A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 (92 page)

On the outskirts of Algiers Gambiez ran into the 1st R.E.P., heading at fifty moles per hour for the city. Sergent’s jeep, driven like Jehu by a German Legionnaire, had already crashed through several unsuspecting gendarme barricades. Almost apoplectic with rage Gambiez dauntlessly attempted to bar the way with his own car, and a singular roadside dialogue ensued between the general and a young para liutenant:

“You recognise me…I’m the Commander-in-Chief.”

“You are nothing any longer. Challe and Zeller have arrived. It’s them we obey.”

“In my day, lieutenants didn’t answer generals like that.”

“In my day, generals didn’t sell out
Algérie française
!”

Still endeavouring to “arrest” the rebels, Gambiez suffered what, for a French general, must have been the unsurpassable humiliation of watching his car heaved into a ditch and of being marched off himself by German Legionnaires, most of them understanding little of what he had to say. The column continued on to Algiers.

At the Palais d’Été de Gaulle’s Minister of Public Works, Robert Buron, was asleep in his bed, having come to Algiers on a twenty-four-hour visit to attend a Chamber of Commerce banquet in the Hôtel Saint-George. There was an agitated knock on his door, and a polite voice said: “Excuse me,
Monsieur le Ministre
, and please don’t laugh. The palace has been seized by parachutists. Monsieur Morin thinks that you would prefer to receive them dressed, rather than in your bed. I assure you, it’s not a joke….” Hastily dressing, Buron thought to himself: “What a mess!…I was only with Frey and Messmer [Ministers of the Interior and Defence respectively] yesterday afternoon; why didn’t they know something was being prepared?” Buron found Morin and his staff under arrest, also by German-speaking Legionnaires who had “no precise orders and seemed not to know what to do with us”. With remarkable incompetence, the putschists had also neglected to cut all the telephone lines from the Palais d’Été, so that Morin had managed to call Paris and many of the key command centres.[
5
] Oran and Constantine remained untroubled, with their respective generals-commanding declaring loyalty to de Gaulle. Admiral Querville, tipped off by a young naval officer, had escaped from his villa in plain clothes and locked himself up in the Admiralty, where he too declared himself “loyal”. His air force opposite number, Bigot, reported — somewhat disingenuously — that he had only just woken up and knew nothing of what was going on.

The first day: Challe satisfied

By dawn on the 22nd, Challe at Les Tagarins was well satisfied with the way things had gone. All the vital centres of Algiers were safely under his control; Morin and Gambiez and their staffs were under lock and key. The one black spot had been the death of a sergeant-major, shot down when trying to defend the Algiers radio transmitter; but, apart from a senior general punched by a beefy German Legionnaire (of course, the Germans got all the blame that day!), this had been the only casualty in an otherwise bloodless operation. (Meanwhile, Sergent, off his own bat, had gone and liberated various “ultra” activists, like Dr Pérez, who had been in the cells since “Barricades Week”, thereby letting a considerable genie out of the bottle.) The first thing the
pieds noirs
knew of the revolt was at 7 a.m. when an anonymous voice interrupted the early morning news to announce: “The army has assumed control of Algeria and the Sahara….
Algérie française
is not dead…. There is not, and never will be, an independent Algeria. Long live
Algérie française
, so that France may live!” A military march followed, and it was announced, with pointed symbolism, that “Radio Alger” was henceforth changing its name to “Radio France”. That Saturday was one of those magical days of clear, exhilarating skies and spring warmth that makes the pulse of Algiers beat again — and rapidly. The city streets began to fill with cars beating out on their horns the notes of “
Al-gé-rie fran-çaise!
”. Festoons of red, white and blue appeared on balconies, and passers-by cheered wildly as truck-loads of paras drove past.

