Days of Glory: What Indigènes Changed for Veteran Pensions

A war film is how a lot of people first hear about a pension freeze that outlasted the governments that wrote it. Days of Glory, the English title of Rachid Bouchareb’s Indigènes, follows North African soldiers who fight to free France and then lose the rises in pay that French comrades keep getting after independence.

The short answer comes in two steps. A private showing pushed President Jacques Chirac to start the repair as the film opened in France, and the next budget raised the benefits tied directly to combat. Retirement pensions stayed on the old rules until a constitutional ruling and a later finance law. There is no general back pay. Here is the story on screen, the freeze itself, and what each step changed on the payslip.

The Four Men the Film Follows

Bouchareb and co-writer Olivier Lorelle build the war around four recruits and the sergeant who trains them. The five leads later shared the top male acting prize at Cannes. The men are fictional, and each one stands for a reason a man from French North Africa might have signed up in 1943, and for what the army did with that trust.

• Saïd: Jamel Debbouze plays a poor young man who cannot read, leaving village life with a deep loyalty to the unit.
• Abdelkader: Sami Bouajila plays the corporal who can read and write, and who treats service in the French army as a claim to equal treatment.
• Messaoud: Roschdy Zem plays a marksman who wants a future in France, and whose letters to a woman in Marseille are stopped by the military censor.
• Yassir: Samy Naceri plays a Moroccan goumier, an auxiliary soldier, who enlists for the pay.

Bernard Blancan plays Sergeant Martinez, the man who drills them and who stands between the squad and the officers above. The official Cannes notes on Indigènes put the four in a larger wave: they enlist like 130,000 other colonial soldiers, to free what the army calls the mother country.

The trailer cuts that campaign into a few minutes, from the villages to the fighting on French soil.

From Italy to a Village in Alsace

The route on screen runs through Italy, Provence and the Vosges. By the last battle the men are almost alone, holding an Alsatian village against a German battalion, which is the film’s picture of colonial infantry sent where the losses fall first. Contemporary write-ups of the release also dwell on the smaller slights in camp, including promotion that does not come and recognition that does not match the risk.

The end card is the line that left the cinema and entered politics. It tells you that pensions for these soldiers were frozen in 1959, once their countries became independent, while French veterans’ pensions kept their rises. The card is blunt about the rule, and it is early about the repair, because the statute that matches its complaint arrives long after the premiere.

The Meaning of the French Title Indigènes

Indigènes is the colonial administration’s word for a native subject, as against a French citizen, and the army used it for these troops. Days of Glory, the title used in Britain and the United States, sells the battle. The French title names the legal category that made the later pay gap possible.

That category is why a family in Algiers, Casablanca or Dakar can hear its own story in scenes a Paris audience watches as a missing chapter of the liberation. The film is a coproduction of France, Morocco, Algeria and Belgium, and the dialogue moves between French and Arabic, which fits a unit where orders come in one language and home in another.

How Did the Pension Freeze Take Hold?

Cristallisation is the office word for the freeze. France locked the pension of a veteran from a former colony at the tariff in force around independence, instead of letting it climb with French pensions. The stated aim was that each new state would, in time, take on pensions the empire had owed. In practice the French payment stayed flat, and the gap with a French comrade widened whenever Paris revalued the French scale.

HOW THE FREEZE WAS BUILT

1. 30 December 1958: Ordinance n° 58-1374 freezes pensions for veterans from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos at the tariffs of 31 December 1956, with no back pay for 1957 and 1958 and no power to make an exception by decree.
2. The independences that follow: The same freeze is extended to African and Algerian veterans as each country leaves French rule, with some room for later increases by regulation.
3. 3 August 1981: A rectifying finance law writes a special retirement regime for Algerian pensioners, after years of trouble applying the old rules.
4. 30 November 2001: The Conseil d’État, in the Diop judgment, holds that a freeze based only on nationality conflicts with the European Convention on Human Rights.
5. 30 December 2002: Article 68 of a rectifying finance law revalues benefits using prices in the country where the veteran lives, which is a partial thaw, not equality with the French point value.
6. 21 December 2006: The finance law for 2007, passed after Chirac’s decision, fully aligns the point value of disability pensions and the combatant pension, and leaves ordinary retirement pensions out.

A point value is the cash worth of one point in the formula. An index is the number of points your rank and years are worth. The 2002 law moved the money with local prices. It did not put a Moroccan or Senegalese veteran on the French index. The 2007 law did that for the benefits tied to combat, which French texts call prestations du feu: the military disability pension and the retraite du combattant. Retirement pay for a career in the army or the civil service was a different file, and it stayed frozen for people living outside the European Union.

The September 2006 Screening of Days of Glory

On 5 September 2006 Chirac watched the film at a private screening, with Bouchareb and Debbouze in the room. On 27 September 2006, as Indigènes opened in French cinemas, the government said colonial veterans would be brought up to the French level. Chirac told a cabinet meeting, “We owe it to these men, who have paid with their blood.” Reports of that week put the group at about 80,000 veterans.

What passed into statute is narrower than that cabinet sentence. Yung’s written question and the reply from the defense ministry, published in 2010, split the benefits in three. The 2002 reform had revalued combat benefits for differences in the cost of living. The 2007 reform then aligned the point value of the combatant pension and the disability pension with the French value, on its own. Retirement pensions were not in that 2007 step.

