History Essay
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BattlefortheCasbah.docxExcerpts from Paul Aussaresses, The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957, (New York: Enigma Books, 2006).
[…]
June 18th
When it launched the insurrection in November 1954, the FLN had failed to massively draw the population in its wake, as it had hoped. Contrary to what many people believed, the rebellion had not spread like wildfire and one could even say that by the spring of 1955 it was running out of steam. Therefore the FLN radically switched tactics. From now on the rebellion would make systematic use of terrorism, targeting the civilian population, whether it was Algerian Muslims who were known to be “friendly” to France, or Europeans. The FLN could easily intimidate the countryside but it was having difficulty organizing itself in urban areas. That was precisely where terrorism was going to develop. During the spring of 1955, after several months of taking a wait-and-see attitude that was encouraged by political instability, the government finally understood how much the situation was deteriorating. Urban guerrilla warfare had to be avoided at all costs. The new government, with Edgar Faure as prime minister, which included Maurice Bourgés-Maunoury as Interior Minister replacing François Mitterrand, and Robert Schuman as Justice Minister, decided to counter attack. On April # Parliament approved a state of emergency law allowing tighter cooperation between the police and military intelligence. It was a way of institutionalizing what I was already putting into practice unofficially in the field. From now on police and military operations were to be carried out with tight coordination.
During the days that followed the state of emergency was declared in the areas most affected by the FLN. Everyone feared that things would get worse during Ramadan, which was to take place in May that year, in fact there was an increase in attacks at that time. A governmental committee decided in the middle of May to beef up military involvement and increase French troops from 60,000 to 100,000 men in Algeria. Drastic instructions were issued to make sure the rebellion was crushed, even authorizing bombing from the air, which the government until then had opposed. At the same time Paris secretly decided to liquidate all FLN leaders by any means available, including through the use of special services.
Colonel de Cockborne had just been appointed military attaché to Rome, which was much better for everyone. I assumed that he had foreseen the kind of extreme measures we would be required to use and he didn’t wish to participate in the beginnings of the operation. Colonel Georges Mayer, his deputy, replaced him. Myer was a tough fair-haired man, nicknamed “Prosper” because of his rumored popularity with the ladies. His wife, the pretty Simone, came from a French family established in Morocco and she didn’t seem to mind his reputation. She was known as “Monette.”
Mayer was one of the oldest paratroopers in the French army and that added a lot of prestige to his good looks. He had volunteered right after graduating from Saint-Cyr, before the war, to be part of one of the two companies of the new units of airborne infantry that had been created in 1937 and had seen action during the campaign of France in Alsace and Vosges regions. He had later served in Indochina. I felt he would be less strict than his predecessor as to the means required to defeat the FLN.
On June 18, 1955, a series of terrorist incidents took place in Philippeville. I saw this wave of unforeseen attacks as a personal insult and a provocation. I had been part of the special services of the Free French that belonged to the Big One’s – as we nicknamed General Charles de Gaulle – personal staff. Therefore any incidents on a date like June 18 were unacceptable.[footnoteRef:1] Furthermore, I was an intelligence officer now and I had uncovered no hints announcing the incidents that had just taken place. And for an intelligence officer any surprise is extremely humiliating. [1: June 18, 1940, was the date of General De Gaulle’s broadcast from London, appealing to the French people and the army to reject both the armistice with Germany and Marshal Pétain. De Gaulle was known as “The Man of June 18th” – a date considered sacred by most Frenchmen. ]
Seven bombs exploded in different sections of town at the same time. Isolated groups had shot at European passers-by and also attacked them with sticks and knives. Some cars had been set on fire as well as a few storefronts. The police force, the gendarmerie, and the brigade had the situation under control rather quickly after some heavy fighting. An Algerian Muslim had approached a pied-noir who was walking in the street. They knew each other well and yet the Algerian split the man’s head in two with an ax. Alexandre Filiberti, head of urban security, went to the bedside of the dying man, who whispered the name of his aggressor. I was given the information and we were able to arrest the Algerian almost immediately and start questioning him. I had to find out whether an organization had coordinated these attacks and if so who its leaders were.
