Word: ait
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Three weeks ago in French Morocco, swaggering, red-headed Brigadier-General Freydenberg, battle scarred onetime monk, vivid division commander of the Foreign Legion, rushed with 8,000 men to the relief of the besieged garrison at Ait Yacoub, Jacob's Hummock (TIME, June 24). Ait Yacoub was relieved. General Freydenberg wired the French Ministry of War that he was preparing, in accordance with the old Foreign Legion custom, to wipe out the offending Moors...
French officers in Morocco did not hesitate to say that the recall of General Freydenberg was entirely political. The Ait Yacoub affair was causing uncomfortable debates in the Chamber of Deputies. Socialist and Communist deputies wanted to know the cause of this latest Moroccan outbreak. There were stories of Moorish villages bombed by aviators, Moorish women and children killed. The Poincare government, attacked, recalled Freydenberg, whose brusque methods had been if anything too effective...
...rifle fire. Soldiers fell. Hastily the French commander flung out a skirmish line, halted the advance. His little patrol was completely ambushed by 3,000 ragged, bearded, fierce-fighting Moors. Firing every inch of the way the French patrol retreated through the pass to the cement blockhouse of Ait Yacoub (Jacob's Hummock). For 48 hours the garrison of 360 French and Senegalese stood off 3,000 yelling bloodthirsty tribesmen owing allegiance to no recognized Sheikh, who had sworn to die rather than submit to French rule. In the ambush and retreat to Ait Yacoub, 13 French were killed...
French army headquarters at Rabat, 100 miles away, moved quickly to rescue the beleaguered garrison. Three squadrons of bombing planes zoomed into the air. Eight thousand troops of the Foreign Legion soaped their horny feet, filled their canteens with good red pinard in preparation for the long march to Ait Yacoub...
...known, as is the sentence: Raisuli is not to be executed, for he is a descendant of the Prophet and must not be killed; he is to be condemned to reside for the remainder of his life within the four walls of Abd-el-Krim's palace at Ait Hamara...