Customer Reviews

My Battle of Algiers: A Memoir

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Journalist and biographer Morgan was born Sanche de Gramont. In 1955 he had just finished college in the U.S., was working for a newspaper, and was called up for conscription by the French Army, which was ratcheting up for a major colonial war in Algeria. He went through officer training, and was sent to Algiers as a writer of an Army propaganda sheet. There he observed the behavior of the Arabs and the French colons. The Army decisively won the battle of Algiers, using torture brutally and effectively. However, the response from France, international condemnation, and increasing Arab resistance caused them to lose the war and brought about the collapse of the Fourth Republic and an abortive uprising by Army officers. Morgan sees many parallels between Algeria and Iraq. He asserts that most of the tools of modern urban warfare (with the exception of suicide bombing) were invented in Algeria, where a campaign of assassinations and popular resistance eventually drove Europeans out. While torture was very effective in breaking the Arab nationalist organizations, in the end it did more harm to the French than to the Arab cause. Including a generous helping of history, this absorbing personal narrative will capture readers.

A somewhat forgotten war gets a fresh on-the-ground look from a young lieutenant. Well-written, full of interesting details, and also contains some passages of more general history to put the Algerian war into historical and political perspective for those unfamiliar with it. Fascinating exploration of a young soldier's ambivalent experiences and feelings for the war of his times (I was a young lieutenant in Vietnam in 1968-69 so this book has a special resonance for me). Ignore the first section which is a silly attempt to link the current war in Iraq with France's colonial war in Algeria 50 years ago -- the parallels are forced and false, and I can think of no reason why they were included except to help sell books or curry favor with liberal reviewers. Extremely fine prose and structure. Deflates a few egos invested in the "Battle of Algiers" movie as an interesting sidelight. If you want to read more after finishing this book, Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace" remains the best and longest overall history of the Algerian war for independence.

This is a personal history recounted a half-century after the fact, so Ted Morgan (formerly Sanche, the Count of Gramont) should be given a little journalistic license. Many of the scenes are recounted with a novelist's precision, with pages of dialogue that the author couldn't possibly recount verbatim.

The author wins us over at the outset by his self-depiction as a rather silly, spoiled, and lazy young man. A diplomatic brat raised in both America and France, he transfers from the Sorbonne to Yale. Then comes the Columbia J-School and some dullish work for a paper in Worcester, Mass. The French Consulate phones him up and reminds him it is time for his National Service. And so the scenes shift quickly to a hellish French-army bootcamp, officers' school, the back hills of Algeria, and then at long last to the lush and legendary city of Algiers, where he works in the propaganda department of counterterrorism chief Gen. Jacques Massu.

The year is 1957, and the Battle of Algiers is on. The FLN is leaving package-bombs throughout the European quarters of the city, killing and maiming dozens. Thanks to brilliant intelligence officers and dedicated, seasoned paratroopers, Massu and company completely break the FLN network and win the war. (A few years later Algeria would be handed over to the FLN revolutionaries, but that was an outcome of French political debate rather than military failure.)

During his free time, the author has an affair with a wealthy colonial woman (a real-estate heiress named Georgette Cohen; her husband is conveniently out of town), and then an irksome friendship with an Arab girl with FLN sympathies and a day job with the French government. He entertains visiting American politicians and socialites when they come to town. These social notes let Morgan suggest things that would be hard to substantiate in a more serious history.

For example: the French (in France) were not too fond of Algeria, and didn't feel particularly attached to it. The police corps in Algiers was corrupt, under the thumb of the Corsican mafia (these are the author's recollections, remember). Only a large minority of the one million colons, or colonists, were actually French in origin: the rest were Maltese, Spanish, Italian, Jewish, German. Furthermore at least 15% of the non-Arab population of Algeria were Jews. Many were of Sephardic background--they'd been there for hundreds of years--yet unlike the Arabs they were given full French citizenship.

The Algerian War was therefore not really a matter of Arab vs. European. Morgan tells us that funding and encouragement for the FLN came as much from European activists as from pan-Arab ideologues. The army regarded the colons are selfish and annoying, a tail wagging the dog, a colonial mistake well past its sell-by date. I had vaguely imagined that the army in Algiers was a seething nest of disgrunted OAS men, but that does not seem to have been the case in 1957.

The book has two endings, the conventional one in which we're told how the French finally pulled out of Algeria in 1962, and Ted Morgan's personal one. Shortly before his national-service term was up, he got arrested and held for three days on suspicion of espionage (for the USA). Though the incident ended fairly amicably, it appears it put Sanche de Gramont off his native country for good.

