For those of us who remember them, the 1960s opened with an air of optimism and positivity. John F Kennedy was in the White House. Space was beginning to yield to human curiosity. The Beatles were about to emerge from their chrysalis. A man was executed by firing squad in Paris.
What? A firing squad? In 1962? Yes, and as I was to discover much later, I was there on the day – in Paris, I mean, and not far away. Purely coincidental, of course, but I find the contrast between the pedestrian routine of my day and his rather more melodramatic one piquant, to say the least.
The day that would become July 6th, 1962, was forming. Just before 4am, a prison van passed under the arch of the main gate of Fresnes prison south of Paris. The van headed north towards Ivry-sur-Seine. Roger Degueldre was on his way to a lingering death, convicted of participation in 10 murders.
At that time of the morning I would still have been deep in slumber in the Cité Universitaire, a couple of kilometres from the execution place .(I had been taking classes in French literature).
Degueldre wore the green beret of the Foreign Legion's 1st Parachute Regiment. The legendary 1er REP, disbanded for its part in the generals' putsch in Algeria a year earlier. As they were banished to Mascara hundreds of kilometres into the desert, the legionnaires defiantly sang Edith Piaf's Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. But not Degueldre. He deserted, remained in Algiers and joined the OAS, the Organisation de l'armée secrète, which fought a murderous and ultimately futile 15-month battle to keep Algeria French.
That morning, having arrived as usual at the Luxembourg Métro station, I might well have walked down the Boulevard St Michel to purchase a new notebook at Gibert the stationer.
In Algiers, Degueldre had applied the odd term ponctuelles to the assassinations his Delta commandos carried out, of Berbers and Kabyles, of French police and soldiers, of barbouzes (de Gaulle's "Black and Tans"). The word might be translated as "a one-off". His adieu to life would not be a one-off.
Of the volley of shots from the firing squad, only one struck home. Did his one-time army comrades aim deliberately to miss? On the instructions of defence counsel Jean-Louis Tixier-Vignancour, a doctor examined Degueldre and pronounced him still alive.
The adjutant-executioner stepped forward to administer the coup de grâce. His eyes closed, and his hand shaking uncontrollably, he fired three times. No 1 Delta, incredibly, still breathed. The adjutant was ordered to fire again, at Degueldre's head this time. The muzzle was placed the regulation five centimetres from his ear. The adjutant pulled the trigger. The gun jammed. The state prosecutor called for a new weapon. None of the military detail carried arms. One was eventually procured from somewhere.
I probably ate my usual modest lunch at the La Source self-service restaurant on the Boul’ Mich’.
Even then, life was still extant. The next shot to the head finally dispatched No 1 Delta. Degueldre was buried in the municipal cemetery of the Gonards, on the southeastern outskirts of Versailles. Websites that list the famous and distinguished who occupy some of its tombs offer the names of the pioneer aviator Louis Blériot, the jeweller Louis-François Cartier and Edith Wharton, the American novelist.
None speaks of Roger Degueldre.
If I bought a paper that day, it might have carried a small report about the last despairing OAS plastiquage in Paris, probably on an inside page.
But every year, on the Saturday nearest July 6th, a group of elderly white people assemble at Degueldre's black and pink marble tomb against the cemetery's perimeter wall, with its medallion: "À ceux qui se sont sacrifiés pour l'Algérie Française" [To those who sacrificed themselves for a French Algeria]. They will lay floral tributes and observe a minute's silence. A few are old petits blancs, homesick, decades later, for what they still see as their north African homeland; others are the vestiges of the OAS. Once again, the local media will probably complain about them.
That Friday evening in July 1962 I might well have emerged from seeing a movie at the Champo cinema at the corner of rue des Écoles and rue Champollion. Not far away to the west Roger Degueldre, having been judicially and most maladroitly shot dead, was settling into his cold new billet against the cemetery wall.