“The Killer” appears also to have been a specialist in style; perhaps the more to frighten off the arms dealers—épater les bourgeois! The most active of them all, and the top target of Bureau 24, was another German called Georges Puchert, who operated out of Tangiers, was impervious to threats and for two years led a charmed life. Dealing with Boussouf in Morocco, Puchert learned that one of the F.L.N.’s most favoured weapons was the German Mauser 7.92 mm. carbine from the Second World War. The principal stocks of these were to be found in Czechoslovakia, accumulated from the 1945 defeat, but as they were soon insufficient to meet demand the Communist Czech regime had obligingly set up plants to construct Mausers, perfect down to the last detail, including the swastika engraved in the metal, as a guarantee of top quality. Unable to tamper with this source of arms, “The Killer” was unleashed on Puchert’s closest collaborators. In September 1958 one of them, a Swiss explosives expert called Marcel Léopold, was picked up dead in the corridor of one of Geneva’s smartest hotels. An autopsy revealed that he had been shot in the neck by a tiny blowpipe dart, tipped with curare and fired from a contraption like a bicycle pump, which “The Killer” had thoughtfully left behind for the benefit of the world Press. Six months later, when Puchert was visiting Frankfurt, a limpet bomb was attached under the driver’s seat of his Mercedes and detonated by inertia. Filled with ball-bearings, it did relatively little damage to the car, but riddled the ample arms trafficker like truffles in a Perigord pâté. With the death of Puchert, freelance gun-running more or less faded away.
France’s new Maginot Line
For both sides, however, what was more important than the liquidation of gun-runners, or the “secret war” inside Algeria, or pitched battles like Agounennda, was the struggle constantly being waged on the Morice Line during this period. Completed in September 1957, this barrier was a remarkable and sinister triumph of military technology which ran along the Tunisian frontier for two hundred miles and more from the sea to the empty Sahara, where no one could hope to cross it undetected. The nucleus of the Line was an eight-foot electric fence charged with five thousand volts; on either side of this was a fifty-yard belt liberally sprinkled with anti-personnel mines and backed up with continuous barbed-wire entanglements of the style of the First World War. “An immense serpent in the style of Bernard Buffet” was how one French conscript described it. The wire was festooned with electrocuted animals—dogs, sheep, goats and even occasionally a pathetic little donkey. The German Foreign Legionnaires were particularly distressed at the sight of handsome Alsatian tracker dogs electrocuted by the Line. Immediately to the rear ran a track along which passed frequent armed patrols, equipped with powerful searchlights at night. Not only was the electric fence designed to kill but there were also electronic devices that could determine precisely where it had been cut by a raiding party. Fire from automatically sighted 105 mm. howitzers could be brought to bear on the point immediately, and mobile troops rushed to it. Defending the line was a force some 80,000 strong, the most powerful concentration of French combat troops in Algeria. There were mechanised and armoured units, four para regiments—including the crack 1st R.E.P. of Colonel Jeanpierre who had been wounded during the capture of Yacef—and plentiful helicopters to spot any crossing-points and track the crossers. In the event of a successful crossing in force, presumably made by night, it was of prime importance for the French defenders to pin down and destroy the A.L.N. unit before the end of the following day, after which time it would be able to break up into small groups and disperse into the interior.
With such an outlay in expenditure and effectives, the integrity of the Morice Line became the top military priority for the French during the winter of 1957–8. Its breaching had equally become the supreme objective for the F.L.N.; there were now some ten thousand A.L.N. troops, armed or in training, concentrated in the frontier zone, and the weapons beginning to flow into Tunisia from all over the world had totalled, over the three winter months, 17,000 rifles, 380 machine-guns, 296 automatic rifles, 190 bazookas, thirty mortars and over 100 million rounds of ammunition. Meanwhile, the Wilayas were asphyxiating for want of reinforcements.
