In the latter part of the Second World War it was customary in the French army to vaunt the ferocity of "their" Algerian Tirailleurs against the Germans, much as the British took pride in the deeds performed by the Gurkhas with their terrible kukris. But when one's own comrades became the victims… well, that was different. In his Lieutenant en Algérie Servan-Schreiber notes how soldiers in Algeria accustomed themselves never to say "'Watch out, you're going to get yourself killed,' but one repeats several times a day, 'Make a mistake, and you have your balls cut off."' It was what the French soldier expected, and he reacted accordingly.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 516