Out of the French army's soul-destroying trial by fire in Algeria there has so far emerged one superlatively good combat commander, a 42-year-old ex-bank clerk from Toul named Marcel Bigeard (TIME. April 28). So notable is Colonel Bigeard's tactical genius and so successful his Spartan training methods that for three years, whenever French troops scored one of their rare clearcut victories over the Algerian rebels, French newspaper readers automatically looked for the name of his 3rd Colonial Paratroop Regiment. Last week, to their confusion, Frenchmen learned that there was no longer any place in Algeria for Marcel Bigeard.
At the root of...
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