Although the discipline was tougher, in the free and easy atmosphere and relaxation of the old caste system within them the para formations as a whole exemplified post-1945 trends throughout the French army. While seventy-two per cent of all serving colonels were still St Cyriens, the percentage fell to twenty-five per cent among captains and twenty-three per cent for lieutenants. Few officers had come from the Polytechnique or any of the socially "smart" schools. The result was that the army had become a much more democratic, more representative, force than it had been for many a year. As J.-R. Tournoux remarked, "It is no longer the army of the Dreyfus Affair, of the blue line of the Vosges, of the charge in white gloves. It is an army of Valmy." In one respect, however, the development of the para regiments was to become distinctly atavistic. Tournoux adds pointedly: "certain colonels gladly regarded themselves as proprietors of their regiments, as under the monarchy". The trend towards "private armies" among the paras undoubtedly carried with it at least two pronounced disadvantages; because of this elitism, morale in the more humdrum units of the army tended to suffer correspondingly; and, when the two big challenges of military versus civil authority came, the colonels of Algeria were to prove too powerful by half.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 511