University of Virginia Library

Post-Algeria: Busting Heads In France

By Harv Feigenbaum

Spring approaches and as it
does, so do the seasonal churnings
of political protest. For the melting
ice and those annoying 6 a.m.
chirpings of the robin redbreast are
indicative of another type of thaw:
that of the political tongue. Yes,
spring will soon be officially here
and the change in temperature will
cause student hands to sprout
placards and those of the National
Guard to sprout rifles and the rites
of spring will commence, probably
synchronized with he new invasion
of some old country (Burma?
Mexico? Only Milhouse the
Magician knows for sure).

And as we clasp our hands in
anticipation of thy Sacred Ritual,
our thoughts leap back. Where?
Why to May, 1970 of course. To
the Great Police Charge and the
Rape of the Jocks, and to the
Charlottesville Sixty (Seventy?
Thirty? Anyway, you get the idea)
where anyone who was anyone
managed to get himself arrested.
However my thoughts don't leap
back to May '70 or at least not to
May '70 in Charlottesville. I wasn't
here.

You see, during the academic
year of '69-70 I took part in the
Sweet Briar College Junior Year in
France program, or SBCJYR to
those in the know. Having tired of
Charlottesville society I packed my
mint juleps in a steamer trunk,
hopped aboard the Queen Elizabeth
2 Floating Pleasure Dome and
headed to France seeking a year's
vacation and thirty-three hours'
credit. I got them both.

The situation was ideal. We
traded our mint juleps for bottles
of wine (35 cents a liter) and we
males luxuriated in a girl-to-boy
ratio of two to one. But what has
this to do with political protest,
you ask? Attendez, mon vieux, ca
commence.

While my thoughts do not leap
back to May '70, they do manage
to stumble across November '69. It
was a good year for wine and a
better year for police (it wasn't
even too bad for Cambodians, they
had a half year to wait.) If you
remember, November 15th was the
Moratorium and the Americans in
Paris decided to show their
solidarity with the demonstrators
back home. Unfortunately, the
CRS (French riot police) decided to
show their solidarity with American
police. Thanks to a heavily Gaullist
National Assembly, any
demonstrations concerning Viet
Nam — remember when the war
was in Viet Nam? — were and are
illegal. This gave the cops a perfect
excuse to bust heads.

The CRS — I've forgotten what
the letters stand for — is not any
ordinary police squad. It is a
paramilitary organization made up
of all the sadists who missed their
chance to see blood in Algeria and
who are only too willing to see it
now. Not their own, bien sur. They
perform prefrontal lobotomies with
their night sticks and are the
mentors of Mayor Daley's
blue-helmeted dandies. Anyway,
the sight of 300 CRS coming at you
is not unlike facing the combined
offensive lines of the entire NFL
with a few German Panzer divisions
thrown in for good measure. Those
guys are big!

Victims Of Accidents

So tell me about the police
charge on the Lawn; just remember
I've been there. The lawn, however,
was that of the American Embassy
at Place de la Concorde. The
situation was even worse because
none of us knew what the hell we
were doing. Vaguely, we were
supposed to present petitions to the
Ambassador, but Sargent Shriver
locked us out. So we stood around
the bottom of the Champs-Elysees
for lack of something better to do
and the CRS started picking us off
one by one; they yanked people at
random and threw them into Black
Marias for "verification of papers."
Because we were Americans, and
only a few at that (about 200,)
they only kicked and hit. They
reserved their tear gas and machine
guns for the French students.
(People who die in French
demonstrations are usually hauled
off to provincial hospitals where
they become "victims of traffic
accidents" of so say some of the
students I met.)

It was sort of funny in a way.
They chased us half way up the
Champs-Elysees ( a strange event
for the Elysian Fields) and divided
us onto opposite sides of the street.
They had to act like school Safety
Patrols in order to stop traffic and
let us cross. They even had to
bother with an accident before they
could get back to the more
enjoyable work of scaring us to the
point of youthful cardiac arrest.

It might be noted here that the
Sweet Briar group had more people
taken in for "verification of
papers" than any other American
group in Paris. This was a fact that
started Dr. Arnold Joseph, professor
in-charge-and-basically-good guy,
well on his way to his first ulcer
and gave the rest of us something to
talk about and to embellish for a
long time to come. A sort of
baptism by night-stick, a palpitator
of not-so-fragile hearts.

So it starts again. We'll march
down the Lawn and up into
Washington. We'll fight the good
fight and we'll soothe our
consciences.

And the War will end. Like it
did last year.