From August 2009, the ministry told the Senate, the retirement point value was the same for civil and military pensioners living in France or in a European Union state, whatever their nationality. A foreign veteran living outside the Union was still paid in proportion to the cost of living there. A French veteran in that same country kept the French amount. Nationality, not the address, was doing the work. The 2007 alignment of combat benefits had a nationality line of its own: Algerian veterans were left outside the full step.

A Constitutional Ruling With a Delayed Effect

On 14 April 2010 the Conseil d’État sent the Constitutional Council a priority question from a family of Algerian pensioners, the case the Council titles Consorts L. It was the Council’s first ruling under that new procedure. On 28 May 2010, in decision n° 2010-1 QPC, the Council held that the nationality gap breached equality.

The note on decision 2010-1 QPC explains the wait. Striking the recent statutes on the spot would have revived the 1958 and 1959 freeze, which paid even less. The Council therefore set 1 January 2011 as the day those rules would lapse, and left Parliament time to write a replacement. On 13 July 2010 the president then in office announced that the remaining pensions would be aligned.

What Did Article 211 Change on 1 January 2011?

Parliament wrote the fix in article 211 of the 2011 finance law, dated 29 December 2010. It repeals the crystallization statutes and sets one calculation for military disability pensions, civil and military retirement pensions, and the combatant pension. The people covered are nationals of countries that belonged to the French Union or the Community, or that were under a French protectorate or trusteeship. The base point value rises to the French value on its own. The career index rises only if the pensioner, or an heir, asks, because the office has to rebuild the career from papers it does not already hold.

The upgrade is not a cheque for the decades of the freeze. The ministry told the Senate the rise would not be retroactive, apart from cases already before a court. A request to lift the index runs from the date of that request. If your case was already open on 28 May 2010, the revision can run from the day the administration received the claim that started it.

THE GAP AND THE BUDGET SCORE

• Still short in early 2010: Senator Richard Yung counted 18,000 disability pensioners and 32,000 military retirement pensioners whose revaluation was still only partial.
• The sergeant example: A Moroccan sergeant’s yearly indemnity is 612 euros, against 7,512 euros for a French sergeant with the same service, on a combatant pension.
• The 2011 score: The budget commentary puts the cost at 82 million euros in 2011.
• The next year: It puts 100 million euros on 2012.
• The year after: It puts 125 million euros on 2013, then about 150 million euros a year once the measure is fully in place, for a group it counts as nearly 32,000 veterans of the Second World War and of the wars in Indochina and Algeria.

Yung’s 32,000 and the commentary’s nearly 32,000 are two 2010 counts of the retirement file, one of people still only partly revalued and one of people still on that regime. The 18,000 are a different benefit, the disability pension. The film’s place in that official story is in the Senate commentary on the 2011 budget: Indigènes revived the case in 2006, Chirac’s decision produced the 2007 law on combat benefits, and the court ruling plus this article are what finished retirement pay.

Decree n° 2010-1691 of 30 December 2010 sets the practical rules and takes effect on 1 January 2011. The index request had to go in inside three years, through consular posts or the veterans’ services, with a fuller path noted for the Maghreb. The point value did not wait on that form.

Frequently Asked Questions

How Long Is Days of Glory?

The Cannes listing gives the film as 125 minutes. A shorter cut is also listed at 120 minutes, so a copy that runs about two hours can be that version rather than a missing reel.

Did Days of Glory Get an Oscar Nomination?

Algeria, not France, submitted Indigènes, and the film was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign-language film. A search under the English title alone can hide the fact that France was not the country that put it forward.

What Is the Arabic Title of Days of Glory?

The Arabic title is Baladiun, a word in the same range as indigènes, a local person or a native. Festival notes sometimes print it beside the French title, and it is the title an Arabic search is more likely to use than Days of Glory.

Does Article 211 Help a Widow or Another Heir?

It can. The finance instruction that applies the article recognizes new pension rights for heirs, in particular a reversion pension, not only a higher rate on a pension already being paid. The same reform also lifts the freeze on payments tied to the Legion of Honor and the military medal, which is a separate line from the combatant pension in the film’s end card.

Can a Family Still Ask for an Index Revision?

The special window closed on 31 December 2013, three years after decree n° 2010-1691 was published on 31 December 2010. The automatic rise in the point value never needed a form. The public-finance instruction also refuses interest for the delay, and a request filed now sits outside that window and has to be read under ordinary pension rules.

If you stay through the end card, you are looking at a real rule and a repair that took two more statutes. The card dates the freeze to 1959. The payslip that matches the complaint is the one calculated from 1 January 2011, and only forward from the request where the career index is concerned.

Disclaimer: This article is an educational guide to the film Days of Glory and to the French pension rules that changed after it, and it is informational only. It is not legal, pension, or financial advice, and it does not tell you whether a file today would succeed. For a claim on a French military pension or a survivor pension, talk to a qualified pensions adviser or the French service that pays the benefit before you act. Figures and rules here reflect the statutes, the court decision, and the official notes cited, and later texts can change how a file is handled.