It was important that he talk because we had been surprised by this wave of violence. Incidents of that kind could take place at any moment all over again, God only knew where, with more bombs exploding the next day. The most revolting part was that they had attacked only civilians and I had to find out who could have issued such orders. The man refused to talk and I decided to use violent methods. I did the job without the policemen. It was the first time that I tortured anyone. But it was useless that day because the man died without talking.
I didn’t have any thoughts, nor did I regret his death. If I had any regrets at all it was that he hadn’t talked before dying. He had used violence on someone who was not his enemy. It was someone whose only crime was to be there at that time. I could have understood had he picked an official, even a military man. But just anybody from Philippeville at random and someone he knew well on top of it? I felt neither hatred not pity. Time was of the essence and I was looking at someone who was directly implicated in a terrorist act: any methods were good enough to force him to talk. That was what the circumstances demanded. After the prisoner’s death, I asked my informers what was going on inside Philippeville. Had an armed group set itself up in town? I was finally able to find out that the real leaders were hiding in the countryside, in the rocky landscape, amid the shrubs and the caves. It was impossible to detect anything from a plane and rockets, bombs or even artillery wouldn’t work to get them out.
At the beginning of July 1955, just as General Lorillot took over as commander in chief of all French forces in Algeria, the Oran sector was quiet and terror had almost stopped in the Algiers region where the FLN was making only a few isolated attacks. Only the Aurés Mountains and the area around Constantine remained difficult. Since it happened to be the area where the FLN was stronger it kept feeding a climate of terror and fear designed to bring about repression and force the uncommitted mass of the population to take its side. Around July 20 I became convinced that there was a large concentration of rebels in the wooded areas around Philippeville that were hard to reach. There were about 3,000 to 5,000 men, including fellagha fighters and civilians mixed together. Some of them were from the immediate areas around Philippeville, others were from the surrounding administrative departments. I activated my network and made a number of connections, a long and painstaking task.
Logically the rebels needed food and they were isolated. They had no supplies being parachuted in to them or any convoys coming from the outside. Therefore they had to get their food from Philippeville. With the help of the local police force I took a tour of the small food stores. Mohamed, the grocer from the Mzab region, who normally sold one sack of semolina every three days had just sold fifty sacks in one shot. That was odd. But there was something even more disturbing: a man had gone into a pharmacy and purchased scores of bandages. I figured out through the analysis of information I had gathered that on August 20, 1955, at noon, the FLN was going to launch a massive frontal attack with several thousandth men against Philippeville.
Zighout Youssef was the head of the northern Constantine area and had decided to stage a spectacular and bloody attack on the anniversary of the deposition of Mohamed V, the Sultan of Morocco. Since 1952 Mohamed V had asked the President of France, Vincent Auriol, for a revision of the French protectorate of 1912, but this only led to the Sultan’s removal and replaced by his uncle on August 20, 1953. The Sultan was sent off into exile to the island of Madagascar. Youssef also wanted to use the attack as a signal to support a motion of the United Nations by seven African and Asian countries, which included India, in favor of Algerian independence. The attack was also to be followed by commando action, where the men were to take up positions in the cellars of buildings all over town a few days before the offensive. The FLN high command wanted to take an entire Algerian mid-sized town as hostage.
I would find out later on that at the same time, on the same day, they also wanted to take over a town in Morocco. They chose Oued Zem, in order to demonstrate to the world that the nationalist movements of the Maghreb were acting in unison and could coordinate their actions. The rebels in Algeria did not have the power to take over a sizable town of any kind and could not take part in a general attack. Therefore to target Philippeville was a good solution. It was an active port city and the matter would certainly be noticed worldwide. And so I knew one month before it was to take place, the location, the date and the hour of the planned operations, including the number of men involved and the tactics that had been chosen. Now we had to sit tight and make no moves while we dug in, waiting for the enemy.
The Attack
I informed Colonel Mayer and travelled to Constantine to also inform Colonel Decomps of the 2nd Bureau.
“Colonel, it’s quite simple: we will be attacked in Philippeville on August 20.”
“Have you found out anything about a similar operation against Constantine?”
“They only discussed Philippeville. I have no information regarding the Constantine region,” I answered.
“And above us, in Algiers? Do you think something will happen there?”
“No, nothing will take place above us – at least not right away. The FLN isn’t ready for a general offensive.”
