The Centurions (43 page)

“Tomorrow we are leaving the Camp des Pins, tomorrow we are embarking on this beastly war in Algeria and I'm almost relieved at the prospect.

“Dear God, help me against myself, against the others, against the temptations of the wolves!”

P —— was like any other little Algerian town situated in the cultivated zones: a long street with three cafés, a Moslem veterans' association, a few French shops and a larger number of Mozabite stores. The French inhabitants were called Perez or Hernandez: and the Mozabites, who never ventured outside their own front doors, were as fat and limp as slugs.

At the end of this street with its scarred and pitted surface, stood the police-station, a brand-new building with fine yellow railings and white bars across the windows.

The gateway was reinforced with sandbags, the café terraces protected against hand-grenades by iron grilles, and the entrance and exit of the town sealed off by makeshift roadblocks of spiked fences and barbed wire.

Barbed wire everywhere: round the public gardens and its bandstand where no band had played for years, along the church, the town hall and empty school, in front of the little concrete blockhouses guarded by steel-helmeted, trigger-happy sentries.

The Moslems hugged the walls and avoided running into the Christians; hatred had become a living, palpable thing, it had its own smell and habits; at night it howled in the empty streets like a famished dog.

In two months the whole area round P —— had gone over to the rebels. Settlers' farms had gone up in flames, turning darkness into daylight right up to the gates of the town; flocks had been slaughtered; men, women and children had been massacred in particularly atrocious circumstances.

Cars were machine-gunned on the roads, and buses set on fire, and one convoy every other day was the only means of communication between P —— and the rest of the world. Troops only moved about in full strength, and even then were shot at every time they emerged.

Colonel Quarterolles, the garrison commander, had been taken prisoner in
1940
. He had not taken part in the war in Indo-China and he claimed to know Algeria like the back of his hand by virtue of having commanded Tunisian and Moroccan levies over a period of fifteen years. First of all, he was unwilling to admit that with a garrison two thousand strong he was held in check by a “band of thugs and murderers armed with
boukalas
.” It was only after one of his platoons that had gone out on patrol to a farm five miles outside the town had got itself wiped out that he requested the support of an operational unit.

And that was how one fine day the Raspéguy circus turned up in P —— with its trucks, its loud-speakers and its paratroops in their outlandish headgear. Colonel Quarterolles thought that these lads of twenty, with their over-tailored tunics and easy gestures, powdered like little marquises by the dust of the road, did not strike a serious note at all. He liked hefty warriors in steel helmets, clanking with heavy equipment—the old-fashioned, wine-swilling type of soldier.

Quarterolles had managed to extract the commitment from the headquarters of Area Ten in Algiers that the paratroops sent to him would be placed under his orders and that he himself would command all the operations “in person.” In order to get rid of him, the Chief of Staff had promised him anything he asked.

The commander-in-chief had thought of relieving Quarterolles of his command and sending him back to France, but he feared there might be a scandal. It was only by a miracle that a scandal had so far been avoided.

At Lille the S.F.I.O. Party had just adopted a motion on Algeria requesting the Government to concentrate all their efforts on achieving a cease fire. If the newspapers had come out with a report in heavy type: “A platoon of twenty-eight reservists has been massacred outside P —— by a rebel band; three machine-guns, one
60
-calibre mortar with its shells and twenty-three rifles or submachine-guns have been lost,” the congress might have not only requested but demanded a cease fire as well as disciplinary measures against the army leaders who allowed the soldiers under their command to be massacred.

The only unit in reserve was the
10
th Colonial Parachute Regiment which was said to be insufficiently trained and lacking in team spirit. The general had sent for Raspéguy who had reported with Esclavier by his side. They had been made to wait in a little room through which busy young officers kept passing to and fro, clacking like old hens.

A captain came to fetch them; he wore a scarlet waistcoat with brass buttons under his tunic—like a damned lackey, as Raspéguy observed.

