Challe, of all the rebel officers perhaps the one most commanding sympathy, was released in 1966 after serving five years of his fifteen years' sentence, amnestied in 1968 with the rest, and stricken with cancer of the throat. Against all odds he survived, and ran a freight company from a small office near the Gare St Lazare, surrounded by devoted and caring secretaries. Behind his desk hung an ancient map of the Barbary Coast. He would still speak passionately of France's betrayal of the "loyal" Algerians, believed that the war could have been won, and that Europe lost her great opportunity to create a "bridge" to Africa through Algeria. Deeply pessimistic, he felt that "Europe now is finished".

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1669