Original French WWI Moroccan Tirailleurs Red Fez Cap with Crescent Badge Original Items

Original Item: Only One Available. These caps are extremely rare! This example sadly has suffered much moth damage over the past 100 years, but these are very hard to find in any condition. The cap has sadly lost the original top tassel, but still has the base for it. It has a very nice Moroccan crescent moon badge on the front, and the inside has a cloth label marked T / 4335.

A bit rough, but still with great display potential!

A tirailleur, in the Napoleonic era, was a type of light infantry trained to skirmish ahead of the main columns. Subsequently tirailleurs was used by the French Army as a designation for indigenous infantry recruited in the French colonial territories during the 19th and 20th centuries, or for metropolitan units serving in a light infantry role.

The first colonial tiralleurs will raised from Algeria, but later Tunisia and Morroco would follow. In 1914, during World War I, the 1st Regiment of Moroccan Tirailleurs was created. At the end of the period of French rule in 1956 six regiments of Moroccan tirailleurs were still in existence.

The recruitment of Muslim tirailleurs was mainly voluntary, although a selective form of conscription was introduced in Algeria in 1913 and continued until the end of French rule in North Africa. Prior to 1939 up to 90% of the rank and file of each battalion had been indigenous. The proportion of French European (both metropolitan and pied-noir settlers) to Maghrébin (North African) personnel had however increased to about 30% by the end of World War II, as the tirailleur units became increasingly mechanized.