All through the winter the two sides fenced for an advantage on the Morice Line. The F.L.N. probed, or threw itself at the barrier, constantly trying out new techniques. High-tension wire-cutters were ordered from Germany, employed with special hooks to lift up the wire; but the French electronic detectors proved capable of locating the breach all too swiftly. Groups tried burrowing under the wire, or throwing insulated ramps over it; teams specially trained with “Bangalore torpedoes” in Egypt blasted holes through it. Then they would bury delayed action mines under the lines along which ran, bristling with machine-guns, the French armoured trains; these mines were timed to explode beneath the third coach, the one usually carrying troops. But always the French mines, electrocution, or the sheer firepower of the defending patrols took a terrible toll. Diversionary tactics were tried, with a small detachment setting off the alarm system while the main body in fact attempted a breakthrough perhaps fifty kilometres further down the line. In Tunisia the breakthrough units were trained in the execution of forced marches at astonishing speeds, so as to avoid being corralled by the French once through the line. They attempted to go round the end of both the Moroccan and Tunisian lines, through the Great Erg sand deserts of the Sahara, disguised as Meharist columns. But the wretched camels would be slaughtered wholesale by strafing them from the air (and sometimes those of genuine Meharists, in error), and in one of the last operations by Bigeard before his repatriation a parachute-drop trapped and wiped out fifty of one such group of frontier runners.
In their assaults on the main line the A.L.N. at first threw in small commandos; then bigger groups; finally whole katibas, and even faileks over 300 men strong, in desperate efforts to overwhelm the defenders. But this escalation only resulted in higher and higher losses; for all the time the French were perfecting their interception techniques, speeding up mobility and increasing the firepower brought to bear on a given point. The statistics speak for themselves. One regiment in a busy part of the Line, the 9th R.C.P., recorded scores as follows for early 1958:
10 February: 39 rebels; 30 weapons
14 February: 20 rebels; 25 weapons
20 February: 78 rebels; 50 weapons
31 March: 69 rebels; 50 weapons
7 April: 86 rebels; 60 weapons
According to French estimates, the percentage of F.L.N. infiltrators “neutralised” rose as follows:
January—February: 35
February—March: 60
March—April: 65
end of April: 80
Souk-Ahras and Sakiet
The steep increase in this last figure was caused by the F.L.N.’s decision to launch an all-out offensive against the Line. The sector chosen was the so-called bec de canard, east of Souk-Ahras and not far from the scene of the Sakiet bombing in February. Its wooded hills provided ideal cover for katibas attempting to disperse once through the Line, and much of the previous barrier-crossing action had taken place in this area. Thus, also, the French forces were particularly well-prepared. But, apart from just military considerations, the F.L.N. were probably encouraged by the international uproar raised over Sakiet, as well as the accompanying political disarray in France—the Gaillard government having fallen two weeks previously, leaving the country in a vacuum. Over three nights, from 27 to 30 April, seven katibas totalling over 800 men, and destined to reinforce both Wilayas 2 and 3, were thrown against the Line north and south of Souk-Ahras. A large number got through the wire, but were almost immediately pinned down and encircled by a crushing superiority of airborne troops ferried in by big transport helicopters. For the best part of a week an intense and merciless battle raged. A twenty-year-old French conscript who took part, Alain Manévy, records how the entire pied noir population of Souk-Ahras turned out to watch, infuriating the military by blocking the highways with their cars, and accompanied by Arab
street vendors plying the spectators with sticky cakes. French losses were heavy, one company of the 9th R.C.P. losing its captain and most of its effectives. But those of the A.L.N. were crippling, by far the worst that it had suffered in the war to date; out of a total of 820 men crossing the Line, no less than 620 were killed or captured, including a failek commander. With them were taken 416 rifles or sub-machine-guns, and forty-six machineguns. (The disproportionate number of arms to rebels captured, however, is once again a testimony to the efficiency of the F.L.N. system of weapon recovery, which aimed at never leaving behind the previous firearm of a fallen djoundi.) The pile of weapons was displayed in the market-place of Souk-Ahras, though Manévy noted indifference on the part of the Muslim inhabitants: “The French have simply got out their old weapons from stores to make us believe….”
