French Documentary Brings to Mind a Forgotten Category of “Algerian War”

A French documentary about the “Algerian War,” as French literature calls it, the liberation revolution according to the Algerian term, reviewed what was called the suffering of “conscripts in the Algerian War,” a group that was forced into the war, while performing national service, and which is still searching for its identity in French memory.

The documentary was broadcast on “Figaro Live”, and it dealt with the category of French conscripts in the occupation army who were forcefully transferred to Algeria in the period between 1954 and 1962, to confront the National Liberation Army, whose number was estimated, according to the documentary, at more than a million conscripts. Many of them acknowledge their brutal testimonies of what they experienced during more than two years of their work as conscripts.

This memorial documentary was based on a set of questions that were answered by figures who lived through the event (the brutal crime) in Algeria, while the aim was to show what this forgotten group of French people suffered during the “Algerian War”, and to remind of what was considered “an entire generation ending in the ash heap of history”.

The documentary also asked why the memory of this group of the occupation army in the Algerian War was kept silent for decades, that is, since Algeria’s independence and the end of the war in 1962 until today, and then how their words became free over the years, making them representatives and an integral part of the Algerian tragedy, as it was called. The documentary also spoke about the systematic silence about the “Algerian War,” which remains, from the French perspective, their “last great shock.”

The author of this lengthy documentary admits that “the Algerian War put an end to the colonial dreams of France,” which had dominated many African and Arab countries and on more than one continent, and also left incurable diseases for those who lived through it, represented by the changes that occurred in their behaviour after the war and affected even their families, wives and daily living.

One of the conscripts’ wives said that her husband used to sleep with a knife under his head and then wake up terrified. As for other conscripts, they completely refused to talk about their work in Algeria during the liberation war. However, there were also testimonies about the brutal torture of Algerians even when they were wounded and in need of intensive health care.

In the testimony of one of them while evaluating his participation in the war in Algeria: “I do not know French heroes in the Algerian war,” indicating that what the occupation army did in Algeria in the period that extended between 1954 and 1962 had nothing of the values of wars, which is supposed to have values and laws that must be respected.

However, the documentary also transfers testimonies of moral people who criticized the situation of Algerians at that time, including impoverishment, displacement, and systematic ignorance, due to the brutal practices of the occupying army. One of them, whose father participated in the French war of liberation against the Nazis, said that he advised his son, who worked in the occupation army in Algeria, to keep his hands clean during the war, but his son admitted that whoever participates in the war cannot keep his hands clean.

The documentary indicates that this group, which worked within the French army during the liberation revolution, was completely forgotten in the laws and code of the armed forces and veterans, given that its members were not contracted with the army or working within one of the known formulas, even though many of them died in difficult and painful conditions, and despite their repeated demands for rights and a special system to recognize their sacrifices.

According to the same source, French conscripts in the “Algerian War” did not receive their description except in 1974, when a law was enacted that gave them the status of “warrior.” However, the French authorities at that time did not acknowledge that what happened in Algeria between 1954 and 1962 was a “war”, and the wait was until 1999 when recognition of the “Algeria War”, as the French call it, came after a vote in the French Parliament, a recognition that came very late, according to the documentary.

The wife of one of the conscripts described the situation, saying that the bodies were returned in complete secrecy. The wounded were tens of thousands, while one of them admitted that the military was not a good school. The torture was systematic, said the driver of a jeep who was transporting the wounded. He asserted that they were being tortured even though they were injured. Another confirmed: “Silence about the Algerian War is considered treason… Everyone betrayed, including General de Gaulle and the Pieds-Noirs…”.