John Prados, 2014 WORKING CLASS GENERAL: MARCEL BIGEARD IN
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© John Prados, 2014 WORKING CLASS GENERAL: MARCEL BIGEARD IN FRANCE’S WARS John Prados The general passed at high summer, June 17, 2010. A funeral with full honors took place five days later at Les Invalides, France’s famed resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte. Prime Minister François Fillon delivered the eulogy. Altogether a remarkable end for a bank clerk, who by the aristocratic standards of the French Army before pre-World War II, should hardly have been an officer at all. Controversial within military ranks, Marcel Bigeard sparked contention in France and among an international public as a result of French actions during the Algerian war of 1954- 1962, where Bigeard stood among those accused of torture in the notorious Battle of Algiers. His death rekindled a heated war crimes debate that had lain dormant for half a decade. The charges had infuriated Bigeard, a true fighter—“baroudeur” in the French lexicon—who thought battle results more important than military academy degrees. For Bigeard had believed deeply in his lucky star, his “Baraka.” Marcel Bigeard’s Baraka had served him well through three wars and more. The bank clerk from Toul, the most decorated officer in the French Army, the government minister and legislative delegate, was as controversial at his end as at the beginning. Although Marcel Bigeard received occasional mention in American press reporting on the Algerian war, he really came to Americans’ attention in the mid-1960s, when the first detailed histories of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu appeared in English. This climactic battle, where a major fortress had been captured by Viet Minh revolutionaries after a long siege, had ended the French war in Viet-Nam. Then-Major Bigeard, leading the 6th Colonial Paratroop Battalion, had parachuted into Dien Bien Phu several days into the battle to replace Foreign Legion troops whose strongpoint had fallen. Bigeard’s arrival not only stiffened morale, his paratroopers ably blunted enemy attacks. Bigeard himself became a mainstay of the defense, personally masterminding the most successful French counter-attack of the campaign. Supervising the critical “Five Hills” section of the entrenched camp in late March and early April of 1954, Major Bigeard organized a key riposte that regained a vital hilltop strongpoint. Before Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7, 1954, Bigeard had emerged as the de facto chief for counter-attacks of the French command. Though Americans noticed Bigeard in the context of Viet-Nam, he was already well- known in France. And Dien Bien Phu was not Bigeard’s first fight, not his first famous action in Indochina, not even his first appearance at Dien Bien Phu; nor, to the minds of many, would it be Bigeard’s most important battle. Nothing marked Marcel Maurice Bigeard as the soldier he would become. The family had no military tradition. Bigeards had been vintners. Marcel’s grandfather broke the mold, garnering enlistment bonuses to serve in place of those called up by the draft, but he died before the baroudeur was born. Marcel’s father dreamed of becoming a locomotive engineer and started as a railroad switchman. Not stout enough to shovel coal in a steam engine, he persevered in railway work and became a mechanic at Toul, a dusty garrison town of about 15,000 in the French interior. Marcel was born during the Great War, on February 14, 1916. Like his father, the boy had no thoughts of a military career. Though their apartment overlooked the shooting range where soldiers practiced, Marcel paid little attention. Athletes were his heroes. With the family scrimping on every cent, Marcel worked as soon as he could, as a gopher at a Toul branch of the Société Generale bank on weekends. He excelled at math and wanted to be a civil engineer. But he became a clerk once old enough, at the height of the Depression. Marcel’s closest knowledge of the army was from a young lieutenant his mother had taken in as a boarder when he was a pre-schooler, and the stories told by the next-door neighbor, who had been wounded badly in the Great War. France had compulsory military service then, and in late 1936 Marcel Bigeard went to Hagenau and served in the Maginot Line. Though Marcel admired athletes he had never played sports. The military training seemed superhuman. Bigeard’s platoon included soccer pros, a boxer, a Paris singer, and a syphilitic. The officers were distant, the NCOs abusive, the enlisted men were treated like criminals. Bigeard did not understand that. He had done nothing wrong save to hope he might become an NCO himself—though receiving the top score on the NCO school test his commander told Bigeard he lacked military aptitude. But Bigeard became an expert