The sense of involvement in Algeria was profound. At its less idealistic level, to some of the regulars, as Colonel François Coulet noted, the war "was their raison d'être; they feared seeing it end one day". It meant professional security and promotion. On the other hand, there was a deep undercurrent of fairly noble-minded reformism, of genuinely wanting to do something about the economic plight of the Algerians, of wanting to save the country from the maw of Communism. Grafted on to it there was now a new sense of destiny that—in the face of the total debility of the civil regime in France—the army alone could influence and ordain matters in Algeria.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 825