The Turning Point

For months the big question has been: Would the French army in Algeria stay loyal to De Gaulle against the Secret Army Organization? As of last week, the answer was a resounding yes, pronounced by bullets.

In one tumultuous night, the S.A.O. strategy went completely off the rails. Raoul Salan and his S.A.O. staff planned to goad the Moslems with indiscriminate terror attacks until they lashed back with mob action against the Europeans. According to S.A.O. theory, once both sides were locked in racial war the French army would not hesitate to intervene on the side of the European pieds-noirs. But someone blundered, in what may well prove to be the fatal turning point for the S.A.O.

Climbing Blocks. The scene was a western suburb of Algiers called Bab-el-Oued (pronounced Bablouette by its 50,000 inhabitants, who are mostly of Spanish, Italian and Jewish origin), a district of dark, dingy bars and cafes interspersed with modern shops, movie theaters and banks. Huge apartment blocks climb the hills above the shoe and cigarette factories that employ many Moslem workers. Long a hotbed of pied-noir extremism, Bab-el-Oued produces leaders like ex-Cab Driver Jesus Giner, who swaggers about the Cafe des Trois Horloges with a posse of armed hoodlums and boasts, "Here, I make the law." On Thursday, the pieds-noirs of Bab-el-Oued ripped down the government's cease-fire posters featuring a Moslem and European child in friendly embrace and the legend "For our children, peace in Algeria." They also plastered the suburb with insulting placards warning French soldiers: "If you do not evacuate by midnight, you will be considered troops of an alien government." It was considered a piece of typical pied-noir bombast, but at dawn European snipers opened up from rooftops on army patrols. An army truck was ordered to halt by 20 uniformed Europeans. Instead, the driver stepped on the accelerator and the Europeans poured a withering fire into the truck--killing a French lieutenant and five army conscripts, wounding twelve others.

The army reacted with swift and deadly cold anger.

Oiled Streets. Ten thousand troops swarmed into Bab-el-Oued, and for the first time, a pitched battle was waged between the army and the S.A.O. The pieds-noirs fought stubbornly, hurling Molotov cocktails from apartment windows, aiming bazookas from the railings of balconies, taking potshots from behind rooftop pillboxes. Oil and soapy water were spread on the streets to spin the wheels of army vehicles. Soldiers advanced from doorway to doorway, crouched to fire from behind trash cans filled with uncollected garbage.

Halftracks and armored cars pounded shopfronts and apartments with 37-mm. cannon. From behind a barricaded bar on the Boulevard Guillemin, a red-faced European screamed: "Remember this day! This is the day of our victory or death!"

Helicopters whirled overhead, dropping tear-gas grenades to clear snipers from the roofs. When they failed, French pilots in four U.S.-made T-6 trainers made strafing runs on Bab-el-Oued buildings, and clouds of black smoke drifted skyward from a modernistic white apartment block. "It is brutal," said a French corporal, "but it's necessary to be brutal now." A former French paratrooper who, like many of his comrades, sympathized with the S.A.O., watched the wheeling planes in disbelief, then muttered, "It's against the pieds-noirs. Finally, it's war." On a street corner, a European woman clutched two long loaves of bread, wailed. ''They're killing our men!"

Smashed Doors. By week's end Bab-el-Oued subsided into stunned silence. Most of the Secret Army snipers had vanished, and French troops took over the rooftops, made house-to-house searches for weapons. In the past, such searches in European districts were well-behaved and perfunctory; now the angry French soldiers smashed down doors, ransacked cupboards and closets. The French army bitterly counted 16 soldiers dead and 91 wounded. The local Europeans had their casualties, too--an estimated 20 dead, 80 wounded. But it was their morale that had taken the heaviest blow, for the S.A.O. had always preached that the French army would never fire on Europeans, would, at least, show them "benevolent neutrality"

The army's tough reaction drained away S.A.O. strength. Some Secret Army fund raisers have already slipped away to Spain and Switzerland, taking the funds with them (in Oran, S.A.O. gunmen who last week robbed the Bank of Algeria of $4,250,000 might be similarly tempted). To many disheartened Europeans last week, all that seemed left was a desperate baroud d'honneur (hopeless rearguard action), because a battle to the death with the French army is one the S.A.O. cannot possibly win.

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