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In the collective memory, the Indochina War tends all too often to be summed up by the defeat at Dien Bien Phu, on May 8, 1954, and the heroism of the soldiers involved. This representation of heroic soldiers was communicated by the first witnesses, beginning with the great military leaders. The hero-soldier figure leaves little room for the expression of suffering: a true soldier accepts his fate as all in the day’s work, sacrificing himself to a higher cause. This representation found its ultimate expression in the work of cinematographer Pierre Schoendoerffer. A new figure, however, was superimposed on this in the early 1990s. It may have originated from the community of former French prisoners of war in Indochina, who came to public attention through the Boudarel affair (a French academic accused of torturing French prisoners for the Viet Minh during the Indochina War). Their accounts progressively illustrated what could be understood as a “humanized soldier”.