The Praetorians

by Jean Larteguy

  I put the question to Lamazière.

  “In the A.L.N. he was only a staff-sergeant, and then he had fallen foul of the leader of the zone over some woman or money trouble. He’s ambitious.

  “Now, the longer he fights on our side, the more reasons he has for being on it, and those reasons aren’t at all bad. In another army, our army, he has remained a fell and he knows quite well that at the end of it all lies the independence of Algeria. The problem is quite simple: either the F.L.N. snatches this independence out of our hands, or we oblige men trained by us to deserve it by fighting on our side.”

  “So many people killed for such a minute distinction!”

  “An essential distinction! We began this war and we’re caught up in the works. But if you find this raid too sickening and want to go back . . .”

  I saw by his eyes that he wanted me to remain. For days and nights, for mile after mile, I went on slogging up and down the slopes, slipping, stumbling, tearing my hands on the thorny undergrowth. How much easier it is, sitting in a chair with a billycan of coffee within hand’s reach, to listen to the report of an engagement on the W.T.

  Lamazière is due for demobilization in a month’s time, but I know he will sign on again.

  Blast and damn all those who have plunged us into this mess and darkness, all those who are keeping us in it and those who still dare to lie to us!

  13 April 1960

  The sector is almost completely pacified. The barbed-wire entanglements which surrounded the church, the public buildings and the officers’ club have been removed. A propaganda centre has been set up in the middle of the village. A loudspeaker keeps blaring out slogans in Arabic, punctuated by military marches. Peace seems to have returned: we control the whole sector and, through the medium of Abdallah and his “party,” all the resettlements.

  Permanent villages are being built. We are providing work for these “uprooted” elements. The roads to the interior are no longer blocked. But it’s now all round this island which has become healthy once again that everything is going to rot. There’s never an end to this war! To protect his own sector, Raspéguy is ceaselessly obliged to carry out more or less clandestine operations in the neighbouring sectors.

  Everyone is talking about this striking success: the pacification of N. The news has attracted journalists and press photographers.

  But only three days ago I fell into an ambush. I had set out with three vehicles to fetch some W.T. equipment from the Signals branch of Corps H.Q. We were bowling along through the sector next to ours and one of the Moslems of the commando, whom I was taking in to hospital to be treated for an old dose of clap, started singing in all innocence the marching song of the A.L.N. moujahedines:

  “‘The brushwood of the jebel is the finest in the world,

  The machine-gun is as light as a feather,

  The singing of the bullets is balm to my ears . . .’”

  At a bend in the coastal road overlooking the sea, bullets began whistling round us. My truck turned over and I was thrown ten yards down the side of the cliff. Bruised and battered, covered in thorns, I fell into a sort of ditch concealed under a bush.

  The rebels swarmed out into the road, I heard several shots and loud yells. Those gentlemen were having a fine time.

  I didn’t even have a revolver and was scared stiff. But soon hatred got the better of my fear, a burning, wild hatred that drove me to struggle to my feet and attack those savages with stones, for the yells were growing louder, mingled with bursts of laughter, then screams and sounds of choking. The rebels then set fire to the trucks, which gave the alarm to the neighbouring post.

  I heard the caterpillars of a half-track and came out of my hole. It seems I wasn’t a very pretty sight. The lieutenant in command of the detachment forced some brandy down my throat. The scene on the road was horrible.

  As soon as I got back to N, I asked Lamazière to take me on in his commando.

  He refused.

  “The job we’re doing, however cruel it may be, has got to be done without hatred.”

  14 April 1960

  Yesterday the cavalry were to celebrate the feast of St. George, their patron saint. The Spahis paraded in full dress uniform. They had sent to Algiers for chickens, champagne and a few pretty ladies, and organized a garden-party and point-to-point.

  At nine o’clock Colonel Morfaix de Jusseau, booted and spurred and gloved, with his cane tucked under his arm and his monocle screwed into his eye, came and invited Raspéguy and his officers to the celebrations.

