Hinton, West Virginia, June 25, 2007 (HNN) -- In 1941, I was twenty. I was a high school graduate but a socially promoted one, specifically in trigonometry. I hadn’t been out of the state but once and that to Virginia. I was innocent as to the ways of the world. But on December 12, 1941, I joined the Army Air Corp and after service in the states, I eventually arrived in Algiers, Algeria. There my innocence ended. What I saw and learned there opened my eyes and mind to the evils of colonialism and in retrospect revealed to me the origins and causes of what has been the history in Algeria and the rest of the Middle East since.

First I noticed the abysmal and appalling poverty of the Arabs, or Wogs, the epithet used by the British. Many lived in shacks with earthen floors and mud-brick walls with ragged children everywhere, some of whom were blind. A look at their water supply would make one gag. In Algiers many storefront entrances were at night beds for the homeless. Many Arab males had fashioned pants from barrack’s bags, the drawstrings of which served as belts. Arab women were mostly absent except those who had westernized and those who had become whores.

One night while abed in my quarters, which were attached to a radio communication facility, I saw, guarding the area, black Senegalese soldiers in French uniforms doing their prayers to Allah, which prostrations they would do day and night with regularity. I learned from the prayers that I was in a Muslim world, but a world ruled by Christians, who were a wee minority. This fact was evident everywhere.

Thievery by the Arabs was rampant and skilled. One soldier lost his shoes while asleep or drunk. The thief cut his laces with a razor blade and removed them. It was reported that on the airbase, theft became such a problem that at night a gunner sat in a bomber turret with a view of the field and when lights flooded the field, anyone in sight was shot. I was with a patrol at night when a Wog was caught. Rather than go to the trouble of incarcerating him, a British sergeant suggested that we look the other way and when he ran he would kill him. The captive ran as expected and a hail of lead followed him. But he apparently knew to run and fall and then run again. He disappeared into the dark.

I had the responsibility of maintaining a radio-directional facility a mile or so from the airfield. Part of the responsibility was to maintain a field-phone connection from the field to the facility. As certain as I laid a line from the field to the facility, Arabs would take it up. There was a black market for most anything they could steal. Cigarettes were a medium of exchange.

A Wog attacked a British soldier in a nightclub. The British dragged the Arab outside and beat him either to death or near to death. Wogs were inferior humans and were treated that way. Americans hadn’t become so hardened by the realities of occupation and colonialism as they are today as manifested by shocking instances of killing, torture and rape in Iraq; and they were more generous and charitable toward the Arabs. Americans were generally treated with respect.

Three soldiers and I were given the detail of guarding three freight cars of radio equipment on a train that was going from Algiers to Biskra, an oasis and resort in the Sahara desert, where the Allies had an airfield. The train trip took a week. The experience of the ride is another story. What I remember relative to conditions today is that at every stop at a station, Wogs would by the dozens race to the train to find a place to hang on and just as soon as they found a place a French conductor with a big stick would began beating them with bureaucratic zeal until they retreated. This episode was repeated at every stop.

Once, the train passed through a tunnel. I was riding on a platform at the end of a car and I nearly suffocated from the heat and smoke before the train exited the tunnel. I was soot covered, head to toe. When the train made a stop in Constantine, a city named after the Emperor and located in the Atlas Mountains, I went to find water to cleanse myself. I saw a military base with an Arab guard at the gate. With the French word douche and with my fingers imitating water showering my head, I was able to communicate to him. He understood and took me to a pipe arising from the parade ground with a spigot attached. The water was cold and it was chilly in late October in the Atlas Mountains. This was where the Arab soldiers showered and washed. I indicated that I wanted hot water. The Arab then took me to a French officer, who took me to his office and introduced me to his personal shower, hot water and all.

One day I was walking somewhere near the airfield at Biskra when I saw coming toward me a young Arab in military uniform. As he neared, I could see that he had been shot up pretty badly and had recovered enough to be discharged and sent home. I learned from him with my bit of French and his bit of English that he had been wounded somewhere in the fighting in Europe and was on his way to his family and home. To this day, I cannot get out of my mind the difference between what that boy experienced in the war and what I experienced and what he gave and received and what I gave and received. His wounds would impair him for the rest of this life; and he came home to a mud hut and little else for his service and sacrifice.

The Wogs of Algeria, as I remember, were the serfs and the French and British and Americans were the lords. The Arabs, I suspect, had little to hang on to but Allah and His promise of the rewards of Paradise. It may be that the broken soldier I met had children and they had children and all of them knew the history of their ill treatment and also all believed in Allah and his reward of Paradise. These are the terrorists of today.

The wrongs the West sowed are now the harvest of evil it reaps. Nations, just as people, are not immune to Fate’s judgments and its punishments for their errors and evils.

Algerian experiences in WW II

Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County
and a regular columnist for the 'Nicholas Chronicle' in Summersville and 'Huntington News Network'