During the Italian campaign, it served with the French Expeditionary Corps under General Alphonse Juin, and was cited four times at the orders of the armed forces.

This possibly reflected the fact that the areas of recruitment had formerly been part of territories under Ottoman guardianship administered by the Dey of Algiers and the Bey of Tunis.

According to other sources, the tirailleurs gained that designation during the Crimean War when Algerian infantry in the French expeditionary force were sometimes mistaken for their Turkish allies.

In the course of World War I, France mobilized 62,461 Muslim tirailleurs and spahis in Tunisia, together with 9,000 French soldiers and 24,442 indigenous colonial workers, numbering in total 86,903 men.

Engaged for the first time on August 23, 1914 at Hanzinelle [fr] in Belgium, these Tunisian soldiers experienced extensive service in WW1 trench warfare.

The performance of the Tunisian tirailleurs at the Chemin des Dames in Verdun 1917, earned the regiment the Croix de guerre and the Légion d'honneur.

During the Tunisia Campaign, equipped with material from whatever sources were available, the regiment fought alongside French, American and British units.

According to Charles de Gaulle, during the Belvédère fighting: "the 4th Tunisian Tirailleurs Regiment accomplished one of the most brilliant successes of arms endeavours at the cost of enormous heavy losses.

Accordingly, Adjudant-chef Ahmed El Abed was the first military of the French Army to penetrate Germany in 1945: he reached the iced waters of the river of Lauter with a couple of dozen combatants and on March 14 took the village of Scheibenhardt.

Some of the veterans of the 4th TTR were integrated into the newly established Tunisian National Army alongside other local contingent forces.

Complete with red fezzes and waist sashes, this North African style of clothing was reintroduced for parade and off-duty wear in 1932.