Word: indo
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...Communist barbarians, the Slavic hordes. What would be curious anywhere but in France, militarists had been among the most vociferous appeasers prior to the War, precisely because they feared a German defeat would unleash the Communist revolution all over Europe. And the Army conceives of its fight in Indo-China and Algeria, the subject of The Centurions, as a continuation of the struggle against Marxist in humanism begun passively in the late...
...novel is a tract, written expressly to sell the author's ideas on the role of the army. As a novel, it hardly exists. Although the cover calls it "the sensational bestselling French novel about their paratroops in Indo-China and Algeria," it only describes Indo-China after the defeat at Dien-Bien-Phu, and deals with the Algerian campaign in a curious (and not very exciting) fashion, as though the French army there were Larteguy's model army...
...went to the front, was wounded in action, won the Croix de guerre. After the war, he was sent to the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon just in time to be plunged into fighting against the Djebel Druse tribesmen and be wounded again. Next, he served in French Indo-China as administrator of a corner of jungle near the borders of China, Burma and Laos. In the solitude of his post. Salan dabbled in Oriental philosophy and astrology, is said to have experimented with opium. These predilections won him the nickname of "the Mandarin." Like many French officers...
After the war, as deputy to De Lattre, Salan went back to his old colonial paradise of Indo-China, which was now threatened by nationalist rebels under Communist Ho Chi Minh. The struggle against the Communists proved a nightmare that dragged on for years and pitted swift guerrillas against a ponderous French army fighting a classic war with tanks, planes and heavy artillery. It was like trying to swat mosquitoes with a sledge hammer...
When De Lattre died, in 1952, Salan succeeded him. He did no better and no worse than those before and after him. In 1954, covered with praise and new medals, Salan returned to Paris, and another ill-starred general took over the hopeless Indo-China...