In winter 1942–43, he read Joseph Kessel's epic adventure novel Fortune Carrée (1932), which changed his ambitions; he wanted to become a mariner and travel the world[4] In 1946, he spent his summer as a fisherman aboard a small fishing trawler in the Bourgneuf-en-Retz bay, near Pornic, Pays de la Loire (close to Brittany).

Schoendoerffer's first SCA production was a 9-minute short documentary First Indochina War Rushes (1952) that would surface thirty years later on screen in The Honor of a Captain.

In 1954, his friend and superior Sergeant-Chief Péraud asked him by telegram to join him at the battle of Dien Bien Phu and he dropped with the 5th Vietnamese Parachutist Battalion (5e BPVN aka 5e BAWOUAN).

This event was later depicted on screen by his own son, Frédéric, in Pierre Schoendoerffer's 1992 docudrama Dien Bien Phu recreating the battle.

In prison, his life was spared at the insistence of Roman Karmen, the Soviet war reporter who directed all the main sequences illustrating the battle, from the Viet Minh raising the Red flag over General de Castries's bunker staged a few weeks after the siege, to the French Union POWs column marching from Dien Bien Phu to the re-education camp (a crane was used for the shooting), that are featured in Вьетнам ("Vietnam", 1955).

During this time, Karmen had some friendly meetings with Schoendoerffer; they spoke about their job, and he revealed to the French prisoner that he had found his reels and had watched them.

On the battle's tenth anniversary, in Paris, Schoendoerffer was invited with Bigeard to comment on the Viet Minh footage, including segments from Vietnam, which were broadcast on the French public channel ORTF (Cinq colonnes à la une show) for the first time.

In April 1955 he left South Vietnam to return to France, stopping along the way in Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan, Hawaii and San Francisco.

Over dinner and a long "Kesselian" night with a lot of alcohol and even a little bit of opium, Schoendoerffer narrated his three-year adventure in Indochina to Kessel who was impressed.

In Hollywood Schoendoerffer became an apprentice on a movie for ten days, thanks to his connections with Life magazine, but without a Green Card he was eventually forced to leave.

Back in France, he signed his first important contract with Pathé Journal and two weeks later he flew to Morocco, where the French Algeria anti-colonial rebellion was being emulated.

Kessel wrote the script, Raoul Coutard, a First Indochina War photograph (SPI) veteran was in charge of the cinematography on his first film (later he would join Jean-Luc Godard), Jacques Dupont assisted Schoendoerffer with the direction and Georges de Beauregard produced it.

In 1959, Pierre Lazareff, founder of the newspaper France Soir (where Patricia Schoendoerffer and Joseph Kessel worked), asked him to direct a reportage about the Algerian War for his Cinq colonnes à la une (ORTF) TV show.

As a writer he won multiple festival, academy and military awards and prizes, including the Prix Vauban, in 1984, (celebrating his life achievement.)

Pierre Schoendoerffer was elected at the Académie des Beaux-Arts' Section VII: Artistic creation in the cinema and the audio-visual field, Seat#4, on 23 March 1988, replacing Guillaume Gillet.

Following his 1992 motion picture Dien Bien Phu, Schoendoerffer spent three years working on the screen adaptation of his favourite writer Joseph Conrad's Typhoon (1902).

[8] The script was ready and the filmmaker started location spotting for shooting but the producer didn't find enough money to cover the high production budget and so the project was eventually cancelled.

[8] Military photograph Jean Péraud was a "big brother" for him — he was three years younger — and "the most important person he met in Indochina" as well as an inspiring character model.