1961 Generals' Putsch

The 1961 Generals' Putsch was a failed military revolt against de Gaulle that made the Legion's political power visible—and ended the 1st R.E.P. The regiment became the cornerstone of the generals' plans, but the wider Legion did not join it. When the rebellion collapsed, the 1st R.E.P. was disbanded, and Creasy and Guido, then senior non-commissioned officers, were discharged along with other consequences of the regiment's disgrace.

Political Background and Escalation

The episode grew out of opposition to the prospect of a political settlement of the Algerian War. White settlers, known as the pieds noirs, responded furiously and erected barricades in Algiers in defiance of the army. Many professional soldiers sympathized with them, particularly the tough parachute units that had borne the brunt of the fighting. The revolt thus emerged from a conflict over the war's political direction, but it also drew strength from the soldiers' sense of solidarity with the settlers and their resistance to the government's course.

The authorities ordered the gendarmes to clear the barricades and sent two parachute units in support, including the Legion's 1st R.E.P. Both units dragged their feet. The gendarmes suffered many dead and wounded in the operation, while the regiment's hesitation showed that military orders did not ensure political obedience. Colonel Dufour was relieved of command. Rather than install an officer considered politically reliable, the high command temporarily placed Elie Denoix de St. Marc in charge. Tough, idealistic, and uncompromisingly brave, St. Marc was worshipped by his men; his authority over them helped turn disaffection into organized revolt.

The 1st R.E.P. Takes Action

St. Marc chose to lead the regiment into the 1961 Generals' Putsch against de Gaulle. The 1st R.E.P. became the cornerstone of the generals' plans, whose leaders expected the rest of the Legion to follow. That expectation proved mistaken: only the 1st R.E.P. acted against the government. In the course of its revolt, it even arrested Gambiez, the Army Commander-in-Chief. The contrast between the ambition of the plan and the narrowness of its actual support defined the episode. A regiment could challenge the state, but the Legion as a whole did not make the challenge.

The revolt failed. On April 27, 1961, its twelve hundred Legionnaires dynamited their barracks and fired all their ammunition into the air. The pieds noirs lined the route and wept as the paratroopers drove out of Zaralda, singing Edith Piaf's Non, je ne regrette rien. The song accompanied a departure rather than a victory: the regiment's destruction of its barracks and its last collective movement marked the end of its existence as a unit.

Disbandment and Personal Consequences

The 1st R.E.P. was disgraced and disbanded. It had lost three hundred men in the war for France, but de Gaulle was in a vengeful mood after the rebellion. The rank and file were absorbed into other Legion units. The officers faced different outcomes: some fled to join the O.A.S., the underground extremist army, while others surrendered to stand trial for mutiny. Senior non-commissioned officers, including Creasy and Guido, were discharged. They had followed their officers' orders, yet that obedience did not protect them from the consequences of their unit's revolt.

Pietro's incredulous response to Guido's dismissal brings that injustice into focus: Guido had been expelled even though he had only followed orders. Guido did not deny the political passion of the period or minimize what the regiment had contemplated. At one point, he explained, they expected to parachute onto Paris itself and arrest de Gaulle. The possibility was alarming not simply because the 1st R.E.P. had rebelled, but because a united Legion could have made the threat far greater.

The Legion's Threat and the Event's Significance

Guido put the scale of that unrealized danger in concrete terms: the Legion had more than thirty thousand men, and, if it had acted as a whole, nothing could have stopped it. In his account, the revolt was the first time the French realized what the Legion could threaten within France itself. He connected that discovery to the Legion's later basing, saying that even then the bulk of its forces was stationed in Corsica and other locations outside mainland France.

The putsch therefore ends on two levels. For the 1st R.E.P., it meant dissolution and the scattering or punishment of its members; for Creasy and Guido, it meant discharge despite their subordinate role. For the state, it exposed the danger of a powerful military institution divided over national policy. The regiment's departure from Zaralda, watched by grieving settlers, stands against the scale of the force that never joined it: the coup failed, but its brief concentration of military defiance revealed why the possibility of a wider Legion revolt mattered.