On May 13th and 14th, last week, the French Secretary of State for Defence and Veterans, Jean-Marie Bockel, visited Algiers, to discuss the pensions of the Algerian veterans who fought for France during the Second World War. On Thursday, he awarded seven Algerian veterans a military medal in recognition of their contribution to the war effort and inaugurated a ‘Maison des Combattants’ (the French equivalent of a Royal British Legion Club) at the French embassy in Algiers. The centre is designed to provide medical and administrative assistance to almost 40,000 surviving Algerian veterans, who fought on the French side and participated in the Italian campaign from 1943 onwards, and the invasion of Provence, in August 1944.