ELEVATED TO DIGNITY - Memoirs 1923–1954

"Elevated to Dignity…" is the story of a young man who comes of age in the mid-1940s.
His path is far from ordinary. Of very modest origins, Lucien Le Boudec had considered becoming a priest, a schoolteacher, a meteorologist, or even a civil engineer… The war decided otherwise.
To escape the STO, he joins the FFI and finds himself launched into a military career.
Promoted to NCO, he is offered the chance to sit the entrance exam for Coët. Accepted, he chooses the colonial armoured arm and, after a year in Saumur, joins the 1st demi-brigade of airborne commandos before embarking
for Indochina. His book recounts the discovery of the Far East, the fascination of its landscapes, the first experiences of combat, but also the daily routine, the flooded rice paddies, the grey mists
and the nights spent in the rain alongside his brothers-in-arms.
Volunteering for a second tour with the 6th BPC,
Lieutenant Le Boudec is posted in 1951 under
the orders of a certain Captain Bigeard.
At his side, he will be among those of Tu Lé, Lang Son and Castor. A captain at Dien Bien Phu, he will be wounded four times in fifty days and promoted to officer of the Légion d'Honneur on an exceptional basis. A prisoner at the fall of the entrenched camp, he will endure for four months the Viet camps and the marches that decimated two-thirds of their number.
Alternating operational accounts with letters from the period, the purpose of this book is not to analyse the strategic dimension of battles, nor to offer a political viewpoint on feats of arms that have already been the subject of abundant literature. General Le Boudec chooses instead to fulfil a duty of remembrance. Against forgetting, he is determined to bear witness to the spirit, the courage, the
solidarity and the selflessness of the young men of that
generation. Long hoped for, long awaited,
his book is a tribute to so many brothers-in-arms
killed or missing, whose memory, for want of
testimony, for want of accounts, would have sunk still further into oblivion.