Free The Praetorians by Jean Lartéguy

th Infantry Regiment.”
    â€œNo journalists about?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œI want this affair to be kept absolutely secret. On orders from Paris. What are you waiting for to finish them off right away?”
    â€œRight away, sir? It would cost a good hundred dead and wounded.”
    â€œWhat on earth do you mean?”
    â€œThe Viets—the
fells
, I mean—have gone to ground among the rocks at the bottom of the wadi. We’d have to drag them out one by one. If we wait until nightfall they’ll come out.”
    â€œThey might and they mightn’t.”
    â€œIt’s not in their interest to wait until we get further reinforcements and they’re more tightly hemmed in.”
    â€œThis business has been going on long enough, Raspéguy. In Paris as well as Algiers they want it finished and done with before the day is out. We shall attack the valley with artillery and napalm, and in three hours’ time you’ll go over the terrain with a fine tooth-comb. We’ve got one of the largest scores of the year here.”
    â€œIt can’t be done, sir.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œIt can’t be done. Have you looked at the terrain? Artillery and napalm in a spot like this won’t have any effect at all.How many times did they try it in Indo-China! We’ve got to out-manœuvre them, sir.”
    â€œI’ve given you an order, Raspéguy. See that you carry it out.”
    â€œI can’t do it.”
    Marrestin mistook the paratrooper’s conciliatory tone for weakness. He concluded that Raspéguy, like many officers who were said to be hard to handle, needed only to feel the fist of a real leader.
    He assumed a curt, trenchant tone:
    â€œIf you don’t obey immediately I’ll relieve you of your command.”
    â€œThen it’s up to you, sir. You yourself will give the company commanders their orders to go out and get their men killed for the sake of the bulletin.”
    Raspéguy had picked up the receiver of the W.T. and was holding it out to the general:
    â€œGo ahead. But all the papers will know, because I’ll tell them, that because of your negligence, and because you don’t know how to wage this sort of war, two hundred and fifty or three hundred
fellaghas
were able to cross the barrier. I shall also tell them how, after having been responsible for the deaths of twenty reservists, you still wanted to kill off a hundred or so paratroopers, who are likewise reservists.”
    On the W.T. Captain Orsini was asking for the colonel. Raspéguy turned amiably to General Marrestin:
    â€œYou’re in touch with Orsini, sir. Would you like to talk to him?”
    Marrestin had turned pale. On the 13 th of May he was on a tour of inspection in Constantine. Not being abreast of the events, he had loudly proclaimed his loyalty to the Government, although he had never stopped plotting against it. A little paratroop captain had come slouching over and, pointing to a sort of underground shed, had said to him:
    â€œIn you go.”
    In front of fifty hilarious or dumbfounded officers General Marrestin, the divisional commander, had crept into the shed. And now he had just recognized that voice which had a whiff of Corsican maquis about it.
    Raspéguy put the receiver down on the ground and assumed an insidiously good-natured tone:
    â€œWell, General Marrestin, don’t you think it would be better for all of us to come to some arrangement? Even so, I still can’t understand how such a large band managed to get across the barrier!”
    Marrestin had recovered a little of his self-assurance. He was coolly calculating his chances. This was no time to have a show-down with Raspéguy over a question of tactics. In the Rue Saint-Dominique they would support the colonel, for, though accusing him of every sin in the book, they considered him outstanding in the field. The losses had been somewhat heavy, which was