The Centurions (41 page)

“That can't be denied,” said Bistenave, “he certainly dares.”

“On your feet, men,” blared a loudspeaker. “In ten minutes all the paratroops parade on the beach in singlet and shorts . . .”

“What about us?” said Mougin.

“They're not going to bother about lepers like us,” Estreville fumed, “we're just left to rot in our filthy tents, in our tattered battledress . . .”

The “juice” arrived with slices of buttered bread and jam. The juice smelt of coffee, the bread was fresh: yet another innovation.

“Things have begun to look up since Raspéguy got here,” Torlase observed. “At least there's something fit to eat.”

The loudspeakers were playing regional tunes and “Sur les Quais de Paris.”

At eight o'clock the regiment was drawn up in a hollow square on the beach. The sky was crystal-clear and a smell of iodine and salt was wafted in from the sea which broke in gentle waves of grey and green.

The reservists formed the fourth corner of the square. Polyphème had simply told them:

“Stand there—in line, if you can.”

The warrant-officers were barking away to get their men in position and kept dressing and re-dressing the ranks. The paratroops were soon in perfect line, whereas the reservists looked like a herd of goats that had halted there at random.

“This can't go on,” said Bucelier.

“You're going to get it, you know,” Bistenave gently remarked.

“I don't care. What do we look like? Don't listen to him, you men.”

He stepped out of the ranks and tried to draw his comrades up in line.

“Come on now, straighten up. Pull your stomachs in. You there, shift along a bit; and you, move up . . .”

Polyphème appeared behind Bucelier:

“You say, ‘By the right, dress.' That's the usual word of command.”

And Bucelier found himself shouting:

“By the right, dress.”

“In every Commie there subconsciously lurks a military man,” Bistenave thought to himself.

Raspéguy stepped inside the square, followed by Boudin and Esclavier. All three wore their medals hanging from their breast. Bistenave heard the men behind him saying:

“You see that thing Raspéguy's wearing just below the others. That's the star of a Grand Officer of the Légion d'Honneur. He's the only lieutenant-colonel who's been given it.”

“All three of them have got the Resistance Medal,” Bucelier drily remarked as though by way of apology.

“With that broad chest of his and lean behind, that camouflage uniform and that funny cap, the colonel looks like a tiger,” the seminarist was thinking. “A cruel beast of war taking possession of his horde.”

Major Boudin yelled in his Auvergne accent:

“Tenth Colonial Parachute Regiment . . . Atten . . . shun!”

The ranks stood motionless. The reservists froze more or less in a position of attention, but one after another, like tenpins being replaced. They were embarrassed and kept glancing at one another.

Raspéguy took three steps forward, saluted, then called out:

“Privat, Sapinsky, Mugnier, Verteneuve!”

The four paratroopers marched out of the ranks and came to a halt six paces in front of the colonel.

Raspéguy raised his rasping voice, which seemed to fasten on the men and hold them rooted to the spot.

“I don't like my men making trouble, brawling in bars and then being beaten up by gunners. I'm throwing you out of the regiment; go and hand in your uniforms.”

White in the face, the four paratroopers about-turned.

Then the colonel began moving slowly down the ranks, stopping every so often to interrogate a man he recognized.

“Your name?”

The man gave it.

“Weren't you at Na-San?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you got scared; you went sick. There was nothing wrong with you. Go and hand in your uniform.”

“And you there, what's your name? You've got a bad record. Misappropriating the regimental funds. Move off.”

He came to a halt in front of a staff-sergeant.

“Raspin, you're already drunk at eight o'clock in the morning. I'm throwing you out of the regiment and at once; you're finished with the paratroops.”

“I'll stop drinking, sir.”

“I don't believe you: you've said that before, out in Indo-China. I'm sorry, Raspin, because you're a good soldier and you know how to fight.”

“Please keep me on, sir.”

Raspéguy slowly shook his head and put a friendly hand on the staff-sergeant's shoulder.