The general was sitting at his desk, bent over a large sheet of glass with a map of Algeria spread out underneath it. His face was lifeless, his voice toneless:

“Raspéguy, I allowed you the two months you requested in order to train your regiment. Those two months are now up; are you ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I've got a tough job for you. Do you want to hang on to your reservists?”

“Very much so.”

“That's up to you. You've heard about what happened at P ——. I want those arms we lost there to be recovered. I want Si Lahcen dead or alive . . .

“Good hunting, Raspéguy! For this job you'll have an absolutely free hand. I want results and I don't give a damn what methods you use.”

Raspéguy had asked:

“What's my position in relation to the colonel commanding the sector?”

“It can be whatever you like. If he gets in your way . . .”

He made a gesture with his hand as though to sweep away a troublesome fly. His handsome face with its regular Roman features remained inscrutable but Esclavier noticed that his eyes betrayed the cruel glint of a mandarin of old China, whose peace and meditation has been disturbed by an importunate intruder.

The intruder was the garrison commander.

Raspéguy had reported to Colonel Quarterolles in the prescribed military manner, snapping splendidly to attention, giving a smart salute, keeping his eyes fixed on some point in the middle distance. But he had no badges of rank, no decoration, no weapon, and his battledress was unbuttoned to reveal his sunburnt torso.

“I'll have to take him in hand immediately.” Quarterolles had said to himself, “these former N.C.O.s always try to take the bit between their teeth.”

“Look here, Colonel, I've noticed your men don't wear steel helmets. The regulations . . .”

“The regulations are all very well, Colonel, but they overlook one important point.”

“What's that?”

“That we've first of all got to win. Now no one can fight properly and win while lumbering about the mountains in the month of July with a heavy helmet on his head. I've given my men orders to leave their helmets behind at the Camp des Pins, but to take two water-bottles each.”

“That's your business. Tomorrow we'll mount an operation to occupy a few farms which I had to abandon for lack of personnel. Today I've arranged quarters for your unit in the town. You can take over the school as your headquarters.”

“No.”

“Eh?”

“No. The whole regiment will camp out in the mountains tonight and we'll light some big fires so that the
fellaghas
will know that we're there. I don't like the idea of barbed wire, Colonel; I saw too much of it out in Indo-China.”

“I forbid you . . .”

Raspéguy shrugged his broad shoulders and smiled.

“Come now, Colonel, we'd better see eye to eye. Besides, it would be tiresome for you if we did not recover the weapons which you let them steal from you . . . and I feel it's not going to be very easy.”

“That incident has been grossly exaggerated.”

“That's to say it has been hushed up.”

“But, for you and your staff, if the school won't do . . .”

“I live with my men, I march with them, I eat the same rations, I put up with the same heat and thirst. So do my staff. My compliments, Colonel.”

Raspéguy saluted. The trucks disappeared in a great cloud of dust, heading for the bare mountains which were tinged mauve and blue by the clear light of the late afternoon.

In the last truck three paratroopers were singing a slow, melancholy cowboy song.

“Yet another of those tricks they brought back from Indo-China,” Colonel Quarterolles said to himself, “with their don't-give-a-damn attitude, their lack of discipline, their contempt for regulations and proper channels, their line-shooting and shoulder-swinging . . . We'll see what they're like when they're on the job, those puppets.”

Vesselier, the mayor, came and called on the colonel. He gesticulated with his hands while he spoke and had a pronounced colonial accent:

“Ah, Colonel. Where do they think they are off to, those fools, into the blue like that without knowing what's going on? They ought to be stationed on the farms so that the crops which haven't been burnt might at least be harvested . . .”

“And he did not even introduce me to his officers,” the colonel complained. “We'll see about that tomorrow . . . Have you got any new information on the band, Mayor?”

“The band, the band . . . If it had been left to us, Colonel, the whole business would have been settled long ago. As you and I know, there's only one thing they understand, these fellows—a firm hand on the cudgel.”

By nine o'clock in the evening the main street of P —— was deserted, all the shops shut, but outside on the balconies the householders sat taking the air and looking towards the mountains where the lights of the paratroops' camp blazed brightly.

