A Pied Noir communist defector stole a truckload of arms to join the resistance

Evidence

In July 1955 the central committee of the P.C.A. decided to participate in the revolution, but under its own organisation. Stalemate. Then, in September, it found itself dissolved by the Gouvernement-Général. On 4 April 1956 a twenty-eight-year-old pied noir called Henri Maillot, who was a Communist and the son of a Communist, and who had been recalled to serve with the army as an officer cadet, left Miliana with a convoy of arms for Algiers, seventy-five miles to the north-east. Arriving in a wood just outside Algiers, Maillot dismissed the escort to get their breakfast, tied the driver of the arms truck to a tree, and drove off into the blue with a booty including over two hundred automatic weapons as well as a large quantity of grenades and ammunition. It was all too ridiculously easy. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 424

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A Communist ex-member risked his life to formally break with the Party — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 527