The characters are based on real life officers of the French paratroop regiment. Larteguy's Colonel Raspeguy is modeled after Col. Bigeard and Col. Ducourneau, two regimental commanders who epitomized unconventional warfare in Indochina and Algeria. Larteguy wrote that "Captain Esclavier is based on Captain Barres, grandson of the writer, veteran of Korea, killed in Tunisia and a few other people I'd met and glimpsed." One of these, was probably a Foreign Legion officer named Major Saint Marc who fought in the resistance, was captured by the Gestapo and tortured in Buchenwald and who had a Vietnamese woman killed by the communists, just like the Esclavier character.
Larteguy wrote, "Captain Glatigny was inspired by Captain Pierre Fresnay in La Grande Illusion, but recast in the modern style, confronted by the problems of revolutionary war- as well as by Jean Pouget and a few others." Also that, "I invented the character of Captain Boisferuas. I wanted him to be the extreme spokesman for my ideas, someone who would go directly to the heart of things and who would be lost because of his logical mind. It was with this entirely imaginary character that most officers would later identify." However, Boisferuas can certainly be seen as having been modeled after Col. Trinquier who led guerrilla teams behind Vietnamese lines and Captain Aussaress who was the SDECE (French Intelligence) officer in charge during the Battle of Algiers.
Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:
"Have you noticed that in military
history no regular army has ever been able to deal with a properly organized
guerrilla force? If we use the regular army in Algeria, it can only end
in failure. I'd like France to have two armies: one for display, with
lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and
doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply
concerned over their general's bowel movements or their colonel's piles:
an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the
country.
The other would be the real one, composed
entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not
be put on display but from whom impossible efforts would be demanded and
to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That's the army in which
I should like to fight."
"We no longer wage the same war as you, colonel. Nowadays it's a mixture of everything, a regular witches' brew… of politics and sentiment, the human soul and a man's ass, religion and the best way of cultivating rice, yes, everything, including even the breeding of black pigs. I knew an officer in Cochin-China who, by breeding black pigs, completely restored a situation which all of us regarded as lost."
"My father used to say that in love one must stake one's soul on it the same way as one stakes one's life in war, and if he had known about the war we're fighting now, he would have added: one's honor."
"The Templars discovered the power
of money at a time when money was despised, and in Syria the sect of the
Assassins had taught them the power of a dagger wielded by a fanatic,
in other words terrorism. They were ready for the conquest of the world."
"The ancestors of the Communists?"
"Perhaps. But the Templars were burnt
on the stakes of Phillippe le Bel just as the Communists were shot through
the head by Stalin's henchmen."
"We had too many arms, too much money. With the money we bought up a lot pf puppets, while we let the Vietminh take the arms. We had no valid reason for fighting, apart from preventing the Communists from fanning out into South-East Asia. To succeed in this aim, we needed the support of the Vietnamese people. But how could they give us their support since, at the very outset, we denied them their independence?"
"For a prisoner, everything is justified," Esclavier had declared, "stealing, lying… From the moment they deprive him of his freedom he is given every right."
"I make war as best I can. If I were in the position of the French, I wouldn't need bombs, but I've no other means at my disposal. What difference do you see in the pilot who drops cans of napalm on a mechta from the safety of his aircraft and a terrorist who places a bomb in the Coq Hardi? The terrorist requires far more courage."
"In Indochina we experienced the solitude of mercenaries; we felt like outcasts from the nation. We don't want any more of that situation. We've got to create a popular army, thanks to which we will find ourselves in communion with the people. That's why those who've been called up, the reservists like you, are much more important to us than the volunteers who, by the very fact of enlisting, have performed more or less the act of a mercenary."
"He was like a bullfighter being asked by ignorant strangers, who did not number one genuine aficionado among them, to describe his fight just after it is over, when he has not yet got rid of his fear, when he still feels closer to the animal he has killed in the sunshine of arena than to these people scrutinizing him with a strange gleam in their eyes as though he was a murderer."
"All warfare is bound to become political,
colonel, and an officer with no political training will soon prove ineffective.
Frequently the word 'tradition' only serves to conceal our laziness."