A chain of suspicions and panics escalated an accidental shooting into a staged massacre
Evidence
At a village near Palestro a pied noir postman, employed there for twenty-five years and liked by everyone, is found with his throat cut. The next day two Muslims are sitting at a café table, quite innocently. Getting up, the younger one is nearly run over by a French jeep. His friend goes to pick him up. The private in the jeep waves his automatic at the older Muslim. It goes off, “by mistake”, hitting the man in the stomach. The jeep drives off rapidly, for fear of attracting trouble in the Muslim quarter, and leaving the mortally wounded man in the road. A U.T. detachment now arrives and, in a state of nervousness because of the recent killings, assumes the victim to have been shot by the F.L.N. Next, a truck loaded with “loyal” Muslim mine-workers comes past. Terrified by a recent lynching in the nearby village, they recognise in the demeanour of the U.T. “that sort of excess of fever and physical fury which overtakes the European population of any village, when exasperated by a series of assassinations by the fellagha”. So the driver of the Muslim truck panics, and drives off at full speed. The U.T. fire at it, inaccurately. A further army vehicle arrives on the scene and its occupants are informed by the U.T. that the Muslim truck just passed was full of F.L.N. and had been responsible for the shooting of the man lying in the road. The truck is overtaken and, refusing to halt, shot up. All its occupants are killed — but, strangely enough, not a weapon is found. Meanwhile, the culprit has reported the shooting “accident” to his commanding officer. In recording the episode, however, regimental headquarters decides that awkwardness would be avoided if it were stated that arms had been found in the shot-up truck. So the final communiqué reads: “Yesterday at … the occupants of a truck machine-gunned passers-by, miraculously only wounding one.” — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 522
Categorization
- SEED: This escalating chain-of-errors — each step rational and each actor ‘reasonable’ in isolation — could anchor an essay on how institutions manufacture atrocities without any single villain.
- XREF: connects to: Police actions intensified fear among community members. — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 2237
Broader Connections
- Police actions intensified fear among community members.
#corroborates(0.65) — Lynley Hood, A City Possessed, 2237