Family origins
Roger Trinquier was born on March 20, 1908 into a peasant family in La Beaume in the Hautes-Alpes. He studied at the municipal school of his native village where he obtained his certificate of studies in 1920. In 1925, he entered the normal school of Aix-en-Provence.
Military career
Between the wars
A student reserve officer in 1928 during his military service, he took command of a section of Senegalese skirmishers when he left school in Fréjus in the Var.
At the end of his service, Roger Trinquier enlisted in the army and joined the school for active officers in Saint-Maixent, from which he graduated as a second lieutenant in 1933. Assigned for a time to Toulon at the 4th RTS, he embarked on May 11, 1934 bound for Indochina where he joined Kylua, in Tonkin, in the immediate vicinity of Langson. He then took command of the Chi Ma post, on the border with China.
World War II
Posted in Beijing on the eve of the Second World War, it was withdrawn in January 1940 to the French concession of Chang-Hai, where a small mixed battalion (Europeans and Annamites) maintained the French military presence despite the occupation of the city. of Shanghai by Japanese troops. But, in March 1945, following the Japanese coup in Indochina, the battalion, long since cut off from mainland France and of which he had become deputy corps commander, was interned in his own barracks, the flag was maintained. ... During the Japanese capitulation, the French will recover the weapons that have escaped the excavations and will regain a certain autonomy, living on credit until the arrival of the "Gaullist" authorities. Object of suspicion and considered as "collaborators" of the Japanese, the officers of the battalion will have to fill out a detailed questionnaire about their activities during the period 40/46... Trinquier, following the suicide of his commanding officer and morally affected , will refuse and even will resign. General Salan convinces him to stay and he immediately volunteers for Indochina. As a result, his advancement will be compromised for a few years.
Indochina War
From the end of the Second World War, he participated, still with the rank of captain, in the reconquest of Indochina within the Ponchardier parachute group. Within the group, quickly, after some fighting and despite mutual mistrust, the amalgam is made between the Old (those from China) and the New (those from Leclerc). At the end of the stay, Commander Ponchardier offers him for promotion, but the famous questionnaire comes out and Roger Trinquier refuses to fill it out. He remained a captain... In mid-1946, he was transferred to Tarbes as deputy to Commander Dupuis to form the 2nd BCCP (colonial battalion of parachute commandos). This battalion was engaged from 1947 to 1949 in Indochina in counter-guerrilla operations. Captain Trinquier receives command after the death of Battalion Commander Dupuis until his return to France and his dissolution.
Finally promoted to battalion commander, he returned to Indochina in 1951 where, on behalf of the SDECE (external documentation and counterintelligence service), he headed the "action service" of Tonkin, then of all these same services for all of Indochina. As such, he led the famous GCMA (mixed group of airborne commandos, which later became the GMI - mixed intervention group) which organized the various maquis on the rear of the Vietminh. He returned to France in January 1955 after the defeat at Ðien-Biên-Phu... Lieutenant-colonel, he was assigned to Paris on the staff of General Jean Gilles, commanding the airborne troops.
War of Algeria
In August 1956, he joined Algeria and took command of the AFN Airborne Base, then became General Massu's deputy, commanding the 10th Parachute Division (10th DP), during the Battle of Algiers. He is at the origin of the creation of the "urban protection system" (DPU).
From June 1957 to March 1958, he commanded the Base School of Airborne Troops (BETAP) in Pau. In March 1958 he replaced Colonel Bigeard at the head of the 3rd RPC (colonial parachute regiment) which would become the 3rd RPIMa (marine infantry parachute regiment).
Putschist and member of the Public Safety Committee of Algiers from May 13 to June 11, 1958, he resumed the fight at the head of his regiment in the south and in Kabylia where he captured Commander Azzedine. In the first half of 1959, he took part in the operations of the Challe plan in Oranie and Ouarsenis.
In July 1959, he took command of the El Milia sector in Constantinois with his chief of staff Captain Dabezies.
