Challe himself admits that, at first, they were “disappointing”. Mohand Ou El-Hadj had reacted swiftly by splitting up his katibas into small packets of ten to twenty men that went to ground in caves, or escaped through the teeth of the army comb. But “little by little the regiments saw the population come to us and give us their confidence”. By late October when the autumn rains brought an end to “Binoculars”, the French announced that 3,746 Kabyle insurgents had been killed, captured or wounded, and their military structure fragmented, while the F.L.N. itself admitted to extremely heavy losses.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1017