Selecting, symbolically, the All Saints anniversary of 1 November, a full-scale offensive had been mounted to breach the Morice Line and get supplies through to the suffering Wilayas 1 and 2. It was too obvious a date for the French army to be caught napping, and—like so many of those disastrous “big pushes” on the Western Front of 1914–18—it ended in a welter of blood and total failure in the barbed wire of the Morice Line. Morale among those involved hit rock bottom and four colonels, led by Colonel Lamouri, decided to act. With secret support, apparently, from Nasser (whose relations with the new G.P.R.A. were icy) they intended to march on Tunis, chuck out the G.P.R.A. and liquidate the “three Bs”, replacing it with a completely “military” regime.

QUESTION: This obscure military coup plot involving the GPRA and Nasser's chilly relations is a fascinating thread worth pulling. What became of the four colonels and Lamouri?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 988