The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  “I must admit, sir, that the men were unwilling to fight. They don’t understand this sort of war. They were not able to defend themselves because they had received no training. They were cowardly, but for the last six months they had been footslogging all over the mountains without seeing a soul and their heart wasn’t in it. We haven’t any leaders. The officers who know how to fight and command and win the confidence of their men are all with the paratroops, not with us. The Raspéguys, the Bigeards, the Jean-Pierres and Buchouds are not made for the likes of us. . . . But there are forty thousand of us. We’re the real France, not you. I apologize, sir.”

  Raspéguy then addressed him by the familiar tu:

  “Now that you’ve started you’d better go on and get it all off your chest. It’s important, my lad.”

  Naugier drew closer. This time the colonel was not putting on an act. His eyes were screwed up into narrow slits, the nostrils of his great beak were quivering.

  With deep feeling Lamazière went on with his story, hanging his head. Every so often he kicked at a twisted stump growing at his feet.

  “Second Lieutenant Barrestac was killed because his men let him down. He was my best friend, the sort of friend you make in an hour and keep for a lifetime. We exchanged books and lent each other money, even when it wasn’t necessary, just for the pleasure of exchanging something more between us, like boys lending their pen-knives or fountain-pens. At Cherchell we had been taught how to behave in every situation, but when three hundred well-armed fells spoiling for a fight fall on your neck it’s a bit different. When that happens there must be someone in command; you need to hear a confident voice in which you can trust because it’s the voice of a man who knows how these things are and that it’s never so frightening as you think.

  “Our company commander was an old lieutenant whom everyone called Totoche and who used to go drinking with the men. Our colonel was busy wooing the rich settlers. He was approaching retirement and was after a job. But you people, the great fighters in camouflage uniform, who tot up your scores and are given medals, you whom everyone in Algiers applauds and who get all the girls, you might at least have taught us how to wage war. But you’ve never been willing to deal with us and that’s why, this morning, twenty men have had their throats slit like sheep.”

  “Wouldn’t you like to transfer to the paratroops?”

  “No.”

  “Or join me?”

  “It would be the same thing.”

  “Go and fetch your kit and come back here. At least you’ll see how we set to work.”

  “At your orders, sir.”

  The second lieutenant snapped to attention, saluted, then started back down to the valley. Raspéguy sat musing over his map. Captain Naugier came and crouched by his side.

  “You know, Naugier, it’s serious what that lad told me. We’ve got five officers per company and they’re all capable of commanding a hundred and fifty men; but those chaps haven’t got one . . . and their colonel, I’ll bet you anything, can’t even read a map. We have created a sect of fighters apart from the army, but that’s not the way you win a war like the Algerian war, or remake a country. All you do is get yourself hated.

  “That’s why Esclavier left us and Boisfeuras got himself killed on that dune near Foum el Zoar. Let’s change the subject. It won’t be long before the general arrives. Here are the orders: our reinforcements must be in position. We’re clearing out of the valley. All the companies are to climb back on to the ridges.”

  “But, sir——”

  “We’re going to block the exits. Tonight the fells will try and make a break-out, and that’s when we’ll get them.

  “I have no wish to lose a hundred men killed or wounded; that’s what it would cost us to mop up the undergrowth. Too high a price!”

  “We shan’t be able to block all the exits; there aren’t enough of us.”

  “The other regiments will be here.”

  “They’ll reduce our score.”

  “What of it? Do you think that’s so important, our score? You heard what the lad told us. In our outfit we tot up scores, meanwhile they get their balls cut off, bleating like lambs.”

  A helicopter brought in General Marrestin. The machine came and landed with the grace of a dragon-fly near the black regimental pennant bearing the motto “I dare.” The general was a wiry, fussy little man, with a nervous tic that showed whenever he felt anxious. He was reputed to be a brilliant striking-force theoretician and his only wish was to be on a combined-operations staff. He was known to be ambitious and was said to be intelligent; he had no friends, but had accomplices in all the key posts in the National Defence. His lips were thin; his blue, almost opaque, eyes reflected neither passion nor pity nor tenderness.

  General Marrestin regarded Algeria as lost. He therefore considered extremely dangerous the steps taken by a part of the army to adjust itself to revolutionary warfare and guerrilla combat. Politics, in his opinion, should be confined to a very small number of generals and should in no way concern senior officers, and still less junior ones. But revolutionary warfare meant politics at section-leader and duty-corporal level. More than once he had declared, at dinners and receptions, that the first step to be taken to save the army from anarchy was to dissolve the two parachute divisions and put Colonel Raspéguy on the retired list.

  Like a jack-in-the-box, the general sprang out of the Alouette, briefly shook hands with the colonel, who had advanced to greet him, and rushed over to the map.

  “Well, what’s the position?”

  Raspéguy pointed out the valley with his finger:

  “The fells are in there, sir. At the moment we’re bringing out the dead and wounded of the 7th Infantry Regiment.”

  “No journalists about?”

  “No.”

  “I want this affair to be kept absolutely secret. On orders from Paris. What are you waiting for to finish them off right away?”