This is a book that makes me really wonder if I should just ignore reviews from Kirkus and Booklist placed on a booklisting on amazon.com.

I'm saying this because of a variety of reasons:

1. Ted Morgan's "Battle of Algiers" was that of a press officer writing propaganda for the French army. By his own account, he worked at a desk, lived in a nice apartment, and had a beautiful (and married) girlfriend. He was not out on the streets of the Casbah (the Arab sector of Algiers) kicking in doors with the paratroopers who are depicted in the epic film "the Battle of Algiers."

2. A good deal of this "memoir" consists of unfootnoted or sourced history of the conflict in Algiers. It reads well, but I detest books about controversial topics that don't provide their readers some idea of what sources were used by the author.

3. The author doesn't seem to consider the possibility that some of the second and third-hand accounts that he recounts in his book might just be false or embellished. In one case, he presents the claims of a member of the French Communist Party about being tortured without the caveat that someone like that might be a bit "economical with the truth." In another case, he recounts the claim of a friend of his who deserted from his unit that he was forced at gunpoint by his fellow officers to eat the brains of a dead guerrilla because of perceived cowardice on his part. That's an extraordinary story, but Morgan apparently just accepted it as truth without making any attempt to verify it.

4. Morgan commits a sin that a lot of people who write memoirs long after the events that they write about took place. He recalls lengthy conversations word for word. Unless he was walking around with a tape recorder that he shoved under everyone's nose (which is a little unlikely concerning the technology of the 1950s and his situation), I find such perfect recall extremely unlikely. Like Morgan, I served in the military , and I have a good memory. But I can only recall snippets of conversations that took place a little more than a decade ago.

5. In the preface of his book, Morgan tries to argue that Iraq is Algeria and hence the American effort there is doomed to failure. I could write a book about how those two conflicts are different (apart from the fact they both take place in Arab countries). Suffice to say here, France actively colonized Algeria and by the time the war broke out in the 1950s, Algeria was a legal part of France with hundreds of thousands of Pied Noirs (European settlers) living there. France's attempt to absorb Algeria in this way while marginalizing the Arabs living there in their own country was a major reason for the war. In no such way has the United States attempted to do this.

In short, this is a superficial account that essentially regurgitates the story of the war in Algeria that is better told by far in books such as "A Savage War of Peace." Anyone looking to understand what happened in Algeria would be much better off to read that book and watch the film "the Battle of Algiers" rather than read this dubious effort.

Now that Iraq is on the brink of civil war, there is increased interest in the French experience in Algeria. Many new people are discovering Pontecorvo's 1965 classic movie, "The Battle of Algiers". The movie's focus on urban terrorism and the use of torture by the military clearly resonate in today's Iraq.

It was with great anticipation that I began Ted Morgan's account of the two years that he spent in Algeria in the late 1950's. Many of the best military memoirs are written by older veterans who have had the time to look back at the events that shaped their youth. Ted Morgan writes well and he definitely had a distinguished career but unfortunately in the end he didn't do much during the Battle of Algiers.

A graduate of Yale College and a budding journalist at an American paper, Ted Morgan received a draft notice that ordered him to return to his native France and serve a tour of duty in the increasingly turbulent Algeria. He spent a short time leading a platoon in the Algerian countryside and then used his social connections to be assigned to an Army newspaper job in Algiers.

Ted Morgan spent the Battle of Algiers writing propaganda for a newspaper that was meant to win the hearts and minds of the city's Arab population. Not even permitted to be a real journalist, Morgan was on the fringes of the battle. Having been mainly kept in the dark at the time, Morgan integrates the works of other historians and memoirists into his account of the battle. He does this without footnotes or giving other writers credit. The purpose of the battle memoir is to give the reader a visceral first person account of important historical events. Much of this book has the feel of heresay and unattributed journalism.

The Battle of Algiers was important and there are many lessons that are still relevent. However, there are better sources of information. If you like movies, check out Pontecorvo's "Battle of Algiers" or even "Lost Command". In my opinion the best account of the Battle of Algiers can be found in Jean Larteguy's novel, "The Praetorians". For strict history, the definitive account in English is Alistair Horne's "A Savage War of Peace."

Ted Morgan is the American name adopted by Sanche de Gramont, a French-American born in 1932 ("Ted Morgan" is an anagram of "de Gramont"). Shortly after graduating from Yale and beginning his career as a journalist, Morgan, then still a French citizen, was conscripted into the French Army in 1955. From September 1956 to December 1957 he served as a lieutenant in Algeria. For the last eleven months of his service he helped write and put out a newspaper in Algiers, "Réalités Algériennes", that in actuality was a French Army-sponsored organ of propaganda, addressed to the Arab community and intended to show France and the French Army (though not necessarily the colons) in a positive, benevolent light. Thus, Morgan had a front-row seat, at times far too close for comfort, of the "Battle of Algiers" that the French Army waged for control and pacification of Algiers during 1957. The French "won" that battle, though they of course ultimately lost the war to retain Algeria as part of France.

