[5] During the Indochina War in the late 1940s, Lieutenant Perrin is in charge of a small battalion of French troops at a remote outpost in Vietnam.

The soldiers are glad of the peace but boredom soon sets in amid expectations of an impending assault.

One night, the Vietnamese insurrectionists converge on the garrison and launch a fierce, all-out attack.

Such are the scale and ferocity of the onslaught that Perrin and his men are caught completely off-guard and can only put up a token resistance.

The French soldiers are vastly out-numbered by their Viet Minh attackers, and the grim outcome is all too certain.