We were brutes under the orders of bastards, What Benoist Rey witnessed in Algeria [1] when he was called to the colours in September 1958, he will never forget. As a tradesman volunteer, he was assigned to an elite unit, the pursuit commandos, with whom he was to take part in operations mounted in the Constantinois area. He was just twenty-one years old, For a full year’s orgy of crime he was to bear impotent witness to that war, which, if it had a name, was barbarism itself and, if it had a face, was the face of terror. Go ahead and rape but exercise a little discretion, one of the torturers, Officer Cadet P., told his section before they entered the villages. And it was the very same P, who added : That’s what pacification is all about. Be that as it may, the only good Arab was a dead Arab. Returning to base on that first evening, Benoist Rey was to discover that one young Muslim girl, aged fifteen, had been raped by seven troopers, and another thirteen year-old by three men…