  Raspéguy was covered in mud; he had just come in from operations and had not been to bed. He listened to the cavalryman, but was suddenly seized with fury.

  “You’re going to give a garden-party, Colonel, organize a point-to-point, show off your stupid snobbery, drink your bubbly and stuff yourselves with your chickens, while in N alone there are three thousand unemployed dying of hunger! I forbid the celebrations and if by any chance you try to go ahead with them, I’ll have you chased off by my Moslem commando with grenades.”

  Morfaix de Jusseau went off white with rage.

  Quartermaster-Sergeant Pieron, who has a good nose for a bargain, bought back a dozen of the chickens at a very fair price.

  22 August 1960

  Lieutenant Lamazière was killed last night. There was a rumour going round, following a speech of General de Gaulle’s and certain articles in the press, that France was about to come to terms with the G.P.R.A. A dozen men of the commando mutinied and, after killing the lieutenant, disappeared with their arms. Belhanis was coming in from operations. Did he arrive too late to save the lieutenant, or not early enough to join the deserters?

  This war could not go on any longer. Since the F.L.N. was the only nationalist organization which, by means of terror or persuasion, had succeeded in imposing itself on all the Moslems, it was only logical to come to terms with it.

  But why all this trickery, this persistent trickery? Why not have honestly explained to the army what, in the given political circumstances, it was possible to do and what was not possible?

  The Government allowed the officers, when it did not actually encourage them, to give their word to the French Algerians as well as to the Moslems that they would never leave, and it proclaimed in all the papers, in every broadcast, that France would not come to terms with the F.L.N., although it knew these promises would not be kept. Therein lies the crime.

  Tomorrow we bury Lieutenant Lamazière.

  23 August 1960

  At the graveside of our comrade, Raspéguy, looking aged and weary, merely uttered these words:

  “This officer died because we’ve been told a lot of lies.”

  Major Esclavier stood behind him, looking even more sombre than usual. He was ostentatiously wearing all his decorations except the Croix de la Libération which left a wide gap on his chest.

  30 August 1960

  Colonel Raspéguy has been relieved of his command.

  The diary ends with this last entry. Shortly afterwards Second-Lieutenant Mussy went home to France, where he was demobilized.

  Since then, in the company of his “goat-girls” and comrades from the Arts and Crafts, he has tried to forget Algeria. Apparently, he has succeeded.

  * * * *

  “There are some who still keep shouting, but it won’t do any good.”

  And Charles de Gaulle launched himself into the crowd that shortly before was booing him, the crowd in which there swarmed, in the soaking rain, fellahin, soldiers’ wives and children, and settlers from Ain-Temouchent who are perhaps the best in the whole of Algeria.

  Shortly before, a group of demonstrators had torn down the only banner which acclaimed the general. It was the sub-prefect who had ordered it to be hoisted; it was the president of the local branch of the Direction des Affaires Politiques who had given the counter-order to re
move it.

  For a brief moment the hostile crowd was taken aback, so great was the legend, so moving this almost blind statue moving forward towards them, as though to beg from the very men who were about to be sacrificed their approval which would also be their forgiveness. Hands were stretched out towards de Gaulle; he seized them, clung to them.

  But the cries of hatred which had died away as he went past started up again immediately behind him.

  On the steps of the town hall thirty officers stood motionless, watching him with blank expressions.

  “I must say, the old man’s got a nerve,” said a young lieutenant, as though he was witnessing a simple athletic feat.

  “Charles the Cheat,” spat out a captain, red-faced with anger.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques de Glatigny turned to Major Philippe Esclavier who now wore the green beret of the Foreign Legion Parachute Regiment.

  “What do you think, Philippe?”

  He waited for the usual answer: “Nothing.”

  But the major seized him by the shoulder and Glatigny was grateful to him for showing so openly that he was still his friend. During the last few months many of his former comrades in the division had pretended not to recognize him.