Morgan wrote about his military service in Algeria fifty years later. His book, MY BATTLE OF ALGIERS, is an excellent companion to Alistair Horne's classic book "A Savage War of Peace" or to Gillo Pontecorvo's classic film "The Battle of Algiers", although it also has considerable intrinsic merit standing alone. It is a mixture of personal memoir and eye-witness history, sprinkled with reflections on war, torture, and sundry other topics. It is very well written and quite engaging. Although Morgan reports on many cruel and abhorrent episodes, he also reports on the sunny aspects of life in a beautiful and exotic Mediterranean city as well as many incidents from the human comedy.

From the beginning, Morgan was opposed to the French military efforts in Algeria. When he was drafted, he did not try to avoid service primarily as a gesture to the memory of his father, who died in 1943 in a plane crash while a pilot in the Free French escadrille of the Royal Air Force. Once posted to Algeria, his principal objective was survival. That was difficult in his initial assignment to a company in relatively remote forested hills, where he served as transportation officer, intelligence officer, and platoon leader. As intelligence officer, Morgan killed an insurgent while interrogating him (something which, fifty years later, he still had not fully come to terms with). Unwilling to continue in that capacity, he took charge of a platoon. On patrol, his platoon was ambushed leading to a firefight that ended with two French and seven insurgents dead. Instead of accepting the citation that was proffered, Morgan requested and was granted two-days leave in Algiers. While there, serendipitously, he was tabbed by the French General Jacques Massu to serve the rest of his tour of duty in Algiers, out of uniform and living in a comfortable civilian apartment, as a propagandist and inadvertent witness to the Battle of Algiers.

With the passage of time, the Battle of Algiers seems to assume ever greater significance, historically, because it was triggered by the first "systematic use of urban terrorism" by insurgents, turning a major city into a battlefield in which all occupants, not just combatants, are at risk. The response of the French Army under General Massu was draconian. At bottom, it was grounded on the suspension of the civil justice system and wholesale arrests, detentions, interrogations, torture, and liquidation (over 3,000 Arabs who were arrested simply disappeared). Especially in the wake of the ongoing American invasion of Iraq and "war on terrorism", both the morality and efficacy of torture are hot topics. Morgan's input on the subject is that in the Battle of Algiers torture was effective, tactically and in the short term. But Morgan recognizes that in the long term, French acts of torture and other atrocities only served to further alienate and embitter the Arab population, with, of course, lethal consequences to many (some innocent) and incalculable psychological consequences for many of the French practitioners.

In the end, Morgan survived. "When I left in December 1957, I felt that I was fleeing a burning building. I had been scorched, but I was still alive." He also comments, retrospectively: "The Algerian experience did not enrich me; it diminished me." Paradoxically, however, reading about it is an enriching experience.

Thus, I strongly recommend MY BATTLE OF ALGIERS, despite one nagging reservation - namely, that it was written fifty years after the fact. Why did Morgan wait so long? (He wrote almost twenty other books in the interim.) His critique of the French war effort certainly would have had more impact if published in the 1970s, say, instead of in the 21st century. And then there is the question of the reliability of his account after all this time. The book includes numerous extended conversations, with lengthy verbatim quotations, that surely must be largely (entirely?) reconstructed. We can only hope that Morgan is faithful to the essential truth of those conversations as well as to the truth of the historical events he reports on, but, alas, we can never know for sure (as with so much else in life). 4-1/2 stars, rounded up.

There should be no question about whether everything in this book is exact or not- it is the truth of a worldly man reflecting upon the truth of his experience as a young man in war. All wars resemble each other. Algeria seems especially notable because of its brutality and in some ways its simplicity. The inherent contradictions of a split society of colonials and arabs were thrown into relief during the war forcing, as planned, the untenability of French rule. The violence was staggering in its casualness: everything was permitted. Similarities of the battle of Algiers to current conflicts are there to be made and perhaps should be made placing the course of future wars along a continuum beginning after WWII. There might be some utility in that.
As a report from an ardent young man compelled by duty and conscience the war was a hard reckoning. There is not an ounce of self pity here but a reader can't help but wonder if without his charm and line whether he would have not ended up like his friend Dourakine, hardened and antinomian, indifferent to the result when passed, prepared for more of the same, likeable but inexorable.
Morgan is charmed ( he has amazing luck) but the cost must have been immense despite the hand of serendipity which after all can explain only so much.
He writes well and I'm glad he told his story in his clear unflinching prose.

