The Battle of the Casbah: Terrorism and Counterterrorism in Algeria 1955-1957 by General Paul Aussaresses

Author:General Paul Aussaresses [Aussaresses, General Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Europe, France
ISBN: 9780982491119
Google: aXGosE0ZLGQC
Publisher: Enigma Books
Published: 2004-02-01T00:07:29.269523+00:00

9

The Préfecture

Massu assigned me a clever and congenial lieutenant named Gérard Garcet as my deputy. He had been Massu’s ADC until then but had fallen from grace due to an incident involving some rotten shrimp he had forgotten in a refrigerator. A few days before, Massu, having just returned from Egypt, wanted to relax and go fishing. He had sent his ADC to find some shrimp to be used as bait. While Garcet was off on his errand, General Raoul Salan had summoned Massu, informing him of his new mission and sending him off to see the resident minister, Robert Lacoste. Once the lieutenant, who had lots of trouble finding the bait and was looking forward to going fishing, returned, he found the house empty. The general having disappeared, Garcet concluded that the fishing expedition had been cancelled without his being informed. Garcet was disappointed and got rid of the bait by hiding it inside the refrigerator. Day after day the Massu family meals had taken on an increasingly strange taste and apparently Jacques Massu was much more sensitive than his wife to taste and smell.

“But Suzanne, don’t you think the meat has a strange taste, and the vegetables too?”

“Jacques, you’re really being very difficult. Maybe you think someone wants to poison you?”

The general could take no more and running to the kitchen he followed the smell to the refrigerator and discovered what his ADC had done. Garcet had been violently reprimanded and sought revenge by stealing a case of Scotch whiskey that his “ingrate” of a boss had brought back from Egypt. The whiskey found its way to our office and helped us get through the many tough nights ahead.

I had to start my new job by making the rounds of visits according to protocol. Some of them had to take place with Massu. We started with the prefect of the Algiers region, Serge Baret, who was very friendly and cooperative. Then we met with Paul Teitgen, the general secretary of the Prefecture, who had been in charge of the Algiers police for four months. Massu and every paratrooper knew Teitgen as the man who had driven General Faure out of Algeria. General Faure was to eventually return; however, in January 1960, after the barricades by the French ultras in Algiers, he was suspected of having “Algérie Française” sympathies and was again ordered back to France.

Faure was a patriotic Frenchman but during the Second World War he had refused to join General de Gaulle and had even traveled to London to tell him as much. Vichy noticed that this very non-conformist officer was steadfastly anti-German and decided to ship him out to Morocco, where he was put in charge of the youth service. Following the allied landings in November 1942 he had taken part in the creation of the 1st RCP, culled from airborne infantry units. There was even a legend going around that de Gaulle’s personal hatred of General Faure eventually affected the 1st RCP to the point that the regiment was never allowed to take part in a single paratrooper operation.

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