A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (112 page)

For the rest of the modern world (and not least Southern Africa), the French experience in the Algerian War — a prototype of its kind — continued to offer its compelling lessons, most of them painful, for anyone prepared to heed them. There was the failure of a materially mighty Western power to combat a civil insurrection equipped with little more than ideology, without resort to the means one condemns in one’s enemy; in Algeria, the instrument of torture, as well as being fundamentally wicked in itself, was proved to be a boomerang weapon. There was the failure of the West to comprehend Third World aspirations; and the failure of the moderates everywhere to prevail against the extremist minority on either side; the
Gironde
is sent packing by the
Montagne
.

France, ten years on: the “pieds noirs” assimilated

Ten years after the liquidation of the Algerian war, the face that France showed to the world was, once again, that of a truly great power, more self-confident than she had been at any time since before 1914, and certainly more prosperous in material terms. The economic revival of France under the stewardship of de Gaulle has been one of the miracles of the Western world, second only to Federal Germany’s recovery after 1945. No more remarkable yard-stick of it exists than the way in which France assimilated the over one million
pieds noirs
who flooded to her shores.[
4
] The adaptation of the uprooted
pieds noirs
to their new homes has been no easy process. Of the thirty thousand who went to hot and dusty Alicante on account of its resemblance to Oran, many — like an eminent ophthalmologist who started a night club rather than practise his profession, because that involved taking out Spanish papers — never felt at home there, despite their Spanish origins. “The
pieds noirs
of Alicante, when they stroll along the sea-shore,” wrote
Le Monde
, “invariably gaze to the other side of the Mediterranean. In Alicante they are still in exile.” Viticulturists of Alsatian stock who went to found vineyards in Corsica found themselves
plastiqué
once again — this time by jealous and less industrious Corsicans. Of the
pieds noirs
who headed for northern France, their “souls died”, says Anne Loesch with sad nostalgia. Of herself, exiled in a grey Paris, she wrote, “I yearn to run across the beach and look at the sun dying in the sea.”

So most of them stuck where the sun was, in the Midi, generally close to Marseilles. Some built colonies of white houses with flat roofs and patios and bougainvillaea over the door, to remind them of their lost homes. But if they sought climatic warmth, they did not necessarily find it in the hearts of their neighbours. Too often the
provençaux
regarded them as an alien race, as threatening competition, calling them
sales pieds noirs
much as they in turn had once scorned the
melons
and
ratons
of Algeria, and barring their homes to them. Sometimes the local village grocer would make a point of short-changing his ingenuous
pied noir
customers. When the farmers went shooting, memories of nightmares from years past would reassert themselves, causing children to shout in terror, “The Arabs are attacking!” Adults, when describing their new lives in France, would still look instinctively over their shoulders, in case the O.A.S. might be listening: “You never know; it’s all still so close.…” If they missed the cheap domestic help of the
fatmas
, the exiles also claimed to miss the companionship of the “good Arab” and the whole ambience of the Muslim world in which they had grown up. The first state aid they received from France — subsistence allowance of 450 (new) francs per couple per month,
déménagement
loans of 20,000 francs — was far from generous. Many who had lived in modest comfort in Algeria found themselves reduced to the fringe of poverty; some took up with former members of the O.A.S., smuggling heroin and running protection rackets in Marseilles, extorting money from other
pieds noirs
. Nevertheless, by the end of the 1960s, such was the absorptive power of France’s booming economy, it could be claimed that, by and large, there was no “
pied noir
problem”.

