From: sahraoui@SUNSPOT.ECE.CLARKSON.EDU (Saad Sahraoui)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.french
Subject: Guerre sans nom(Algerian war)
Date: 13 Apr 92 00:30:26 GMT

These are two articles which were published in the GURDIAN WEEKLY of March 15.
1992. Enjoy!

The war the French would prefer to forget

By Jacques Amalric

Thirty years ago, on March 19, 1962, the cease fire 
that ended the Algerian War was signed in Evian. 
The war, which had started in 1954, left an
estimated 500,000 dead* (soldiers and civilians 
on both sides). Yet it was officially described not 
as a war at all, but as 'an operation to maintain law
and order'.

The conflict is the subject of a new documentary, 
'La Guerre sans Nom' ('The War without a Name'), 
by director Bertrand Tavernier and historian
Patrick Rotman. Consisting almost entirely of 
interviews with French veterans, it is the first 
film to take a serious look at the scars the war left 
on the nation. It also touches on the taboo subject of 
torture.

Over 2.5 million French conscripts and re-
servists took part in the Algerian war, which
Bertrand Tavernier and Patrick Rotman call
"the war without a name." Some of them
went through hell, many were bored, while
others, wrenched for the first time from their
farms and factories, experienced the one and
only great adventure of their lives. But for
almost all of them, the war was an incom-
prehensible, absurd and often painful epi-
sode, which ended quickly but was never
forgotten.
Thirty years after what were described at
the time as the "events" in Algeria, Tavernier  
and Rotman managed to findQ largely             
thanks to Georges Mattei, a leading oppo-       
nent of the warQ28 people who, willy-nilly,           
played minor roles in one of the most           
anachronistic of wars. Workers, farmers,        
shopkeepers and executives, they all came      
from the area round Grenoble, which in 1956     
saw the biggest demonstrations against the      
sending of reservists to Algeria.               
 For the four hours of the film (but in fact    
for much longer:Tavernier and Rotman shot            
over 50 hours of interviews) these people       
seem stunned by what they are saying. For       
the first time ever, peopleQfilm-makers as      
it happens Qwho were not involved at all        
in their misadventure are showing an inter-     
est in that wasted but crucial episode of       
their lives, an episode which long tended to    
be avoided in conversation, probably because    
it was a national war (half-heartedly sup-      
ported by most parties) that ended in politi-    
cal defeat.                                    
We see here an upsurge of emotions.
Movingly, hesitatingly, the men gradually
reveal the psychological wounds they suf-
fered and the illusions they lost.
Memories flood back: of drowning their
sorrows in beer, night ambushes, bleak bar-
racks, inhospitable mountains, intermina-
ble guard duty, dead or maimed friends, the
gaze of the Algerians they rounded up, the
all-too-audible screams of those under "in-
terrogation".
The brunt of the Algerian War on the
French side was borne by conscripts and
reservists.Most knew nothing of Algeria and
felt they had no business to be there. That
was particularly true of the reservists, who
felt they had already served their country.
Yet few refused to fight on ideological
grounds, and those that did acted alone: the
Communist Party never encouraged people
to ignore their mobilisation orders, let alone
desert.
Tavernier and Rotman nevertheless man-
aged to track down one such rebel, a militant
Communist who got sent to prison for two
years for insubordinationQin other words,
for refusing to serve in Algeria. After serv-
ing his sentence, he gave up the struggle
and joined the troops. He now regrets that
decision. "I didn't have the courage to desert,"
he simply says.
The great majority of soldiers, when they
set off for North Africa, were worried and
sometimes curious, but hardly wracked by
serious doubts. Many were easily influenced,
and in any case terribly isolated, by the ar-
my's primitive, infantilising structures. Some
enjoyed the initiatory kicks of the war game.
Many just tried to save their skins: they
knew that the freedom fighters of the Front
de Liberation Nationale (FLN) took almost
no prisoners, and were aware of the appall-
ing way they mutilated bodies.

In the field or in their offices, the soldiers
all looked forward to being demobbed. In
letters to their families, many painted a de-
ceptively rosy picture so as not to alarm a
civilian population that had accepted the
war without protesting too much because
they saw it as a law-and-order operation.
When the soldiers got home, they continued
to lie by omission; and no one really asked
them probing questions anyway.