I returned to Philippeville and wrote a report, which I handed in to the Colonel.
“Your report is all well and good,” said Mayer, “but now it must be signed and passed along.”
“Sign it and send it,” I answered.
Mayer was hesitating:
“What if nothing happens on August 20? What will I look like? Do you actually believe I’m about to take that kind of a chance?”
“But Colonel,” I was suddenly yelling at him, “I tell you something will happen! Come on and sign it now! Goddamn shit!”
In my excitement I had used the favorite curse word of the Big One. Maybe that’s what convinced Prosper. In any case he grabbed his pen and signed my report without uttering another word.
On Thursday August 18 I was told that FLN commandos were beginning to take positions in the cellars around town. Obviously there was no way we were going to step in; it would only prove that we had sources of information. It was very hard to live with the knowledge that there were hundreds of men so close to us primed to kill. We were also very few and the next day I took a tally: our 1st Battalion had just returned from operations and the trainees from the paratrooper school would be used as additional forces. All told we had a total force of 400 excellent men, but 400 against several thousand made it a very tough challenge. Prosper had provided me with a deputy for this operation, Lieutenant Soutiras, a graduate of Saint-Cyr. He was a signals officer but hated the specialty and didn’t mince his words in saying so. His father was a regular army officer, who had been killed fighting the Germans during the campaign of France in 1944.
The colonel gathered his officers on August 19. He didn’t want to contradict me but I could sense that he didn’t believe a single word of my forecasts. He read the report to the others, then turned to me:
“Tomorrow is Saturday and I must hand out graduation certificates at the paratrooper school in the morning. After that there will be a meeting at the trainers club. Do you suggest that I go there or not?”
“You should go,” I replied. “The best thing to do is not change anything to your planned schedule: they could get suspicious.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Nothing different, normal service, but by 11:55 a.m. everyone must be at his station, with weapons at the ready.”
“Very well, gentlemen. Issue your orders: should the attack take place at noon, as we expect, fire at will until you finish your ammunition. Fire the machine guns without stopping. I’ll call in reinforcements. Once the frontal attack has been stemmed, go around and take care of the commandos hiding in the cellars. And don’t let them off the hook!”
On Saturday, August 20, 1955, I decided to go parachute jumping just for relaxation. I had to go very early because the wind would start blowing toward the sea at dawn and the jump area was on the coastline. I woke up at 3 a.m. and after jumping I returned to the brigade barracks at daybreak. Across the street there was a café owned by the son-in-law of the mayor of Philippeville. At 8 a.m. I quietly crossed the street to have a big breakfast with some very strong coffee, fried eggs and wine. I knew that the commandos were watching me from their cellars and were dying to shoot at me. The heat was already stifling at that hour. A police inspector dropped by.
“So, Captain, are you ready?” he asked.
“Right now as you can see I’m enjoying breakfast. You can’t fight well on an empty stomach.”
“A taxi driver has just informed that his car has been requisitioned by the FLN.”
A second fellow came into the bistro saying that there wasn’t a single taxi at the railroad station. We all suddenly thought about the taxis of the Marne. Colonel Mayer was friendly with Paul Ducourneau, who had graduated from Saint-Cyr in the same class and was in command of the 18th RCP in Saint Charles. Ducourneau said that nothing was expected in his sector. If the attack did take place he promised to come to our rescue as fast as he could. His second battalion was stationed me six kilometers south of Philippeville. The FLN was able to listen in to both the radio and the phone lines. We agreed to signal Captain Thomas, who was in command of the second battalion.
“Don’t worry, Georges,” Ducourneau had said. “Should the fellagha show up, just ring and Thomas will come around with the 18/2 to kick some ass.”
[…]
At noon, in downtown Philippeville, shooting began from all sides. The rebels were farmers who had been given rudimentary weapons and were lead by FLN militants who were much better equipped. The impressive part was that they advanced along the streets, marching as if they were on the parade ground. Philippeville was a town of 20,000 and even though many of its citizens were at the beach the whole story could take a very ugly turn. Then, in unison, the commandos, how had been lurking for three days in the cellars, took to the streets. The brigade counted them immediately. Our headquarters, where I was located, came under fire by individuals emerging from a bistro-hotel across the street, just next to the one I usually patronized. They attacked, screaming at the top of their lungs.
