The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  “It’s disturbing, that sort of experience. I’ve given a lot of thought to Raspéguy, that bemedalled beast, a perfect tactician, as crafty as a monkey, as publicity-conscious as a film star, yet at the same time with a leaning towards metaphysics. Extremely dangerous for an army. If you asked me my advice, I would never make Raspéguy a general. I would keep him a colonel all his life, with more medals than he could possibly wear. But perhaps if he became a general, that power he has might suddenly vanish. It’s happened before. Being promoted to general is a decisive step; you view the game from a different angle . . . So you had Raspéguy to guard your flocks, did you, Colonel?”

  Old Colonel Mestreville had then asked the following question:

  “What would Napoleon have done with a man like that?”

  “He’d have made him a marshal. Napoleon believed in obscure forces, in destiny, in chance. When a colonel was due to be promoted to general, he always used to ask: ‘Is he a lucky man?’ In other words, is he in harmony with his destiny? There’s no such thing as luck any more, there’s only economics and statistics, artificial economics and false statistics, which eliminates Raspéguy and everyone else like him. I can’t say I’m sorry; I’m just about reaching the age of statistics.”

  • • •

  When Raspéguy came down from the pass for luncheon, Mestreville had already poured out two more absinthes to clear his brain. He asked his former shepherd:

  “Do you know General Meynier?”

  A grin came over the paratroop colonel’s face and his eyes sparkled with mischief:

  “I remember . . . one day in Tonkin, I put on a show for him. It gave him something to think about, I hope.”

  “It was just a show, was it?”

  “Of course. His sort don’t understand anything else.”

  “His sort?”

  “Yes, all those who only do their fighting on paper, who draw up plans and believe that a battalion strength is eight hundred men, whereas in the line you’re lucky if you have half that number; who believe that soldiers can go on for ever, without being conscious of fatigue or despair, that they’re nothing but machines with interchangeable gears. Those great strategists were prisoners in 1940, but they had been through Staff College. They complacently say: ‘Well done, my boy,’ when, on account of the stupidity and laziness of those broken-down old hacks, half of one’s battalion has just been wiped out!”

  “Isn’t that going a bit too far?”

  “No. They also tell you, like that Meynier of yours: ‘Leave politics to the generals and the ministers,’ whereas with the Viets politics are the concern of all ranks, right down to corporal, right down to private. Communism exists, and there’s no getting away from it. We no longer wage the same sort of war as you, colonel. Nowadays it’s a mixture of everything, a regular witches’ brew . . . of politics and sentiment, the human soul and a man’s ass, religion and the best way of cultivating rice, yes, everything, including even the breeding of black pigs. I knew an officer in Cochin-China who, by breeding black pigs, completely restored a situation which all of us regarded as lost. What gives the Communist armies their strength is that with them everyone is concerned with everything and with everyone else and that a mere corporal feels he is in some way responsible for the conduct of the war. Apart from that, the men take everything seriously, obey orders to the letter, and economize without being asked on their rations and munitions because they feel it’s their own war they’re waging. If ever we’re given a war which we look upon as ours, then we’ll win it. But away with privilege, away with the sumptuous treatment of cabinet ministers and inspecting generals on the field of battle! Everyone in the shit with the same box of rations! From now on what we need is a truly popular army commanded by leaders of its own choice. Let the victor be honoured and the vanquished thrown out or shot. We don’t need staff planning, what we need is victory . . . and don’t saddle a whole draft of Saint-Cyr cadets with the name of a defeat, however glorious it may be, even if it bears the name of Dien-Bien-Phu.”

  “You’re talking like a revolutionary.”

  “Our only hope of getting the upper hand, whether in Algeria or elsewhere, is to have a revolutionary army which will wage revolutionary war.”

  “Algeria? But that will be settled in no time.”

  “No, I don’t think so, or else I’ve understood nothing since I started making war. Have you noticed that in military history no regular army has ever been able to deal with a properly organized guerrilla force? If we use the regular army in Algeria, it can only end in failure. I’d like France to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general’s bowel movements or their colonel’s piles: an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

  “The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”

  “You’re heading for a lot of trouble.”

  “That’s as may be, but at least I shall have courted it deliberately; in fact I’m going to start courting it right away.”

  The peasants and shepherds of les Aldudes soon got used to seeing the colonel from Indo-China in his light blue track-suit racing up and down the goat paths. One day Jean Arréguy and Manuel, the little Spaniard, accompanied him. From then on they were always seen together, leaping through the bushes, crouching in the water holes, out on the mountainside in all weather. The two boys followed Raspeguy’s example, imitated his gestures, his gait, his manner of speech and the swing of his shoulders.

  Raspéguy bought the papers every morning and flew into a rage as he read the reports of the fighting going on in the Aurés and Némentchas. In Morocco the medinas were in revolt and in Tunisia fellagha bands were attacking French troops. The Viets had predicted this.

