Et Finalement, Égalité ?

Director Rachid Bouchareb, prompted as he said by his own family background, has crafted a film of power about the soldiers of Algeria and Morocco who fought for France in the Second World War. It is a film that should be required viewing in every high school across Canada, as well as France. Though it makes its point with characters from North Africa, its themes of prejudice and the brutality of war are relevant to every one of us. Shown here in Toronto under the title "Days of Glory", it was made as "Indigènes". The title is the French word for "natives" and makes reference to the Indigenous Code" established in Algeria in 1881, defining a native as "not having the same rights as a normal citizen." (emphasis my own) The title bespeaks a colonialist attitude still indulged in by far too many; something that the director and cast hope to change with this epic.
The film follows the fortunes of Said, Abdelkader, Messaoud and Yassir as they and 130,000 other indigenous soldiers wage their battle to free the "motherland" from the Nazis after the original French army's decimation at the war's onset. The four main characters fight in the campaign that takes them to battlefields in Italy, Provence and the Vosges before they make their final stand in a village in Alsace.

One of the characters in the movie was inspired by Algerian war vet Yoube Lalleg, who joined the French army at the age of 21. Lalleg appeared at the movie's debut, at the age of 87, to support the controversial film and the hopes of its director to break through the laissez-faire governmental attitude toward the pensions of vets like Lalleg. Bouchareb hopes to cure the "national amnesia" suffered by those who teach France's history to today's students and citizens. As the teacher's section at the movie's site phrases it, "In the history books and the collective memory the Liberation of France and Europe appears to be entirely the result of the landing in Normandy in June 1944, the actions of the Resistance, and the Soviet offensive on the Eastern Front. This is forgetting the offensive from the South", the offensive shown in "Indigènes".

The men from North Africa fought for France and died for her, but their sacrifice didn't change the ignoble way they were treated. They were denied leave, while their French counterparts were given leave. They were denied the same rations and equipment given to the French soldiers, and after the war they were given pensions sometimes less than one third of those given to the French soldiers.

One of the many powerful scenes in the movie shows a crate of tomatoes in the mess hall being denied to the Arabs, and the way in which this inequality is dealt with by them. Maybe the reality never matched the movie character's defiant challenge of the injustice, but it certainly roused an inward cheer from me when I saw his demand for fair treatment. Another scene shows one of the Arabs trying to warm his comrade's feet as they lay in the snow. The one had on only the sandals appropriate to the clime of his homeland, while around him the French soldiers all wore boots.

The final battle to save the village in Alsace from the approaching Germans comes to a devastating conclusion, one that brought tears to my eyes. The camera keeps rolling to show the white soldiers arriving after the fact and photographs being taken of the "liberators" that exclude the men from Africa. It doesn't stop, and the viewer is told they are about to see a scene that takes place 60 years after the battle in Alsace.

The camera continues its damming indictment of the French treatment of the vets from Africa with one survivor's visit to the war cemetery where his comrades-in-arms lie beneath grave markers that say "mort pour France". Although some of the markers have full names, one says simply "Yassir". He was consigned to eternity without France even knowing his name or making an effort to discover it. The survivor then goes home to his pitiful dwelling; a barren, dreary room where the toilet is mere inches away from the cot he lays down on. It is a scene perhaps more bitter and heartrending than any that preceded it.

To add further insult to injury, the paltry pensions of the indigenous soldiers were "crystallised" in official parlance, after France's colonies gained their independence. Veterans' groups have been fighting this injustice ever since. In 2002, a partial de-crystallisation adjusted the pensions to take account of the standard of living in the soldiers' countries, but they still lag far behind the amount given to their French counterparts.

The "mother country" continues to make shameful use of the men she has treated so unfairly. On August 15, 2004, those men provided a few good photo-ops for Jacques Chirac, who invited several African Heads of State to the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Allied landings in Provence. 20 African vets were made Knights of the Legion of Honour, and you can bet Chirac was smiling his best for the cameras as he shook their hands. The pension fiasco remains unresolved, however.

Chirac was supposedly moved to tears when he saw "Indigènes" and his wife Bernadette is quoted as saying "Jacques, we must do something". Chirac announced his intent to bring the pensions of foreign soldiers into line with those of the French as the movie was being released in France in September 2006. Will the government make all payment retroactive to the date of the first payment? Will they pay the amounts owing to the families of men who have died since the war, without ever being acknowledged as the heroes that they were?

Will France finally afford all her peoples the liberté, égalité, et fraternité that she so blithely promises, but so often fails to deliver?