If the pied noir loved France, it was with a love that sought constant reassurance: "The French of Algeria would like to be reassured that…" was a theme frequently to be found in Press editorials. For his part, he felt that he had well deserved France's love through his sacrifices in two world wars. "Where is our promised land?" one of the rebel generals of 1961, Edmond Jouhaud, was to demand: "I think we have paid for the right to be French, by the blood that we shed from 1914 to 1918 and from 1939 to 1945." It was an argument with which Britons were made familiar early in the Rhodesian crisis.

XREF: Parallels the Rhodesian crisis rhetoric where white settlers claimed loyalty through wartime service — a recurring pattern across European colonial retreats. QUESTION: How did the claim of wartime blood sacrifice fail to translate into political standing for pieds noirs? Worth exploring.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 158