I was fed up very quickly with all that noise and took to the street with some of my men. The assailants were surprised to see us and to be suddenly under the fire of our submachine guns. They quickly fell back into the bistro but continued to shoot. We ran across the square, doubling up under a hail of bullets that whizzed around our ears. We were now under an infernal crossfire form the buildings in front and the rebels coming into the street. It was looking more and more like hell on earth. The café had a main door and a rear exit door. I yelled to Misry to follow me and try and smoke the rebels out with grenades by getting through the back door. But it was locked shut. Misry shot up the keyhole with his submachine gun and we could see how thick the door was form the impacts of the shells. Some shots must have gotten through because we heard screaming from inside.
We ran back to the bistro’s main entrance and were welcomed by a heavy round of gunfire. After throwing a few grenades inside we stormed the main room, spraying it with several rounds of machinegun fire. I never saw so many broken bottles and I am even not mentioning the owner, who should never have decided to stay behind the counter. The rebels ran back down into the cellars but didn’t lock themselves in and continued shooting from the open door, determined as they were to hold out, come what may. We couldn’t get near them and it was impossible to finish them off without heavy losses. I ordered my men not to attempt any heroics and to just keep on shooting as a diversion. Meantime, with Misiry we got as close as we could and threw in two grenades. Once they exploded a fire broke out.
The shooting stopped but the cellar was big and I knew the commandos were still hiding inside and would soon make a sortie. On both sides we stopped breathing and leaded new clips in our machine guns. Suddenly about twenty men sprang forward from the smoking cellar. We were waiting for them with our submachine guns and none of them survived.
The battle was raging outside. We went to the Communist Party headquarters. The party members had cautiously left the premises and had been replaced by about fifty FLN rebels who had spent the night there. The proof of collusion between the Communist Party and the FLN that Lieutenant Colonel Decomps of the 2nd Bureau in Constantine had requested was absolutely indisputable.
[…]
The rebels lost 134 dead in the streets of Philippeville and several hundred wounded, whom they didn’t even attempt to rescue. The brigade had to pick them up and an NCO was shot as he tried to bring back a wounded fellagha. One of our squad leaders had been shot at from a cellar. Rather than set fire to the building or force them out with hand grenades, he decided to attack the rebels fairly and paid the supreme price for his foolishness. Two men had lost their lives trying to play by the rules, in addition to about another 100 wounded on our side as well.
[…]
By 1 p.m. it was all over. Following Zighout Youssef’s orders, the leaders, seeing things were going badly, had decided to pick up the weapons of the dead and fall back, leaving their men behind, whether they were still standing or wounded, to face us alone. Youssef had figured out precisely the heavy losses he would incur because the fighters had only light weapons. The objective was to make an impact on public opinion: the more blood there was, the more they would talk about it. Youssef had sent some farmers out in front, doped up with hashish. Clearly their death meant nothing to him, not much more than the death of the French civilians he had ordered them to massacre. I understood that without my intelligence information, there would have been a massacre at Philippeville, similar to the atrocities at El Halia.
El Halia
Around 2 p.m. we were told that the attack concentrating on Philippeville also involved a few villages and small towns near Constantine. There was an isolated sulphur mine some 22 kilometers to the east and the FLN had targeted it for an attack. At El Halia some 2,000 Algerian Muslims lived side by side with 130 Europeans. All of them were paid according to the same salary scale and had identical social and health benefits, precisely the kind of situation the FLN couldn’t accept. I never thought the rebels would attack the mine or that they would be so cowardly as to target only the civilians of European origins.
Zighout Youssef had ordered all the European civilians to be killed and to kill them in the cruelest way possible. He expected that the French would react to this massacre, that they would be surprised by such terror, and start a mindless repression that would bring together the Algerian Muslim population against the pied-noirs and stir up international public opinion. In the intense midday heat, while people were having lunch, two groups of fellagha had launched a surprise attack and began killing all the civilians who were inside their homes. There were small children inside the houses who were being kept out of the heat to avoid sunstroke and women who were quietly busy with the midday lunch as they waited for their husbands to come home.
