From Dien Bien Phu to Algeria with the French Colonial Paratroops

LOST COMMAND, a 1966 movie starring Anthony Quinn and based on the best-selling novel, "The Centurions" by French author Jean Larteguy is probably the only large scale movie made that deals with the French colonial experiences in Indo-China and Algeria. Interestingly, the film, made in Spain and which used hundreds of members of the Spanish Army as extras does a fairly good job of portraying the French Army, but especially the Colonial Paratroops under the command of Quinn playing Lt. Col Pierre-Noel Raspeguy in a favorable light.

THE SETTING: The opening scenes show the final reinforcement drop of paratroopers into the beleaguered French garrison of Dien Bien Phu on May 6, 1954 (a day before the main position fell to "les Viets"). This is historically correct.

The opening scenes are misleading because they lead the viewer to believe that Raspeguy is the overall commander of the fortress, when in actuality he is just one of the airborne regimental commanders. The novel does a far better job of laying this out.

There is a brief scene showing the final charge of the Viet Minh troops as they overrun the trench lines held by the members of the French garrison and then, a scene where the French troops are marched off to the prison camps from which less than half returned alive.

After the cease fire between the French and Ho Chi Minh's Communist led Viet Minh, there is another scene where the French soldiers are repatriated to French control. They are subjected to the ignominy of having to pass through a delousing station where Raspeguy, fearing for their morale after having to undergo the "sheep deep," allows them to destroy the facility, instead.

On the long trip home via French Navy troop transport, we see a despondent Raspeguy when he finds that he has been relieved of his command (hence the title of the movie). The ship makes its first stop in Algiers, where one of Raspeguy's Moslem officers, a First Lieutenant named Mahidi (played by George Segal) obtains permission to leave the ship to visit his family. He heads home only to find that corrupt French officials have stolen his father's mass transit business and denied the return of his sister Aicha for her final year of med school. His younger brother has become a supporter of the FLN (Fronte de Liberation Nationale)and Algerian independence and is caught out after curfew and is shot by the French gendearmes. This radicalizes Mahidi, heretofore a loyal French officer; he deserts from the army and becomes a miltary leader, using his French Army training as a member of the ALN (Army of National Liberation).



The Main Cast:

ANTHONY QUINN as Lt. Col. Pierre-Noel Raspeguy. The character is a Basque peasant and former enlisted soldier who received his commission during WW II and then remained in the army, spending the bulk of his time in airborne units hunting down and killing the Viet Minh (the guerrillas who eventaually became the NVA).

ALAIN DELON as Captain Phillipe Esclavier. He is the intellectual and conscience of the regiment. He was also one of the final volunteers to jump into the doomed fortress at Dien Bien Phu the day before it fell.

MAURICE RONET as Captain Julien Boisfeuras. Another company commander in the 10eme Regiment de Parachutistes Coloniaux, he is an experienced counter-guerrilla leader, but ruthless in his application of torture with captured members of the FLN or ALN. He is painted as the least sympathetic figure and the one most dedicated to preserving the French colonial position regardless of cost.

CLAUDIA CARDINALE: as Aicha ben Mahidi. An agent of the FLN, sister of the former 1Lt Mahidi, she eventually is forced to betray the rebellion when her role is discovered by Esclavier, who she has been using as a free pass through secured areas of Algiers.

GEORGE SEGAL as Mahidi, the military leader of the insurgents in Wilaya 4 (military district). He is an effective if not tolerant commander. He uses his intimate knowledge of French airborne tactics to fight the better equipped French Army, but still maintains his affection and respect for the men he fought alongside in Indo-China. He disciplines his band ruthlessly as he attempts to best one of the elite colonial parachute regiments of the French Army, knowing full well that he is at both a materiel and personnel disadvantage. Like all guerrilla leaders, he must use terror, speed and hit and run tactics to make up for his other military shortcomings.

There are several battle scenes out in the "bled" where Mahidi's guerrilla forces ambush the truck bound paras of the 10eme RPC. Young French soldiers, many of them reservists or draftees with little training are killed outright. Raspeguy is outraged and determines to make his conscripts and reservists the equal of his battle hardened veteran paratroops.

There is reference to atrocities on both sides. The 10eme RPC retaliates when they find one of their most popular junior officers, Lieutenant Olivier Merle, a survivor of the death camps after Dien Bien Phu and two of his sergeants murdered after being betrayed by their Moslem interpreter. Murdered in brutal fashion and with their bodies mutilated and laid in the road facing toward Mecca, the relief column under Captains Esclavier and Boisfeuras arrive at the village of Rahlem too late to help the three French soldiers.

At the urging of Boisfeuras, the men in the column leave their rifles, pistols and submachine guns in the trucks and head into the village armed only with their trench knives or bayonets. Boisfeuras tells them knives only and only go after the men. Esclavier attempts to stop the vigilantes from his own company, but they race around him as bloodthirsty avengers of their slain and mutilated friends.

In a later scene, the 10th Colonial Parachute Regiment moves into Algiers and surrounds the Casbah after the French National Police have failed to maintain order. AFter cordoning off the Moslem Quarter of the city, there are several very powerful scenes where the army rounds up Algerian civilians and trucks them off to prison camps. There are also scenes showing informants identifying their fellow Moslems who are clandestine members of the FLN or ALN. All of this offends the sensibilities of Esclavier.
The regimental commander, Raspeguy, recently promoted to full colonel accepts all of it as a part of the new war they are fighting.

Raspeguy and many of the other professional officers have sworn that they will not lose in Algeria the way they did in Indo-China. They felt this way because in actual fact, Algeria at the time (unlike Morocco and Tunisia) was an actual department of France, whereas the other two countries were only protectorates.

The war in Algeria was an exceptionally dirty and bloody one on both sides of the divide. French Army units and members of the intelligence services were extremely brutal in their methods and the ALN retaliated in kind.

With the fall of the Fourth Republic in 1958 and the return of Charles DeGaulle to the Presidency and his creation of the Fifth Republic with a new constitution, the professional soldiers thought they had found their answer. Little did they know that he too, would turn on them and in 1960, the General's Putsch, led by retired GEN Raoul Salan, GEN Andre Zeller and GEN Edmound Jouhoud attempted to seize power, first in Algiers and then by launching an airborne operation against Paris itself.

History tells us that the generals revolt failed and the regiments of the French Army, the Foreign Legion and the Air Commandos that took part were disbanded. The government crackdown against the officer corps in Algeria was swift and heartless and many went to ground and joined the OAS.

While THE LOST COMMAND does not cover the entire history of the Algerian War, it does cover enough of it to give even the casual viewer with little background in the history of the war a fairly accurate look at the motives that resulted in some horrific actions both on the side of France and the Marxist dominated insurgency. We also get a very good look at what made many of the professionals of the French Army behave the way they did, how they interacted with each other and with the European colonists who were a very significant, albeit minority percentage of the population.

Unlike the U.S. Army, with its long history of respect for the civil government and its refusal to threaten the Constitution, the French Army, steeped in its conservative traditions, has long had a history of involving itself in the affairs of state. Thusly, the French Army ultimately came to be the real authority throughout Algeria.

The movie THE LOST COMMAND is a powerful reminder of the inhumanity of war, the injustices of colonialism and a grim reminder that might does not always make right.