To the Barricades

The hotheads, toughs and ultras held the heart of the city of Algiers. Their barricades of paving blocks sealed off street after street around the university. Students cradling Tommy guns sat on the roofs, dangling their legs. Members of the Front National Franc,ais poured in from the nearby slums to stand guard under their black Celtic crosses or to drill in the makeshift uniforms of the territorial army, a sort of Algerian home guard. Truckloads of armed peasants had rushed in from the rich plain of Mitidja. And there were the girls of all of them, serving as nurses or waitresses or human chains to pass stones to the barricades, but, nevertheless, wearing high heels, tight skirts and floppy sweaters.

Direct Action. The insurgents looked like an armed mob, but they had a leadership of sorts (see box). Handsome Pierre Lagaillarde shouted orders to his student followers and strode about, impressive in his paratrooper uniform of camouflage cloth, looking--with his neatly trimmed beard and mustache--like a well-barbered Fidel Castro. Burly, olive-skinned Jo Ortiz led the slum contingents instead of setting up drinks in his Forum bar. Pious Robert Martel had brought in the farmers who belonged to his "Movement of May 13."

These three men had set in train the circumstances they now uncertainly faced. It was Lagaillarde who persuaded the other two to "direct action" to protest De Gaulle's removal of Paratrooper General Jacques Massu (TIME, Feb. 1). Once, as they sat in the cafe plotting, he turned on Ortiz, pulled his pistol, and barked at the older man: "I should drop you right now, with this!" After the bloody Jan. 24 fight with the gendarmes (19 dead, 146 wounded), it was Lagaillarde who ordered up the barricades and dug the first shovelful of dirt.

Three or 20,000. On that first Sunday there was a bad moment for the insurgents when General Maurice Challe issued a tough communique: "I am bringing troops from the interior . . . All meetings of more than three people are forbidden." But it soon became clear that if a meeting of three people was illegal, a crowd of 20,000 was unstoppable. Next day the hastily built and ill-manned barricades were surrounded by crack regiments of paratroops and Foreign Legionnaires. But the paratroops in their red and green berets merely patrolled, did nothing to interfere with well-wishers who brought food, drink, munitions and weapons to the insurgents. From several hundred, the defenders of the barricades grew to several thousand, and by nightfall they were turning away volunteers, "unless you've got a damn good gun."

There was a carnival atmosphere to the first warm, sunshiny days. The crowd in its thousands thronged the gardens between the steep hill of the Forum and the wide Plateau des Glieres. Along the barricaded Rue Charles-Peguy, the three insurgent commanders set up their headquarters. Jo Ortiz took over the second floor of a bank building at No. 1 that had the advantage of a balcony fronting not only on Rue Charles-Peguy but on the gardens as well. A loudspeaker blared out martial music and anthems to the cheering crowds, and occasional fight talks by speakers who did not even identify themselves to the crowd. Some 200 yds. distant, at 13 Rue Charles-Peguy, Mystic Robert Martel and his rural gunmen established their command post in the Lycee de la Croix. A little farther along, at the university itself, was the headquarters of Pierre Lagaillarde and his fire-eating students. Protected in front by 5-ft. barricades of stone, concrete, wood and wire, and in the rear by the university campus and its buildings with their clear field of fire, the insurgent chiefs had a strong position and good interior lines of communication through the rear doors of their headquarters. If fighting came, and the rebels had a stomach for it, they would be hard to dislodge.

Except for cheering the rebels from morning until curfew, there was little for the crowds to do. The general strike called by Lagaillarde & Co. closed down shops and bus lines, movies and streetcars. The only show in town was the barricades, where the insurgent heroes gallantly defied the bored paratroopers who surrounded them. Close to home stayed only one group: Algiers' Moslems. Despite frantic appeals from the insurgents, from Gaullists, from the F.L.N., they stayed out of trouble, hugging safety in the narrow streets of the Casbah.

