Harvest in Algeria

A bumper crop of golden grain waved last week along Algeria's coastal plain. Rain had been plentiful, there had been hardly a breath of the hot, dry, dreaded sirocco, and the harvest promised to be the best in history. But in many fields the crops--wheat, oats, barley--drooped overripe and unharvested, and in some the grain, and the farm buildings too, were burning in the lazy heat.

Ragged but shrewd, scattered but organized, the rebel army was striking the most telling blows of the bitter, 19-month war. For Algeria's 9,000,000 acres of grain are vital for France as well as Algeria (Algeria is France's No.1 customer). Last week 300,000 French troops were trying desperately to protect Algerian farmers getting in the harvest.

Hide & Seek. It was an uphill task. The 20,000 partisans dispersed and hid themselves in their huge country (four times larger than France itself). They operated with precision. Secret cells throughout the country kept them informed of French troop dispositions. They usually struck in groups of 10 or 20 partisans who did the shooting, backed up by some 50 auxiliaries who burned crops and buildings, destroyed livestock and equipment. Sometimes, when French troops made open attacks dangerous, rebels doused cats and dogs with gasoline, drove them flaming into barns or haystacks.

The 25,000 French colons, whose better land yields nearly half the total crop,*employ more than a million miserably paid Arab hands, many of whom, out of conviction or fear or desperation, collaborate with the rebels. The European farmers can trust no one. Many are discouraged and some are leaving. Good farms can be bought for almost nothing.

Last week TIME Correspondent Stanley Karnow went to watch the battle of the harvest in Western Oran department, in an armed convoy of halftracks and trucks. In the area he visited, 80 of the 300 French farms had been burned in the past fortnight and 20 Europeans killed, some after torture. He visited one pillaged farm where vineyards had been torn up, buildings burned, 1,432 barrels of wine poured on the ground. Said the farmer: "I spent my life making this farm. My son and his son will spend theirs repairing the destruction--if they are still here."

Near Ain Alem, Reporter Karnow found a farm couple leaving, after having spent a night fighting off rebel attacks. He found other colons confused and bitter. They blamed Paris, Cairo, Moscow, Washington. But they dared work their fields only when covered by troops, and there were not enough troops to do the job.

"Dry Your Tears." Once the convoy drew fire, but when the troops searched the hilltop whence the bullets came, no one was there except some Moslem farmers scything their grain as though nothing had happened. On the way back a farmhouse could be seen burning brightly. "IndoChina was nothing compared to this," said the veteran commander.

A patrol of 22 young conscripts from the Paris area was ambushed, tortured, killed, and their bodies mutilated in the wild gorges of Palestro, near Algiers; only one escaped to tell the grim tale. The massacre aroused more emotion in France than anything else that has happened in Algeria. This week the mother of one of the dead, Serge Villemaux. received a letter postmarked Algiers. It contained her son's military identity card and a letter stamped with the seal of the National Liberation Army. It read:

"Madame: We are sending you sad news. Your son will not return. He has fallen in an ambush. Fatalists will call it fate. Realists will answer that it is mad ness--the stupidity of our leaders, Guy Mollet and [Minister Resident] Lacoste. The war in Algeria is indeed a dirty war. But it is those who impose it on us who are the assassins . . . Madame, something must be done. Dry your tears. Assume your responsibilities. go resolutely to your rulers and tell them, with other wives, other mothers, that you have had enough, and that the war must stop ..."

* 700,000 Moslem farmers account for the rest.

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