A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (18 page)

All in all, it was perfectly logical that the C.R.U.A. leadership should have chosen the Aurès, under the command of its native son, Ben Boulaid, to be the focal point of operations on All Saints’ Day. It was their ambitious aim to sever its tenuous communications with the rest of Algeria, spark off a general uprising there, and ultimately (according to Ben Bella) make it Algeria’s “principal revolutionary stronghold”.

The day of 30 October was spent by Ben Boulaid’s men in cleaning and preparing their weapons. The next day, from a command post which he and his lieutenants, Bachir Chihani and Adjel Adjoul, had set up in the dense oak forest of Beni Melloul, safe from any aerial reconnaissance, Ben Boulaid issued his detailed orders. The most important objective was at Batna itself, where a group of three commandos each comprising ten men was to attack Deleplanque’s sub-prefecture, the gendarmerie and two barracks; the latter with the aim of seizing arms. A second detachment under Chihani was to cut the main Biskra—Batna highway eleven miles south of Arris in the Tighanimine gorges, with orders to ambush vehicles and kill any “Beni-Oui-Oui” Muslims found in them. Also under Chihani another group was to besiege the isolated gendarmerie at T’kout sitting astride a commanding ledge five miles off the main road south of Arris; meanwhile, a further commando would also be blowing the road bridge just north of Arris. All telephone lines between Arris and the outside world were to be sabotaged, and simultaneously an all-out attack was to be made on the small garrison there. Similar blows were to be struck at the lead mine of Ichmoul, at Khenchela on the road eastward through the Nementchas, and at the big garrison town of Biskra on the edge of the Sahara. The most precise, synchronised timing was to be observed; under strictest orders from Ben Boulaid not a shot was to be fired until 03.00 hours on the morning of 1 November.

“
It’s a general uprising
.…”

It was at Biskra that the Aurès suffered its first major setback. There trigger-happy rebels attacked the police station half an hour in advance of Ben Boulaid’s H-Hour. At about the same time, Hadj Lakhdar and his group, crouched in position outside the Batna sub-prefecture, watched while a car drew up and Deleplanque and his wife got out, having just driven back from dining with his superior in Constantine, the prefect Pierre Dupuch. Sighting his carbine on Deleplanque’s chest no more than thirty yards away, Lakhdar reflected on his orders: “No attacks on European civilians” — but was a sub-prefect a civilian? On the other hand, Ben Boulaid had been totally emphatic about no shooting before 03.00 hours. He lowered the carbine. Deleplanque entered the building, went into his bedroom and was taking off his shirt when the telephone rang. It was an apologetic but excited Commissaire of police at Biskra reporting that he had been attacked and had suffered two casualties. Deleplanque immediately telephoned the captain of the gendarmerie in Batna, ordering a state of alert for all units. Next he telephoned Army headquarters, but here there was an aggravating delay while a sleepy colonel (the same who had recently claimed never to have seen a
fellagha
in front of his jeep) at first insisted on receiving written orders “through the proper channels”. Trying to contact Arris, Deleplanque found the lines cut, but on getting through to his host of a few hours ago in Constantine he was told: “It’s a general uprising. There have been incidents both in Algiers and the surrounding region. It began at 01.00 hours.…” At this point a volley of shots was fired in the street outside. “
Ça y est!
” shouted Deleplanque. “It’s begun here!”

With ten minutes to go before H-Hour, Lakhdar’s men outside the gendarmerie were suddenly taken by surprise as all lights flashed on inside the barracks, alarm bells started ringing and searchlights sprang into life. Cursing, they fired off a red rocket, signifying “abort”, and withdrew at the double, firing as they went. Two twenty-one-year-old Chasseurs, Pierre Audat and Eugène Cochet, mounting guard at the gate of the regimental barracks, heard the shooting and saw the rebels running past. In accordance with peace-time standing orders, their rifles were unloaded and the ammunition
sewn up
in their pouches. With never a chance to get a round off, they were mown down — the first army personnel to be killed in the Algerian war. But — thanks to the premature action at Biskra — that was the end of the F.L.N. attack on Batna.

