Images of unfathomable sadness

Images of an unfathomable sadness

September 25, 2005

This Sunday, September 25, on the occasion of the "Nation-Defense" and "National Reservist" day organized by the French Ministry of Defense. A national event organized in several major French cities, as here, in Lyon.

Note the nail polish.

September 27, 2005:

I believe it was Flammarion who wrote "We believe we die for the fatherland and we die for the banks." If money is the sinew of war, lies are the sinew of history. Go take a look at this brief evocation of the confidences made by Delouvrier, de Gaulle's right-hand man, High Commissioner in Algeria during that war without a name. Phrases where, to ease his conscience, on the threshold of death, he confesses to having bribed the FLN so that the gas pipeline bringing Algerian gas to the Mediterranean coast would not be blown up, money with which the fighters could buy bullets with which young Frenchmen would be killed. Who will bring this "affair" back up? How many affairs of this kind in our French-style wars, recent and... future.

I remember a program on "Cinq colonnes à la une" where journalists followed convoys leaving France, from the Lucher company if my memory is correct, transporting shells. Half were headed for Iraq and the other half... for Iran.

That is what must be taught to young French people. That all wars are dirty and that they are and will increasingly be so. A weapon is not a toy. It is approached with gravity. This is a field I know. I was a gunnery officer during my military service.

I discovered "the dirty war" at twenty and had the luck not to go there. It ended just in time. At Supaéro, like a dozen of my comrades, I followed a military "PN" training program, aircrew. Goal: to become a fighter pilot, on T6s, training aircraft bought back from the Americans, which the French had equipped with 12.7 machine guns and napalm bombs.

North American T6 re-equipped by the French air forces during the Algerian War

I had entered Supaéro out of a passion for aircraft and immediately had taken advantage of the opportunities offered to us to complete my pilot training, begun at thirteen. Soloed on those marvels that were those yellow Piper Cubs, without radio, which one landed blindly the way one pulls on the reins of a small horse (the translation of "Piper Cub" is "baby Piper").

Aviation was that, plus the smell of cut grass on the Guyancourt airfield. And then one day I saw a boy my age arrive. He had short hair, almost entirely disappearing into a khaki jacket that doubled the volume of his thin silhouette. He was two years older than me. He was in AFN, in "North Africa," on the other side of the Mediterranean.

*- And over there, what do you do? - Strafing - What's "strafing"? - You go down near the ground and you pepper the "fells" in the mechtas. - But how do you know they're fells? - They're all fells, over there. We also drop special canisters on the mechtas. - What are special canisters? - Well, it's napalm. Since we don't have a real bombsight we use the landing light, on the wing, to aim. You go into a slight skid and you drop. After a while you get the hang of it. *

He looked switched off, hunched, prematurely deprived of all youth. The next day, at the School, I said to my companions in the PN group:

*- But what are we going to do over there, in this war that none of us understands anything about? - You don't care, we'll fly. - Yes, we'll fly, but we'll be shooting at guys. And that doesn't bother you? I'm willing to fight a war, but I'd at least like to understand the stakes. It's getting more and more murky over there, this thing (it was 1960). If it's just to fly, I'd rather pay for hours in a civilian flying club, outside this mess. *

I resigned from the PN group, which led to fighter aviation. I had the option, it's a stroke of luck. Colonel Davy, head of the School's military office, didn't understand.

*- Come on, you're a good pilot. You handle the Stampe very well. *

That war ended quickly. Another followed, that of the OAS, the "Secret Army Organization." At the time, during an eighteen-month military service, I was in charge of gunnery instruction for an entire air base. I regularly set out with a substantial arsenal to have my rookies shoot in the open countryside. I had under my orders two warrant officers, mechanics who had served on air bases in Algeria, and two sergeants from the "hunting commandos."

My warrant officers were nostalgic.

- Ah, my lieutenant, life on an operational base was something else, you know.....

