De la Vigne, whose family name comes from his Huguenot heritage, grew up in the Sudetenland and spent his youth years playing for Deutschen Sportverein Böhmisch-Leipa, a club which, at that time, was based in nearby Nový Bor (which was annexed from Czechoslovakia in September 1938 as part of the Munich Agreement).
[1] He agreed to sign for Warnsdorfer FK, champions of the newly created Gauliga Sudetenland who had already qualified for the final round of the German Championship, for the 1938–39 season, but he could not prevent the club from losing their four preliminary group matches against Dresdner SC and Schweinfurt 05.
Following the outbreak of war in 1938, aged 18 or 19, de la Vigne was called up to the Wehrmacht and joined the Fallschirmjäger, however was captured in May 1940 and held captive in Rotterdam until the end of the Battle of France.
A return to the Czech Sudetenland was, for a German, undesirable, given the intense animosity as a result of the annexation of Czechoslovakia, and for de la Vigne was neither personally attractive as his family no longer lived there.
On paper, de la Vigne was a striker, but he operated more as a playmaker than a target man and was known for having good technique, and his playing style was described as having an "aesthetic" quality.