Word: servane
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LIEUTENANT IN ALGERIA (231 pp.)-Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber-Knopf...
...violently angry book about the stain of "lies and bluff" spreading across France and the French army as its three-year-old war of "pacification" in Algeria gradually becomes a degrading massacre of the innocents on both sides. The man who hurls this "J'accuse," Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, 33, is the brilliant editor of the liberal weekly L'Express and an ex-braintruster of the Mendes-France regime. To a six-month volunteer stint in 1956 as an active reserve officer in Algeria, he brought a young man's sharp nose for injustice and strong palate...
...Arab fanatics are the terroristic fellaghas who have converted every isolated colonial's farmhouse, every road, every French-employed work gang into a guerrilla front line. A bout of fellagha Mau-Mauism periodically drives the local European population into a frenzy. Whole villages go on "gook-hunts." Says Servan-Schreiber: "The police and the army are helpless ... so they let the wave pass, hoping that the Arabs are not fools enough to stay out of doors. In a small town, by the time the fun is over, there will be two or three of them lying in the street...
...French army, inertia, poor pay, bad quarters and a casual official unconcern for the soldiers' dependents back home sap morale. Most of the generals, according to Servan-Schreiber, are ribbon-happy pols who insist on military operations in keeping with their inflated status even when their sectors contain no one in particular to shoot-except innocents...
...what Lieut. Servan-Schreiber has to report is dreadful, but men of good will fare almost worse than the corrupt brutalitarians. One officer was so dedicated to winning back the trust of the native population that he founded an Arab-French unit. On patrol, his outfit was betrayed into ambush and he was machine-gunned by one of his own Arabs...