# Obit - General Marcel Bigeard



## daftandbarmy (21 Jun 2010)

General Marcel Bigeard 

General Marcel Bigeard, who died on June 17 aged 94, was France's most decorated and popular soldier, a hero of Dien Bien Phu and the Battle of Algiers; but his reputation was tarnished in later life by allegations that he had taken part in torture. 
Bigeard served with the Free French and the Resistance in the Second World War and rose from the ranks to play a leading role in France's colonial wars in Indo-China and Algeria. As commander of a parachute battalion in south-east Asia, he was captured along with about 11,000 other defenders when Viet Minh insurgents overran the French fortress of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954 – a debacle that brought an end to France's involvement in Indo-China and paved the way for America's subsequent involvement in Vietnam. Within a year of his release, as commander of a parachute regiment, he was taking on Algerian freedom fighters in the battle for the capital, Algiers. 

A colourful, acerbic man who always led from the front, Bigeard inspired the fervent loyalty of his troops for his fearlessness in battle and his irreverence towards gently-born "generals with middle-aged spread" who preferred to lead from behind the lines. A profile of Colonel Bigeard (as he then was) in Time magazine in 1958 described him as "a martinet, but the idol of his men" who "made them shave every day, no matter where they were, doled out raw onions instead of the traditional wine ration because 'wine reduces stamina'." A brilliant tactician (the military historian Martin Windrow described him as an "intuitive master of terrain, who could conduct a battle by map and radio like the conductor of an orchestra"), he helped to shape thinking on counter-insurgency techniques throughout the world. The American general David Petraeus is said to keep a signed photograph of Bigeard on his desk. 

Wounded five times in battle, Bigeard emerged from the Algerian war – which France finally lost in 1961 – as one of the country's most decorated military officers – "the Heroic Bigeard" as President Charles de Gaulle called him. He ended his career as a four-star general and went on to serve as a Minister of Defence under Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in the 1970s, and later as a deputy in the lower house of the French parliament. 

During the Algerian War, Bigeard had been given command of the 3e RPC (Colonial Parachute Regiment), part of General Jacques Massu's 10th Parachute Division, which he led through numerous operations, the most famous being the 1957 Battle of Algiers, when 3e RPC was entrusted with the dirty job of destroying the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) in the central Casbah. Bigeard's forces succeeded in neutralising the FLN in Algiers through intelligence garnered by imposing a system of quadrillage (sector-based surveillance) – and through more dubious methods. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/military-obituaries/army-obituaries/7841910/General-Marcel-Bigeard.html


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## The Bread Guy (21 Jun 2010)

daftandbarmy said:
			
		

> .... Within a year of his release, as commander of a parachute regiment, he was taking on Algerian freedom fighters in the battle for the capital, Algiers ....



Also said to be the inspiration for the lead French character in "Battle of Algiers"


> .... Though Bigeard was known to be one of several models for "Colonel Mathieu", the brutal French paratrooper depicted in Gilles Pontecorvo's The Battle of Algiers (1966), the film was initially banned in France for several years ....


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## daftandbarmy (22 Jun 2010)

Here's a trailer for the movie. Fantastic footage and hard to believe that it wasn't real!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca3M2feqJk8

Les Paras... those chaps seemed rather 'wet' don't you think?


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## The Bread Guy (20 Nov 2012)

Bump with the latest - _finally_ a decision on where/how to bury him ....


> The remains of one of France's most decorated generals, Marcel Bigeard, will finally be interred on Tuesday, following bitter wrangling in the two years since his death.
> 
> The funeral in the Indochina War Memorial at Frejus, in the south of France will be attended by his daughter and France's Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian.
> 
> ...


BBC Online, 19 Nov 12

This, after the Vietnamese government rejected the idea of having the General's ashes scattered over Dien Bien Phu.


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## tomahawk6 (28 Nov 2012)

As controversial in death as he was in life. Yet he was an outstanding combat leader. Quite a man. Too bad people wont let him rest in peace.


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