At Khenchela, Ben Boulaid’s men showed similar precipitateness. Their first fusillade of shots, punctually at 03.00 hours, drew from his quarters the commander of the small garrison, Spahi Lieutenant Gérard Darneau. Still buttoning up his shirt, he was mortally wounded by sub-machine-gun fire — the first French officer to be killed by the F.L.N. In the ensuing shoot-up, however, two of the rebels were wounded and the remainder took off into the maquis — with a booty of only three pistols to show for the night’s operation. At the Ichmoul lead mine, an attack aimed at seizing some 1,500 pounds of dynamite failed equally, with a commando of wildly firing rebels driven off by a Muslim night-watchman, who returned their fire from under his bed with an antique cavalry rifle. Against the isolated gendarmerie post of T’kout, with its garrison of seven gendarmes, three wives and five children, matters were pressed rather more energetically. A nearby explosion abruptly woke up one of the gendarmes, Martial Pons. His eight-month-old daughter started bawling. Pons went out on the terrace to see what was happening, while his wife tried to soothe the baby with a bottle. There was a burst of fire, and the bottle was smashed in Madame Pons’s hand. For the next thirty-six hours T’kout was under siege.

The Monnerots

There now ensued the most tragic episode of this night of violence. Chihani and his group had been waiting since 3 a.m. in the rugged defile called the Tighanimine gorges, where the river tumbles through a narrow canyon. Nearby a marble plaque set in the cliff walls by the Romans commemorates the crushing of a revolt by the Legio Augusta. They knew that at approximately 7 a.m. the Biskra—Arris bus would pass their ambush, and that on board would be a loyal
caid
, Hadj Sadok, who had the previous day received a roneo copy of the F.L.N.’s proclamation — which he had thrown away in contempt. Also on the bus were the young couple of French teachers, Guy Monnerot and his wife, whom Deleplanque’s office had been unable to contact the previous day. In their early twenties and recently returned from their honeymoon, the Monnerots had taken up their posts at the school in the small Aurès village of Tiffelfel only three weeks earlier, and were using the long week-end to see something of the countryside. Dedicated liberals, the Monnerots had arrived full of youthful enthusiasm for tackling the appalling problems of illiteracy in the Aurès; Guy, gangling, bespectacled and bookish, could hardly have conformed less to the image of a “colonialist oppressor”.

The driver of the bus, it appears, had been warned by the F.L.N. to expect a hold-up at kilometre stone 79 and, as he rounded the bend at the appointed spot on the twisting road, saw it blocked by a makeshift barricade. Faithful to his instructions, he jammed on the brakes so violently that the passengers were thrown forward on to the floor. In the confusion Chihani leapt on to the bus and ordered Sadok and the Monnerots to get outside, where they were covered by Mohamed Sbaihi armed with a Sten gun — the only automatic weapon possessed by the group. Chihani demanded of Sadok: “You received our proclamation; now which side are you going to take?”

Sadok replied with an hauteur that apparently infuriated Chihani: “Do you think I’m going to talk to bandits!”

It then seems that the
caid
made a move to reach a pistol under his cloak. Sbaihi fired a burst with his Sten, mortally wounding Sadok and also hitting Guy Monnerot in the chest, his wife in the side. Chihani ordered the bus driver to take the dying
caid
on into Arris,
pour encourager les autres
, leaving the badly wounded Monnerots on the roadside; and then retired into the hills.

In Arris, which had awoken in panicky chaos after the confused shootings of the previous night, and in the unpleasant realisation that it was completely cut off from the outside world, Jean Servier, the ethnologist, had assumed command by default. His immediate fears had been that either the whole township would be massacred by the rebels — whose strength no one could then estimate — or that the trigger-happy Europeans, all armed and anticipating another Sétif, would launch a pre-emptive, promiscuous
ratissage
of the Muslims. He thus set about withdrawing the Europeans and their families into the local
bordj
, or fort (which seems to have been virtually unmanned), and organising it into an armed camp. Next, his training as an ethnologist enabled him to glean the vital intelligence that the local rebels belonged to a tribe called the Ouled-Abdi and that their mortal, blood-feud enemies, the Touabas, would remain loyal to France. Swiftly, and taking a considerable risk, Servier distributed arms to them and brought the Touabas into the defence of the town; it was a scene that P. C. Wren could hardly have improved upon.

