The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  “My God, those two! Those two!”

  In camp that evening I came across Captain Naugier who had come up from N. I discovered he was a shrewd fellow, nonconformist in his speech as in his behaviour.

  I asked him what he thought of this exploit.

  “I don’t know Major Esclavier very well,” he said, “but I can assure you that Colonel Raspéguy is not the sort of man to get himself killed for the pleasure of accomplishing a fine gesture or through ‘sticking his neck out,’ as he puts it.

  “It was in full awareness of the risks he was taking that our colonel staked his life today. In order to fight, he needs men whose feelings for him are far stronger than those of a troop for its leader. Raspéguy wins because he can demand the impossible from the men under his command, because between them there is not merely discipline and respect but a sort of passionate affection. Don’t you think, my dear Mussy, that his gamble has paid off yet again?”

  But later on, while I lay bundled up in my damp blanket trying to fall asleep, I said to myself that there was something more besides: just like Esclavier, Raspéguy is one of those men who from time to time feel the urge to put their lucky star to the test.

  18 December 1959

  Operation Aldudes is over. The score: 300 fellaghas wiped out, 200 prisoners (of whom a hundred have joined the harkis or the Moslem commando), 250 army rifles and 100 shot-guns recovered, as well as several tons of food supplies, a field hospital and 22,000,000 francs.

  The climate is completely changed. The reservists talk of nothing but fighting it out to a finish. Raspéguy has sent them off to the outlying posts to relieve their comrades who’ve been rotting there for months, and promised them he would celebrate Christmas with them.

  Throughout this operation the colonel made full use of his signals system. He never stopped taking the enemy and their look-outs by surprise, launching his troops in one direction, halting them, withdrawing them to the rear. Out of our “reservist malcontents” he has obtained more than an old seasoned troop would have provided. Now, when the Mule flies over N, they all shout out: “There goes Pierrot!”

  The Moslem commando is likewise making progress. Lieutenant Lamazière has invited me to follow an operation which they are going to carry out next month in the mountains where the command post of the rebel zone is installed.

  Since this morning the commando has been equipped with an embryo political organization directed by a former rebel leader whom the colonel captured in the Sahara. He is a certain Abdallah, a former Kabyle school-teacher, one-eyed and efficient . . . a little too efficient perhaps, because his methods of indoctrination are most energetic. This party or semblance of a party is called the “Movement for the Emancipation of the Algerian Element”; its undeclared aim: independence within the framework of the community. Its slogan: “War on Want.” Its premise: “General de Gaulle will keep his promise and will never come to terms with the F.L.N. but will always be prepared to grant an honourable peace.”

  Big photographs are being displayed everywhere of the paratroop hero Captain Boisfeuras who, propped up on one elbow, said with his dying breath: “Victory is his who dares the most.” That captain must have been a perfect model of the good, somewhat circumscribed, soldier.

  22 December 1959

  Lieutenant Piétang is back from Algiers where he spent four days and met some journalists.

  According to him, there’s something being cooked up, not only on the military staffs but by the activists as well.

  He heard one colonel, and not one of the least important, declare: “With or without de Gaulle, the army will never abandon Algeria.”

  This mania the Algiers colonels have of insisting on speaking in the name of the army!

  They’re perfectly entitled to say: “I, Colonel So-and-So, undertake not to abandon Algeria.” But the army! What do they know about it? Most of them have not even got a command. They’d do better to consult us! Admittedly, they’d be in for a few surprises.

  “A troop can always be conditioned,” they explain. So they take us for under-developed half-wits, do they!

  On the other hand, Operation Jumelles, which was mounted by General Challe in Kabylia, has given us some breathing-space and his raiding forces have done a fine job.

  For the first time the army in Algeria has a leader who does not dabble in politics but makes war, and who, “even though an airman” (as Raspéguy says), has not got his head in the clouds.

