France's Last Gasp in Indochina

Marcel Bigeard, who died on June 18 at the age of 94, was a paragon of a new type of professional warrior that arose during the Cold War. For while the United States and the Soviet Union (and their many allies) built large-scale militaries for an eventual hot war, what came instead were proxy wars in places like Vietnam and the Congo. These did not require the technology-laden and discipline-heavy units prepared to fight in the Fulda Gap, but instead small, mobile units of soldiers dedicated to an intense operational tempo. And they required resourceful officers, able to adapt the methods of guerrillas and willing to lead by example. Bigeard, who rose from the ranks to four-star general, was such a soldier: emphasizing physical fitness and endurance, preferring to live rough with his men, and a master of the topography of battlegrounds. He refused to carry a weapon into combat, feeling his job was to lead not to fight. (In the U.S. Army, men like Charlie Beckwith, the founder of Delta Force, and Richard Meadows, leader of the Son Tay Raiders, had similar careers and maintain similar legends.)