  “Do you know why I asked to be transferred to the Foreign Legion, Jacques? The legionaries are mercenaries; many of them speak German. Colonel Millois who commands our Foreign Parachute Regiment keeps telling anyone who’ll listen: ‘I’m just a simple machine for killing.’ So for me there are no twinges of conscience or ‘commitments,’ as there are for Raspéguy.”

  “So you’re at peace at last?”

  “You know I’m not. The legionaries follow their officers, especially in the paratroops, and the officers always have problems. . . . Some of them are foreigners, the Legion has become their fatherland, and they all know that the Legion will never survive a defeat in Algeria.

  “And then there’s Algiers, this town that has fallen in love with them. This is their temptation, which they overcome when they’re in the field, but which seizes them again as soon as they approach Zeralda.”

  General de Gaulle was making his way back to his car with a strange smile on his weary face.

  “The army will never forgive de Gaulle for having obliged them to break their word,” Pasfeuro whispered to another journalist, “but they’ll continue, reluctantly, to obey him.”

  “Through discipline?”

  “The best of them, yes.”

  “What about the others?”

  “They’ve got to live, and they have wives and children to think of.”

  Françoise Baguèras shouldered her way towards them through the crowd:

  “Look, Pasfeuro, over there on the left, Glatigny with Esclavier. I wonder what those two can be thinking?”

  “In Glatigny’s case it’s not hard to imagine: he’s a loyal follower, but a crucified one. With Esclavier, it’s impossible to tell. Since that Influences story, no journalist has been able to speak to him.”

  Villèle, with the collar of his raincoat turned up, sidled over towards them:

  “Esclavier’s here?”

  “On the steps. Are you preparing another dirty trick on him?” Pasfeuro enquired.

  “No, but I’ve got a lady-friend who’s still interested in him. When I get back to Paris I’ll tell her: ‘I saw that paratrooper of yours, dear Irène. He was standing to attention in the rain, with a haggard expression and wearing a green beret. He’s no longer front-page news. He wasn’t worth all the pain he caused you.’”

  In the lobby of the town hall, where they had taken shelter, Glatigny asked Esclavier:

  “Do you think the army will react? That they can risk another wild move like the 24th of January?”

  “Or the 13th of May? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. Marindelle came to see me several times. I refused to listen to him as long as he talked about plots, but I pricked up my ears when I heard him mention Mahmoudi, in charge of Willaya 4, and a certain meeting which is said to have taken place in Paris.”

  “It’s an embarrassing business, I admit, but I don’t think those negotiations could result in——”

  “Marindelle violently accuses the men who are now your friends of having, out of compliance with the rebellion, torpedoed an unexpected chance of winning the war.”

  “You don’t make friends of those who happen to be with you, close to the powers that be, only allies or accomplices. A month ago I was in Koblenz; I went and called on Raspéguy. He’s putting on weight and doesn’t even do his physical jerks any longer.”

  “What’s he commanding?”

  “Nothing. I defended him as much as I could, but he’s become the black sheep; they believe him to be capable of any plot. Some police were sent out to keep him under observation and he noticed them.”

  “Raspéguy writes me from time to time. This is what he said more or less in his last letter: ‘I have not dared to go back to my village with my head hung in defeat and my old tarnished colonel’s badges of rank. Back there, in my mountains, they don’t know anything and, like all humble people, they always think the boss and the Government is right. They might have thought I had done something wrong, so I’ve come to rot away in Germany. In a year’s time I shall be entitled to apply for my retirement.’

  “That’s what they’ve done to Colonel Pierre-Noël Raspéguy.”

  “It will come out all right in the end.”

  “No, Jacques, between de Gaulle and the army the ‘card is broken,’ as they say out here. It was a fine army all the same! You remember?”