Secrecy & Haste. Tight censorship at first kept from a puzzled French public the basic facts of the situation, which began to get home to the rest of the world when De Gaulle's chief civil authority in Algiers, Paul Delouvrier, made his distraught radio appeal: "There are no insurgents in Algiers!" he told the people of Metropolitan France. "There are men here, at the moment of truth, who want to die to remain French. There is no rebellious army," only "resolute officers and men resolved to die . . ." Then, torn by conflicting emotions, Delouvrier told the army: "Listen to me carefully. There cannot be another May 13. There is no De Gaulle in reserve." To the insurgents behind the barricades. Delouvrier announced that he and General Challe were leaving Algiers to retain freedom of action. "It is not to betray you that I go," he added hoarsely. "I am leaving my wife and children in your safekeeping. The minute you want it, General Challe and myself will come back to Algiers. Together we shall visit the 'Alcazar'* at the university. We shall shake hands with Lagaillarde and Ortiz."

To the Gallows. The rebel answer to Delouvrier's almost tearful speech was short and derisive. Around the barricades a crowd of several thousand took up the old cry, "De Gaulle to the gallows!" Lagaillarde and Ortiz used the pro-rebel Echo d'Alger to reply contemptuously that Delouvrier "can have peace of mind. His family will be entitled to the same protection as all other French families."

Then, in a drenching rain at week's end, both the defenders of the barricades and the paratroopers listened to De Gaulle. Inside the barricaded buildings where trestle tables were loaded with beer, wine, cheese, pate, fruit and canned meats, the rebels heard the President in a silence broken occasionally by snarls or bursts of bitter laughter. When De Gaulle's uncompromising speech ended, a rebel switched off the radio as it began playing the first, bars of the Marseillaise, saying: "We don't want to hear it from them." An insurgent leader rushed to the balcony to cry to those outside in the rain: "There will be no evacuation. Our friends of the army still stand resolutely at our side!"

But it could be noted that many in the army stood at attention during De Gaulle's broadcast, and their demeanor indicated that the President's message had set them thinking. Many were tired of standing around in the rain, and less and less sure that the ill-disciplined lot on the other side of the barricades were really their kind.

Relays of Women. Next day came the testing of the army's change of heart. From his refuge outside Algiers, the former U.S. airbase at Reghaia, General Maurice Challe gave orders. All members of the territorial army behind the barricades were told to report at once to their headquarters. Radio Algiers, which had apparently been in insurgent hands for several days, reverted to government control. The general strike began to dissolve.

The paratroop patrols grew less friendly and sealed off the rebel citadel from the rest of the city. There were scuffles between civilians and paratroopers, who had put on steel helmets; the soldiers used their rifle butts to hold back a mob of anti-Gaullists who broke through a side street to reach the barricades. From Paris came an order transferring General Jean Gracieux, commanding General Massu's old 10th Paratroop Division. Gracieux had shown himself reluctant to move against the rebels.

Now it was the rebels in their fortress who were talking excitedly. An insurgent voice, as if fearing the worst, cried through the loudspeaker: "Women of Algiers! Do not tremble for your men. Assemble yourselves, group yourselves before the barricades. Do it in relays, day and night. While you remain before the barricades, your men are safe!" But the crowds had already begun to dwindle. Out from the barricades came the first of the haggard territorial troops, belatedly answering the call to duty. As the night wore on, others slipped away, despite Ortiz' appeal to "fight to the death." Next day at noon, abandoning hope, bearded Pierre Lagaillarde marched out of his university redoubt to surrender, carrying the tricolor, leading 300 of his weary silent men. Army troops snapped to attention as the insurgents entered a waiting convoy of army trucks. Somebody started to sing the Marseillaise. The barricades began coming down.

* A reference to the thousand Franco supporters who held out for two months in the Alcazar Palace of Toledo against the Loyalists during the Spanish Civil War--an allusion easily understood by the 40% of Algerian Frenchmen who are of Spanish descent.

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