One of the leaflets he picked up, yellow paper and large pockmarked print, described the big attack he had taken part in, telling how it came as an astonishing surprise to the enemy who, being so far south and in such open country, had always considered themselves safe. Frank could not understand how they had been taken unawares. Drawing towards the town on the previous days and nights all had seemed confused and obvious. Those who had taken part were referred to as ‘heroic soldiers’ — ‘Les heroïques soldats luttant contre le légionnaire et le mercenaire, les combattants loyaux luttant contre le napalm …’ — who had destroyed seven transport-planes and damaged ten others, and caused heavy losses to the enemy. The country was denuded, so no one had thought to suspect or look. The beige flat-topped hills towards the town and oasis had crawled with hundreds of men, brown and olive patches that from the air may have appeared like clumps of alfalfa grass or vegetation that a chance shower had drawn up from the baking flats. No plane had flown over low enough, and no binoculars from road or outposts had penetrated the sage-green and purple hills. They lay in their private ovens for the common good, the Algerian Moudjahid risking a daytime death-trap in order to spring down at dusk and do with rifles and grenades what should only in all sanity be attempted with mortars and artillery. The planes went up like jellyfish laden with gasoline, white lights bursting the crab-exterior of wings and wheels. The vague scuffling under a vast umbrella of stars and noise portrayed nothing glorious, but the leaflet turned it into an inspired strike for independence, and it needed no poet to put such phrases together, but only the experience of having been part of it for the fine words to dominate your fibres forever.
He could claim no share or glory, because he was exhausted and sick, and because he had so far survived. Dozens had been left behind, out of the oven and into death, and scores more had been killed in the organised rattisages of subsequent days. The hunt was always on, and any time the sackcloth might be pushed aside and show the automatic rifle of some para or legionnaire. He was old enough to know that he could worry about that when it happened. Eyes burned through an inch of grey stubble hiding his emaciation. A shirt of white and charcoal stripes had just been given him, loose and with long sleeves, and his khaki shirt and trousers lay newly-washed on the floor ready for when he was able to get up one night and walk away.
The air was close, and smells hung thick from his morning ablutions. A cock scraped out its cry beyond walls and doors where a blue-white sun smothered the hills. By thinking of it, he could feel it, and the fear of it no longer daunted or pushed him back into sleep as a defence against the recollection of something dangerous. He wanted to leave at no matter what risk. A scorpion lay flat and literate on the wall, an analphabetic insect shaping itself in the first clear letter of the world, grey lines with grey callipers and an aerial sting-tail which looked as if it came from a big family and was a long way from home. He reached for some paper and crushed it before it had time to kill itself. It was an easy enemy, that you could see. Its twin-brother had turned into a globe of sweat, and broke into a run down his face. The greatest heat, when you were lying in bed, came at five in the afternoon, with the sun on its first slow pull away from your part of the earth, collected humours of the day falling into its track, and an intense pitch of fiery dampness turning his shirt into a foul dishrag without one muscle moving.
He read the papers, eyes close in the dim light. In earlier campaigns Azrou had been burned, Nahra flattened, the people of Laghouat wiped out. Massacre and destruction had been poured onto them, oil into flames by the self-conscious madmen of Europe, gaolers and bullies and scum-soldiers who perpetrated atrocities they would never mention to their grandchildren who would sit on their knees when they became kindly old men. They indulged in frenetic cruelties of ‘pacification’, they humiliated, exploited, butchered wherever they went. Behind them came the technicians and tillers of soil, roadmakers and administrators, idealists who did even dirtier work because they believed it was good, or were glad to have a career and servants they would never have achieved in their own country. But after a hundred and twenty years the Algerians had finally risen, and would not be put down. He found his friends proud and competent, dedicated and amiable, endlessly suffering and brave. ‘Le Moudjahid! he is the soldier of the FLN, the political militant, the contact-man, the shepherd, the herdsman, the schoolchildren who go on strike in Algiers and Oran, the man who fights by sabotage, the student who joins the men in the hills, the man or woman who hands out leaflets, the poorest peasant who, with his wife and family, can only suffer and hope. The Moudjahid is the combined effort of a whole people guided by the FLN and having but one idea: the independence of their country.
‘The Moudjahid is the one who cuts telegraph-wires, derails a train, burns down the house of the colonialist farmer. Every peaceful means to free ourselves from colonialism has been tried, and all that is left is to take up arms in order to recover liberty and independence. The Moudjahid is in the mountains and valleys; in every town and village he is the heroic soldier fighting against the mercenary and the legionnaire. Our wounded bleed to death or succumb under torture, perish by arbitrary justice, die protecting women and orphans. But the virtues and moral worth of the freedom-fighter are an indivisible part of the Algerian Revolution. Such qualities will lead us to victory, because true dignity and spiritual greatness are the first attributes of this fight without mercy, this fight to the death in which nevertheless we must not lose our sense of humanity, so that in the future we can remember our sufferings and in so doing recover our tenderness, affection and sensibility in order to build a free and democratic country for the people.
‘The occupying powers have tried to divide the Algerian people among themselves, separate brother from brother, but they can never succeed. The people are united and determined to triumph in this war of liberation. Our people will confound and defeat the enemy: they are the creative force, the inspiration and faith of our fight. The secret of our success resides in the support of the people. The Moudjahid is a citizen-soldier face to face with a conscript who does not wish to die for something in which he has no belief. The Moudjahid has a social duty, and a clean conscience, and though he is willing to die for these ideals, the fear and thought of death never for a moment enters into his soul.
‘Small groups yesterday have become a regular army today, developing a power of offensive, gathering their war material, and improving their tactical skill. Faced with an enemy bent on genocide the Algerian army has rapidly reorganised. The Moudjahid in uniform operates in the mountains and wilderness. The Moussebelines — those without uniform — operate in the towns and villages, accomplish their missions in the streets, in cafés, cinemas, on the roads, in public gardens. They hunt down informers and torturers. They destroy police stations and guard-posts. They transport guns and ammunition, hide and look after the wounded, act as guides and liaison runners, report on the movements of the enemy. They draw the enemy into ambushes, form scout guards around our halting-places. The enemy cannot sleep or rest. He can never remain calm, or forget that we are there. Faced with the young and old, people of the towns, peasants of the countryside, students and workmen, all those who make up the FLN the enemy has the whole country against him. The colonialist hordes continue their savage repressions against unarmed people, their extortions and pillage, and remain a devastating force. But they will be met by the serene courage of the Algerian Moudjahid. In combat he always stays within the limits of the laws of war. He must respect the human being, the plants and crops, animals of the field and all those works necessary to the wellbeing of the population. As well as fighting the enemy he must assist the people for whom he is fighting. He must help them in their misery and hunger, ignorance and illiteracy.’