The same could not be said about the other side of the coin, the Algerian immigrant workers in France. Granted certain preferential treatment by Evian, driven from home by persistent unemployment to prosperous, labour-hungry Europe, their numbers had mounted steadily ever since the war ended, until by 1973 they were close on 800,000. For the most part these Algerians lived like third-class citizens, their plight concealed from the eyes of other Frenchmen. Existing in rat-infested
bidonvilles
, or six to a tenement room, without women and on the poor food that their rock-bottom wages would provide, over eighty per cent of the Algerian workers performed the
travaux pénibles
; generally the heavy, dangerous or distasteful labour eschewed by Frenchmen. Nearly three-quarters of them were illiterate, and therefore unlikely ever to better themselves. But every year they were able to send home an impressive total of one milliard francs (then £100m.), vital to the Algerian economy. With relations seldom brilliant between the French proletariat and the sweated-labour Algerians, in the summer of 1973 there was a major explosion after a white bus-driver had his throat slit in the centre of Marseilles by an apparently unhinged Algerian. Suddenly it seemed as if the war was starting again: whites machine-gunned Algerian cafés in the city and threw Molotov cocktails into their lodgings; a sixteen-year-old boy was shot down by men in a moving car. In Toulouse fifty paras rampaged through the streets on a
ratonnade
, beating up any North African they encountered. “We have had enough,” shrilled a right-wing Marseilles newspaper,
Le Méridional
: “Enough of Algerian thieves. Enough of Algerian vandals. Enough of Algerian loudmouths. Enough of Algerian troublemakers. Enough of Algerian syphilitics. Enough of Algerian rapists.…” In Algiers a furious Boumedienne halted all further emigration and declared that — regardless of the cost — he would bring all his compatriots home from France if they could not be properly protected. But, such were mutual needs of inter-dependence in what the Algerians call “the damned inheritance”, the breach was swiftly healed. Ten years later the Algerian work force in France still numbered approximately three-quarters of a million.

And so, imported across the Mediterranean, the prickly relationship between Algerian and Frenchman, Algerian and
pied noir
, French and
pied noir
, continued with but little reprieve.

What happened to them? The “Centurions”

In the fullness of time, de Gaulle’s modernisation of the post-Algerian army resulted in the most sweeping metamorphosis. Many famous regiments, some of them the toughest fighting units in the West since 1945, and whose names had held the limelight for so many years, so many campaigns, disappeared or were totally transformed. For a time even the legendary Foreign Legion seemed doomed. The great bronze globe from its
Beau Geste
parade ground at Sidi-Bel-Abbès was uprooted, then reinstated at a new headquarters in Aubagne, outside Marseilles. Once masters over infinite miles of desert, mountain and rice paddy, within the limits of France’s shrunken empire the Legion found its sphere of operations confined to small islands like Corsica, Tahiti and Martinique. Most of those who had led it through Vietnam and the Algerian war disappeared rapidly. In the army as a whole, senior officers — the men of forty in Algeria — weighed down by all the burden of bad dreams and stresses that the past had imposed on their beloved army, left prematurely, settled down to writing their memoirs, or withdrew entirely. General André Beaufre, France’s greatest military thinker, who resigned rather than take command over a still bitterly divided army, died early. General Gambiez, the ill-starred Commander-in-Chief at the time of the 1961 generals’ putsch, retired in 1967 and took up writing history. Colonel Trinquier, the tough para leader during the Battle of Algiers, went to Katanga as a mercenary before the end of the Algerian war, then retired to devote himself to viticulture. The ace of all the paras, and prototype of Lartéguy’s
Centurion
colonel, Marcel Bigeard, was one of the few to remain in the service and attain the ultimate heights. A four-star general in 1975, Bigeard was appointed State Secretary in the Ministry of Defence by President Giscard to “remoralise” the army and purge it of the revolutionary and “permissive” elements sapping it from within.

Finally, the controversial and forceful General Massu was to perform one further role of greatest moment. Reprimanded in 1962 for publicly demanding the release of his fellow generals imprisoned after the 1961 putsch, then appointed, nevertheless, to command French forces in Germany, in the critical month of May 1968 the ever-loyal Massu received a secret visit from de Gaulle, who wanted to be reassured of Massu’s and the army’s support in the event of deepening internal trouble in France. Massu gave him the required assurance, apparently on the condition of de Gaulle granting an act of grace for the imprisoned officers. Later that year, de Gaulle proclaimed an amnesty for all those under sentence for acts committed during the war. Massu then went into semi-retirement with a small office in the Invalides, writing two fearlessly outspoken books on the Battle of Algiers. At the time of President Giscard’s conciliatory state visit of 1975, Massu declared that he too would be happy to return to Algeria and “shake M. Boumedienne’s hand” — if invited.

