Read Online The Praetorians by Jean Lartéguy - Free Book Online Page B

job. But you people, the great fighters in camouflage uniform, who tot up your scores and are given medals, you whom everyone in Algiers applauds and who get all the girls, you might at least have taught us how to wage war. But you’ve never been willing to deal with us and that’s why, this morning, twenty men have had their throats slit like sheep.”
    â€œWouldn’t you like to transfer to the paratroops?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œOr join me?”
    â€œIt would be the same thing.”
    â€œGo and fetch your kit and come back here. At least you’ll see how we set to work.”
    â€œAt your orders, sir.”
    The second lieutenant snapped to attention, saluted, then started back down to the valley. Raspéguy sat musing over his map. Captain Naugier came and crouched by his side.
    â€œYou know, Naugier, it’s serious what that lad told me. We’ve got five officers per company and they’re all capable of commanding a hundred and fifty men; but those chaps haven’t gotone . . . and their colonel, I’ll bet you anything, can’t even read a map. We have created a sect of fighters apart from the army, but that’s not the way you win a war like the Algerian war, or remake a country. All you do is get yourself hated.
    â€œThat’s why Esclavier left us and Boisfeuras got himself killed on that dune near Foum el Zoar. Let’s change the subject. It won’t be long before the general arrives. Here are the orders: our reinforcements must be in position. We’re clearing out of the valley. All the companies are to climb back on to the ridges.”
    â€œBut, sir——”
    â€œWe’re going to block the exits. Tonight the
fells
will try and make a break-out, and that’s when we’ll get them.
    â€œI have no wish to lose a hundred men killed or wounded; that’s what it would cost us to mop up the undergrowth. Too high a price!”
    â€œWe shan’t be able to block all the exits; there aren’t enough of us.”
    â€œThe other regiments will be here.”
    â€œThey’ll reduce our score.”
    â€œWhat of it? Do you think that’s so important, our score? You heard what the lad told us. In our outfit we tot up scores, meanwhile they get their balls cut off, bleating like lambs.”
    A helicopter brought in General Marrestin. The machine came and landed with the grace of a dragon-fly near the black regimental pennant bearing the motto “I dare.” The general was a wiry, fussy little man, with a nervous tic that showed whenever he felt anxious. He was reputed to be a brilliant striking-force theoretician and his only wish was to be on a combined-operations staff. He was known to be ambitious and was said to be intelligent; he had no friends, but had accomplices in all the key posts in the National Defence. His lips were thin; his blue, almost opaque, eyes reflected neither passion nor pity nor tenderness.
    General Marrestin regarded Algeria as lost. He therefore considered extremely dangerous the steps taken by a part of the army to adjust itself to revolutionary warfare and guerrilla combat. Politics, in his opinion, should be confined to a verysmall number of generals and should in no way concern senior officers, and still less junior ones. But revolutionary warfare meant politics at section-leader and duty-corporal level. More than once he had declared, at dinners and receptions, that the first step to be taken to save the army from anarchy was to dissolve the two parachute divisions and put Colonel Raspéguy on the retired list.
    Like a jack-in-the-box, the general sprang out of the Alouette, briefly shook hands with the colonel, who had advanced to greet him, and rushed over to the map.
    â€œWell, what’s the position?”
    Raspéguy pointed out the valley with his finger:
    â€œThe
fells
are in there, sir. At the moment we’re bringing out the dead and wounded of the 7