But the young sergeants were more dangerous. Two killers, two "leopard men," from Bigeard's paratrooper sections, who showed the soldiers photos of their hunting trophies. It was the custom, on the other side of the Mediterranean. A macabre montage was made with the victims of an operation and a "souvenir photo" was taken. On the other side, the FLN people slit throats and put the victims' testicles in their mouths.

I had immediately banned this kind of display and confiscated the dagger of one of the sergeants, who used it to clean his nails during the combat classes he taught.

- Sergeant, give me your dagger! - Yes, my lieutenant - I'll give it back to you at the end of the course.

Hello, the look.

Every week the newspapers reported a raid through which OAS members recovered weaponry. Young reserve lieutenants like me were prime targets. I felt it coming a mile away. So I took precautions by permanently installing a machine gun in battery, on a platform, covering the entire firing range, which was outdoors, and announcing that if anyone tried to make off with my weapons, I would immediately open fire.

My two lieutenants deserted, then got themselves arrested while robbing... a cinema box office, to fill that of their group. On them, a list of men to eliminate. I was on it.

War, terrorism, the barbouzes, the secret services, don't thrill me. At the end of the journey there is no longer any victory, any liberation, but blood, tears, smells of oil, dirty money, peoples being crushed and a few sorry stories. Honor, none.

That doesn't mean we should lower our guard, turn the other cheek. But we shouldn't settle for looking at the world the way this kid in the photo does, through a sight, the tangible extension of his favorite video game at home. Do you realize what we're putting into the heads of our young children with our brain-mashing machine, television? Do you count the number of murders they witness every day? Was it appropriate to make such contacts possible?

A reader told me: "Me, I'm in a shooting club. I teach my children not to be afraid of weapons."

A strategy that can lead very far. Think of Moore's film "Bowling for Columbine." What drove those two young people to shoot their classmates before killing themselves? Despair. That same feeling that made two teenage girls jump from the top of a building, hand in hand.

Hitchcock once made a fantastic short film. In it, a father of a family one day receives his brother, a career soldier. He has a son who is the age of those seen in the photos. His paternal uncle had told him "I'll bring you a present, when I come."

The three adults go out. The kid goes up to his uncle's room, spots his suitcase and opens it. He finds his revolver with a box of bullets. So that was it, the toy! Unconscious, he slips a bullet into the cylinder and leaves the house, dressed in his Cow-Boy outfit. He passes the grocer. He aims at him.

*- Bang! Bang! You're dead! *

Playing along, the grocer pretends to collapse laughing. The kid rolls the cylinder in his fingers. The clicking amuses him. It's... Russian roulette, but he is totally unaware of it. Each time he passes an acquaintance from the neighborhood the same scene repeats, the same pantomime.

*- Ah, I'm dead... says the shoe merchant. *

Meanwhile the parents have discovered the disappearance of the revolver. Panicked, they alert the police. A "child hunt" is organized, before it's too late. He is discovered just as he aims at the maid. The mother screams. The shot goes off, brings down the light fixture. The child, terrified, bursts into tears.

September 28, 2005: Message from a reader.

Mr. Petit

Your aversion to the army is taking on proportions bordering on hysteria... I'd say it's even becoming pathological.

I don't see what you have against these images where two children are seen with weapons. In their eyes I certainly see a difference. In one you see hatred and in the other curiosity, even amusement.

Who didn't play cow-boy, soldier or bandit when they were a kid! I remember vacations spent in the Var where, with my children, we had attended an open day at an army center in Fréjus. All the kids had rushed onto the AMs, AMX tanks, and other armored vehicles, bombarding the soldiers with questions. So you see, there's nothing to make a fuss about!

Moreover, stop pestering us endlessly with the Algerian War, which I lived through as a civilian, and where I lost many civilian friends massacred by the FLN throat-slitters

Whether you like it or not, I owe my life to Massu's gégène and his paras...

In any case one thing is certain, if one day France were at war, it's not people like you who would save it.

It's more comfortable to wage war behind a desk armed with a pen.

A pity, in other fields I appreciate you a lot.

Regards

G. P. (I removed the name)