Challe now prepared to move back to his old headquarters in the Quartier Rignot, which he had occupied the previous year. In the meantime, he had edited with his fellow generals his proclamation for broadcasting over “Radio France”. “I am in Algiers, together with generals Zeller and Jouhaud, in order to keep our solemn promise, the promise of the army to hold Algeria, so that our dead shall not have died for nothing,” it began. There was at first conspicuously no mention of the absent Salan until, under pressure, Challe added, after the names of the three generals, the words, “in liaison with General Salan”. There then followed a diatribe against “a government of capitulation”, condemning it for intending to deliver Algeria to “the external organisation of the rebellion”, and making specific reference to its failure to deal with Si Salah (an episode which, up to that moment, remained still unknown to all but the inner circle).[
6
] Algeria was also placed, once again, firmly in the context of the international struggle against Communism.

After a few brief instants of euphoria, Challe’s troubles began. At every turn there was evidence of the lack of forethought in the planning of the coup. The generals had divided responsibilities among themselves as follows:

Challe: military matters.

Jouhaud: information and propaganda.

Salan (when he arrived): civil affairs.

Zeller: economics and administration.

The least imposing of the quartet, Zeller, was an irascible sixty-three-year-old Alsatian (described by one writer as perpetually bearing “the ruffled look of an angry hen”) who had huffily resigned from the army twice in the space of four years. Finally retired as Chief-of-Staff to the Ground Forces, he was regarded as an expert on logistics, but the report he now gave Challe was unexpectedly depressing: there was only three weeks’ stock of medical supplies, milk and olive oil, while the vaults of the Banque de France were found to contain no more than twelve million dollars and less than a million dollars in gold and foreign currency. Zeller now reckoned that an Algeria boycotted by France could last little more than a fortnight — a considerable reduction on the three months bandied around before the generals left France — added to which, none of the potential foreign “allies” looked like coming forward with any kind of material aid.

Of greater and more immediate concern to Challe was the allegiance of those military leaders in Algeria on whom he had counted. Admiral Querville had escaped to a warship and steamed off to the impregnable naval base of Mers-el-Kèbir (though, in fact, the navy was to play little part on one side or the other during the putsch; as one officer remarked acidly, “It’s always missed the boat, ever since Trafalgar!”). In Kabylia General Simon had made it clear from the beginning that he would not go along. In Oranie General Pouilly proved a disappointment, while his deputy whom Challe had hoped would activate the general had, as previously noted, gone on leave; so had a number of other army leaders when the moment for action came. General Gardy, the retired Inspector-General of the Foreign Legion whose appearance had so little impressed Salan, was sent off with Colonel Argoud to stiffen support in Oranie. Gardy was at once distressed to discover his old comrades at Sidi-Bel-Abbès refusing to collaborate. As one after another senior officer faltered when confronted by the terrible dilemma of loyalty imposed on him by the rebels, a swift chain-reaction set in until all the generals in the Oranie command had pronounced against the putsch — or, at best, offered their inert neutrality. In a rage, Argoud ordered Colonel Masselot to arrest General Pouilly, but — typical of the interlocking relations — the two were bound by personal tragedies in that Masselot’s son had been killed while serving under Pouilly, and Pouilly’s son killed under Masselot. Though committed to the putsch, privately Masselot told Pouilly that he would not lift a finger against him.

Even more symptomatic of the agonies of conscience within the French army in those days was the anguish of the commander of the Constantine area, General Gouraud, scion of a renowned military family and whose uncle had been the famous one-armed hero-general of the First World War. Gouraud found himself appalled by de Gaulle’s “policy of abandon”, but equally appalled by commitment to revolt and all that it implied. Of his waverings, some may say he was riven by opposing vectors of honour, others that he was simply irresolute. During de Gaulle’s visit of December Gouraud had (according to de Gaulle) declared solemnly: “I can answer for myself and my subordinates!” Late on the night of 21 April, when pressed by Challe he had pledged “
Bien sûr, je marche
”; only a few hours later, however, after Morin had got on to him over the uncut line from the Palais d’Été, Gouraud was back on the telephone to Challe telling him that he had “reconsidered”. All through that first day he had wavered back and forth; meanwhile, the units under him had stood still, to the great discomfort of Challe. Gouraud’s command was considered to hold the balance of the revolt. An attempt was made to replace him by another general, Maisonrouge, who had previously promised support but whose response now was “I can’t, I’m ill…I’m spitting blood….” The peppery Zeller was despatched on Sunday the 23rd to talk Gouraud round, and after an angry shouting match the Constantine commander finally committed himself publicly, too late to render much assistance to the putsch but in time to shatter in fragments a lifetime’s career of honour and distinction.

