His goumiers pushed on, out for blood and booty. ‘Most wore sandals, wool socks, gloves with the trigger fingers snipped off, and striped djellabas; a beard, a soup-bowl helmet, and foot-long knife at the belt.’ The knives were used for cutting off fingers and ears from the German dead as trophies. The goumiers were formidable mountain fighters. But they terrorized Italian civilians, and there were tales of brutal rapes, which their French officers tended to shrug off as the price to be paid in war.
