Bernard de Lattre received several medals during his military career, including the Médaille militaire.

His father fought in the army during the invasion, later commanding forces in the "free zone" in Montpellier and Tunisia, but he was arrested for resisting the German military occupation of Vichy France in November 1942, and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

[3] Following the war, Bernard de Lattre studied at the French military school (the EMIA) from August 1945, training in the armoured cavalry section.

[4] Bernard de Lattre served in the French army during the First Indochina War, embarking at Marseille on 1 July 1949.

He had died obeying his father's orders to hold the town at all costs; this stubbornly fought battle is credited with halting Vietminh General Giap's advance on the Red River Delta at that time.

[5] The citation for his actions concluded: He fell heroically, giving an example of the finest military virtues.Following his son's death, his father arranged for a Catholic mass to be held in the cathedral in Hanoi.

[6] Two days after the battle, Bernard de Lattre's body was flown home to France, accompanied by his father, and the young soldier was buried with military honours.

[13] One of the lasting memorials to Bernard de Lattre is a small open-air chapel in the commune of Wildenstein, in the Haut-Rhin département in Alsace in north-eastern France.

The chapel later fell into disrepair, but was renovated and reinaugurated during a service on 20 August 2004, the day dedicated to Saint Bernard of Clairvaux.

[18] Historians and other authors writing about the First Indochina War have commented on the symbolism of Bernard de Lattre's death.

In Soldats perdus: de l'Indochine à l'Algérie, dans la tourmente des guerres (2007), French journalist and author Hélène Erlingsen says that Bernard de Lattre's death was symbolic "of the modern world devastated by war" and that his life was "representative of our time".

[19] Bernard de Lattre's death has been placed in context in relation to other deaths in this war, with Brian Moynahan, in the 2007 work The French century: an illustrated history of modern France, noting that "in all 21 sons of French marshals and generals died in Indochina".