Marcel Maurice Bigeard

Marcel Maurice Bigeard (; February 14, 1916 – June 18, 2010), personal radio call-sign "Bruno", was a French military officer and politician who fought in World War II, the First Indochina War and the Algerian War.

He was one of the commanders in the Battle of Dien Bien Phu and is thought by many to have been a dominating influence on French "unconventional" warfare thinking from that time onwards. He was one of the most decorated officers in France, and is particularly noteworthy because of his rise from being a regular soldier in 1936 to ultimately concluding his career in 1976 as a lieutenant general and serving as Secretary of State for Defence (19751976) under the presidency of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

After leaving the military, Bigeard was elected a deputy of Meurthe-et-Moselle from 1978 to 1988 and became a prolific author. His final years were marked by a controversy surrounding allegations that he had overseen torture during the Algerian conflict; he denied the allegations of personal involvement, though defended the use of torture during the war as a necessary evil.

Early life Marcel Bigeard was born in Toul,

He also had an older sister, Charlotte Bigeard, four years his senior. Lorraine instilled a strong patriotism in him and his mother a will to win; those two would remain his strongest driving forces. At fourteen, Bigeard quit school to help his parents financially by taking a position in the local Société Générale bank, where he did well.

Pre-war career Following a 6-year career in Société générale, Marcel Bigeard conducted his military service in France at Haguenau at the corps of the 23rd Fortress Infantry Regiment . Incorporated in the regiment as a soldat de deuxième classe in September 1936, caporal-chef, he was relieved of duty and military obligations with the rank of reserve sergent in September 1938.

World War II Six months following his relief of duty, in anticipation of imminent conflict, he was recalled on March 22, 1939, to duty at the corps of the 23rd Fortress Infantry Regiment and promoted to the rank of sergent.

In September 1939, with the arrival of the reserves, the battalions of the 23rd Fortress Infantry Regiment (23e RIF), served each in a chain link to form new Fortress infantry regiments of "mobilization", Bigeard was assigned to the 79th Fortress Infantry Regiment (79e Régiment d'Infanterie de Forteresse) in the under fortified sector of Hoffen and the Maginot Line. Volunteer for the franc corps, he led a combat group at Trimbach in Alsace and became quickly a sergent-chef then adjudant (warrant officer) at the age of 24.

On June 25, 1940, he was captured (post-armistice) and made prisoner of war, spending 18 months in captivity in a stalag (German POW camp). Following his third attempt to escape on November 11, 1941, he managed to make his way to the unoccupied zone in France, and from there, he went to Senegal. In 1944, after paratrooper training by the British, he was parachuted into occupied France as part of a team of four with the mission of leading the resistance in the Ariège département close to the border with Andorra. One of these audacious ambushes against superior German forces gained him a British decoration. His nickname of "Bruno" has its origins in his radio call sign.

At the beginning of 1945, Bigeard created and managed during a scholastic semester, the regional cadres school of Pyla-sur-Mer, near Bordeaux, destined to form officers issued from the French Forces of the Interior. Decorated with the Légion d'honneur and the British Distinguished Service Order for his actions in Ariège, Bigeard was promoted to an active captain in June 1945. Designated to participate to the expeditionary corps in Indochina, the regiment disembarked in Saigon on October 25, 1945, and served until March 1946 in various sectors of operations. During this epoque, the "Bruno" surname started to circulate.

On March 8, 1946, a detachment of the 2nd Armored Brigade 2e DB and 9th Colonial Infantry Division , which the 23rd Colonial Infantry Regiment 23e RIC was part of, disembarked in Tonkin.

On July 1, 1946, Bigeard left the 23e RIC and formed south-east of Dien Bien Phu, a unit constituted of four commandos of 25 volunteers at the corps of the autonomous Thai Battalion. The historian Jules Roy, however, makes no mention of this event, and Martin Windrow argues that the 'paratrooper putsch' is unlikely to have happened. Both Langlais and Bigeard were known to be on good relations with their commanding officer. The FLN had decided to deliberately target pied-noir citizens as a way of breaking French power. As one FLN directive put it: "A bomb causing the death of ten people and wounding fifty others is the equivalent on the psychological level to the loss of a French battalion."

Promoted to colonel in January 1958, Bigeard directed the 3e RPC with others to the Battle of the Frontiers from January to June. After other urban, desert and mountain operations, Bigeard was replaced as the commander of 3e RPC in March 1958 by Roger Trinquier. In 1958, Time magazine wrote of Bigard that he was "a martinet, but the idol of his men, who made them shave every day, no matter where they were, and doled out raw onions instead of the traditional wine ration because 'wine reduces stamina'."

He met on January 30, 1975, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing who proposed the post of secretary of state attached to minister Yvon Bourges. He held that post from February 1975 to August 1976, the date on which he leaves the service.

Torture accusations In his later life, Bigeard was drawn into the controversy over the use of torture in the Algerian war. The admission by senior military officers such as Massu and Aussaresses that torture was used systematically by the French in Algeria put the spotlight on all figures involved. In a memoir published in 1999, Bigeard admitted to using "muscular interrogations" to make FLN suspects talk, but denied engaging in torture himself while at the same time justifying torture as an interrogation method writing "Was it easy to do nothing when you had seen women and children with their limbs blown off by bombs?".

Aussaresses stated that the corpses of Algerians executed by French forces and dropped by aircraft into the sea had been dubbed crevettes de Bigeard ("Bigeard's shrimp"). However there is no evidence that Bigeard authorised or participated in such practices, while Aussaresses would later serve as an advisor to the regimes of Augusto Pinochet and Jorge Rafael Videla during Operation Condor where "death flights" were used to dispose of dissidents.