marksman, managing to become a corporal before returning to the Société Generale at Toul in September 1938. Corporal Bigeard was recalled when Hitler invaded Poland and France declared war. At 23, Bigeard was about to discover his calling. France, under pressure from the Wehrmacht in 1939- 40, needed officers and senior NCOs. Marcel aced the exams again. Though denied admission to reserve officers’ school, Bigeard rose to master sergeant, then adjutant and deputy chief of the regiment’s scout/raider unit. There he received his first mention in dispatches. He garnered a second for saving his commander when they were trapped in no man’s land. Bigeard ended up leading the detachment. Bigeard’s later standards of command—train hard, keep cool amid adversity, and operate with extreme flexibility—all flowered here. Bigeard’s regiment, the 79th Fortress Infantry, experienced all the chaos of the Nazi invasion. It was ordered to Epinal to create defenses facing the French interior, where Germans were pouring into the country. Redeployment became a nightmare with the dislocation of the railroads. The poilus packed onto four trains. None ever met again. Only a small rump of the 79th reached the assigned position, there to be surrounded. They surrendered on June 25, 1940. The prisoner camp Stalag-12 became Bigeard’s home for 18 months. He made three escape attempts, succeeding on the last try. Flexibility was key: steal a boat to cross the Rhine; get a train with no ticket or papers; and traverse 100 miles of German-controlled territory. He was almost caught when stopped at 4 AM by a policeman—his bicycle light had failed. In Toul the young Frenchman reunited with his childhood sweetheart. They crossed occupied France to Vichy, where Bigeard presented himself at a French Army office, collected back pay, and they married. Adjutant Bigeard volunteered for service in Africa and was sent to Sénégal. The baroudeur had yet to emerge full-blown. Debarking at Dakar this NCO with the nose for numbers was posted as accountant to a Colonial Army unit at the inland post of Bandia. Bigeard was no longer happy keeping books. He asked to lead a section and turned it into a sharp unit. But there was a war on. By now the Vichy military overseas had merged with the Free French to fight Germans. Bigeard volunteered for the special services, the Direction Général d’Etudes et Recherche (DGER) which would support the Allied invasion of France with small teams parachuted in to work with the Resistance. The DGER supplied French personnel to the SOE/OSS “Jedburgh” program and ran similar French teams out of Algiers. Marcel Bigeard excelled at the commando training and led a team, promoted sub-lieutenant, then quickly to full lieutenant. For his mission Bigeard was given the fictive rank of major, affording him greater weight in dealing with Resistance leaders when parachuted into the Arriège, in the foothills of the Pyrénées, on August 8, 1944. On this first airborne drop Bigeard’s parachute caught in tree branches and he had to be cut down. Fortunately the mishap was not an omen. Neither was the next snafu, in which the local Spanish maquisard leader detained the commandos and seized their supplies and gold. Bigeard impressed the Spaniard so deeply the man soon asked him on a raid into Franco’s Spain. The Frenchman kept to his mission. Within weeks Bigeard united several Resistance bands, organized supply drops from Algiers, ambushed Nazi columns, and mounted an assault that captured the town of Foix. With a Mercedes taken from the Germans, Bigeard drove to recently- liberated Paris to connect with newly-arrived DGER headquarters. One night at a Paris club, Bigeard danced with the singer Edith Piaf after preventing another officer from starting a fight with her companion. The war was heroic, the aftermath increasingly contentious. In France there were headaches involved in amalgamating the regular army and the Resistance. Whether maquis ranks could be continued was a huge sore point. Bigeard himself was a major at war’s end but a junior lieutenant in the Army, though with a notable combat record and the medals to prove it. Bigeard was confirmed as a captain and organized a commando school. But he lobbied for a troop command and was finally given a rifle company in the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment (II/23 RIC in French usage), which sailed for Indochina with General Philippe Leclerc’s expeditionary corps. Arrival in Saigon in November 1945 marked the beginning of Bigeard’s engagement with Viet-Nam. Already fights were developing with Viet Minh guerrillas. The II/23 helped secure the environs of Saigon. Bigeard’s 6th Company suffered its first casualty at Gia Dinh, and his unit cleared the town of Ben Tre—both familiar to a later generation of Americans. In March 1946 II/23 moved to Tonkin—North Viet-Nam—with the French return there.