  * * * *

  The Head of State’s tour continued amid shouting and tumult. At Oran the shop-windows were smashed, at Algiers there was a general strike. The two communities faced each other with cries of “French Algeria” and “Long live Ferhat Abbas.” Outside the prefecture of Orleansville, under a lowering sky dripping rain and melancholy, amid shouts of hate and death, the stones started flying.

  The S.A.S., under the orders of the prefects, brought their “good pupils” to applaud the President-General, and the settlers forced their workmen to boo him.

  “Di Gaulle—Di Gaulle!” yelled one side.

  “Al-gé-rie-Fran-çaise!” yelled the other.

  It depended on which truck they had driven in.

  On Sunday, 11 December, firing broke out in Algiers, causing eighty-four dead, and the white-and-green F.L.N. flag was seen being brandished by groups of Moslems armed with hatchets, picks and knives. Shops were looted, cars set on fire.

  In his office above the Hôtel Saint-Georges Major Marindelle was on the telephone:

  “I assure you, sir, it was on the order of the Delegation that two S.A.U. officers, urged on by the Direction des Affaires Politiques, pushed the Moslems out into the street to counterbalance the extremists. For two hours these Moslems shouted ‘Long live de Gaulle’ then ‘Long live Ferhat Abbas.’ In the evening they went round carrying green flags and slitting Europeans’ throats. The Minister of Information, who is with de Gaulle, boasted in front of fifty journalists of this twinge of conscience on the part of the Moslem masses. You must do something!”

  “You can’t expect me to arrest the General-Delegate or his director of political affairs!”

  “Why not?”

  “You must be off your head!”

  Marindelle hung up and, with his blood-stained handkerchief, wiped his face. By the Clos Salembier he had almost been lynched by the crowd and had had to abandon his car which was blazing.

  On Monday, December 12th, while the journalists who had accompanied de Gaulle to Tizi-Ouzou were at lunch, Pasfeuro was called to the telephone. Malistair was on the other end of the line.

  “Try and get back to Algiers right away, and bring Françoise with you. They’re shooting again and the Kasbah is up in arms. The C.R.S. aren’t doing a t
hing about it.”

  Pasfeuro suggested Villèle should come with them.

  “No, I’m going to go on covering the official tour. These incidents . . . always mountains out of molehills . . .”

  “Come now, Villèle, it’s back there that things are happening! You’re not scared, are you?”

  “Don’t you understand, you great oaf, that town which is in flames is still my town and that I couldn’t bear to see it?”

  “Are you frightened of your feelings?”

  “No, of my reactions.”

  * * * *

  In the Rue du Divan the car that had been turned over was still burning, and the smell was suffocating. Pasfeuro, Malistair and Françoise Baguèras walked past some garrison soldiers, looking very pale and nervous, their rifles still hot in their hands. They had just fired on a crowd and killed for the first time.

  This crowd was still on the other side of the car: about a hundred young Moslems in blue jeans, brandishing clubs, rusty iron bars, hatchets, muttering as they pulled back with their dead and wounded.

  “Not a very pretty sight,” said Françoise.

  On the left was an alleyway ending in a flight of stairs, in which the rain mingled with the refuse. A man of about forty, dressed like an office worker, clutched at the three journalists. At first they took him for a European and only realized he was a Moslem when he opened his mouth:

  “Do you want to see what’s going on up there? Come on, you won’t be in any danger.”

  In front of them rose the stairs. Pasfeuro and Malistair hesitated.

  “Now that we’ve got this far . . .” Françoise muttered, swinging her bag.

  In the wake of their guide they crossed the deserted Randon market-place and came up against a hysterical mob streaming between the walls like a torrent in spate. On the balconies the women were screaming savagely.

  The crowd, bristling with flags, exhibited a body carried at arm’s length.

  Extremely handsome, extremely smart in his suède jacket and moccasins, a young Moslem—a Kabyle for sure—dragged the three journalists out of the torrent and into a little Moorish café. He spoke without any accent: only three days earlier he had still been in France where he was completing his education.