Roger Faulques

Roger Faulques (born December 14, 1924 in Zweibrücken , † November 6, 2011 in Nice ) was a French officer and mercenary .

Life

During the Second World War , Faulques joined the FFI , the armed forces of the French resistance. In January 1946 he left France to fight with the 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Foreign Legion in the Indochina War. In October 1950, the Viet Minh captured him seriously wounded during the Battle of Route Coloniale 4 after his comrades thought him dead and left him behind. The Vieth Minh handed the apparently dying man over to French troops. Faulques survived and returned to Indochina in 1953 . At the age of 23 he was appointed Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor for his services in this war .

During the Algerian War, Faulques commanded a company of the 1st Paratrooper Battalion of the Foreign Legion. He later became an intelligence officer in the 1st Paratrooper Regiment (1st REP) of the Foreign Legion. In this role he helped to develop the French doctrine of counterinsurgency formulated by Roger Trinquier , which goes back essentially to the experience of the Indochina War. It includes, among other things, the mostly secretly executed mass arrests, systematic torture and illegal killing of suspects, the so-called "enforced disappearance". The 1st REP used these methods to inflict severe damage on the FLN liberation movement, particularly in the Battle of Algiers in 1957 . In the summer of 1960 Faulques was appointed commander of the 2nd Paratrooper Regiment (2nd REP).

At the same time that Katanga Province declared its independence from the Congo , President Moïse Tschombé asked France to send officers. They were supposed to organize and command the army of the new state that was formed from the "Katanga Gendarmes" police force. Although the government of Charles de Gaulle refused to comply with the request due to pressure from Belgium , Trinquier and some of his officers resisted the ban because they wanted to collect the high pay. On January 25, 1961, Faulques arrived in Elisabethville with the delegation led by Trinquier . On March 9th, however, Trinquier and others were expelled under pressure from the UN and Belgian diplomats. Faulques and many other French stayed, however, and he became in fact supreme commander of the Katangalese armed forces, which relied largely on French, Belgian and South African mercenaries . Faulques benefited from the influx of former legionaries and paratroopers who were looking for new employment after a failed coup attempt and the end of the Algerian war. He directed the Para-Commando-School in which he trained the local elite soldiers. On September 13, 1961, the UN troops launched Operation Morthor to militarily end the Katanga secession. Faulques directed the units of mercenaries, Para-Commandos and Katanga gendarmes so skillfully that they surrounded the UN units in their bases in and near the capital Elisabethville and sometimes forced them to surrender. Ultimately, the United Nations had to agree to a ceasefire . On December 5, 1961, Operation Unokat was the next attempt by the UN to end secession. Katanga's troops had to surrender to the clear superiority. But Faulques withdrew them from the threat of encirclement and led his units out of Elisabethville and to Kipushi in an orderly manner , so that Tschombé remained as a force. In Kipushi Faulques was exposed to increasing pressure from the local officer corps, who accused him, among other things, of his high pay and his disrespectful behavior towards Defense Minister Muke. Faulques left the Congo in mid-December 1961, allegedly vowing never to fight under African command again.

In 1963 Faulques surfaced in Yemen , where at that time a civil war was raging between supporters of the overthrown monarch and the Egyptian- backed republican government. Almost 50 French officers and NCOs trained the rebels militarily, who faced 50,000 Egyptian troops, among other things. The operation was financed by the British secret service. The mission led by Faulques from Paris ended in 1967.

That year, Faulques was commissioned by the Biafras government to build the army of the newly founded state with 100 mercenaries, which had recently renounced Nigeria . Faulques probably had a semi-official assignment from Charles de Gaulle , who was interested in a weakened Nigeria. However, Faulques was only able to recruit a good 50 mercenaries, of which about 40 suffered such a devastating defeat on the first deployment against Nigerian troops that they left the country on January 2, 1968 after only two months of deployment. Faulques, who had been in Paris during the failure, never reappeared in the mercenary and intelligence business.

On April 30, 2010, the Foreign Legion honored Roger Faulqes by having him wear Jean Danjou's wooden prosthetic arm on Camerone's day during the parade in Aubagne .

literature

• Frederick Forsyth : The Biafra Story. The Making of an African Legend . Barnsley, Yorkshire, England: Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2007, ISBN 978-1-84415-523-1 , pp. 112-153
• Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X
• Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9
• o. V .: Secret order for Kirk , in: Der Spiegel 9/1962, pp. 58–60 here:

Web links

• Obituary for Roger Faulques , accessed December 3, 2016
• Faulques on "Camerone's Day" 2010 , accessed December 3, 2016

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.lefigaro.fr/flash-actu/2011/11/08/97001-20111108FILWWW00365-deces-du-commandant-roger-faulques.php
2. ↑ Christiane Kohser-Spohn / Frank Renken (eds.): Trauma Algerian War : For the history and processing of a taboo conflict Campus 2006, ISBN 3-593-37771-3
3. ↑ Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9 , pp. 97ff
4. ↑ Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9 , p. 113
5. ↑ Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9 , pp. 132-166
6. ↑ Christopher Othen: Katanga 1960-63. Mercenaries, Spies and the African Nation that waged War on the World , The History Press, Brimscombe Port Stroud, 2015, ISBN 978-0-7509-6288-9 , pp. 167-186
7. ^ Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 59-82
8. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/2553726/Colonel-Jim-Johnson.html
9. ^ Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 168-172
10. ^ Ray Pateman: Residual Uncertainty Trying to Avoid Intelligence and Policy Mistakes in the Modern World, University Press of America, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7618-2592-0 , p. 119
11. ^ Anthony Mockler: The new mercenaries . Corgi Books, London 1986, ISBN 0-552-12558-X , pp. 162-172
12. ↑ http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-monde/2010-04-30/ceremonies-de-camerone-le-grand-retour-du-commandant-roger/1648/0/449798