Sometimes I don't know where books will take me. I happened to pick up a very good but matter-of-fact history book on the war in Algeria between 1954 and 1962 at a local library, called “A Savage War of Peace” by Alistair Horne.

Someone else might say, so what, but I had once read two books by Jean Larteguy about soldiers in the French army around that time called “The Centurians” and “The Praetorians.”

“The Centurians” focuses on the reaction of the troops when the French lost Indochina after the Battle of Diem Bien Phu in 1954. The soldiers had fought ferociously and magnificently in that doomed valley against overwhelming numbers of what became the Viet Cong. If you want to read about that battle, try “Hell in a Very Small Place” by Bernard Fall.

“The Praetorians” is about the French forces in Algeria from the viewpoint of the paratroopers who were brought in by the French government when the original Algerian revolt became a full-blown insurgency. This surge of troops became very controversial then and later as they used torture and indiscriminate killings in their attempt to win the Algerian War.

Larteguy focuses on the effects of such actions on the paratroopers themselves, showing how the noblest of motives are corrupted by war, especially a guerilla war in an urban environment where soldiers do not know who the enemy is. A good visualization of what the paratroopers faced and how they acted is in the movie, “The Battle of Algiers,” made in 1966 in Algiers itself with many of the war's participants playing themselves.

The conflict started after World War II when the original Muslim inhabitants of Algeria realized that their efforts for France during the war were not going to change their situation in the land, then a French colony. Settlers from Europe, called the pied noirs, only 10 percent of the population, were still going to own 90 percent of the arable land and industry.

The struggle was horrific and terrible. The French themselves count 17,456 soldiers dead. More than 100,000 Algerian Muslims died. The figure is in dispute; Algeria counts more than 1 million Muslims dead due to the war. No one really knows.

The Algerian War took a toll on the French government, too. The Fourth Republic collapsed. It took someone with the stature of Charles de Gaulle not only to establish the Fifth Republic but to end the Algerian War.

De Gaulle was hailed as a savior at first by the pied noirs. They thought he would bring back their old power in Algeria and squash the Muslim revolutionaries. Instead, de Gaulle negotiated with their enemy and settled the conflict, leaving the pied noirs nowhere to go but out of Africa.

The aftermath of this is reflected in the book, “The Day of the Jackal,” by Frederick Forsyth. The Jackal is a killer hired by the pied noirs to assassinate de Gaulle in revenge for their betrayal. The book reflects the 12 or 13 assassination attempts actually made upon de Gaulle in this time. The book is a quick read with a most ironic ending.

Albert Camus, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 1957, was a pied noir. It is curious, though, that in his books one never sees the Muslims of Algeria. In “La Peste” (“The Plague”) the bubonic plague attacks only the pied noirs of Oran.

The person that L'Etranger (“The Stranger”) kills on the beach is obviously a Muslim but that is not significant in the book. What is significant to most readers is the existentialist apathy of The Outsider, as L'Etranger is sometimes called.

To the pied noirs the Muslims were basically anonymous. In a court case quoted in “A Savage War of Peace,” a judge asks, “Are there any other witnesses?” “Yes, five,” answers a pied noir, “two men and three Arabs.” And, “It was an Arab, dressed like a person.” The Arabs or Muslims were not considered as people by the pied noirs.

Camus uses the atmosphere of Algeria in “The Outsider” to illustrate the fate of the pied noirs. He describes them as being “mystically aware of a merciless tête-à-tête with Death, this physical fear of the animal who loves the sun.” The pied noir “is born of this country where everything is given to be taken away.”

The Outsider is full of the pride of the pied noirs. His last wish is “to occupy the center of the stage: ‘for me to feel less lonely, all that remained was to hope that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.'”

This did not happen to the pied noirs at the end of the Algerian War. Feeling betrayed by de Gaulle, over 1 million of them left Algeria forever to France, Italy and Spain. One can see them and their descendants still around the towns and cities of southern France. They are outsiders there and strangers in a new land.

Ralph Mohr taught English and Latin at Marshfield High School for 31 years. Retired, he is currently teaching Latin through CyberSchool. He welcomes comments and suggestions regarding the column at rmohr1565@charter.net.