In that respect, the Algerian war bore no
similarity to the Vietnam war, which was
experienced live on television by a whole
nation. Footage from the front took a long
time to reach the French public, and was
then censured anyway. And the strictly con-
trolled press all too often went along with
that fudging of the truth.

The odd men out in the gallery of portraits
presented by Tavernier and Rotman are one
or two junior officers who favoured "Algerie
francaise". One admits almost regretfully
that he has never since then felt so power-
ful.

Most soldiers had little contact with the
Algerians, who were perceived as a kind of
abstraction, albeit a possibly lethal one.
There were exceptions: a doctor who was in
charge of a camp of prisoners on the Moroc-
can border is in tears describing handing
over to the Algerian army after the cease fire
of March 19,1962- and officers who were in
charge of harki units (Algerians fighting on
the French side) say they detest de Gaulle to
this day, not only because he tricked them
but because he betrayed the harki commu-
nityQthousands were massacred in Alge-
ria after the cease fire when France refused
to grant their families asylum.

Also more or less absent from the picture
are the Pieds Noirs (Algerian-born French)
who are remembered as objects of fun by
certain conscripts, and whom the officers
distrust retrospectively because "they were
chiefly interested in marrying off their
daughters."

**********

Torture in Algeria - conscripts confront their memories
Interview with Bertrand Tavernier and Patrick Rotman

Q:Why does your film last four hours?

Rotman: For the film to have any mean-
ing, it was vital to give the people time to
discover what it was they were trying to say,
time to settle into their roles. The moment
we started shooting, we were struck by the
extraordinary quality of their testimonyQ
by the intensity, the emotion, the accuracy
of their memory, the way they had clearly
been mulling over their experiences.

We had to ensure that this slow process of
introspection and maturation was visible in
the film. It very soon became apparent to us
that it was more important to bring out the
characters of those interviewed than to adopt
a chronological approach.

Tavernier: The producers were worried
about the length of the film. It was thanks to
Rene Bonnel, of the TV channel Canal Plus,
that we were able to bring it out in its present
version. Had it not been for Canal Plus
Patrick's project, which had been lying for-
gotten in some producer's drawer for two
years, would never have got off the ground.

Q:How did you choose your interviewees~

Tavernier: Our only criterion was the in-
terest of what they had to say. We didn't try
to establish a systematic cross-section of
people according to their opinions, where
they were stationed, or how long they spent
in Algeria. It so happens that the film ends
up giving a fairly accurate picture of what
the war was like for conscripts.

There's nothing about Algerian cities in
war-time. That's not surprising because,
apart from Algiers, where operations were
carried out by paratroopers, the war wasn't
being waged in the cities. The film's subject
is: what did it feel like going off to war at the
age of 20?

Q:Why have you included scenes of the Al-
gerian countryside as it is today?

Tavernier: I was struck by the way our
interviewees talked of their feelings of lone-
liness, of their lack of contact with people.
When I went to film those landscapes I was
in a sense, putting myself in the same posi-
tion as them, when they discovered a country
that was unfamiliar to them.

Q:Was there any hostility from the French
authorities while you were shooting? Any
banana skins?

Tavernier: Yes, from the regular army. A
general in Grenoble refused us permission,
which had been requested by four of his
officers, to shoot in the mess.

And one witness backed down: a Grenoble
municipal official who was probably at some
point involved in the OAS [Organisation de
l'Armee Secrete, an illegal military organi-
sation supporting French rule in Algeria].

But what struck us most weren't the vari-
ous minor obstacles put in our way, but the
indifference of politicians. While we were
shooting in Grenoble, the mayor, Alain
Carignon, didn't bother to turn up once on
set, whereas when I was making "La Passion
Beatrice", a film that takes place in the
Middle Ages, all the local councillors came
along to see how things were going.

We have invited countless politicians to
the previews, but so far only Defence Minis-
ter Pierre Joxe has turned up. Yet practically
the whole present generation of Socialist
leaders cut their political teeth at the time of
the Algerian War. Those on the right of the
political spectrum were no keener to see the
film, either. And so far no television channel
except Canal Plus has shown interest.

Q:The contrast between that indifference
and your interviewees' desire to talk
about their experiences is very striking.

