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Helicopters whirled overhead, dropping tear-gas grenades to clear snipers from the roofs. When they failed, French pilots in four U.S.-made T-6 trainers made strafing runs on Bab-el-Oued buildings, and clouds of black smoke drifted skyward from a modernistic white apartment block. "It is brutal," said a French corporal, "but it's necessary to be brutal now." A former French paratrooper who, like many of his comrades, sympathized with the S.A.O., watched the wheeling planes in disbelief, then muttered, "It's against the pieds-noirs. Finally, it's war." On a street corner, a European woman clutched two long loaves of bread, wailed. ''They're killing our men!"
Smashed Doors. By week's end Bab-el-Oued subsided into stunned silence. Most of the Secret Army snipers had vanished, and French troops took over the rooftops, made house-to-house searches for weapons. In the past, such searches in European districts were well-behaved and perfunctory; now the angry French soldiers smashed down doors, ransacked cupboards and closets. The French army bitterly counted 16 soldiers dead and 91 wounded. The local Europeans had their casualties, too—an estimated 20 dead, 80 wounded. But it was their morale that had taken the heaviest blow, for the S.A.O. had always preached that the French army would never fire on Europeans, would, at least, show them "benevolent neutrality"
The army's tough reaction drained away S.A.O. strength. Some Secret Army fund raisers have already slipped away to Spain and Switzerland, taking the funds with them (in Oran, S.A.O. gunmen who last week robbed the Bank of Algeria of $4,250,000 might be similarly tempted). To many disheartened Europeans last week, all that seemed left was a desperate baroud d'honneur (hopeless rearguard action), because a battle to the death with the French army is one the S.A.O. cannot possibly win.