Sunday, 23 April: the clouds build up; Salan arrives

As the counting of heads was completed by the morning of Sunday, Day Two of the putsch, it was painfully clear to Challe that only Algiers and its surrounding region was totally reliable; while the units committed wholeheartedly to the revolt numbered chiefly the elitist para regiments. Even among them the
primus inter pares
of Bigeard’s and Trinquier’s famous 3rd, with its “lizard’s beak” headgear, had opted out under its resolutely pro-government new commander, Colonel Le Borgne.

On Sunday the halcyon blue skies of the previous day were replaced, symbolically enough, by the Chergui — that unpleasant wind from the Sahara which frays tempers and distorts thought — blowing violently and covering the city with a gritty film of sand. The paras on guard at the vital city centres lounged about, sleeping in the streets or looking bored, with little apparent discipline or direction. In the empty corridors of the Délégation-Générale a few clerks strolled about with a lost and lugubrious air. Then, around midday, there arrived an eminent accretion to Challe’s ranks — also, however, accompanied by its own additional headaches.

Since 20 April, in Madrid the “Mandarin” ’s court had lived in a state of anxiety, waiting from minute to minute for the putsch to begin — all except the “Mandarin” himself, who, according to his adjutant, Ferrandi, “always impassive, returns from his cabaret at 4 o’clock each morning”. At 6 a.m. on the 22nd a breathless Susini had telephoned to announce the beginning of the putsch. Dodging the half-hearted Spanish police surveillance which had been placed on him at French request, the next morning Salan and his entourage secretly boarded a plane provided by his friend and supporter, Serrano Suñer. To Salan’s manifest relief, Lagaillarde was prevented by the Spanish police from joining the party. The putsch would have to manage without its “d’Artagnan”. The “Mandarin” comported himself, says Ferrandi, as if “he were accomplishing the most banal of voyages on a regular line. Not a grain of dust on his clothes, his shoes glittered as always in the old
coquetterie
of the colonial soldier.” Suñer had accompanied them to Barajas airport, but his send-off was hardly inspiriting. “Your affair is lost. The generals in Algiers lack energy. They have had neither Morin nor Gambiez shot. Franco would never have hesitated.” At Algiers Salan was received coolly by Challe; nevertheless, the quartet presented themselves to their adherents in public as an imposing array of solidarity and five-star brass, to sing the
Marseillaise
in unison together at the Forum. But behind the scenes there was soon friction and dissent. Susini plunged into contact with the inchoate O.A.S. headquarters, who began preparing sinister round-up lists of “enemies of the nation”. On hearing of this, Colonel Godard immediately announced that he would “shoot the first to touch a single hair of a civilian”, and Saint-Marc reiterated that he would have nothing whatever to do with “assassins”. On the other hand, the “activists” were critical of Challe’s irresolution in declining to make any move that he considered might precipitate civil war. Meanwhile, to add a note of farce to events, the
bistrotier
leader of “Barricades Week”, Jo Ortiz, from the distance of his Spanish retreat pronounced himself “Head of the Provisional Government of Algeria”.

…
and in France

And how, meanwhile, were de Gaulle and his government in Paris reacting to all this? On the night of the 21st de Gaulle and his new Minister for Algerian Affairs, Louis Joxe, had attended a performance of
Britannicus
, Racine’s play about treason at court during the early rule of Nero. Later, well after the General had retired to bed, Joxe heard the first news of the putsch and — breaching a strict standing order — telephoned the Élysée to rouse him. With immediate
sangfroid
, as usual, de Gaulle simply enquired: