With such an outlay in expenditure and effectives, the integrity of the Morice Line became the top military priority for the French during the winter of 1957–8. Its breaching had equally become the supreme objective for the F.L.N.; there were now some ten thousand A.L.N. troops, armed or in training, concentrated in the frontier zone, and the weapons beginning to flow into Tunisia from all over the world had totalled, over the three winter months, 17,000 rifles, 380 machine-guns, 296 automatic rifles, 190 bazookas, thirty mortars and over 100 million rounds of ammunition. Meanwhile, the Wilayas were asphyxiating for want of reinforcements.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 815