"C'est Fini!"

In Bizerte last week, as French and Tunisian troops observed an uneasy ceasefire, they were burying the dead. On the scene, TIME Correspondent Edward Behr reported:

At street corners and in courtyards, hastily covered with sacking or blankets, lie hundreds of corpses. Some died in the first day's fighting and had sprawled in the blazing sun for four days. The stench was overpowering. Everywhere on the fringes of the casbah and inside it were houses wrecked by mortar and artillery fire. Swarms of large black flies buzzed over pools of blood in the streets. For 24 hours after the ceasefire, ambulances, lorries and mule carts brought out the dead and dying. In Bizerte hospital, the wounded lay shoulder to shoulder on mattresses in the corridors. From a personal count of the dead, I estimate that the official Tunisian figure of 670 is accurate, with 1,115 wounded. Civilian casualties outnumbered military casualties by ten to one.

The bulk of the death toll came in two waves: 1) on Thursday, July 20, when French planes blasted Bizerte for hours, 2) two days later when French paratroopers rained grenades and mortar shells on the close-packed houses of the casbah. In. Bizerte, the myth of the poor quality of the Tunisian fighting men finally died. Dirty and stubble-chinned, they clung to their positions. Four Tunisians held up an entire French company for four hours, killing five paratroopers and wounding 15, and battled on even after two medium tanks had blown to smithereens the houses in which they were sheltered. With howitzers, tanks and planes on one side, and rifles and light machine guns on the other, Bizerte is not a battle of which the French can be proud.

During and after the fighting, the paratroopers behaved with all the arrogance that has made them the despair of France and the bane of the French army. It is natural for troops in battle to get their food and drink where they can find it. But the paratroopers carried looting several stages further, in keeping with the time-honored practices of the Algerian war. They went through Tunisian houses and emerged with wads of money, watches and jewelry. They wantonly smashed what they could not carry away.

Amazingly, the Tunisians made no individual reprisals against the 180,000 French citizens scattered throughout the country. In all, President Bourguiba ordered the arrest of only 300 Frenchmen, some of whom were released the next day.

It is difficult to convey adequately how the Bizerte tragedy has affected Tunisians. "For years we have lived with France and now they do this," said a dock worker at Bizerte. "One never knows them well enough, does one?" Dozens of times during the week. Tunisians came up to me to say, "C'est fini!" From President Bourguiba down to the lowliest peasant, there is the realization that, come what may and even with the passage of time, Tunisians will never trust France again.

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