I had visited the mine a few day s before, and checked the efficient self-defense system that the director had set up. Since relations between the French and the Algerian Muslims were excellent at El Halia, I wasn’t worried. The pied noir employees felt very confident about their Algerian co-workers and were convinced that the fraternal feelings they shared would come into play should an attack take place. In order to avoid the risk of showing the FLN our hand, which would have delayed the attack and exposed my informers, making a later operation much more difficult to forecast, I didn’t share any information with the director of the mine. As a cautionary measure I placed the Péhau military camp used for the training of young recruits, located ten kilometers away on the road to Philippeville, on the alert.
The defensive system at El Halia was made up mostly of a good supply of rifles and submachine guns. And yet on the day of the attack, the system didn’t work because the man who had the key to the weapons supply locations had gone off to Philippeville to the beach. Two European workers at the mine were able to slip away, reaching Camp Péhau, distraught and out of breath. They were crying and said that the men were killing with unbelievable ferocity, taking small children and crushing them to death against the walls and disemboweling women of every age after having raped them.
At Péhau we only had 200 young recruits under the command of Captain Perret, who had survived Dien Bien Pho, and Lieutenant Nectoux, who was originally from Burgundy. Once informed of the disaster, Mayer decided to take back the mine as soon as possible. To use green recruits who hadn’t even finished their basic training and could barely reload their rifles or understand an order was extremely risky. However, they happened to be on the spot and Mayer was one to take on the responsibility when it came down to it. He therefore gave Perret the order to attack without maneuvering, just like the soldiers of the French Revolution and in the simplest manner possible on a line, shoulder to shoulder, and only open fire on command to avoid any accidents.
The only thing Mayer could do was call in the tactical air force group from Constantine. Two T6, single engine training planes in use in Algeria for ground attack took off immediately, to support the 200 recruits who unhesitatingly went on the offensive to save those civilians who were still alive. None of those boys panicked and they opened fore only on sight and when their officers gave the order. The pilots also did their job well and we counted 80 dead fellagha and some 60 prisoners.
Unfortunately what they had the time to do to the Europeans at the mine was beyond description. We found 35 bodies, 15 wounded, and 2 persons were missing. When I saw children chopped up into pieces, with their throats slit or crushed to death, women who had been disemboweled or decapitated, I think I really forgot what having any pity meant. What was hardest to believe was that these people had been massacred and mutilated by their Algerian Muslim neighbors, who had been peacefully living with them until then. The FLN had them drink alcohol and smoke “kif” then they had encouraged them to plunder the homes of pied-noir workers and had showed them how to do it.
Towards 4 p.m. Nectoux phoned Mayer.
“Colonel, I’m up here at the mine and it’s not a pretty sight, sir.”
“Approximately how many?”
“Thirty, maybe forty, Colonel, but in such awful condition.”
“Do you have any prisoners?”
“Yes, about sixty. What should I do with them, Colonel?”
“What a question! Get rid of them, naturally!”
Fifteen minutes later we heard GMC trucks pulling up with Nectoux.
“Why all these trucks, Nectoux?”
“Well, I brought the prisoners, Colonel, as I thought you meant.”
Prosper and I tried not to laugh but we felt enraged inside. I said to Nectoux:
“Is it because you’re from Burgundy that you don’t understand the French language?”
The lieutenant felt hurt because he didn’t like people making fun of his accent and he looked so miffed that we really began laughing like during those odd moments when tragedy suddenly seems grotesque.
“OK, Nectoux, unload your trucks and get out of here.”
I told the colonel that I would take care of the job. Mayer didn’t answer me, but we got along very well and I knew that he approved of what I was about to do. I picked one man among the prisoners to question him myself. He was an Algerian Muslim foreman who had murdered the entire family of one of his French co-workers.
“But why did you kill them, goddamn shit? They hadn’t done anything to hurt you! How could you murder small babies?”
“I was told that I ran no risk.”
“What do you mean no risk? How could that be?”
“Yesterday a FLN representative came to see us. He told us that the Egyptians and the Americans were landing today to come and help us. He said that we should kill all the French and that we ran no risk. So I killed all those I could find.”
I answered him in Arabic:
“I don’t know what Allah thinks about what you’ve just done, but now you’ll go and explain to him directly. Since you’ve murdered innocent people, you must also die. It’s the rule of the paratroopers.”
