Caid El-Hadj
At Fez, Capital of the French protectorate over Morocco, a French court martial sentenced to death last week a German who was perhaps the most striking Occidental in the Moroccan war between Abd-el-Krim and the French (TIME, May 11, 1925 to June 7, 1926.)
The condemned, Herr Josef Otto Klems, born in the Rhineland, later a French Lieutenant, finally Chief of Staff to Abd-el-Krim, asked last week that he be sent into life exile on Reunion Island, where Krim is now enduring that fate. The Court Martial replied that Herr Klems must suffer the fate of a deserter from the French army, ordered him shot.
Two years ago Josef Otto Klems, known to Moroccans as the Caid el-Hadj, told his extraordinary life story to a U. S. correspondent,* in part as follows:
"When I was 20, something happened: ... a Christian woman. She was a Christian woman in the sense that when she was tired of me, she went off with another man. No Arab woman would ever do that, unless she was sent away.
"[She had made me evade my German military service and take her to Paris. She left me when I was out of money.] So, I took service under the French in Morocco in 1912. . . . The French then did not care any more for Germans than they do now, but I was recommended as a German who had evaded his military service in Germany. ... By 1920 I was a lieutenant. I fought very loyally for the French. ... I risked my life for them thousands of times, but that meant nothing. Some of the officers could hardly keep from calling me 'Boche,' all because I was born in Germany. At last, at a little dinner in Fez, a certain French captain got drunk and called me a Boche. I knocked him down, and got out before the guards came to arrest me [and I deserted to the Moroccans].
"[At first I was treated as a captive and a slave.] One day a young French officer--he was not more than 22--was captured. . . . He was buried alive up to the neck. The women brought a great bowl of thick brown honey and poured it over his head.
"I suppose I went mad when I saw how he would be tortured before he could die . . . long hours in the scorching sun . . . the insects . . . jackals eating his head. . . I grabbed a stick, and made for the grave. But in a moment ten or fifteen tribesmen had me down. [It was lucky I did not suffer the same fate as the French officer, who died two days later.]
"[Eventually] I was circumcised and made Mohammedan. ... I married the daughter of an old sherif, and became the recognized chief of my section of the tribe. She was a beautiful little creature of about 15, with great brown eyes and a Rosenknospe mouth. She was my first Arab wife. . . . Arab girls are always in love with the first white stranger they see. . . .
"I had kept my French uniform, and sometimes at night I would make my way across the hills to one of the French outposts while the officers were at dinner. . . . In my uniform I was able to make the rounds of the officers' quarters, collecting automatic revolvers, or anything else of value.
"It was my custom to scrawl on a piece of paper, 'El-Hadj Aleman,' (the German Pilgrim) and leave it prominently displayed. I must have done this 20 times.
"When I burned down a French house, I made sure to put my name on the work: 'El-Hadj Aleman.' . . .
"I saved the lives of several Frenchmen at that time. ... I have no sentiment about that. . . . It seemed to me very foolish to kill, torture or castrate all the French captured. . . .
"At last the Sultan [Abd-el-Krim], gave me another wife, a mule and a house. . . . One of my wives, called Fat'ma, as half of all Arab women are, has a son, whom I have called Mohammed. . . . My son, I hope, . . . will never learn the evil ways of what you call civilization. . . . The only world fit for a man to live in is the Mohammedan world."
* Cf. AN AMERICAN AMONG THE RIVER-- Vincent Sheean--Century.