This book does not pretend to be historical research. There is nothing about politics, power, strategy, influence, national interest or foreign policy. She does not bring charges against those prominent figures who led us to Indochina, and whose mistakes were paid for with the blood of the most ordinary people. In general terms, this is simply a book about war, what people do in war, and what war does to them. In a narrower sense, this is a soldier’s story about the longest military conflict with our participation, the only one we lost, and, first of all, my memories of that long and sometimes unpleasant period of my life.