Appendix Algerian War Witnesses Biographical Details
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Appendix Algerian War Witnesses Biographical Details General Alain Bizard Volunteering for the 1st Hussar Regiment Alain Bizard took part in the August 1944 Liberation of France and in 1945 attended the French army's officer training academy at Saint Cyr. From 1947 to 1949 he served in Indochina with the 1st Regiment of Chasseurs, returning for a further tour of duty in Indochina in 1950-2. He was then promoted captain and returned to Indochina for a third time in February 1954, in command of a company of the 5th Vietnamese parachute battal ion. Captured at Dien Bien Phu on 8 May 1954, he was liberated on 2 September that year and posted to Tunisia, where he commanded the 1st Moroccan tabors on the frontier with Libya. In 1956 he joined the 1st Regiment of Chasseurs Paratroops (1e RCP) in Algeria, with whom he took part in the short-lived operation in the Suez Canal in November that year. In 1960 he left Algeria on secondment to the United States where he graduated from the US Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In a second posting to the United States, commencing in 1962, he took courses at the Armed Forces Staff College at Norfolk, Virginia, and the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. After returning to France he was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1965, commanding the 13e Regiment de Dragons Parachutistes in 1967. In 1969 he became chief of staff of 4th Division, headquartered at Verdun, and in 1974 he took command of 1st Parachute Brigade. Promoted brigadier-general in 1975, he became Commandant of the military acad emies of Saint Cyr-Coetquidan and then commander of 8th Division in 1979. General Bizard's career culminated as a lieutenant-general in command of 3rd Army Corps in 1983. Colonel Henri Coustaux Born on 28 February 1915, Henri Coustaux entered the Ecole Polytechnique in 1936 and was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery in 1938. He saw action in the Battle of France from the Ardennes to Castries with 12th Battalion, 45th Artillery Regiment, being promoted lieutenant on 19 July 1940. After the Armistice he converted from the artillery to the mechanized cavalry and in 1943-4 joined the FFI (Forces Franc,:aises de l'Interieur), in the 1st Regiment of the Rhone, taking part in the liberation of Lyon. After the Ecole d'Etat-Major in 1944-5 he served from 1945 to 194 7 with the 4th Cuirassiers in Occupied Germany. In 194 7-9 he was an instruc tor at the leadership training school at Rouffach-Mutzig in Alsace, before being posted to Indochina until 1951. There he established the Vietnamese leadership training school at Hanoi and Namdinh and commanded a battalion of the 1st Colonial Tank Regiment (1 e RCC). His decorations include the Croix de Guerre 1939-45 with one citation and the Croix des Theatres d'Operations Exterieures (seven citations). Promoted major in 1951 he served a tour as an instructor at the staff officers' school in Paris and then graduated from the Ecole Superieure de 261 262 Appendix Guerre. He served in Algeria from 1956 to 1961, initially as head of the Operations Bureau of the Algiers army corps. On promotion to lieutenant-colonel he assumed command of the 1st Regiment of Chasseurs Paratroops (le RCP) and was subse quently chief of operations and then deputy chief of staff of the combined-arms staff in Algiers. Promoted colonel, he gained the Croix de Valeur Militaire and was made a Commander of the Legion d'Honneur. Despite not being involved in the failed April 1961 Algiers putsch, he was nonetheless compulsorily retired from the army after it. Major Paul-Alain Leger Born on 29 November 1922 in Morocco, where his father was stationed, Paul Leger took part in the student demonstrations against the German occupiers in Paris in 1940. In 1942 he crossed into the unoccupied zone of France, made his way to Algiers and enlisted in the 1st Regiment of Zouaves. He volunteered for parachute training and in December 1943 joined the Free French BCRA (Bureau de Centralisation de Recherches et d' Action) in London. In 1944 he joined the 3rd Regiment of Chasseurs Parachutistes, also known as the 3rd SAS, commanded by the legendary Pierre Chateau-jobert. He made combat drops on 17 july 1944 into France, at Cholet, and again into Holland on 7 April 1945. On 1 February 1946 he sailed for Indochina with the 1st Battalion of Parachutists SAS, making combat jumps at Vientiane in Laos, Louang Prabang and Namdinh. Promoted lieutenant in September 1947, he served in French Equatorial Africa in 1948-51 with the Colonial Commandos. Returning to Indochina in 1953-4 he commanded a unit of the GCMA (Groupe de Commandos Mixtes Aeroportes), being promoted captain in January 1954. From 1955 onwards he served in Algeria, initially with the lle