The elite 1st R.E.P. Legion regiment was disbanded after the four-day putsch

Evidence

On Thursday the 27th twelve hundred “green berets” of the 1st R.E.P. pulled out forever from their base at Zéralda, en route for disgrace and disbandment. Before they went they had dynamited their barracks and fired off in the air all their remaining ammunition. Little was left behind but the gravestones — many of them bearing German-sounding names — of the more than 300 men the regiment had lost in the six years of campaigning against the F.L.N. As the Legionnaires drove off in their transports they bellowed out in a full-bodied roar the plaintive but brave words of Edith Piaf’s “Je ne regrette rien”. Watching them go, pieds noirs lining the route wept hopelessly. The revolt of the Centurions against de Gaulle was well and truly finished. It had lasted just four days and five nights. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1394

Categorization

• XREF: The German-sounding gravestones recall the Legion’s Wehrmacht heritage, linking to earlier themes of the army’s Vichy past and its transformation. — connects to: The disbanding of the 1st R.E.P. ended the putsch in four days

Related

• The disbanding of the 1st R.E.P. ended the putsch in four days (similarity 0.96)