In a towering rage, the French Commander-in-Chief, General Ailleret, now ordered a full-scale assault on the O.A.S. stronghold of Bab-el-Oued. … It was a scene more familiar to an army coup in Bolivia than anything ever experienced on French territory. For three days the “reduction” of Bab-el-Oued continued, and at the end of it the bullet-riddled walls, shattered windows, gutted cars in the streets and dangling trolley-bus cables resembled scenes from Budapest of 1956 — which, right from the beginning, Roger Degueldre had told Captain Sergent was what he wanted to create in Algiers.

FICTION: The image of besieged civilians smuggled bread by schoolchildren caught between two armed forces is a potent historical-realistic scene for narrative fiction.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1602