The Blue Hussar

At 20, in 1945, Nimier joined the French 2nd Hussar Regiment and wound up in Germany at war's end. Five years later, in The Blue Hussar, he described French troops in action. Two hussars, Sanders and Saint-Anne, finally surrender unconditionally to a handsome, sensual girl named Rita. Sanders had met her in what was then a conventional way: he raped her. Sanders becomes author Nimier's prototype of the fundamentally good Frenchman gone wrong.