Reverence the comment on Larteguy's "The Centurions" (and "Praetoriens"). The characters in the book are all composites. Thus Raspeguy is based largely upon Marcel "Bruno" Bigeard, but likewise includes bits of Langlais, Brechignac, and several other colourful airborne commanders. Julien Boisferas, the fictional 10th Colonial Para's intelligence officer, was partly based on Aussaresses, who knew Bigeard from their WWII FFI service, but also on Roger Trinquier and Decorse. The real Aussaresses served in a totally different regiment in Algeria. (Bigeard commanded the 3rd RPC, Trinquier was on the 10th Abn Div staff, but followed Bigeard into the 3rd RPC/RPIMa whereas Aussaresses served with the 11th Para "Choc' Regiment.) What Larteguy's two most excellent novels fails to capture is the success of the 3rd RPC/RPIMa (renamed in 1958) in converting captured "fells" to their cause end enlisting them into a 5th parachute rifle company within the 3rd RPIMa. You don't enlist former enemy combattants to your cause by torturing them. And their loyalty to the 3rd Colonial/Marine Paras included participating what was to have been a combat jump into Tunisia in 1961 (changed to airlanding at the last minute).

Which brings me to this point. Many French units were able to distinguish between terrorists, who targeted civiians with bombs, and enemy combattants, who fought openly against the French. And many of these same French units often included commando and partisan units composed of captured ALN cadred by an officer and a few really good NCOs who led these former "fells" on operations against the FLN infrastructure and ALN units in the field. A far better view than that in Larteguy's very excellent fiction can be found in such accounts as Jean Pouget's "Bataillon RAS", Henry-Jean Loustau's memoirs on Algeria (my apologies, title forgotten). The battle of Algiers was fought against terrorists who were targeting civilians. While I greatly respect Gen. Paris de la Bollardiere's moral principles, I do not condemn Aussaresses or the others who engaged in torture to break their way into the cells. They were trying to save innocent civilian lives, both Colon and Arab. The fact that they broke those clandestine cells speaks for the efficiency of their methods. But a contemporary eyewitness account I read long ago notes in an aside that those who often volunteered for services that required the application of torture were not the better elements of their units. Such methods were likely not applied across the spectrum. Otherwise the French would have had little success in recruiting former FLN for their partisan and commando units. Pouget (the model for Philippe Esclavier, and to whom Larteguy dedicicated The Centurions) is emphatic that captured ALN must be treated as combattants, and not as criminals. To extrapolate that experience, I would suggest that those Iraqi insurgents using car bombs and other devices to target U.S. Forces are legitimate combattants, while those who do so to target mosques, polling places, and other civilian targets are terrorists, despite the similarity of their TTP.