 • • • 

On the following day Major de Glatigny and Captain Boisfeuras came and reported to Colonel Quarterolles. The colonel knew Glatigny by name. He was extremely affable.

“We should like to get in touch with your Intelligence officer,” said the major.

“I'll send for him.”

Presently a tubby little captain appeared; he had little boot-button eyes immersed in fat and minced as he walked. He looked stupid, narrow-minded and as obstinate as a mule.

He sank back into an arm-chair and mopped his brow.

“Moine, tell these gentlemen what you know about the Si Lahcen band.”

“We estimate it's about a hundred and thirty strong, scattered across the whole range. By day they lie low in the
mechtas
, by night they're on the prowl. They have no automatic weapons . . .”

“What about the submachine-guns they captured from you?” asked Boisfeuras.

“They've got no ammunition for them.”

Captain Moine was lying with complete confidence, certain of being covered and of not running any risk.

“So when they wiped out your platoon,” Glatigny persisted, “the rebels had no automatic weapons? Thirty men with three machine-guns and several submachine-guns let themselves be surprised by
fellaghas
who had nothing but antiquated rifles. Is that how it was?”

“I was on leave in Algiers.”

“But you held a court of inquiry on your return.”

“I've been out here three years. I have my sources of information. One of these witnessed the battle. The
fellaghas
only chucked a few hand-grenades at the trucks. Our men lost their heads.”

“Who were your men?”

“Reservists of an infantry regiment from the north of France.”

“Who was in command?”

“A cadet who had just left school.”

“And you never tried to put them in the picture or prepare them for this sort of warfare?”

“They were given two or three lectures when they landed at Algiers, at least that's what they said.”

“That's all over and done with,” said Quarterolles, “we can't call the poor men back to life. I'm surprised your colonel isn't here with you; we've got to make arrangements for occupying a certain number of farms. I've taken it up with the mayor; the engineers are sending up some barbed wire and a few mines.”

Glatigny replied in that polite, slightly contemptuous tone which he had learnt when serving on the staff.

“The whole regiment has been out on operations since four o'clock this morning and I don't think Colonel Raspéguy is thinking for a moment of occupying any farms.”

“What does he want, then?”

“The band and, above all, the weapons. For that, we need information, for nothing can be done in this sort of war without information. Who is Si Lahcen?”

“A highway robber,” said Captain Moine, picking his teeth.

“Has he got any family, friends or relations who can give us any information about him?”

“We arrested his brother, but he escaped the same evening.”

“So Si Lahcen must have accomplices in the town; that's only to be expected. Who are his accomplices?”

“That's a matter for the police, not the army.”

Boisfeuras then brought a sheet of paper out of his pocket.

“Since you seem to be in the dark about him, Captain, I'll tell you who Si Lahcen is: a former sergeant-major in the levies, Military Medal, mentioned four times in dispatches in Indo-China. Noted by his leaders as a remarkable warrant-officer, with the makings of an officer. On his return here he sank all his savings into the transport business and bought a bus. But the civilian administrator was the undercover owner of a whole line of buses. He made things difficult for Si Lahcen, he kept imposing fines on him and one day suggested buying his bus back from him for less than it cost him. Suborned by old friends of his who had risen in revolt, unable to find a soul who could protect him against the administrator, financially ruined, Si Lahcen took to the hills and started burning all his rival's buses. One night he came down here himself and slit the administrator's throat. That's correct, isn't it?”

Flies were buzzing about the unshuttered room. The colonel brought a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped his brow. He had since taken over the administrator's house and did not like to be reminded of that incident.

“I want to see Colonel Raspéguy at once. He's here to carry out operations under my orders. Garrison affairs are my business and no one else's. I'd rather not know the source of your inaccurate information. I would point out, however, that you're casting aspersions on a senior official who was deeply respected in this area. I shall expect to see your commanding officer shortly. That's all, gentlemen.”