  Major Marindelle, who is on his staff, came to spend a few days at N. A strange mixture of child and soldier-monk. He gave us a lecture on revolutionary warfare. . . . I fell asleep in the middle of it. Yet I remember one interesting point (assuming it to be true—with all this intoxication, it’s difficult to tell!). The rebels in the hinterland, who are very disturbed, knowing that de Gaulle will never recognize the F.L.N. as representing the Moslem Algerians, and fearful of finding themselves evicted from the future Algerian nation, are reported to be ready to come to terms with us behind the backs of the people at Tunis.

  But on what conditions? Meanwhile the French of Algeria seem to be more and more pig-headed. Those chaps are sometimes to be pitied, at other times one feels like giving them a kick in the arse, but no one ever dreams of abandoning them.

  Come to think of it, what is Raspéguy doing in his own small way? He is creating, out of rebellious and dynamic elements, another F.L.N. with whom it will be possible to come to terms, since it will owe us everything.

  Captain Naugier has told me:

  “Major Marindelle is extremely intelligent, in the know about quite a number of things, very well informed on what’s going on in the rebellion, maybe even in touch with some of its elements. He belongs to a very special organization which has no legal existence. It’s not on the French of Algeria but on the rebels themselves that he observes the repercussions of the Government’s policy. But he’s wrong in his belief that it will be possible to get de Gaulle to renounce his disastrous policy simply by stamping one’s foot.”

  24 December 1959

  Paule has agreed to come and spend the Christmas holidays at N. She only needs a permit—there won’t be any difficulty about that—and an air ticket—there the problem is insoluble, for neither she nor I possess forty thousand francs.

  I don’t know why exactly, but I discussed the matter with Major Esclavier.

  “The young lady,” he told me, “need only get in touch with my friend Guitte Goldschmidt, who’s also coming out to Algeria for Christmas, she’ll get her a ticket. Later on, when you’ve got the money, you can pay me back. Are you planning to marry her?”

  I reassured him on that score. Esclavier is still as withdrawn and melancholy as ever. At certain times one feels like trying to be nice to him, but he senses this and at once keeps his distance.

  24 January 1960

  It’s happened! Another revolution in Algiers! Barricades in the streets, policemen shot down like fair-ground targets. We’re in the dark about what’s going on and extremely apprehensive.

  Massu, after giving an interview to a German journalist, was recalled to Paris on 19 January. Five days later firing broke out in Algiers.

  “He’s fallen into a trap,” Colonel Raspéguy maintains. “If this is another of Uncle de Gaulle’s tricks, it’s a pretty low-down one. It was so convenient for Massu to follow a man without having to understand anything.”

  It seems that Raspéguy had a “packet of trouble” with Massu at the time of the 13th of May.

  The Christmas holidays were very pleasant. Having been given a good hiding, the fellaghas left us in peace. Paule came out with Guitte Goldschmidt. Guitte seems to have fallen in love with Major Esclavier the day she was born and never to have recovered from it.

  This daughter of a left-wing university figure is a real fire-brand. From her visit to Israel she came back a Zionist, a nationalist and an activi
st. At Tel Aviv she went on a parachute course—for her own way, she would have gone out on operations with Lieutenant Lamazière.

  Paule, who prides herself on knowing the ins and outs of the human heart, maintains that Guitte is extremely unhappy, that Philippe does not love her or rather loves her very much, which is worse.

  For the first few days Guitte had a room next to the major’s. On Christmas evening she managed nevertheless to slip into his bed and he raised no objection, the pet!

  Yet she’s a real beauty; beside her, my “goat-girl” looks like a lifeless doll.

  I heard the colonel say to Esclavier:

  “Philippe, if you must marry, this is the girl for you. She’s the same breed as you.”

  It’s odd to hear a Basque say that about a Jewess!

  Guitte and Paule flew back on 7 January. Paule thanked me for a “charming visit,” but Guitte, so as not to burst into tears, dug her nails into her palms.

  Tragic passions have always frightened me; they’re liable to get the better of our fragile male egoism.