Ted Morgan's My Battle of Algiers provides a "worm's eye view" of the efforts made by the French Army to hang on to Algeria after they lost Indochina.

Morgan who had graduated from Yale and was working as a reporter in the US, was drafted by the French Army. In an effort to honor the memory of his father, who died during WWII, Morgan chose to serve rather than renounce his French citizenship and continue his career as a journalist in America.

The book describes Morgan's training in the French army, his commissioning as a 2nd LT and his first couple of job in Algeria, first as transportation officer, then as an infantry platoon leaders, and finally as an Intelligence officer out in the bled. As an intelligence officer Morgan essentially beat a prisoner to death in an effort to extract information and was so disgusted with himself and the process that he obtained a more serene billet as a journalist for a French Army psy-ops newspaper in Algiers.

From this position Morgan had a birds-eye view of the unfolding Battle Algiers which he writes about in a fair amount of detail. He is very good on the descriptions of the bombings and their aftermaths, as well as the mindsets of both the French military and the "pieds noirs" or the French civilian colonists.

As a personal memoir of a relatively low ranking participant the book is quite good, especially at evoking a sense of what it was like at that time and place. However, I do have some issues with the book. First, Morgan makes a fairly ham-fisted effort in the preface of the book to link France's war in Algeria with the US war in Iraq. Thsi material really didn't belong in this book.

Second, and more importantly, he also provides a kind of summary or overview of France's colonization of Algeria and the entire Algerian War, including a fair bit of detail on the activities and mindset of FLN. I understand his motivation, he's trying to give readers unfamiliar with that episode in history context for his experiences. Unfortunately, all of this material is presented utterly without sourcing or notes. Since this material is clearly outside the scope of his personal reminiscences the lack of sourcing material is a bit troubling.

With those two caveats I enjoyed the book and recommend it, perhaps alongside another more conventionally sourced history of France's involvement in Algeria such as Horne's Savage War of Peace.

This book is a real pageturner. I had a hard time putting it down and finished it in record time. This is the kind of book you will refer back to. It has many memorable passages. I don't want to say too much in order not to ruin the story for anyone. But I particulary enjoyed how events kind of turned the tables on the writer. The fact that it is all based on real events makes it that much more interesting.

The author mixes the story telling between a first person account of his experiences and an overview of what was happening at that time in the larger picture. He also fills you in on what becomes of all the characters you are introduced to in the story. As far as the criticism I read in another review that the author doesn't document enough, I don't agree with that criticism because it's very clear that this is an account of his experience as he percieved it. When the author is writing of events that others told him about, he says so. He leaves it up to you to decide whether to believe what others told him or not. If someone doesn't agree with one of the authors opinions then they should just say so instead of inventing phoney criticisms. I didn't agree with all of the authors opinions but I appreciate knowing them. Again when the author of this book is expressing his opinion it is clear from the writing style.

Over all I enjoyed this book tremendously and recommend it to anyone interested in the subject matter. This one is a keeper.

Morgan chronicles his experience as a conscripted French soldier sent to Algiers during the mid 1950s. There is some interesting history and Morgan's recollection of events is almost suspiciously detailed. Though generally well-written, I had a couple of problems with this book that keep me from giving it more stars. First, Morgan has a habit of referring to, and describing several public figures in a familiar way, as if he knew and interacted with them regularly which he clearly did not. This is important because Morgan ascribes motives to many of these people which, as far as I can tell, he has no basis for. Secondly, Morgan in his preface asserts that the use of torture by French paratroop regiments brought about the puting down of the FLN. Though I have no doubt that harsh and sadistic tactics were employed as described by Morgan, he was not party to those sorts of interrogations and his knowledge of the use of torture and the resultant intelligence gained from its use is purely second and third hand which makes me question whether he is in a position to make assertions as to its degree of effectiveness in acquiring actionable information. Morgan further discussses the dehumanization of the torturer and his victim, but again, Morgan has no first-hand experience (with the exception of a single instance in which he repeatedly punched a prisoner w/o interrogating the person) on which to base (what is probably an accurate) this hypothesis. I could not help but sense that Morgan is the type of person who harbors petty and immature resentment of others, based on his offhand slap at his cousin, John Negroponte as well as the general air that seemed to be present within the French military at the time. Namely, paratroops were seen by the rest of the conscripted army as overly gung-ho warmongers, wheras the conscripted ranks come across as little more than lazy, negativistic whiners.