Back from your little excursion, it seems.

From a quick Google, this Wiki, Devil's Guard, and this blog page, class the book as fiction. Interesting read, anyway. I expect there were as many or more TdMs (Colonialement ) as Germans in Indochina I. GM 100 had (IIRC) two TdM units.

Wiki/Waps for Indochine and Dien Bien Phu. The latter by Pierre Schoendoerffer (an Alsatian, not a German), who earlier (1967) made the Oscar-winning documentary, La Section Anderson (The Anderson Platoon). The platoon leader, Joseph B. Anderson, seems to have done very well for himself in later civilian life.

sommeil

Mike