Ending the Rebellion
With the Guineans now the only remaining threat, Delestraint and his men paused only to reinforce the Saharan garrisons before pushing south towards the coast. With the First Army now returning to Algiers, it would be up to Delestraint’s mobile infantry and the colonial militia to take on the Guineans alone.
Though the colonial militia succeeded in retaking Labe from the rebels by mid-July, and beating off a counter-attack, the war with the rebels was far from over.
However, Delestraint and his reinforcements would not arrive for a while, which gave the rebels a window in which to act. And act they did, launching an offensive which saw them occupying Kayes by the 21st.
However, by the end of July, Delestraint arrived and ordered the colonial militoa to attack the rebels in Kayes from Labe while his troops launched an offensive from the north.
Caught in a pincer movement, the soldiers of the self-proclaimed Guinean Liberation Army were forced to withdraw after a series of battles and skirmishes lasting six days.
Arriving at the same time as the victory was the welcome news that, after weeks of secret negotiations, the re-elected government of South Africa had re-entered the entente, providing a welcome boost to morale in Algiers, Ottawa, Canberra and Delhi.
However, a few days later, disturbing news arrived from the Middle East, where the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating amidst the Great Arab Revolt.
These international events prompted the arrival in Dakar of a Royal Canadian Air Force squadron to help strengthen the Entente in the region. Their planes were soon put to good use when Delestraint launched a new offensive, pursuing the retreating Guinean troops.
Though the rebels attempted to regroup, aerial superiority and support from the colonial militia allowed the mobile infantry to simply role over the Guineans.
However, despite Delestraint’s was troops killing or force the surrender of a division’s worth of rebels, progress would be slow for much of the rest of the year as, though the way to the coast was now open, poor infrastructure would prevent the arrival of French troops in Ziguinchor until the end of October.
Meanwhile, following the breaking away of Cyprus and Libya, and several military defeats, the Ottomans were forced to sign the Treaty of Jerusalem on October the 24th, giving up much of their land to Egypt and Hashemite Arabia.
This was to prove the death blow for the Ottoman Empire as, infuriated by the national humiliation at the hands of the Arab Block, elements of the military led a coup, establishing a new Republic of Turkey – a nation whose future would become deeply entwined with the French Empire.
As far as the Empire itself was concerned, the only item of interest was that the newly independent Libya presented a weak neighbour on its borders should expansion ever be desired. In the meantime, however, the Emperor and De Gaulle alike were focusing their attention on the capital of the Guinean rebels, Conakry, where French forces had launched their final attack on the enemy.
Outnumbered, poorly supplied and surrounded, the Guineans were swiftly beaten and the French army announced that they had fully regained control of the city by the 29th of December. New Year’s Day in Conarky would be marked with the mass hanging of the rebel leadership.
In Algiers, however, the day was marked with fireworks and celebration.
For, though it had seemed at times though the country had been on the verge of disintegrating, the empire had ultimately won through the fires of rebellion of ’38 and proved that it had staying power.