  “Right away, sir? It would cost a good hundred dead and wounded.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “The Viets—the fells, I mean—have gone to ground among the rocks at the bottom of the wadi. We’d have to drag them out one by one. If we wait until nightfall they’ll come out.”

  “They might and they mightn’t.”

  “It’s not in their interest to wait until we get further reinforcements and they’re more tightly hemmed in.”

  “This business has been going on long enough, Raspéguy. In Paris as well as Algiers they want it finished and done with before the day is out. We shall attack the valley with artillery and napalm, and in three hours’ time you’ll go over the terrain with a fine tooth-comb. We’ve got one of the largest scores of the year here.”

  “It can’t be done, sir.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It can’t be done. Have you looked at the terrain? Artillery and napalm in a spot like this won’t have any effect at all. How many times did they try it in Indo-China! We’ve got to out-manœuvre them, sir.”

  “I’ve given you an order, Raspéguy. See that you carry it out.”

  “I can’t do it.”

  Marrestin mistook the paratrooper’s conciliatory tone for weakness. He concluded that Raspéguy, like many officers who were said to be hard to handle, needed only to feel the fist of a real leader.

  He assumed a curt, trenchant tone:

  “If you don’t obey immediately I’ll relieve you of your command.”

  “Then it’s up to you, sir. You yourself will give the company commanders their orders to go out and get their men killed for the sake of the bulletin.”

  Raspéguy had picked up the receiver of the W.T. and was holding it out to the general:

  “Go ahead. But all the papers will know, because I’ll tell them, that because of your negligence, and because you don’t know how to wage t
his sort of war, two hundred and fifty or three hundred fellaghas were able to cross the barrier. I shall also tell them how, after having been responsible for the deaths of twenty reservists, you still wanted to kill off a hundred or so paratroopers, who are likewise reservists.”

  On the W.T. Captain Orsini was asking for the colonel. Raspéguy turned amiably to General Marrestin:

  “You’re in touch with Orsini, sir. Would you like to talk to him?”

  Marrestin had turned pale. On the 13th of May he was on a tour of inspection in Constantine. Not being abreast of the events, he had loudly proclaimed his loyalty to the Government, although he had never stopped plotting against it. A little paratroop captain had come slouching over and, pointing to a sort of underground shed, had said to him:

  “In you go.”

  In front of fifty hilarious or dumbfounded officers General Marrestin, the divisional commander, had crept into the shed. And now he had just recognized that voice which had a whiff of Corsican maquis about it.

  Raspéguy put the receiver down on the ground and assumed an insidiously good-natured tone:

  “Well, General Marrestin, don’t you think it would be better for all of us to come to some arrangement? Even so, I still can’t understand how such a large band managed to get across the barrier!”

  Marrestin had recovered a little of his self-assurance. He was coolly calculating his chances. This was no time to have a show-down with Raspéguy over a question of tactics. In the Rue Saint-Dominique they would support the colonel, for, though accusing him of every sin in the book, they considered him outstanding in the field. The losses had been somewhat heavy, which was already embarrassing, especially when it was learnt that the band had got across the barrier without being fired on.

  The general composed his voice:

  “I hold you alone responsible for this operation, Colonel. I’m putting the other regiments under your orders. If our losses are too high, if the band is not completely wiped out, I give you my word: your career’s finished, I’ll make a report to the Ministry myself. In any case it is compromised as a result of your insolence and insubordination. I’m going back to my command post. I want you to give me a situation report every hour.”

  “You can say that again,” Raspéguy thought to himself. “My career may perhaps be compromised, but yours is going to take a bit of a knock. I know that barrier. I’ve been along it from one end to the other, in front and behind. It can’t be crossed like an open field. There’s something fishy about this business, I can feel it in my bones. You’re the one behind it, Marrestin.”

  The colonel picked up the receiver and answered Orsini.

  “I can hear you more clearly now. Have you reached the top of the slope yet?”

  “Just about. I’ve got a prisoner who’s talked. We had to knock him about a bit. He tells me his little pals had buried all their heavy weapons and were escorting an important chief. He doesn’t know where the weapons are or the name of this chief.”

  As he flew over the pennant of the 10th Regiment, the general sniggered:

  “‘I dare.’ You’re telling me!”

  But in the eyes of his pilot, a young N.C.O., he saw a gleam of such violent hatred that he felt frightened throughout the return flight. The N.C.O. had witnessed the altercation.

  * * * *

  As each piece of information reached them, Raspéguy and Captain Naugier marked the companies’ new positions in red and blue on the map.

  The colonel stroked his chin. He had had no time to shave and he did not like the feeling.

  “Do you think I went a little too far with our brass-hat friend? What do you feel about it, Naugier?”

  “In 1917 you might have been shot, sir, but today you’re bound to be backed up.”

  “Can you tell me why?”

