At a top-level conference convened by Vaujour at Constantine on 29 October, just two days before All Saints, one French colonel, when told that a hundred armed fellagha had been spotted in the Aurès exclaimed contemptuously: “Monsieur le Préfet, I’ve been patrolling the roads for a very long time, and I’ve never yet seen a fellagha in front of my jeep!” It was not likely that he would have done; Ben Boulaid’s men were hardly moving along the highways.

QUESTION: How substantially did this official complacency delay the French response to the November 1954 uprising?

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 260