Pierre Guillaume (mercenary)

Pierre Guillaume (born August 11, 1925 in Saint-Malo ; † December 3, 2002 ) was a French naval officer , member of the terrorist organization OAS and later a mercenary.

biography

Pierre Guillaume was born to Maurice Guillaume, Brigadier General of the Reserve. He attended the Naval Academy and graduated in 1948. He served as an officer in the French Navy in the First Indochina War . There he was in the Dinassaut division of the French, with which military operations were carried out in the large river basins of Indochina . At the end of the war in 1954, he received the rank of Lieutenant de Vaisseau .

After the end of the war he tried to sail back to France alone on board a junk . When circumnavigating the Horn of Africa , however, he ran aground on November 13, 1956. He managed to return to Paris at the end of 1956. Once there, in March 1957, he learned of the death of his brother, Jean-Marie Guillaume, a French paratrooper officer who had died in the Algerian war . Pierre Guillaume asked for a transfer from the Navy to the French Army , which he was granted. From July 14, 1957 to March 12, 1958, he took over the position of his deceased brother there.

Guillaume participated as a soldier in the Algiers putsch on May 13, 1958. The aim of the putschists was to appoint a government that would guarantee that Algeria would remain under French colonial rule. With their support, Charles de Gaulle came back to power. When de Gaulle wanted to initiate self-government in Algeria by law in 1961, some ex-military and radical nationalist activists founded the terrorist organization OAS , including Pierre Guillaume. The OAS wanted to prevent the independence of Algeria with violence and terrorism.

On April 21, 1961, supported by the OAS, a second coup attempt was made in Algiers to overthrow de Gaulle. Pierre Guillaume was at this point naval deputy to General Challe , one of the four generals involved in the coup. However, the coup attempt failed within a few days due to low participation and a lack of support from France. Guillaume was sentenced to four years imprisonment for participating. He then went into hiding and hid with members of the OAS. In 1962 he was arrested and sentenced to a total of 12 years in prison. Like the generals involved in the coup, he was imprisoned in Tulle prison.

After his release, he worked as a maritime safety advisor in Saudi Arabia and participated as a mercenary in Bob Denard's operations in the Comoros . With several former soldiers, he was also involved in the defense of the Karen people in Myanmar .

Pierre Guillaume lived in Saint-Malo. He hosted the ninety-minute Libre Journal on Courtoisie Radio almost until his death . There he represented u. a. nationalist and right-wing populist positions. He was a personal friend of the right-wing extremist politician Jean-Marie Le Pen , whom he often received on his program.

In his memoirs with the title “Mon âme à Dieu, mon corps à la Patrie, mon Honneur à moi” (My soul for God, my body for the fatherland, my honor for myself) he tells of his experiences in the Algerian war and related of his attempts to escape from Tulle prison.

The 1977 film Der Haudegen (Le Crabe-tambour) by Pierre Schœndœrffer is loosely based on Pierre Guillaume's life.

bibliography

• Mon âme à Dieu, mon corps à la Patrie, mon honneur à moi. (Co-author Elisabeth Escalle), Paris 2006, ISBN 978-2-259-20442-2 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Ruedy: Modern Algeria - The Origins and Development of a Nation. 2nd Edition. Bloomington, 2005, pp. 178-180.
2. ↑ 1961 Generals' Putsch of Algiers (Eng.). Foreign Legion Info, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
3. ^ Guillaume's author page of the Libre Journal at Radio Courtoisie. Radio Courtoisie, accessed April 11, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Le Crabe-Tambour: In the Wake of Empire. H-France, accessed April 6, 2019 .