  “When parents throw their child out into the street they can’t expect respect and obedience from him when he’s an adult. Well, we’ve become adult without the help of our traditional leaders; we have fought wars in which they took no part and undertaken journeys on which they were unwilling to accompany us. We have suffered a lot, which has prompted us to think. But our leaders have remained in the state of knowledge they had reached at the age of twenty. Our fellow-countrymen have ignored us for ages. But they showed some interest in us when we gave them a good fright on May 13th and they felt themselves threatened. They thus discovered that we were ‘not altogether happy.’ Esclavier resigns and is at once headline news. A short time ago no one would even have heard of him. Fear has made film-stars out of us, and that’s not what we wanted. So, of course, one shoots a line, squares one’s shoulders and draws one’s stomach in, but we feel like crying. Here we are, turned into prætorians for having wished too strongly to be soldiers of the people, and into bogeymen for having wanted to be loved.”

  At that moment the second lieutenant reappeared, clambering with difficulty over the rocks, dragging his haversack behind him. Naugier blew his nose. Raspéguy pointed a finger at the lad.

  “To begin with, the paratroops were a wonderful myth, a story to enthral every schoolboy in France. But instead of spreading throughout the army, and growing bigger and better, the myth has shrunk, as you’ve seen for yourself, and now it’s turning to vinegar.”

  Standing with his hands in his pockets, facing the curving line of the bare grey crests, Raspéguy fell to dreaming again. And his massive chest expanded as he heard the sound of a bugle vibrating in his head, so loud as to be almost unbearable.

  This time, he decided, all on his own, he was going to create a fresh myth which would be acceptable to everyone, to this little second lieutenant climbing up towards him no less than to professional fighters like Naugier, Orsini and Pinières, something that would have captivated Boisfeuras and Esclavier as much as the fells hiding in the valley and the strong-arm men of Babel-Oued.

  * * * *

  In a cleft among the rocks, concealed by some brambles, in the almost stifling smell of absinthe and basil, four men huddled close together, sweating, while the mosquitoes devoured their faces and arms.

  Mahmoudi was sucking a blade of grass, and from time to time a cruel smile made his teeth flash in the half-light.

  Atarf grumbled:

  “We’re going to suffocate to death. If only we could have a smoke! I’m thirsty.”

  “Drink your sweat. That’ll teach you to fill your flask with brandy instead of water. The Koran forbids brandy.”

  “To hell with the Koran. They’re probably dropping beer to those bastards up there, and ice!”

  “I’ve marched with them, I’ve sweated with them, all of us eaten alive by mosquitoes which fed on our blood, and shitting our guts out on the way. They know how to do without beer and ice.”

  “Then why are they losing?”

  “They’re being made to defend a cause they don’t like. They let them off the lead for three days, four days, maybe a week, then bring them back growling to their kennels and tie them up again.”

  “Still, they brought off the May 13th revolution, your pals, and it didn’t change a thing. They’re going against history, they’re done for, they’ll drown in their own shit.”

  “Didn’t anyone ever tell you, Atarf, that I was with them on the 13th of May?”

  “Yes.”

  “One of them was called Esclavier, another Boisfeuras, a third Marindelle, led by Major Jacques de Glatigny, and behind them there was Raspéguy, who held his wolves in check, ready to let them loose. He never needed to.”

  “And then?”

  “Boisfeuras got himself killed, Esclavier has just left the army and I am here.”

  “You’re a romantic, Mahmoudi, and romanticism is no longer in fashion in revolutionary wars. It would have done you good to go to Prague. They would have taught you to not to give a damn about the Koran and to take an interest in what makes the stre
ngth of the modern world: the masses, and the methods one must use to lead them.”

  “The other side also knows those methods. In the Forum they imposed the idea of integration on a crowd which only the day before would not even hear of mixed schools!”

  Behind them Ahmed grumbled:

  “Ina al dine.”

  The wireless operator, whom he had jostled, insulted him in his turn, but under his breath and without conviction. It was hot and the hide-out smelled like a grave. The operator had dug plenty of graves when he was with Ziad, who saw spies everywhere.

  “Esketou, shut up!”

  Mahmoudi pricked up his ears:

  “They’re going on with the helicopter operations. They’re surrounding the valley, but won’t come into it. In their position I’d have done the same. Even so, we’ll try and break through when night falls, before the moon comes up. Towards the end of the night they will be more vigilant.”

  “I was told exactly the opposite,” said Atarf.

  “Forget everything you’ve been told. In this war you do the opposite of what the rules lay down; in fact you only learn the rules in order to do the opposite.”

  * * * *

  Captains Pinières and Orsini were interrogating a prisoner. He was squatting on his haunches in the full glare of the sun, his hands tied behind his back.

  Orsini had stuffed a handful of salt into his mouth, as though giving a powder to a dog, and was waving a water-bottle under his nose.

  “What’s the name of this leader you were escorting?”

  “Manarf. Give me something to drink, Captain. He was short . . . young . . . but not so very young. . . .”

  Orsini brought the water-bottle closer to him.

  “They said he was a captain in the levies . . . but I never heard his name. . . .”

  “You were also in the levies, weren’t you?”

  “Sergeant Ahmed Ahia, eleven years’ service. . . .”

  “And you don’t know the name of this captain—you, a deserter like him?”