Choc, partici pating in the Suez and Port Said operations of November 1956. In 1957-8 he conceived, organized and directed the GRE (Groupe de Renseignement et d'Exploitation), formed to penetrate the FLN politico-administrative organization (OPA) in Algiers. Using covert agents and enlisting 'turned' former FLN operatives, Leger dislocated the FLN by sowing mistrust among its cadres and prompting wide spread fratricide among the militants of Wilaya 4 and then Wilaya 3. He assumed command of the 5th Harka (Moslem) company of the 3rd Parachute Regiment in 1958-9, being decorated an Officer of the Legion d'Honneur and winning 11 cita tions. In April1961 he was arrested in Algeria for being implicated in the short-lived putsch against de Gaulle, but was swiftly released and assigned to the French train ing mission with the Mauritanian army. In October 1964 he was promoted major. Increasingly disillusioned, Paul Leger resigned from the army in 1966 and later published an important volume of memoirs, Aux carrefours de Ia guerre (Pion, 1983). He died on 31 December 1999. Professor Andre Mandouze Born in 1916, Andre Mandouze graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure, having specialized in Augustinian philosophy. He drew his convictions from several Left Catholic movements of his student days, including the Jeunesse Etudiante Chretienne and Jeunesse Ouvriere Chretienne. Resistance to Nazism shaped his whole life. While an assistant lecturer at the University of Lyon in 1941, he was an active anti-Nazi and anti-Vichyite in the Second World War and part of the group Appendix 263 that produced the clandestine paper Cahiers du Temoignage Chretien, which he went on to edit. Resigning this post, in January 1946 he took up an appointment to teach Latin in the Faculte des Lettres at the University of Algiers. Within the structures of French Algeria he encountered a world contaminated by everything he had fought against from 1940 to 1944. He became strongly anti-colonialist, first denouncing the colonial system in two articles in L'Esprit in 1947 and then contacting the Algerian nationalist leaders Messali Hadj and Ferhat Abbas. Using his classrooms and lecture theatres as platforms, he preached an independent Algeria, condemning French colonialism and the use of force to retain control over Algeria. He edited two pro Moslem periodicals, Consciences Maghribines and Consciences Algeriennes. Mandouze was appalled by the volte-face of the French left-centre Republican Front in 1956. Victorious in the parliamentary elections that January, on a platform to negotiate with the FLN and end the Algerian War, the new government and its prime minis ter, Guy Mollet, the Socialist Party leader, instead assumed special powers and dispatched conscript troops to Algeria. Mandouze, by now a thorn in the side of the French authorities, was transferred to teach at the University of Strasbourg on 1 April 1956, on the express orders of the Governor-General of Algeria, Robert Lacoste. Mandouze has published two volumes of autobiography: Memoires d'Outrr-Siecle. D'une Resistance a /'Autre (Viviane Hamy, 1998) and A gauche toute, Bon Dieu! (Viviane Hamy, 2000). Georges Mattei Born in Corsica in 1934, Mattei lived with his uncle in Burgundy during the Occupation of France. The uncle, a Communist and member of the FTP maquis (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans), was a powerful role model. But it was first-hand expe rience in Algeria that pushed Mattei into illegal action to oppose the war. Having fulfilled his conscript service before hostilities erupted, he was in Italy when the French Ministry of Defence ordered him in 1956 to report for reservist duty in Algeria. Initially feeling ambiguous about going on active service, he took part in a demonstration that halted the troop train taking his contingent from Dreux to Marseilles. Assigned to an elite paratroop unit in Kabylie, Mattei was appalled at the atrocities being committed by French soldiers. His hostility to the Algerian War, racism and colonialism intensified and he became a passionate crusader for a full and honest debate about the conflict, drawing public attention to the issue of torture. In 1957, partly for cathartic reasons, he wrote one of the earliest articles in Jean-Paul Sartre's review Les Temps Modemes to expose the systematic use of torture by the army in Algeria. He also took a leading role in the reservists' oppositional organization, the Mouvement des Rappeles. Disillusioned with the French Communist Party's failure to offer clear anti-war leadership, Mattei worked illegally from 1959 as part of Francis jeanson's pro-FLN network within France. In the 1980s he assisted Jean-Luc Einaudi with research for the latter's book about the massacre of Algerian anti-war protesters by the police in Paris on 17 October 1961, La Bataille de Paris (Editions du Seuil, 1991).