In the motives and complicities behind it, the affaire du bazooka remains one of the most mysterious and shadowy episodes of the whole war. Colonel Godard, chief-of-staff to Massu in Algiers, who intensively questioned motives of the principals, himself admits: “I never understood why.” According to Pierre Vidal-Naquet, supported by Maître Teitgen, many of the records were mysteriously destroyed “on orders” after May 1958; though Teitgen himself managed to keep copies and Salan himself prints Kovacs’s testimony in full.

QUESTION: What exactly happened in the bazooka affair? The record destruction and multiple conflicting accounts leave a genuine historical mystery worth pursuing.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 542