The “fallen angels”

Of the army’s “fallen angels”, some of those who managed to escape the long arm of French justice had adventurous careers. Broizat, the monastic para colonel of “Barricades Week”, was one of the last O.A.S. leaders to leave Algeria; he fled to Spain, then migrated to New Caledonia to dedicate himself to religion. Pierre Sergent, leader of the O.A.S. in France, and sentenced to death
in absentia
, went into hiding in Belgium, Holland and Germany under various pseudonyms until the 1968 amnesty, when he returned to France. Colonel Jean Gardes, after dodging arrest in Spain, made his way to Argentina, where — remembering some of his mother’s recipes from the Restaurant des Ministères — he established an unmilitary but extremely successful business making pâtés. On the amnesty he too returned to Paris. Averse to reading the many books about the Algerian war, he is fed “digests” by his wife and is distressed when not enough is made of his lasting attachment to the Muslims of Algeria. Godard, the expert on counter-revolutionary war, eventually took refuge in Belgium after the collapse of the O.A.S. in 1962, but — unlike most of his colleagues — he did not return home after the 1968 amnesty. Running a small factory near Mons and tending his aviary, he became increasingly embittered and died at an early age in 1975. Of those who spent time in French gaols, Argoud — sentenced to life imprisonment after his humiliating kidnap by the
barbouzes
— was also released in 1968. Since then, with a mystic belief that he could determine character from handwriting, he set himself up as a graphologist in the Vosges, remarried, spending his leisure time playing the piano and preparing his memoirs, grandiloquently called
Decadence, Imposture and Tragedy
.

Of the
quarteron
of generals imprisoned after the 1961 putsch, only Zeller did not write his memoirs, and none of them continued to see each other. Salan energetically produced books at the rate of a volume a year, well into his seventies. Always the elegant “Mandarin”, with silver hair lightly tinted mauve or saffron, according to his mood, he lived in a comfortable Paris apartment surrounded by gilded buddhas, carved elephant tusks, opium pipes and all the artefacts of the Far East which he so loved. His pension was restored, and his many decorations for valour — but not his campaign ribbons, nor his rank. Nevertheless, “though I am just plain Monsieur Raoul Salan, everybody calls me
mon général
and they often salute me in the street!” he would claim. He spoke unashamedly and without reservation of all that was past, and visitors would often be taken aback to hear a full general, who once reigned over commands comparable to those of an Eisenhower or a Montgomery, describing his prison life with the relish of an old lag: “It was difficult getting used to obeying whistles, you know … The Santé was bad; the
gardes mobiles
were really not at all nice … Tulle was better … But the worst was being locked up at 11 p.m. and the doors not opened until 7 a.m.; I can assure you, we were not spoilt!” In 1984 Salan died, not quite surviving to see the thirtieth anniversary of the war in which he played so equivocal a role.

Challe, of all the rebel officers perhaps the one most commanding sympathy, was released in 1966 after serving five years of his fifteen years’ sentence, amnestied in 1968 with the rest, and stricken with cancer of the throat.[
5
] Against all odds he survived, and ran a freight company from a small office near the Gare St Lazare, surrounded by devoted and caring secretaries. Behind his desk hung an ancient map of the Barbary Coast. He would still speak passionately of France’s betrayal of the “loyal” Algerians, believed that the war could have been won, and that Europe lost her great opportunity to create a “bridge” to Africa through Algeria. Deeply pessimistic, he felt that “Europe now is finished”. In a hoarse voice that obviously pained him, and with emotion, he would declare: “
Je ne regrette rien
; except for having failed.” He died in 1979.