On Thursday the 27th twelve hundred "green berets" of the 1st R.E.P. pulled out forever from their base at Zéralda, en route for disgrace and disbandment. Before they went they had dynamited their barracks and fired off in the air all their remaining ammunition. Little was left behind but the gravestones — many of them bearing German-sounding names — of the more than 300 men the regiment had lost in the six years of campaigning against the F.L.N. As the Legionnaires drove off in their transports they bellowed out in a full-bodied roar the plaintive but brave words of Edith Piaf's "Je ne regrette rien". Watching them go, pieds noirs lining the route wept hopelessly. The revolt of the Centurions against de Gaulle was well and truly finished.

FICTION: A poignant scene of a disbanded elite unit destroying its own base and singing Piaf as they leave could inspire a story about a defiant, doomed regiment's farewell.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1394