Edmond Jouhaud entered the
École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr in 1924. With the rank of
commanding officer, Jouhaud led the resistance against
German occupation in the region of
Bordeaux since 1943. He fled to Britain in March 1944 to join the
Free French Forces. As
army general he had been the inspector general of the Air Force in French North Africa. After the failure of the putsch, he became the deputy of
Raoul Salan in the
Organisation armée secrète. While Salan fled to Spain, Jouhaud remained out of loyalty to his birthplace. He had served as air force commander during France's war in Indochina and air force chief of staff in Algeria. He left the air force in 1960 and allied himself with French Army Gen. Raoul Salan, who shared his hatred for de Gaulle. Generals Maurice Challe and Andre Zeller joined them in a group that seized power in Algiers April 21, 1961, after de Gaulle agreed to negotiate on Algerian independence with National Liberation Front guerrillas. In Paris, the government handed out weapons in the streets and told citizens to be ready for an invasion of rebel troops from North Africa. But the coup fizzled in five days. Gen. Jouhaud went underground in the OAS—Organization Armee Secrete—which waged a campaign of killings and bombings in Algeria and mainland France, including several plots to kill de Gaulle. Jouhaud was captured in March 1962 and sentenced to death by a military court. He called for the remaining activists of OAS to end their
terrorist campaign, and, after a harrowing five-month period of uncertainty, his sentence was commuted by
Charles de Gaulle. He was rehabilitated by a law passed in 1982 under the presidency of
François Mitterrand. Jouhaud was one of the most decorated officers in the French military prior to participating in the putsch. ==Death==