But the fact that in the army torture was by no means institutionalised yet seems to be implicit in Servan-Schreiber’s Lieutenant en Algérie (1957), which, highly critical as it is of French army excesses, omits any specific reference to torture as such. By way of explaining the essential atmosphere in which torture could become institutionalised within the French army in Algeria, one needs to take into account all those factors touched upon in the previous chapters: horror at the atrocities of the F.L.N., a determination not to lose yet another campaign, and the generally brutalising effect of so cruel and protracted a war. Noting the growing indifference to the “enemy” as a human being, such a tough para commander as Colonel François Coulet himself admits that the army had come to regard a prisoner as “no longer an Arab peasant” but simply “a source of intelligence”.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 587