Possibly even worse than the tribulations of cold and hunger was the appalling suffering of the F.L.N. wounded. Unlike their well-equipped adversary, the maquisards had no helicopters with which to whisk casualties from the battlefield to a modern operating theatre in a matter of minutes. There were times when the F.L.N. wounded had to wait ten days or more before their wounds, by then probably gangrenous, could be tended. On one occasion in 1960 a young lieutenant of Si Salah's, Boualem Oussedik, despatched on an urgent liaison mission to Tunisia, was caught up in a ratissage on the way and had his knee shattered by a bullet. An F.L.N. doctor told him that, without proper surgery, he would lose the leg, but Boualem refused, taking with him a supply of antibiotics to tend his own wound. Bouncing about in agony astride a donkey and finally dragging his useless leg behind him under shellfire through the Morice Line, Boualem with extraordinary stoicism took six weeks to complete his journey. He survived, kept his leg, and together with another grand mutilé, Azedine, was to lead the last battles in Algiers. But many another wounded moudjahid succumbed to his wounds before he could receive treatment.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1226