Roger Trinquier maintains a regular correspondence with General Salan and expresses his disenchantment, then his mistrust vis-à-vis the Algerian policy of General de Gaulle.
After 1960
In July 1960, Roger Trinquier, very committed to the defense of French Algeria, was then recalled to mainland France and assigned in December to the staff of the general commanding the group of subdivisions in Nice.
In January 1961, Roger Trinquier, is asked for an intervention in Katanga, he reports immediately and is received by Pierre Messmer, Minister of the Armed Forces. At the minister's request and in complete confidence, as is customary in such circumstances, he signs a blank request for early retirement, just in case... Rue89 affirms that Pierre Messmer then proposed to Roger Trinquier to leave for Katanga with the mission of setting up the first independent army of the new State of Katanga, at the request of its president Moïse Tshombe. The assassination of Patrice Lumumba by the Katangese gendarmes puts an end to the unofficial cooperation of France. Roger Trinquier returns to Paris at the end of the month. A few French officers will remain, they will be called the "awful". On January 26, 1961, the Minister of the Armed Forces brought out the request for early retirement and automatically placed him in a retirement position.
At the end of April 1961, on his way to Katanga via Rhodesia, he heard in Athens the news of the revolt in Algiers. Back in France, he now devotes himself to thinking and writing books inspired by his experience, while remaining faithful to his comrades in arms involved in the revolt of the generals, improperly called the Algiers putsch, the objective of the rebels obviously not being the conquest of power.
He participated in the creation of the National Union of Paratroopers with Colonel Buchoud and was its first president from 1963 to 1965.
He died accidentally on January 11, 1986 in Vence.
Awards
Commander of the Legion of Honor
Quotes
14 citations including 10 at the order of the army
Bibliography
La Guerre moderne, Editions de La Table ronde, Paris, 1961.
The coup d'etat of May 13, Esprit Nouveau, 1962.
Our war in Katanga , La Pensée Moderne, 1963 (in coll.)
The New State, the Solution of the Future, New Latin Editions, 1964.
The Battle for the election of the President of the Republic, L'Indépendant, 1965.
War, subversion, revolution, Robert Laffont, Paris, 1968.
Les Maquis d' Indochine, SPL Albatros, 1976.
Le Temps Perdu, Albin Michel, Paris, 1978.
La Guerre, Albin Michel, 1980.
The 1st battalion of red berets, Indochina 1947-1949, Plon, 1984.
Main works
Modern Warfare (1961)
Trinquier's Modern Warfare has been considered one of the textbooks of counterinsurgency warfare, emphasizing the importance of intelligence, psychological warfare, and the political side of armed operations. It was quoted extensively by British General Frank Kitson, who worked in Northern Ireland and authored Low Intensity Operations:Subversion, Insurgency and Peacekeeping (1971).
According to an interview between American Colonel Carl Bernard and journalist Marie-Monique Robin, Paul Aussaresses, who was then working at Fort Bragg, a training center for American special forces, showed him a draft of this book10. Aussaresses and Bernard then sent a summary of the book to Robert Komer, a CIA agent who would become one of President Lyndon Johnson's advisers on the Vietnam War. According to C. Bernard, it is “from this text that Komer designed the Phoenix program, which is in fact a copy of the battle of Algiers applied to all of South Vietnam. (...) To do this, we turned prisoners around, then put them in commandos, led by CIA agents or green berets, who acted exactly like the death squad of Paul Aussaresses. » .
The May 13 Coup (1962)
In The May 13 Coup, Roger Trinquier demonstrates how the Fifth Republic was established by a coup, the Algiers putsch of 1958.
Quotes
“Errors due to goodness of heart are . . . the worst thing. As the use of physical force in no way excludes the cooperation of intelligence, he who uses it without pity and does not shrink from any bloodshed will gain the advantage over his adversary. »
“These systematic exactions are the expression of a revolution in the art of war intended to respond to the “total war” waged by the rebels with a policy of terror whose challenge is to rally the populations. »