In July 1955 the central committee of the P.C.A. decided to participate in the revolution, but under its own organisation. Stalemate. Then, in September, it found itself dissolved by the Gouvernement-Général. On 4 April 1956 a twenty-eight-year-old pied noir called Henri Maillot, who was a Communist and the son of a Communist, and who had been recalled to serve with the army as an officer cadet, left Miliana with a convoy of arms for Algiers, seventy-five miles to the north-east. Arriving in a wood just outside Algiers, Maillot dismissed the escort to get their breakfast, tied the driver of the arms truck to a tree, and drove off into the blue with a booty including over two hundred automatic weapons as well as a large quantity of grenades and ammunition. It was all too ridiculously easy.

XREF: Connects to histories of the Algerian War and how clandestine networks acquired weapons; also echoes how individual defections can tip the balance in conflict.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 424