Rare book, out of print.
The author, a British volunteer joining to fight Communism, got little chance to, spent his two years in Indochina, 1951-1953, mostly doing office work, once blown up by a mine on the weekly beer run. "I hadn't joined the Legion to spend my life behind a desk; I had fondly imagined that the Indochinese war was an all-out effort to protect an innocent people against the unwelcome attentions of the communists. I had even imagined that equity and justice were amongst the principal objectives. Not even in my wildest dreams had I realized that I was to become part of a mercenary army deliberately trained to devastate. The men of the foreign Legion were first-class soldiers, but they had nothing to do with a mission of pacification and political re-education." The same could be said of the U.S. Army later. He missed the chance "to die" invalided out before Dien Bien Phu.