Alsatian Veteran Honors Moroccan Fighters’ Role in Liberating Mulhouse

To celebrate the 2019 edition of the liberation of Mulhouse, President Macron asked the mayors of France to pay tribute to the African and North African liberators by naming streets and squares in their communes after them.

In Alsace, a French city that shares many stories with Morocco, this wish of the Head of State has been followed in places. Present and witness to history during this liberation of Mulhouse with several of his Moroccan fellow combatants, Jacques Gouvier, who was born in Morocco, his "second homeland", where he grew up, surrounded by "fantastic people", remembers this beautiful era that he shares with the French media.

For the veteran, the first French army whose history is not well known to all has not been sufficiently honored. And yet, this army has done a lot for the liberation of Mulhouse. In this army, he recalls, there was a contingent of Moroccan, Algerian and a few Senegalese soldiers.

"The proportion of the participation of these Moroccan, Algerian and Senegalese troops is about 30 to 31% of the overall strength of the first army. The technical divisions such as the artillery, tank and armored divisions, the engineering divisions had very few Moroccan and Algerian elements," he adds.

However, he recalls that among the Moroccans, there were French, including Alsatians. "I have a filmed document where two Moroccan tirailleur soldiers from the first tirailleur regiment were two Alsatians who had escaped from Alsace. They were indeed French.

And there were French who had the title of Moroccan tirailleurs, mixed with other Moroccan tirailleurs who, according to the Alsatian veteran, were "extraordinary fighters". "The Moroccans behaved heroically during the battles of the Hardt, the most violent in Alsace," he specifies.