Tavernier: They feel terribly resentful
about the way that episode of French history
has been swept under the carpet. I think
that French society is deeply flawed because
of that.

Rotman: It's a shameful page of French
history that people decide either to turn or
to rip out. And to think it was an experience
endured by 2.5 million young Frenchmen!
The film tries to get them simply to talk
about it, and is not interested in denouncing
anything.

Q:Did you talk to them a lot before filming?

Rotman: Georges Mattei did all the re-
search and talked to them. I saw almost
everyone before shooting, though one or two
came in once we'd started. I knew one or two
things about them. But we had to keep what
they were going to say intact until they were
in front of the camera.
A story like Serge Puygrenier's, for
example, can't be told twice. I knew he'd lost
a leg, but was unaware that another of our
interviewees, Bruno Enrietti, was the man
who had saved his life. Things gradually
emerge when you have plenty of time at your
disposal.

Similarly, we were completely taken aback
by the unexpected testimony of Noel
Trouilloud's brother, Jean, when he described
the state of an Algerian village after the
RIMa (the marines) had cleaned it up: "There
was nothing left. Nothing living left. Not
even a dog. The population had been ma-
chine-gunned. The RIMa had shown no
mercy." He didn't say that just because he
wanted to be the focus of attention or to
show that he too had seen the horrors of war.

A lot of them talk about torture, refer
to the fact it existed, but never admit to
having carried it out.

Tavernier: One person owns up: Jacques
Bec.

Rotman: The film is quite clear on the
issue of torture. If almost all of the 28 people
we questioned knew about it more or less at
first hand, it must have been widespread.
They all knew it went on. My second point is
that it wasn't only carried out by conscripts.
As early as 1957, there were special places
for that kind of thing known as Operational
Protection Systems.

I'm not saying conscripts didn't beat up
prisoners, or even finish them offQsuch
behaviour is referred to as normal practice.
But there again we weren't interested in
trying to be sensational or to slant the film
in any way.

Tavernier: As one of them, Alain Boeuf,
puts it so tellingly, some of those who tortured
weren't even aware they were doing anything
wrong. So they wouldn't testify even if they
were asked to, because they have nothing to
say. Boe If talks about the volunteers, who
were in it for kicks and to whom it was
impossible to talk rationally. I think that
even if one could lay one's hands on a volun-
teer, he would have nothing of interest to
say.

Rotman: Whereas with Boeuf, when he
opened a door and saw what he saw, the
effect was terrible. You just need to look at
his face as he recalls the scene. Then his
silence.

Q:There is also the veil of silence drawn
over soldiers' psychological traumas,
which is referred to at the end of the
film.

Tavernier: As soon as I heard about their
existence, I knew the film would have to end
like that, just as it opened with the great
demonstration against the departure for
Algeria that was organised in Grenoble on
May 18, 1956. The psychological disorders
were never officially recognisedQjust as
there are no figures for the number of harkis
killed.

In the course of your interviews, did you
detect any signs of the racism which is
a part of that society today?

Rotman: There's nothing to suggest that
people like the ones we interviewed are the
spearhead of the racist ideas which have
gained currency today. Of course there's a
minority who are still living in 1962, and
who belong to blatantly right wing associa-
tions. They are represented by Jean Bollon
president of the Grenoble section of the Un-
ion Nationale des Combattants. But that's
all.

There's nothing racist, for example, in the
remarks that Jacques Bec, a hard-boiled
paratroop officer, makes about the Arabs.
Another para officer, Robert Andre, in
answer to the question "What aspect of the
war most marked you?n (which was left out
of the final cut), says: "I was left with the
greatest possible mistrust of the mass media
and politicians. I have never voted since
and have never succeeded in deciding where
I stand politically. But if ever I saw a bunch
of cretins beating up an Arab, I hope I would
still have the courage to intervene."

Tavernier: It's the cliches and prejudices
kept alive by both sides after the Algerian
War that encouraged acrimony. The film is
against all that. It boils down to what Orwell
said about the need for two and two to make
four. Up to now, no one had put two and two
together, so no one knew what it came to.
Above all, it wasn't regarded as the sort of
question one should ask.


* PS: According to the Algerian government,
	1.5 millions Algerians (mostly civilians)
	were killed.

Saad