FULL MEDAL JACKET

Marcel “Bruno” Bigeard was among the greatest soldiers of the 20th century. A legendary paratroop commander in Vietnam and Algeria, he had joined the French army as a peacetime enlistee in 1936. Without benefit of military training at either Brittany’s vaunted Saint-Cyr or the École de guerre in Paris, Bigeard had worked his way up through the ranks. By the time he retired in 1976 as a general de corps d’armée (lieutenant general), he had received more than two-dozen honors from the French government, including the Grand-croix of the Legion d’honneur—the highest grade of his nation’s highest order—seven Croix de guerre for World War II, 17 Croix de guerre for post-1945 overseas operations and five wound medals (the equivalent of the Purple Heart). He also was made a Commander of the Legion of Merit by the United States, received the Distinguished Service Order from Britain and was awarded nine other orders and high decorations from various foreign governments. “I do not accept the medals anymore,” the general reportedly quipped later in life, “because they are starting to fall on my shoes.”

Bigeard was the model for Col. Pierre-Noël Raspéguy, the heroic central character in French writer Jean Lartéguy’s Algerian War novels and , a paratroop commander later portrayed by Anthony Quinn in , the 1966 film based on. The real-life French paratrooper’s personal motto was —If it’s possible, it’s done; if it’s impossible, it will be done.