(Forty years ago, France's war with the anticolonial Commu...)
Forty years ago, France's war with the anticolonial Communist-led Vietminh insurgency climaxed in the bloody battle for the valley of Dienbienphu. The Vietminh's victory put the 17 million people of North Vietnam under Communist rule and would, in two years, induce America's attempt to save South Vietnam - without heeding the French army's catastrophic defeat. That defeat, former French soldier Jules Roy explains, occurred not because of a shortage of arms or troops, but more important, less tangible reasons.
Jules Roy was a French writer and air force officer during the Second World War, who reached the rank of Colonel. He was a contributor to periodical publications, including Confluences, Nouvelles Littéraires, Monde, Etudes Méditerranéennes, Figaro, and Nouvel Observateur.
Background
Jules was born on October 22, 1907, in Rovigo, Algeria. He was the son of Henri Dematons (a schoolteacher) and Mathilde Roy (nee Paris). The elder Roy sent his wife and illegitimate son away soon after the birth, and they went to live with Mathilde’s parents. But in 1910, Louis-Alfred Roy died, and Mathilde was free to marry Dematons. Although Jules lived with his natural parents for the rest of his childhood, he never came to feel that Dematons was his real father.
Education
Jules Roy completed a seminary school in Algeria.
Career
During World War II, Roy commanded a Royal Air Force squadron which was engaged in bombing the Ruhr Basin. This difficult period was recorded in an essay Roy wrote, Le Metier des armes (“The Profession of Arms”), published in 1948.
Roy returned to France to resume the writing career he had briefly begun in the early 1940s. The novel La Vallee heureuse (The Happy Valley) was published in 1946 and won him the Prix Theophrasle Renaudot. During this period he also became part of a literary circle of Algerian writers that became known as the Ecole d’Alger (Algiers School). Among the group was Albert Camus with whom Roy became a close friend.
During this literary period, Roy also continued his military work by maintaining a desk job with the air force while he wrote. But in 1953, the war between France and Indochina escalated and Roy was sent as an observer, upon his own request, into the fray. What he discovered was that not only did the French people at home have misgivings about the conflict, but the Indochinese, on whose behalf this war was supposedly being fought, didn’t support it either. He also witnessed French officers applying brutal force, not unlike the Nazis had done, and using napalm in their campaigns. These experiences caused him to resign from military service. Upon returning home, Roy began writing about the conflict in articles and the essay. La Bataille dans la riziere (“The Battle in the Rice Paddy”), published in 1953. The play Le Fleuve rouge (“Red River”), published in 1957, was even more critical of the French government’s position and was followed by the equally harsh novel Les Belles Croisades (“Fine Crusades”), published in 1959.
Roy continued to publish nonfiction works on political topics that interested him. A documentary of the end of France’s battle in Indochina, La Bataille de Dien Bien Phu (The Battle of Dienbienphu), was published in 1965. Following a visit to China. Roy articulated his opinions on the country’s government in Voyage en Chine (Journey through China) published in 1965. Le Grand Naufrage (The Trial of Marshal Petain), an account of the famous court proceeding in which Petain was tried for treason, was published in 1966. This book raises the same kinds of questions that Roy asked throughout his career as a writer and soldier.
During the 1970s and into the 1980s, Roy continued to travel and write about the places he visited as well as develop his discussions about his native land of Algeria.
Jules Roy was an outspoken critic of French colonialism and the Algerian War of Independence and later civil war.
Connections
Jules Roy was first married to Mirande Grimal with whom he had two children, Jean-Louis and Genevieve. Following a divorce, he married Tatiana Soukoroukoff in 1965 (she died in 2012).