  27 January 1960

  Colonel Raspéguy wanted to send Major Esclavier to Algiers to see what’s going on. The major refused and so Naugier went instead. Naugier came back a short time ago, rather depressed. The great man of this revolution appears to be a café-owner with a very shady past, a certain Joseph Ortiz, whom Lagaillarde, who’s fortunately nicer, pipped at the post with his skeleton staff. But behind them there’s the army, or at least a group of colonels, whom Challe and Delouvrier did not completely disapprove of at the start.

  Their aim: to give the Head of State a dressing-down, oblige him to modify his Algerian policy, to recall Massu; but if de Gaulle gives in he’ll be a prisoner of the colonels for good. Then there was that shooting, started by no one quite knows whom. The cannon for the dressing-down was loaded not with blank shells but grape-shot.

  Naugier brought one or two stories back with him.

  Colonel Parsabel du Mostier, commanding a parachute regiment, was questioned by a C.R.S. colonel, his face distorted with fury, who asked him:

  “Well, whose side are you on?”

  The colonel looked him up and down from his great height:

  “I’ll have you know, sir, I don’t belong to anyone.”

  Practically speaking, the army, that’s to say the active army, no longer belongs to anyone, and least of all to de Gaulle, for they feel, a little prematurely perhaps, that he has deceived them.

  “That’s just like him,” said Colonel Raspéguy, referring to Parsabel. “Yet he wasn’t in such a bad position in this régime: a Polytechnician, son of a general and nephew of a provincial of Jesuits, who goes to church and bears the right sort of name!”

  We had assembled for dinner in the more or less ruined villa which serves as our mess. The grey sea was spread out in front of us. The colonel was sucking his pipe.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “what’s going on in Algiers is no business of ours. Back there they’ve got time to waste. Our job is to wage war and to win it, first of all here, then farther afield. Once this war is won, the Moslems and the French will decide their own fate. It’s up to them.”

  “But what if de Gaulle comes to terms with the F.L.N.?” Lieutenant Lamazière exclaimed. “It means I shall have lied to my men. Once the G.P.R.A. is installed in Algeria they’ll all have their throats cut.”

  Raspéguy shrugged his shoulders:

  “Come now, Lamazière. Do you think a man like Charles de Gaulle, with the record he has, will break his word? But do you also expect a man like that to bow his head before a little pub-keeper? Tomorrow, night operations for everyone. Major Esclavier will give you the detailed orders and time of departure.”

  The colonel saluted and went off. In the evenings he always eats alone.

  29 January 1960

  A raving speech from the delegate general who is leaving Algiers. We’re right in the middle of a comic opera . . . in spite of the bodies laid out opposite the Main Post Office.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Hanne came and asked Raspéguy to send a message of loyalty to de Gaulle. But he was sent off with a flea in his ear.

  “I belong,” he replied, “to an army which belongs to the nation and not to a single individual. Furthermore, sending him a message of loyalty would imply that the army is not entirely loyal. It would be most distasteful.”

  Raspéguy, I feel sure, has now lost any chance he had of wearing a general’s stars.

  Major Marindelle arrived in a liaison plane. This time he’s seriously perturbed, he’s got the red-rimmed eyes of a man who hasn’t slept for several days. In front of us all he asked Raspéguy to go to Algiers. He alone could get past the barriers, obtain the capitulation of Lagaillarde and bring him to Challe who has settled in, surrounded by his air-force commandoes, at Cheragua base.

  More raving!

  “What do you think?” the colonel asked Esclavier.

  “Nothing,” the major drily replied. “Since rejoining the army I’ve stopped thinking.”

  The colonel turned to Marindelle.

  “Have you a written order from General Challe?”

  “No, but I’m certain he’d agree.”

  Raspéguy turned back to us.

  “No change in the orders. The time of departure for tonight’s operation is three o’clock in the morning.”

