FOR the past three years, the second home of TIME Paris correspondent Edward Behr has been Algeria, which he has visited 45 times while logging a total of 14 months on the spot covering the Algerian war. He has patrolled with French paratroopers in the rugged Kabylia mountains, has crossed and recrossed the Sahara by Jeep, truck and light plane, turning up at times in spots so remote that they had never been seen before by anyone but nomads and the French camel corps. An Englishman who grew up in Paris speaking accentless French (he was a major in the British army during World War II), Behr became well-acquainted with the secretive rebel leaders who run the war from Tunis, and with their enemies, the white settlers in Algeria. He and TIME Photographer Pierre Boulat were the only newsmen behind the barricades with the French ultras in the streets of Algiers when the settlers' revolt ended in February 1960.

Recently, again in Boulat's company, he spent hardy weeks in Algeria, crossing desert tracks so rough that their station wagon had 29 punctures; they also hippety-hopped over the countryside in a rented plane. The result of their travels is the eight pages of Boulat's color pictures of Algeria in this week's TIME. When Behr had finished filing a story to accompany the pictures of this harshly beautiful land, he had to rush back to Algeria. The rebellious army generals had made it front page news again.

THE Cuban invasion, so baffling in every way, set some kind of journalistic record for coverage and noncoverage. Rarely have supposedly secret preparations gotten so much advance public notice. Then when the pathetically unprepared force stormed ashore, there were no correspondents along; much of the news of the fighting had to be put together from such faraway places as Miami and Guatemala. TIME's Havana correspondent, like the other U.S. newsmen in the Cuban capital, could file nothing: some reporters were rounded up by Castro's security agents; TIME's man found temporary haven in an embassy.

But the essential story of the anti-Castro forces, who they were and how they felt, has long been a subject close to the heart of Contributing Editor Sam Halper, a member of TIME's staff since 1950. Before Fidel Castro came to power, Halper spent three days with him in his eastern Sierra Maestra hideout in April 1958 and there first began to suspect the ultimate direction of this romantic-seeming revolutionary, so quick to execute those he disagreed with. He described Castro then as "democrat by philosophy, autocrat by personality." In recent months so many Cuban exiles have stopped by to see Halper in Manhattan that "they said I ran the Cuban underground railroad in New York." Shuttling between Miami and New York last week he spent many hours with Miro Cardona (the man on this week's cover) and other exile leaders, seeing how little they were consulted about what happened, the general lack of readiness, the confusion and the catastrophic end. Watching them bear up under disaster, Halper became more convinced than ever that "they are quite an extraordinary bunch of people."

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