Ducournau’s victory at Arris was the first major French success of the war

Evidence

On 29 November, after weeks of hard slogging and heartbreaking lack of success, a detachment of Ducournau’s paras was ambushed by an important rebel band in a cave-riddled ravine just north of Arris, and suffered several casualties. The colonel (who had already earned the sobriquet of “Ducournau-le-Foudre”) promptly rushed to the scene and personally took charge of operations. Pinning the rebels down with heavy fire, he encircled them in a swift and skilful turning movement. There was a fierce battle, at the end of which twenty-three dead F.L.N. were picked up, plus eighteen captives. The French lost four dead and seven wounded. Among the rebel dead — clad in an American uniform with two stars on his shoulder — was Belkacem Grine, one of the most celebrated and respected bandits d’honneur of the Aurès with a million francs on his head. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 328

Categorization

• XREF: The bandit d’honneur figure recalls the outlaw-hero archetype seen in colonial resistance literature the reader knows.