Yet the Battle of Souk-Ahras undeniably marked a decisive defeat for the F.L.N.—ironically, on a line whose eponym, Morice, had recently fallen from power. In the course of the seven months since its construction, the F.L.N. was reckoned to have lost 6,000 men and 4,300 weapons (including casualties, though much less significant, on the Moroccan frontier). It signified the end of any serious attempt to breach the barrier. Henceforth the Wilayas would be virtually cut off from the exterior. It was a major military victory for the French, and clearly recognisable as such in army messes.
It was against this background of warfare on the Morice Line that the Sakiet raid of February 1958 had taken place. There were many senior French officers who agreed with Colonel Trinquier that, although the Line had served its primary purpose well, it was accompanied by all the traditional disadvantages of fixed fortifications (plus the mentality that had led, painfully, to Dien Bien Phu). The only way, they felt, to deal decisively with the F.L.N. was to strike into the foreign territories harbouring rebel forces—as indeed, noted Trinquier, had been the accepted norm in the pacification wars of the nineteenth century. In the months preceding Sakiet, French army frustration had been rising at the audacity with which the F.L.N. barrier-crossers trained in full sight of the frontier posts, mortared and machine-gunned them sporadically, and then launched fullscale raids across the Line. More and more lives were lost in this fashion, while the “neutrality” of Tunisian territory afforded the F.L.N. impunity from any riposte. After the ambushing of the French patrol on 11 January, the Gaillard government had come under strong pressure from the military of the kind that brought the Nixon government into the Cambodian adventure of 1973, or that persuades Israeli governments to hit back at P.L.O. camps in the Lebanon. Finally, at the end of January, it had acceded to this pressure and granted “right of pursuit”. It did not, however, specify precisely what form this should take, nor how far it might be pressed. Too much responsibility was left with the local commanders, some of whom had evidently been thinking in terms of an armoured raid to destroy the F.L.N. camps. On 7 February Bigeard—reflecting the impatience felt by the whole army—remarked angrily to Lacoste during a visit to the frontier: “Monsieur le ministre, it can’t go on like this! We must intervene.” The very next day the provocation, followed by the reprisal bombing of Sakiet, took place. Quite clearly the action, and the excessive force of it, had been invoked by the local air force commander acting on his own initiative. Certainly Lacoste had not been consulted, and when informed of it exploded characteristically: “Ils sont vraiment trop cons!”
Sakiet was a revealing example of how, increasingly, the French army had become accustomed to acting without the backing of civil authority from Algiers, let alone from Paris. The first army reaction after Sakiet was one of relief; here at last was a tough line. Then, dismayed by the vehemence of international condemnation of the raid, the government had back-tracked and seemingly let the weight of calumny fall upon the local commanders responsible. Air strikes across the frontier, it was suggested, had never been envisaged. A widespread feeling of disenchantment ran through the army in Algeria that, not for the first time, it was being let down by the politicians.
