Morocco's colonial soldiers, or goumiers, though long virtually ignored in post-independence historiography have begun to receive attention in recent scholarship and gained a higher profile following the release of the Oscar-nominated 2006 film Les Indigènes, which traced the plight of four North African soldiers fighting for the French in World War II. These units (tabors) had originally been formed to help the French “pacify” Morocco itself, played a strategic role in maintaining colonial power throughout the protectorate period, and eventually were transformed into the Royal Armed Forces after independence. Despite not fitting neatly (or at all) into dominant nationalist narratives of Morocco’s anti-colonial struggle, these troops played a pivotal role in Morocco’s colonial and postcolonial history. This paper turns to the still virtually unexamined history of what happened after the war in the late 1940s, as these soldiers were variously deployed in occupied Germany, decommissioned and returned to Morocco, or, as occurred for significant numbers, reconscripted and deployed to fight for the French against the Việt Minh’s anti-colonial struggle in Indochina. Using French military archives and soldier memoirs, I argue this increased military mobilization and global deployment of rural Moroccan men during and after the war in the 1940s had profound economic, social, and eventually political ramifications back in Morocco itself. This paper traces how these effects extended from micro-social dynamics at the family/tribal level (income flows, housing, and movement) to macro-political struggles, in which these soldiers were used as critical leverage, between the Moroccan sultan/king and the French Resident General.