“No.”

Whenever he came across a man who was too badly dressed the colonel got rid of him. But this would have meant getting rid of half the regiment. Twenty men had already been sent off to hand in their uniforms by the time he reached the reservists.

“Just like de Lattre, just as much of a bull-shitter,” Bistenave said to himself.

He hated Raspéguy and this whole sinister show he had put on to “take the regiment in hand.” His father had so often described what he called his “execution.”

The plane had just landed at Saigon aerodrome. Troops had been brought up from the delta to welcome the new commander-in-chief. They were no better or worse dressed than the rest: jungle boots, camouflage uniform, bush hats, webbing equipment.

De Lattre stepped down from the aircraft, taking good care to show his best profile to the cameramen. He inspected the troops. He needed to make an example of someone, a victim. Suddenly he stopped and shouted out:

“How can anyone allow heroes to be so sloppily dressed! Send for the quartermaster. What's he called? Fleur de Nav! What a name!”

Quartermaster Bistenave had been sent back to France in the same aircraft and his career had been ruined. He had been in Indo-China no longer than two weeks; he had taken over his command only three days before.

That was how General de Lattre, through his love of display and theatricals, his injustices and military demagogy, had allowed the war in Indo-China to drag on for another four years.

In the eyes of the reservist Paul Bistenave, Raspéguy was made of the same sort of stuff and belonged to the same species of mankind as the marshal. The squire and the shepherd had the same thirst for glory, the same sense of pomp and splendour, the same contempt for justice.

Raspéguy, he felt sure, was the sort of man who would prolong this rotten war in Algeria. And Bistenave hated war; his Christ was the god of peace.

The colonel was now walking down the ranks of reservists and laughed as he turned to Esclavier and then to Boudin:

“Aren't they sweet, with their dear little pointed forage-caps? Upon my word, it's an absolute Bourbaki army!”

He stopped in front of Mougin because he was tall, strong and had a determined face:

“Do you like being dolled up like this?”

“No, sir.”

“Well, get your hair cut, short like mine, go and have a shave and a wash, pitch your forage-cap into the sea, go and see Polyphème and tell him: ‘I'm no longer a reservist but a volunteer who has joined the Tenth Parachute Regiment for the duration of my recall.' Then you'll be equipped like the others, but like the others you'll march, suffer and maybe die. You can take your choice, you and the rest of your pals . . . Bistenave and Bucelier, report to my office after parade.”

That morning two-thirds of the reservists threw their forage-caps into the sea.

Bucelier faced the colonel first.

“Sit down,” Raspéguy told him. “I'm told you're a Communist; I've even had an official report on you. See what they say—a dangerous ringleader. So I'm making you a sergeant since you know how to lead men.”

“I'm not a member of the Communist Party, sir, but I'm a sympathizer and I'm against the war in Algeria.”

“What the hell do I care? You're in it for a certain length of time. You can either stay on here where you'll have a man's life and responsibilities, a soldier's job, or you can go off and rot in some base camp where the
fellaghas
will probably come and cut your balls off without your being able to defend yourself. It's up to you.”

“I'll stay on, sir.”

“Go and change your uniform and report to your new captain. His name is Esclavier and you'll find him in the office next door.”

Bistenave was then ushered in.

“According to my information,” said Raspéguy, “you're a student-priest and a pacifist, but you've also got a sense of leadership since you've managed to create such havoc among your group of reservists. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm promoting you to sergeant.”

“I refuse, sir.”

“That's up to you, but I'm not going to put up with your low scheming and priestly hypocrisy any longer. If you persist in it, I'll beat you over the head with this stick—and it's a
maquilla
which my own priest gave me. So what's your decision?”

In Bistenave Raspéguy recognized a resolution as firm as his own.

“There's only one thing for me to do, Fleur de Nave—send you off to prison between a couple of policemen. Priests and sons of quartermaster-colonels have useful connexions. You'd soon be released, but your friends whom you've landed in the shit would stick in it for ever.”