The army disenchanted
Soldiers, by the very nature of their upbringing, see little more than what lies to their immediate front. The lieutenant observes what is happening to his platoon, but is little concerned with the affairs of the battalion; the colonel knows little of the overall fortunes of the division or the corps until his battalion is ordered to advance or retreat. And so on upwards. Thus, in Algeria, the senior French army commanders, under pressure from foreground events, were constantly blinkered to higher realities; to the state of the war in the international, political arena, or, later, to public opinion at home. By the spring of 1958, however, they could deduce with the most clear-cut conviction that they were winning the immediate shooting war on all fronts—and for the first time since November 1954. The Battle of Algiers, Agounennda, Souk-Ahras, the blocking of the barrier-runners on the Moroccan frontier as on the Tunisian, the new successes in the underground war; every sign vindicated this conviction. Yet, at the same time, more thoughtful senior officers felt menaced also by a mounting and harrowing sense of urgency. Was this perhaps the last moment when a military victory could be exploited? How long would it be before the flow of weapons from the Communist bloc, and possibly more direct means of support, might reverse the tide? The smell of victory was strong, but there was also, coupled with it, a nasty smell of negotiations in the air; the bons offices episode and other indications all pointed to this. And negotiations implied surrender. Were the politicians getting ready to sell the army down the river once again? The memories of the Third Republic and 1940, of Dien Bien Phu and Mendès-France, were always too close for comfort.
There were other factors, many of them of the order of minor gripes, but all adding up to a massive resentment against the civil government in metropolitan France. The deepening economic crisis there had led it to impose a series of meanly petty privations on the army in Algeria; allocations of petrol and rations had been reduced, leave had been cut, and so on. Salan, for one, could perceive that, for all its fine military successes, the army’s morale was suffering. Yet, more than ever before, the army of Algeria now realised how immense its power and influence had become, and far beyond just the realm of military matters. The process had started with Mollet’s expansion of the army by recalling the reservists, and it was under that good Socialist that it had been truly introduced to politics through his encouraging it to indulge in political warfare. With Massu’s takeover of civil powers during the Battle of Algiers, a point of no return had been reached. By January 1958 an estimated 1,600 army officers and 1,000 N.C.O.s—among the best in the army—were totally employed in civil affairs of one category or another. The lengths to which, from 1956 onwards, some individual officers would go to avoid losing the war, moreover, were illuminated by such episodes as the hijacking of Ben Bella and the bombing of Sakiet.
The sense of involvement in Algeria was profound. At its less idealistic level, to some of the regulars, as Colonel François Coulet noted, the war “was their raison d’être; they feared seeing it end one day”. It meant professional security and promotion. On the other hand, there was a deep undercurrent of fairly noble-minded reformism, of genuinely wanting to do something about the economic plight of the Algerians, of wanting to save the country from the maw of Communism. Grafted on to it there was now a new sense of destiny that—in the face of the total debility of the civil regime in France—the army alone could influence and ordain matters in Algeria. By the spring of 1958, says General Allard, a brilliant and dedicated soldier, the military
felt themselves neither aided, nor encouraged, nor supported. It seemed to them that those responsible had not the courage to look the situation in the face and to fight the war with a will to win, but perhaps rather to put an end to it by some kind of negotiation…. After Sakiet, the army felt itself betrayed, it lost confidence, not in itself, but in the effectiveness of the regime. From then on it was ready to welcome, and to take advantage of, any event announcing a change that would force F
ate….
The army had reached a highly explosive state; all that was needed was a detonator.
In Paris the Sakiet affair had effectually inflicted the death wound upon the Gaillard government; but, like a frog in a laboratory, the corpse had continued to twitch on for another two months. Messieurs les bons offices had not helped matters, the suggestion of Anglo-American interference in Algerian affairs alienating the centre from its support of Gaillard. Soustelle declared emotionally, “It’s the total liquidation of the French positions in North Africa that is being prepared. That’s the policy of the petroleum monopolies who want to kick us out of the Sahara.” On another occasion he was heard to utter the loaded words: “A government of Public Safety must take over.” Another bout of massive strikes shook the country; in March even the police demonstrated in front of the Assembly for “danger money”; on 1 April all the public services went out. On 15 April the Gaillard government fell by 321 to 255 on a vote of confidence about the bons offices. The Communists and the centre had improbably united forces, with Deputy Soustelle—now cast in the role of premier-slayer—putting in the boot as he had with Bourgès-Maunoury six months previously. Once more France faced a vacuum of leadership; this time, the most perilous yet.
A Savage War of Peace Page 39