Small and nervy, a superb horseman and polytechnicien, Argoud at forty-two had been the youngest colonel in the service when singled out to be on his staff by Marshal de Lattre, the Inspector-General of the army. He was also regarded by many as being the army’s finest intellect, one of its foremost strategic thinkers, and if there was a general criticism among his peers of this secretive, ascetic and fanatical personality, it would have been that he was “too clever by half”.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 1079