“I'd like to stay with my friends, sir. I undertake to remain absolutely neutral and obey orders, but I refuse all responsibility or to participate on your side. I undertake this in the name of Christ.”

“Give me the names of two reservists whom I could make sergeants.”

“Mougin and Estrevelle.”

“Good. Go and report to Captain Esclavier. He adores conscientious objectors. Mougin and Estrevelle, you said?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I've committed myself even more than if I'd allowed myself to be made a sergeant,” the seminarist thought to himself. “But at least I'll be able to get rid of these rags and be clean again at last.”

A few days later the rest of the officers arrived.

Out of the reservists, Colonel Raspéguy formed a small battalion of two companies and gave the command to Esclavier. Merle was entrusted with the first company, and Pinières with the second. Glatigny was made Operations officer. Boisfeuras was responsible for Intelligence and Marindelle was put in charge of Propaganda and Psychological Warfare.

Outwardly, the
10
th Colonial Parachute Regiment was no different from any other regiment of paratroops. But its colonel and all its officers had made up their minds to establish a unit of an entirely different sort which would enable them to wage war as it should be waged in this year of grace
1956
.

For two months the N.C.O.s and privates of the
10
th Regiment were subjected to intensive training.

The physical training periods were succeeded by forced marches. A particularly tough and dangerous assault course was set up in the middle of the camp. Raspéguy inaugurated it by getting round it in record time. The officers followed after him. Boudin crashed on his face but limped home all the same.

In the few barrack-rooms which served as instruction halls a number of Raspéguy's favourite slogans had been pinned up:

“Whoever dies has lost.” “In order to win, learn how to fight.” “In battle, death sanctions every fault.”

The “volunteer” reservists were subjected to the same rules and the same training as the paratroops. At the end of a month it was difficult to tell them apart.

The diary which the seminarist Bistenave kept included the following entries for the month of May
1956
:

“I'm beginning to understand Colonel Raspéguy's little game.

“We are ceaselessly lectured on the subject of death, not as the final outcome of a man's life, the great step that is taken in order to cross over into the next world, but as a sort of technical misadventure due to clumsiness or lack of training . . .

“During an exercise with live ammunition two paratroopers of the third company were killed. It was their own fault; they had not followed the instructions they had been given.

“Raspéguy paraded the men of this company and delivered a funeral oration over the two bodies which were covered by a square of tent cloth. ‘They died for France,' he said, ‘and like a couple of donkeys. I forbid you to do as they did.' Then he strode off with his pipe in his mouth.

“Bucelier, who is a Communist, found this brutality quite normal. I'd even go so far as to say that he was fascinated by it.

“We march until we are ready to drop, in silence, our backs bent, dripping with sweat, day and night, and when we think we have reached the stage at which no further effort is possible, Raspéguy and his wolves drive us on still farther. I never thought that officers could demand so much from their men, especially of us reservists who less than two months ago were yelling at Versailles: ‘Down with the war in Algeria.'

“But these officers live as we do, toil as we do, sleep and eat as we do. It only needed Sergeant-Major Polyphème to declare: ‘I drink water because wine affects my legs' for there to be no more wine in anyone's water-bottle within a week. We are all becoming sober.

“In camouflage uniform and with this strange cap of ours, we are all beginning to look like one another, to have the same reactions, to use the same words, the same expressions, drawn for the most part from the radio-code. For ‘yes' we say ‘affirmative'; for ‘no,' ‘negative'; for ‘all's well,' ‘five five' while raising a thumb in the air. We describe such-and-such a man as ‘an all good,' such-and-such another as ‘an all bad.' The colonel does his utmost to prevent all contact between us and the outside world, to keep us enclosed in this strange monastery, on this wooded beach by the water's edge. He limits our leave and we know he himself doesn't ever go out.