lOn October 24, after several years of debates in Toul (Meurthe-et-Moselle), a statue of General Marcel Bigeard (1916-2010) was erected in a square in his hometown, with complete discretion, which at the same time less attests to a certain shame. Since 2018 and in a first vote of the municipal council headed by Mayor Alde Harmand (various left), the controversy linked to this anachronistic and problematic statue shows the path that remains to be followed towards a better understanding of the colonial past of our society.
The statue, offered to the city by the General Bigeard Foundation, invites us to examine the life of this famous Lorraine, already honored by several street names, in Toul and elsewhere. Bigeard, Toul’s son, was Secretary of State for Defense and then a centre-right MP in the 1970s and 1980s. But this political career can only be understood by considering the military career of this resistance fighter, a paratrooper involved in the colonial wars.
There he founded his legend as a leader of men, particularly in Indochina, from where he returned in September 1954, after the fall of Dien Bien Phu and four months of captivity. Promoted to lieutenant colonel, he participated, since October 1955, in the Algerian War at the head of the 3my Colonial parachute regiment, which he commanded during the Battle of Algiers (January-September 1957).
Necessary contextualization
It is from this time that the expression “shrimp” dates back to the practice of eliminating combatants, real or supposed, of the National Liberation Front of Algeria (FLN), thrown into the sea, loaded with cement, from helicopters. It is especially in connection with this period that the erection of a statue, enshrining it in “hero” with the mentions “Serve France” and “Believe and Dare”, without remembering their participation in these war crimes, is problematic.
Bigeard’s name cannot be dissociated from widespread torture in the French colonial context. He indulged in this in Indochina and Algeria, a statement supported by the regret of General Jacques Massu, his superior in Algeria. He relates that in 1955 he arrested Bigeard, who “I was interrogating an unfortunate man with gegene.” (portable electric generator diverted from its use to make the tortured person speak), who responded: “We were already doing this in Indochina, we are not going to stop here! » (the world of June 22, 2000).
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