The start of this book takes place in 1953; in the mountains of Czechoslovakia with a battalion of 900 German soldiers led by Hans Josef Wagemueller are facing defeat to the soviets. Rather than being captured by the soviets the Germans escape to the Swiss boarder and view the result of numerous un-thinkable events committed by the soviets along the way. After escaping, these ex-nazi soldiers join the French legion and head to Indochina and begin fighting in the French colonial war. After moving to Indochina where the legion is facing the Viet Minh the ex-nazis are formed into an all-German “Battalion of the Dammed” later renamed to “The Devils Guard” which is described to be a whole group of soldiers who have nothing left to lose. Which I would believe as being one of the most …show more content…
With this experience in this type of warfare the German soldiers considered everyone an enemy, even when they are in French controlled areas. This is because they knew that the peasants in the rice patties were just as likely to attack or report their position to the Viet Minh so these guys never let their guard down like the other French legion soldiers would. This book described a lot of the futilities in fighting a war like this, in the book there were plenty of people thought to be civilians, such as children or elderly people that were fighting against the legion. While reading these parts of the book I pictured pieces from the movie Black Hawk Down, where the US soldiers would kill one Somalian soldier and another person would come pick up his weapon and continue the fighting. This type of war is nearly un winnable, as long as the natives want to fight back, what can the legion do, they cannot just leave them, but they also could not just exterminate the entire