  And no one mentioned him any more. He could not stand it any longer—one morning he left for Paris. The two boys joined up as paratroopers. For Manuel, this was quite a business, but Raspéguy managed to get him a false identity card. Whereupon everyone in the valley felt that the colonel had a mighty long arm and would make a first-rate deputy on his retirement provided he was willing to go to church a little more frequently.

  • • •

  During the whole of his leave Lieutenant Pinières stuck to his uniform and wore his red beret and all his decorations. On the evening of his arrival at Nantes, two of his former F.T.P. colleagues, Bonfils and Donadieu, had called on him at his mother’s workclothes and stationery store down by the docks. They had gone in to the back parlour, a dim little room which smelt of cooking and cats.

  “We’d like to have a word with you,” Bonfils had said.

  He was the one who did the talking because Donadieu had a stammer. But Donadieu was more decided and therefore more dangerous. Pinières had been with him in a number of tight spots; he had admired his courage and was very fond of him.

  Neither of them had shaken his hand but had brought two fingers to their forehead in a strange sort of military salute.

  “We’ve come to warn you,” said Bonfils. “We don’t take very kindly to colonialist mercenaries in this part of the world but we remember what you did once . . . So if you keep your big trap shut and stop wearing those glad rags, you won’t come to any harm during your leave.”

  “Afterwards you c-can g-go and g-get yourself b-bumped off elsewhere,” Donadieu had added with an effort.

  He, too, was fond of Pinières, but “What must be.” This was the only sentence he could manage to bring out without stuttering and he used it frequently.

  Anger had made the lieutenant lose his head. He refused to feel asham
ed of what he had done with comrades he admired; he was just out of “the bag” and now that he was at home again the little pals of the Vietminh were not going to stop him doing as he saw fit. He had struck Donadieu in the Adam’s apple with the side of his hand. The stutterer had collapsed in a heap of splintered chairs. Then Pinières had grabbed Bonfils by the lapels of his coat and given him a good shaking:

  “Now listen to me, and you can go back and tell whoever sent you here: I shall say what I like, I shall go on wearing my uniform, but I’ll always have my gun on me. You might get me eventually but you’ll pay for it; you know I’m a pretty good shot. My little chums will then come and settle up for me and there’ll be some bloodshed.”

  Bonfils and Donadieu had gone off and Pinières had sauntered about in uniform. But he did not dare linger anywhere near the docks and had to get home before nightfall, for more than once he had caught sight of some shadowy figures behind him.

  His mother began to lose her customers and wept every night. Pinières was bored; there was no one with whom he could have a drink, no one to whom he could talk about the war in Indo-China or tell the story of My-Oi and the child that hadn’t been born. Bonfils and Donadieu were the only ones who might have understood.

  One day he heard his mother complaining to her neighbour:

  “It’s because of Serge I’m unpopular in the neighbourhood. But after all I wasn’t the one who sent him out to Indo-China! I’m just a poor old woman who wants to be left in peace. I’ve already had enough trouble with my husband; he used to drink.”

  Pinières wrote to Olivier Merle, who had given him his address. He received a reply by return. His comrade invited him to spend the rest of his leave at his place.

  Olivier Merle no longer lived in the notary’s big house but in a small cottage about ten miles outside Tours. The Loire, which had overflowed its banks, streamed past the bottom of the garden, a swirling mass of driftwood and tufts of grass.

  “I’m writing a book,” said Merle, as he greeted Pinières, “Yes, big stuff, the Indo-China war as seen from the civilian side. I need peace and quiet. I’ve also got a mistress who’s married to one of the leading citizens of our worthy little town; I had to have a little place where I could meet her; hence this retreat. You’ll see; the housekeeper’s an excellent cook, but she uses too much cream and butter which is bad for the digestion . . . and my inspiration.

  “All right, all right, I can see you know how things are . . . and there’s no point in trying to pull the wool over your eyes.”

  “I called on your father before coming here,” said Pinières. “He burst out in my face: ‘Take Olivier away with you, get him out of this town before we’re obliged to call in the fire brigade or the police!’

  “Luckily your sister Yvette, who drove me here in your car, gave it to me straight.”

  Yvette had said to him:

  “I’m on my brother’s side. If he leaves, I’m going with him; I think he’s right not to let himself be bullied. Ever since he got back he has quarrelled with his father. To begin with, he refused to read for his exams; he did not want to invest the money he had brought back from Indo-China; on the contrary, he started throwing it about and bought himself a bright red sports car; that suits me because I can use it whenever Micheline doesn’t take it. Then he started an affair with Micheline Bezegue. They’re as good as living together. If only they had observed ‘the proprieties,’ as my father would say! What proprieties, Lieutenant? Have you got any ideas on the subject?

  “None of this would have mattered if it hadn’t been for the incident with the secretary general of the Prefecture. Like all the other men he had his eye on Micheline and was jealous of Olivier. That evening there was a meeting at the Piverdiers. You don’t know the Piverdiers, do you? Everyone was there. The secretary general was repeating a little too loudly what my father had said the evening before after a meeting of the general council: ‘Indo-China and the paratroops have turned Olivier into a tramp.’ Olivier overheard and gave the secretary general a shove so that he fell on to the cakes on the sideboard. There was quite a row about it!”