When the ambushed bus reached Arris, Servier immediately set forth with an armed patrol to try to bring back the Monnerots. It was midday before he reached them. Chihani’s group had either disappeared or were lying low, invisible on the mountainside. Guy Monnerot had already bled to death; miraculously his wife was still alive, by his side on the edge of the road. In view of the pattern that the war was to assume, there was something tragically symbolic in the fact that among the seven to die on that first day would be a loyal
caid
and a “liberal” French teacher.[
2
]

Servier accompanied Madame Monnerot back to the simple hospital at Arris, and settled down anxiously to await a further attack at nightfall. If it came he reckoned there would be a fair chance of the defenders — armed only with fifty rifles and thirty rounds apiece — being overwhelmed and massacred. Apart from sporadic sniping from rebel nests in the surrounding heights, nothing, in fact, occurred — partly owing to the defection of the attacking group — and after a sleepless night Servier was relieved by a column from Batna that had managed to negotiate the blown bridges. It was his thirty-sixth birthday, he suddenly recalled in some surprise at having reached it alive.

Elsewhere in Algeria

Outside the Aurès the night of All Saints had followed a similar pattern of failures and half-successes for the rebels. Because of Lahouel’s counsels of prudence, the F.L.N. network in the Mitidja had virtually collapsed and had had to be fortified at the last minute by two hundred of Ouamrane’s men smuggled in from Kabylia. Barely fifty of them, however, possessed a gun, and some of the rest were armed with scout knives; thus there was a particular immediacy about succeeding with their attacks on the arms depots at Blida and Boufarik. Right in the heart of
pied noir
Algeria, outside the Boufarik barracks, Ouamrane and a hundred Kabyles had waited for midnight, at which time a disaffected Moslem corporal was to effect a Trojan horse entry through the main gate for them. But with five minutes to go there was a series of violent explosions as panicky demolition commandos blew up nearby road-bridges thirty-five minutes ahead of schedule. Enraged, Ouamrane precipitated his attack before the alert could be sounded, and in the confusion was only able to seize six rifles and four sub-machine-guns before his group, too, scattered into the darkness. At Blida, Rabah Bitat had come off even worse, with three men killed and several wounded without procuring a single weapon. Both groups then fled up into the cedar mountains round Chréa; the net results of so much planning and so many risks were ten weapons, one of Blachette’s alfalfa depots burnt down and a few bridges destroyed.

In Algiers itself the principal targets had been the radio station, the telephone exchange, the gasworks, a petroleum depot and a cork warehouse belonging to Senator Borgeaud. Through a combination of panic and inexperience all five operations aborted. The attack on the gasworks was probably the most risky, as none of the rebels had any idea of just what kind of blast an exploding gasometer might produce; of Bouadjadj’s homemade bombs, however, those that had gone off had proved too feeble to breach the steel of the gasometers, and an insignificant fire they had started in the petroleum depot had been swiftly extinguished by the Algiers fire brigade. The leader entrusted with incendiarising the cork warehouse had simply “gone sick” shortly before H-Hour; while the automatic relays in the unscathed central telephone exchange continued to click out a flood of messages reporting incidents from all over Algeria. In agonised frustration Bouadjadj, watching from the superb vantage-point of the Bois de Boulogne that crowns Algiers, had awaited the great bursts of flame that never materialised. Descending the mountain he vented his rage on his lieutenants and proposed that they set off the remaining bombs promiscuously in Bab-el-Oued and the Rue Michelet, the main shopping boulevard of Algiers. But he was dissuaded with a reminder of the strict adherence to orders that had been imposed by the C.R.U.A.

In the Oran area, where, as previously noted, the F.L.N. had been particularly weak from the beginning and had, additionally, never received any of the weapons promised from Morocco, it suffered its worst setback. While moving into position, a group of Ben M’hidi’s men were surprised by a tiny Renault 4 c.v. driven by a French civilian, Laurent François. They fired at him, wounding him, but he managed courageously to drive to the gendarmerie at Cassaigne and give the alarm before he died. A vigorous manhunt was launched, and by dawn eight Muslims had been killed, six of them carrying arms. Among them was Abdelmalek Ramdane, one of those who attended the “Meeting of the Twenty-Two”, and the first F.L.N. leader to be killed.