  We shan’t hear General de Gaulle’s speech, for, unlike the rebels, we don’t have transistors.

  8 March 1960

  I was informed this morning of my promotion to the rank of second lieutenant, on my return from a week’s raid into the rebel zone with Lamazière and his Moslem commando.

  I was frightened, cold and hungry, but I don’t regret the experience.

  Muffled up in a kachabia, a windcheater, a pair of old trousers and canvas boots, I spent eight days living as a rebel with the thirty men of the commando.

  A part of the population, who had fled from the resettlement camps with their wives, children and cattle, have built new villages right in the mountains. That’s where we went.

  Built of branches, concealed under trees, these villages are invisible from the air. Lamazière and Belhanis know their position more or less exactly. On their map some of them are marked with a red cross; these are the ones that have a regular A.L.N. garrison. Others, marked in blue, are only encampments or staging points.

  Belhanis was a fellagha for three years. He knows the passwords, the signs made with bits of chalk or broken branches, he can interpret the way in which certain stones are arranged on the side of a path.

  We marched for six hours in the rain after the trucks had dropped us. All of a sudden Belhanis motioned us to stop. The men took cover. Three of them then went off, their sub-machine-guns hidden under their kachabias.

  “That’s the village over there,” said Lamazière. “Look at that smoke rising above the big tree.”

  “It’s odd, the dogs aren’t barking.”

  “They’ve all been killed. Orders from the chief of the zone: where there are dogs there are men, and the French might hear them barking.”

  It was a long wait. One of the two false fells appeared on the path and motioned to us with his hand. We got up.

  In a sort of woodman’s hut we found three old men and some women and children crowded together. The women were ugly, prematurely aged; the children, under-nourished, had crusts of bread in their hands, and runny eyes. They made room for us and offered us some tea and a few bits of biscuit.

  A cry rose in the gathering darkness. With his own hand Belhanis had just slit the throat of the village headman whom the fellaghas had appointed. The cracked bowl I was holding trembled in my hand.

  By then the old men had realized that we weren’t moujahedines, but they didn’t move.

  “We’re waging their sort of war,” Lamazière said to m
e, “and unfortunately there’s only one way of going about it. To begin with it turns your stomach, but you get used to it in the end. When we started I wanted my men to behave more humanely. Belhanis asked me: ‘Have you ever seen a wild boar attacked by hounds which had been muzzled?’

  “I insisted and I lost a stick of ten partisans. The next time, instead of getting rid of a single individual, we had to burn down a whole village.”

  Lamazière has a clean-cut, square face. He has grown a neat little beard. Like me, he’s a reservist, but how will he ever readapt himself to civilian life with all this blood on his hands? And what if it were all pointless? What if all this effort were to come to nothing?

  I asked him:

  “What would you do if one day the Government decided to come to terms with the F.L.N.?”

  “I’d be doomed, for I should have killed for nothing and broken my word. Belhanis would then be perfectly entitled to bump me off.”

  One of the old men uttered a few words, which Lamazière translated for me:

  “The old boy says that the F.L.N. will win because one day we shall pull out.”

  And Lamazière turned back to him: “Insh’ Allah.”

  We set off again in the middle of the night, before the alarm could be given, for another of these villages, this one marked with a red cross. We reached it at daybreak, as the cocks were beginning to crow.

  A dozen fellaghas were quartered in the seven or eight branch huts. They were taken by surprise, but their reactions were quick and they put up some resistance. Seven of them were killed, three taken prisoner, the commando’s casualties being one killed and two wounded. Two of the prisoners agreed to follow us, the third spat in Belhanis’s face. Belhanis shot him dead and left the body in the middle of the path, its pockets turned inside out.

  Behind us the women rushed up. They began screaming round the corpse and tearing their hair. All this in the rain, in the shadowy depths of the forest.

  During a halt I observed Belhanis closely, his agile mountain-slogger’s body, the proud carriage of his head. When he was with the fells, he was doing the same job. But why is he with us now?