Word: strongpoints
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...would have preferred reinforcements to a priest. The French are corroded by defeatism, many of the soldiers are themselves Communists, the colonial troops are unreliable. In this atmosphere, Chaplain Roget's spirit is badly battered. Fear paralyzes him in the midst of a vicious battle for a strongpoint. When Roget lets his driver die without trying to save him, and fails even to comfort the dying, the colonel's contempt becomes withering. Then, piled onto his knowledge of his own unworthiness, Roget is forced to admit to himself that he is tempted by the nymphomaniac wife...
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, saw the Roman Empire falling about him. A few months after he died (430 A.D.), the invading Vandals took Hippo, then a major North African strongpoint. In the ages that followed, the great cities of man crumbled, but their citizens found a spiritual home in Saint Augustine's City of God. To this day, Christian churches of all denominations draw upon the theological system that Augustine tirelessly nailed down before the storm broke. Yet the 20th century is haunted by a question: Is Christian civilization going the way of the Roman Empire? Perhaps, say prophets...
...must be convinced that with his help they would find the "New Jerusalem" in France-despite his convictions, expressed in another letter, that they were "the most despicable race in the world." The same "practical" approach appeared in his fondness for fabricated "accidents," e.g., the destruction of an enemy strongpoint during a ceasefire period. "You can say if you like," he told the marshal who was to do the dirty work, "that a magazine blew up, or that the explosion was due to powder stored in the cellars...
...battle citations and the mystique of a great tradition: "The Legion is Our Country." Many times the Legion had fought for honor in a losing cause, for Gambetta at Orleans, for Maximilian in Mexico. Now there were 1,500 Legionnaires in Indo-China ready to die for Strongpoint Isabelle. They were commanded by Colonel André Lalande from St. Cyr Military Academy, veteran of Narvik, El Alamein, Italy and the Vosges. Lalande was a tough customer: his Legionnaires called him "baroudeur," a brawler. Lalande did not wait for the Communists to come...
Failure in Battle. At 2100 hours there was a muffled stirring within the enemy lines. Mortars opened up, thump and rustle, against six French strongpoints. Communist 1055 and 755 put down harassing fire-nothing more-upon the isolated strongpoint of Isabelle, three miles to the south. At 2 200, high explosives cracked sharply from the edge of the French barbed wire. Then four Red regiments drove in relentlessly. They achieved tactical surprise...