I called Issolah over.
“Take him away. He must be executed immediately. For the others I need to talk with Bébé.”
“You mean Bébé the mechanic?”
“That’s right.”
Bébé had been a sergeant in the Resistance movement and his nickname came from his young-looking face. He was in charge of the motor pool. Since everyone knew what we were doing, Bébé had come to see me a few days before.
“Captain, I need to talk to you.”
“Go right ahead, Bébé.”
“Look, I know what you’re doing and I’d like to work with you.”
“Sorry, Bébé, but I have all the men I need and I think we need you in the garage.” He was disappointed but kept on asking anyway.
“Captain, if some day you need help, don’t forget I’m here.”
“It’s a deal. I won’t forget.”
On August 20, I remember Bébé’s offer.
“If I recall correctly, you said you knew what my job was, “ I said, “and wanted to work with me.”
“That’s right, Captain.”
“Well, I accept your offer and today I have a job for you. Go get all your men with their submachine guns and all the loaded clips you can find.”
I lined up the prisoners, both fellagha and the Algerian Muslim workers who had helped them. When the time came to fire, Bébé was clearly not very enthusiastic. I’m sure he would have much preferred being in the grease pit. I had to give the orders myself. I was totally indifferent: we had to kill them and I did it. That was all. We purposely made it look as though we were abandoning the mine and some pied-noir survivors were left behind to stand guard. A few days later, as we expected, the fellagha returned. Once the guards gave us the signal we went up with the first battalion. We captured some 100 men, who were executed on the spot.
“Please, Superintendent, this man should be under your supervision. Take him!”
“Can’t you hold him for now?” he asked “I’ll come back tomorrow morning to pick him up.”
“My dear Superintendent, I’m really having a hard time I don’t know where to put them. And what about you in the Gendarmerie?”
“I can’t take him down to the barracks; there’s no more room,” he answered.
“You guys are really pissing me off now, all of you!”
I started all over again the next day, but they were sill just as evasive.
“And today do you want them? Yes or no, damn it?”
All the civilians were looking down at their shoes.
“OK, I get it.”
I picked a few groups of NCOs and ordered them to shoot the prisoners. I was always careful not to order the same men to do that kind of work, and very rarely were they recruits, except for those who had seen action and had been in the army for at least one year. They didn’t have any qualms.
Once it was over I prepared a report and helped the inspectors of the RG write theirs. Police Superintendent Amassan was in France and I sat in his office. I found out that more massacres had taken place at El Arushi, Oued Zenatti, Catinat, and Jemmapes. In Constantine a nephew of Ferhat Abbas had been murdered in his drugstore because he was thought to be too pro-French. We picked up the FLN members who had been killed in the uprising and took the bodies to the municipal stadium. There were 134 dead lined up on one of the tracks of the stadium, guarded by soldiers of the 18th battalion. We found those who had dropped between the bushes a few days later because of the August heat.
[…]
Regarding the use of torture, it was tolerated if not actually recommended. Francois Mitterrand, as Minister of Justice, had a de facto representative with General Massu in Judge Jean Bérard, who covered our actions and knew exactly what was going on during the night. I had an excellent relationship with him, with nothing to hide.
While torture was widely used in Algeria, it didn’t mean that it was an ordinary occurrence. We didn’t discuss it among officers, and an interrogation didn’t necessarily end up in torture. Some prisoners started talking very easily. Others only needed some roughing up. It was only when a prisoner refused to talk or denied the obvious that torture was used. We did everything we possibly could to avoid having the youngest soldiers bloody their hands, and many would have been unable to see it thorough anyway. The methods I used were always the same: beatings, electric shocks, and in particular, water torture, which was the most dangerous technique for the prisoner. It never lasted for more than one hour and the suspects would speak in hope of saving their own lives. They would therefore either talk very quickly or never.
Massu decided to undergo electric shock torture himself in order to reassure his men. He was right in a sense: if you neither experienced nor been subjected to torture, it’s impossible to talk about it. But Massu was not crazy and he carefully picked his torturers among his most devoted courtiers. Had I been doing the torturing, he would have been subjected to the exact same treatment as the one we handed to the suspects.
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