In June 2000 Louisette Ighilahriz, a writer and member of the FLN, alleged that Bigeard and Massu had been present when she was tortured and raped at a military prison from late September to December 1957. Ighilahriz had come forward with her story as she wanted to thank one "Richaud", an Army doctor at the prison for saving her life, saying that Richaud was a most gentle man who always treated her injuries and saved her life. Full military honours were accorded to Bigeard on June 22 at Les Invalides by the country's prime minister, François Fillon. In an obituary, the American historian Max Boot wrote that Bigeard's life disproved the popular canard in the English-speaking world that the French are soft and cowardly soldiers, the so-called "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", writing that Bigeard was the "consummate warrior" and one of "the great soldiers of the 20th century". However, the Vietnamese government refused to allow this, as it did not wish to set a precedent. Attempts by the French government to inter him in Les Invalides were "reversed because of public outrage" surrounding allegations of torture, most prominently a petition in the left-wing newspaper Libération that called him an "unscrupulous adventurer" who used "heinous methods". This led to a lengthy controversy over where to bury Bigeard, which was ended in September 2012 when Minister of Defense Jean-Yves Le Drian decided to inter him at the Mémorial des guerres en Indochine in Fréjus. Le Drian's attendance of the burial ceremony in November was criticized by the French Human Rights League, which suggested that praise for Bigeard "would amount to elevating torture to a military discipline worthy of being honoured by the state." However the decision was welcomed by French veterans organizations. "Bigeard gave France a victory in the Battle of Algiers in 1956. But he had to use torture to do it. Even though torture was used on an industrial scale by Bigeard and his fellow colonels, the guilt for what he had done was never quite pinned on him at the time."

Honors and awards

Decorations

French Honors Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur Croix de Guerre 1939–1945 with 6 citations out of which 3 at the orders of the armed forces (3 palms). Croix de guerre des Théatres d'Opérations Exterieures with 17 citations out of which 12 at the orders of the armed forces. Croix de la Valeur Militaire with 4 citations at the orders of the armed forces. Médaille de la Résistance decree of (6/09/1945) Escapees' Medal Colonial Medal with "Extrême-Orient" (Far East) clasp Commemorative Medal of the 1939–1945 War Indochina Campaign commemorative medal Algeria Commemorative Medal Medaille des blessés with 5 stars (5 wounds) Honorary Légionnaire de 1ère classe of the Foreign Legion in 1954

Posthumous homages A 3.65 m stele representing Bigeard in profile was inaugurated on June 29, 2012, at the 3 RPIMa base at Quartier Laperrine in Carcassonne.

Homages in France In France, several avenues, places and roads bear his name: Avenue du Général Bigeard à Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle) Rond-Point du Général Bigeard à Aix-en-Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône) Place du Général Marcel Bigeard à Tellancourt (Meurthe-et-Moselle) Square Marcel Bigeard à Aix-les-Bains (Savoie) Rue du général Marcel Bigeard à Briey (Meurthe-et-Moselle). Rue du général Marcel Bigeard à Villeneuve-Loubet (Alpes-Maritimes) Rue du Général Bigeard à Trimbach (Bas-Rhin) Rue du Général Bigeard à Lexy (Meurthe-et-Moselle) Rond-Point du Général Bigeard à Lagord (Charente-Maritime) Rond-Point Général Marcel Bigeard à Banyuls-sur-Mer (Pyrénées-Orientales) Rue Marcel Bigeard à Scionzier (Haute-Savoie) Rond-Point du Général Bigeard à La Rochelle

Works During his career Bigeard authored or co-authored a number of books which also featured homages to adversaries. In retirement he continued to write, his last work was published in 2010, a few months after he died.

Le Manuel de l’officier de renseignement (The Intelligence Officer's Handbook) Contre guérilla (Counter guerilla), 1957 Aucune bête au monde..., Pensée Moderne, 1959 Piste sans fin (English: Tracks without end), Pensée Moderne, 1963 Pour une parcelle de gloire (English: For a piece of glory), Plon, 1975 Ma Guerre d'Indochine (English: My Indochina War), Hachette, 1994 Ma Guerre d'Algérie (English: My Algerian War), Editions du Rocher, 1995 De la brousse à la jungle, Hachette-Carrère, 1994 France, réveille-toi! (English: France, awake!), Editions n°1, 1997 Lettres d'Indochine (English: Letters from Indochina), Editions n°1, 1998–1999 (2 Volumes) Le siècle des héros (English: The Century of the Heroes), Editions n°1, 2000 Crier ma vérité, Editions du Rocher, 2002 Paroles d'Indochine (English: Words of Indochina), Editions du Rocher, 2004 J'ai mal à la France (English: My France is sore), Edition du Polygone, 2006 Adieu ma France (English: Good-bye my France), Editions du Rocher, 2006 Mon dernier round (English: My last show), Editions du Rocher, 2009 Ma vie pour la France (English: My life for France), Editions du Rocher, 2010 Ma Guerre d'Indochine, documentaire de 52 minutes Réalisation: Jean-Claude Criton – Production L. Salles/Carrère (1994) Ma Guerre d'Algérie, documentaire de 52 minutes Réalisation: Jean-Claude Criton – Production L. Salles/Carrère (1994) Portrait de Bigeard, documentaire de 52 minutes Réalisation: Jean-Claude Criton – Production L. Salles/Carrère (1994)