The Insurgent Counter-Insurgent: The French Army’s Hero and Some Truths About Modern Warfare -...

"In Indochina, French officers like Saint Marc also learned the pain associated with another danger — this time to their honor. The kind of war they fought, as Saint Marc described in his Memoire, required that they form intense relationships with locals and make promises to them. Leaving them behind to certain massacre was, in Saint Marc’s eyes, more than just defeat; it was a stain on his and the French Army’s honor. They had betrayed the men and women who had trusted them and who, as he put it bluntly, died because of them.

Saint Marc and other Indochina veterans went straight to Algeria determined and convinced they could win, provided they had the right kind of political commitment behind them. They had reason for optimism. Most essentially, Algeria was not a distant colony like Indochina but part of France, just as Texas is part of the United States. Also, Algeria’s status meant that, unlike in Indochina, the larger conscription-based French military would now come into play. This war would not be carried by France’s professional “colonial” troops but instead by the country’s entire military."