A-Infos (en) Eyewitnesss to Paris May '68 events

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TWO NIGHTS OF GUERILLA WARFARE
(en) Eyewitnesss to Paris May '68 events

[Please note this is an edited version. The full version is available
at http://www.tao.ca/~freedom/1968/riot.html]

At the junction with St. Germain Boulevard the
students are directing traffic as the massive
demonstration approaches from the north.

 F R E E D O M   P R E S S
                       I N T E R N A T I O N A L
                           Volume 2 Number 6

At the head of the procession are a group of
anarchists flying the black flag. The marchers are
chanting "De Gaulle, L'assassin", and singing the
Internationale. The mood is electric. The crowd
swirls around, the banners jog up and down. A
student, Gilles Tautin, has died from drowning at
Flins. He either was thrown into the river by police
swooping down on a group of students- or jumped
in to avoid a beating-up with truncheons. This
march is to avenge his death.

Every hundred yards or so the march halts, and
L'lnternationale is sung. Now we move past the
Sorbonne, and on, down to Rue Soufflot where the
march is left-wheeled. The girl carrying the
anarchist banner still heads the procession, with
two other girls carrying red flags, and one girl with a
flag that is red on one side, black on the other.

The flags jog through the darkness. Ahead of us
looms the massive dome of Le Pantheon.

Now, suddenly the atmosphere becomes charged
with fervour. The crowd cry hup hup hup, and then
they are running, running, hundred after hundred,
sprinting forward towards the Pantheon.
Immediately there comes two sharp explosions-the
first riot-gas grenades are fired into the crowd. I
jump up on a car and see the black shapes of
police buses on the Pantheon forecourt, and the
CRS.

But the object of the march is not to reach the
Pantheon but to reach the large police station
situated opposite.

More riot-gas grenades are fired, and then, for the
first time, a new sound fills the night sky. Louder,
more menacing a hollow detonation stills the vast
crovvd who pause, uncertain as to what it is. A
second detonation shivers through the night,
followed by a barrage of exploslons from gas guns.

A few minutes later, the word passes through the
crowd. The first Molotov cocktails have set two
police vehicles ablaze. The battle begins in earnest.
There is none of the polite acceptance of
totalitarian authority such as we see in this country.
The people have got their backs to the wall, and
they are fighting with everything they've got.

The crowd enter street-fighting with bravery and
intelligence. All of them do not flee before the
grenades. Two thin lines of determined people
stream past the sides of the Pantheon, opening up
two more fronts of confrontation, to split up the
police forces. Two more fronts open up in Rue St.
Jacqucs, on either side of the Rue Sufflot. The CRS
are now occupied on five fronts at once.

Passers-by in cars drive at high speed to get away
from the fighting, driving through red lights, hands
on car-horns and knocking pedestrians to one side
in their desperation to get away fast. The news of
the petrol bombs has got around.

The night is punctured with many explosions of
petrol bombs being thrown in quick succession.
Riot-gas is fired almost monotonously, with
seemingly little effect on the determination of the
fighters.

My eyes are streaming, the effect of the gas is
rather like sea-sickness, but it passes, and I have
no respect for the gas from that moment on.

The 5th and 6th Arrondissements are a battlefield.
Barricades are quickly set up, but tonight the CRS
are no longer the unstoppable forces of a
totalitarian state. The new weapon has terrified
them. They do not charge, but huddle together in
hundreds for safety, firing gas grenades into
crowds that sometimes surge forward to attack
them.

It is a miracle no one is killed. This is civil war!

Convoys of CRS reserves roll up the boulevards,
cutting off the retreat of demonstrators, and I
decide that it is time to move, or be taken. I run
down streets I do not even know the names of and
miraculously do not find a cul-de-sac. I run out into
the Boulevard St. Michel again, at its southernmost
end to face a further convoy of CRS
reserves-twelve vehicles in all, standing by to go
into action. I walk past studying a map of Paris, and
am not challenged.

The fighting goes on through the night, the CRS
cannot dislodge the students from their barricades.
The new weapon has evened somewhat the relative
armed strength of both sides

It is not until 7 to 8 in the morning that the last
barricades are cleared-by bulldozers backed up by
CRS, which charge and break down the barriers,
and charge the students.

But the night represents a turningpoint in the civil
war. For the first time, the CRS have been shown to
be vulnerable, human, capable of being dented.
The new weapon, and the techniques of guerrilla
warfare that were displayed throughout the night
mark a new devopment of the battle, and things wlll
never be the same again.

*

Afternoon, the second day.

Gutted police vehicles still lie wrecked opposite the
Pantheon. Windows of police buildings are gutted,
news-kiosks burned out.

It is 2 p.m., and the air, despite a moderate breeze
all morning, is still heavy with riot-gas. In
restaurants along the Boulevard St. Michel, the
diners eat with tears streaming down their faces.

>From the dome of the Sorbonne flies the black flag
of anarchy. The flag also lies at strategic points on
the building, in company with the red. The
quadrangle of the Sorbonne is crowded with people
looking at the improvised bookstalls. The anarchist
stall seems to be doing good business, but the
movement is over shadowed by the Communist
Party machine, that dominates the stalls, the
slogans on the walls, the banners that fly from
windows of the building.

The opposition to Gaullist totalitarianism may be
united at the moment, but it is hopelessly split into
half-a-dozen differing ideologies that cannot surely
provide a harmonious alternative. A demonstration
is called at the Gare de I'Est at 7 p.m.

I decide to jump in with both feet and travel direct
there by Metro. As I walk out of the exit I am
pounced on by CRS who are filling the station
forecourt in their hundreds.

'Papier!' I have to give them my passport. They
scrutinize, hand it back. They want me to go back
down the Metro. I refuse. I notice a curious reaction.
None of the CRS surrounding me will look me
straight in the eye. Whenever I look at one of them
and ask to walk out of the station, he turns away
and will not take the decision as to my destiny upon
himself. Faced with an open space, and the turned
back of the CRS, I push past, thanking them, and
walk out of the station.

The massed forces of the Gaullist regime are here
assembled on this warm summer evenng.
Hundreds of armed police and CRS completely
block the Boulevard de Strasbourg, rifles slung
over shoulders, bus-loads of reinforcements also
armed, waiting in side streets. There must be nearly
a hundred vehicles parked around the station,
maybe more. It is a shattering sight. But this is what
a police state has to do to preserve its power, to
continue its exploitation of the many. .

Apart from the rifles, boxes of gasgrenades lie
handy, steel shields are carried by police (everyone
is helmeted naturally) and the wooden truncheons
are swinging openly, even though there isn't a
single demonstrator in sight, or sound.

A quarter of a mile away I encounter three more
complete lines of armed police blocking the
boulevard.

The demonstration, as should have been realised
after last night, is at last obsolete. A few skirmishes
develop, but the students, workers and others, filter
way into the side streets. The police are delayed in
their positions for some ime, however, fearing a
regrouping, and this enables a lot to happen in
other parts of town.

I.D.

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