This book, published in 1977, is the testimony of a soldier, his disillusionments, and his bitterness, that of a man uprooted from his native land.
Without entering into the controversy of Algeria, a French province either bartered away or abandoned, we will raise the responsibility of the political power that, between 1958 and the Evian Accords, continued the military operations known as pacification—a rather hypocritical term to define what was, in fact, a war—operations during which numerous conscripted soldiers fell, casualties for France, whose tragic fate could have been avoided by sparing our army four years of war, a rather unnecessary conflict since the intention of the government was to disengage from Algeria.
General Jouhaud recounts his war, his commitments to keep France on this southern shore of the Mediterranean, which is to his credit, and through his testimony, one can gauge the deceit of politicians regarding this tragedy whose wounds remain vivid among those Pieds-Noirs uprooted from their land.
This work, even if it is somewhat too partisan, is a valuable testimony of this period when France concluded its decolonization in pain and dishonor.
