“There’s still some little matter to be settled?”
“It’s nothing, don’t worry.”
While the 10th Regiment was taking to the mountains again, fifty-two Algerian officers signed a letter addressed to the President of the Republic, which they submitted to him direct, without going through the usual channels.
Sir,
In the face of the events which have disturbed our country for several years, we are anxious to remain true to our word, as officers, and to the ideal of Franco-Algerian friendship to which we pledge our lives.
If we have hitherto concealed the resentment and anxiety we feel, it is because, on the one hand, we were bound by our very education to the country we were serving and, on the other, because we had hoped that our sacrifices would sooner or later serve the cause of Franco-Algerian friendship.
Today this hope is replaced by the deep conviction that the present turn of events is actually opposed to that ideal. Our position as Algerian officers is rendered untenable by the ruthless struggle which divides our French comrades and our blood-brothers.
If we appeal to you, who represent the French nation, it is certainly not to break with our past as soldiers in the service of France, nor is it to sever the bonds of friendship, comradeship and fraternity by which we are attached to her and also to her military traditions, but out of hostility towards a policy which, if we were to condone it, would transform this attachment into a betrayal of the Algerian people who turn to us for support and of France who needs and will continue to need us.*
Captain Mahmoudi, having been charged as one of the instigators of this manœuvre, was first put under close arrest in Germany and then transferred to the Cherche-Midi prison in Paris.
It was from this prison that he wrote a long letter to Olivier Merle to try and justify the attitude he had been driven to adopt.
The letter was returned to him, with the following observation in red ink:
Lieutenant Merle has been killed in action.
While they were marching over the grey crags of the Némentchas in bitter wind and driving snow, the officers of the 10th Parachute Regiment heard that legal proceedings were being instituted against a certain number of them. The charges were brought against an anonymous X—on the grounds of excessive cruelty, and the officers in question were only to be cross-examined as “witnesses”—a pure formality which was part of the usual legal procedure.
At the evening halt, Glatigny, Boisfeuras, Esclavier, Pinières and Marindelle gathered round a camp-fire. The flame-coloured smoke rose twisting into the dark sky. Every so often the wind would blow it back into the officers’ faces; whereupon they all coughed and their eyes began to water.
Raspéguy emerged from the blizzard, with his maquila in his hand. His oil-skin ground-sheet and Balaclava helmet made him look like a shepherd from his homeland in winter dress.
He squatted down by the fire and accepted a little coffee in an empty cigarette tin.
“What were you talking about?” he asked. “Those subpoenas you’ve received? I’ve also got one in my pocket. But what’s a bit of paper worth when we’ve got guns in our hands? And yet ‘they’ told us to use every means at our disposal to win that battle of Algiers. Luckily we went about it fairly gently, but if we had taken them at their word! Now that they’re no longer shitting themselves with fear, they send us these little bits of paper. Each time any cabinet ministers or deputies visited our H.Q. I used to say to them: ‘This is on the side . . . We’re doing this job because your government has ordered us to, but it repels and disgusts us.’ Some of them pretended not to understand or to think that I was making a huge joke. Others would answer with a sanctimonious little gesture: ‘It’s for the sake of France.’ And now these same bastards, are trying to haul us into court. Hold tight on to your guns, then no one will come and bother us.”
There was a short silence, then Esclavier burst out in a fury which startled them all:
“Let Rome beware of the anger of the legions.”
Lashed by the squalls of rain and melting snow, with their faces all but hidden in their Balaclavas, the centurions of Africa brooded on their bitterness and despair. Under their streaming ground-sheets they clutched their weapons. A more than usually violent squall put the fire out and they found themselves in the dark. Boisfeuras’s rasping voice then made itself heard:
“Now we know there’s only one thing left for us to do: abandon the whole damned issue.”
Then Glatigny remembered. It was springtime at Sarlat College. The windows of the class-room looked out on to the golden dust rising in the courtyard. Surrendering to the confusion and poetic anguish of his adolescence, he sat there day-dreaming. The voice of Father Mornelier, the professor of Latin and Roman history, rose a note or two higher to indicate that the lesson was over. Glatigny had given a start, abruptly awakened from his gentle torpor; he had retained nothing but a clear recollection of this final sentence:
“A large number of the centurions of the Proconsulate of Africa abandoned the legions and came back to Rome. They became the Praetorian Guards of the Caesars until the day they adopted the custom of nominating them and then electing them from among themselves. That was the beginning of the end of Rome . . .”
There was a burst from a submachine-gun in one of the advance posts. A sentry had fired at a shadow or a noise: a tree bending in the wind, a fellagha, or some animal or other.
Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!
*P.I.M.: literally, Prisonniers Internés Militaires; in fact, suspects or even prisoners of war who acted as coolies for the fighting units, to which they soon attached themselves as combatants. One Christmas evening, in the Foreign Legion camp near Hanoi, I actually saw some of these Pims ward off a Vietminh attack with mortar fire. The legionaries were far too drunk that evening to do it themselves. (Author’s note.)
*Code names for calibre 60 and calibre 81 mortar shells, respectively.
*Evil spirits of Vietnamese legends.
*Route Provinciale, as opposed to R.C.: Route Coloniale.
*“Darling.”
*Groupe de Commandos Mixtes Autonomes—an organization engaged on creating guerrilla bands behind the Vietminh lines.
*The spare parachute which is fastened on to the stomach, while the main parachute, the dorsal, is worn on the back. It is only used in an extreme emergency, when the first parachute fails to open.
*The régime entitled the patient to improved rations consisting of less abundant but richer food: chicken, molasses, tinned sardines (for the most serious cases) and half a banana.
*The armistice was signed in Geneva on 20 July 1954.
*Algerian slang for “homosexual.”
*“Long live President Ho!”
*Paris-Presse, 11 November 1954.
*An association of former Saint-Cyr cadets whose aim is to protect the interests of army officers. It serves more or less secretly as a trades union for the only social group in France that has no right to belong to any such organization and in consequence has no one to protect it.
*Literally, “Allah sees us.”
*Abbreviation of division navale d’assaut—a small coastal or river flotilla equipped with landing craft and flat-bottomed support vessels.
*Comité de Co-ordination et d’Exécution, the clandestine-rebel government created at the Soumman Congress.
*This letter was published verbatim in L’Affaire des Officiers Algeriens by Abdelkade Rahmani (Editions du Seuil).
ith friends
The Centurions Page 57
