"[1] At the outbreak of World War II he was serving as a platoon commander leading a colonial unit in combat at Valvin and Sully-sur-Loire for which he would be awarded the Croix de Guerre.
[a] In 1947, Mus became the political advisor to Émile Bollaert, the new French High Commissioner of Indochina.
Mus had been authorised to offer Ho a ceasefire on three conditions: 1. the Viet Minh were to lay down their weapons, 2.
Ho refused the offer commenting "In the French Union there is no place for cowards, if I accepted these conditions I would be one.
"[6] Mus first met Ho Chi Minh in 1945 and recounted in his interview for the 1968 documentary film In the Year of the Pig that:[b] He later served as a professor at both the Collège de France and Yale University.