 Nothing was planned for their move to France, and many had to sleep in streets or abandoned farms on their arrival.A minority of departing "pieds-noirs", including soldiers, destroyed their possessions before departure, to protest and as a desperate symbolic attempt to leave no trace of over a century of European presence, but the vast majority of their goods and houses were left intact and abandoned.A large number of panicked people camped for weeks on the docks of Algerian harbors, waiting for a space on a boat to France.