  “Did Olivier apologize?”

  “No, on the contrary, he demanded an apology, declaring that the secretary general had insulted the soldiers of Indo-China. He even said he would box his ears for him.

  “The secretary general sent his apologies, in writing, to Olivier and our father returned the compliment to the secretary general. It was all rather complicated. Everyone was apologizing to everyone else. They even say that my father paid for a new suit for the secretary general who’s somewhat stingy.”

  Pinières had burst out laughing.

  “It’s no laughing matter,” Yvette said. “People are now saying that Olivier’s a thorough bad hat, that when he’s in a temper or drunk he’s capable of killing, that Micheline only sticks to him because she’s scared stiff and that he’s living on her money. Micheline, who’s absolutely mad, thinks this is all great fun and terribly exciting. Yesterday she said to her husband: ‘If you don’t buy me a new car, I’ll tell Olivier to come and cut your throat.’

  “She said this in the bar of the Metropole, in front of everyone. Some people I know believed her, or at least pretended to.”

  “But who do you mean by ‘everyone’?”

  “Well, anyone who counts in Tours, the Piverdiers, the Machalles, the Comtesse de . . .”

  Yvette had embarked on a list and had hardly got to the end of it by the time the house came into sight.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to provincial life again,” Olivier said to Pinières. “Something happened at Dien-Bien-Phu, a sort of break. I realized this when I got back here. That’s why I want to write this book, to exorcise myself somehow, but I can’t get down to it.”

  Yvette was often to be seen with Lieutenant Pinières, first of all walking side by side, later on holding hands, and finally with their arms round each other. That sort of thing was quick to be noticed in Tours.

  It was therefore by hearsay that Maitre Merle learnt of his daughter’s engagement to a certain paratroop lieutenant who still wore his red beret firmly planted on his head.

  From then on Maitre Merle engaged in antimilitarism and pacifism, for he regarded the army and colonialist wars as the root of all evil.

  One night Pinières heard Micheline and Olivier having an argument, which culminated in an angry outburst, a flood of tears and the noise of a car door being slammed.

  The next day Olivier looked down in the mouth. He confided in Pinières:

  “I haven’t got a penny, and my father refuses to advance me any money. My mistress has left me because I wouldn’t take her to the Alps for winter sports—what with, for heaven’s sake? She passes me off as a killer and treats me like a pet poodle. Everyone’s saying that I got knocked on the head at Dien-Bien-Phu and now have fits of madness. They also say I pushed Yvette into your arms to revenge myself on my family and that I belong to a paramilitary organization which is out to overthrow the Republic—that’s a good one, anyway—an invention of the secretary general of the Prefecture.

  “I’ll have to get out of here while the going’s good. But what the hell am I going to do?”

  “Re-enlist.”

  “I don’t like the army. We could always go to Paris. Esclavier’s there, and so are Glatigny, Marindelle and Boisfeuras . . . they wouldn’t let us down.”

  “You don’t like the army, yet when you’re up against it you immediately think of your war comrades because you know you can count on them.”

  A few days later Olivier received a telegram addressed to Lieutenant Merle and signed Raspèguy. It was a curt message:

  Expecting you Paris evening January fifteenth. Contact Esclavier on arrival. Littré 28–12.

  The day after that, Pinières received the same telegram which had been forwarded to him from Nantes.

 
; • • •

  On his arrival in Paris Colonel Raspèguy had moved in with Philippe Esclavier. He had arrived during the night. On entering the drawing-room next morning, Michel Weihl found him in his underclothes doing setting-up exercises.

  “Good morning,” said Raspéguy, “one-two, one-two, in-out . . . deep breathing, it’s most important, develops your wind, and warfare’s above all a question of wind. You the brother-in-law?”

  “Yes.”

  “Lieutenant-Colonel Raspéguy.”

  He had sprung to his feet with astonishing agility. Weihl could not help admiring his lean, muscular body, without an ounce of fat on it. The countless scars on his torso and limbs, far from disfiguring him, on the contrary contributed to his barbaric beauty.

  Raspéguy bent down, straightened up again, leapt into the air and smacked his heels.

  “I used to be the best dancer in the valley,” he said. “Now I daren’t dance any more—the drawback of being a colonel. Philippe not up yet?”

  “Philippe sleeps late when he sleeps here, Colonel.”

  “A man who cuts loose isn’t likely to marry and an officer who gets married loses most of his value, especially in a revolutionary war.”

  “Fortunately we’re at peace, since the signing of the armistice at Geneva.”

  “What about Algeria? That’s the same war as in Indo-China. Haven’t you read Mao-Tse-Tung? Only the Viets were much stronger than the Algerians are, which is lucky for us; otherwise, with the gang of fools who run our army, we’d soon be pushed into the sea. Come and have breakfast, I brought a ham and a demijohn of Irouléguy wine with me.”