Roger Trinquier - Early Life

Early Life

Roger Trinquier was born on 20 March 1908 in La Beaume, a small village in the Hautes-Alpes department, to a peasant family. He studied at a one-room village school in his home village until 1920, when he entered the Ecole Normale of Aix-en-Provence. He graduated in 1928 at twenty and was called up for 2 years' compulsory military service, being sent to the French Army’s reserve officers’ school, where unlike most of his classmates he became interested in the military.

When Trinquiers two years of compulsory military service came to an end, he decided to remain in the army and was transferred to the active officers’ school of Saint-Maixent, from which he graduated in 1933 as a second lieutenant. He now joined the colonial infantry. After some time with the 4th Senegalese Tirailleur Regiment at Toulon, he embarked on a ship bound for Indochina on 11 May 1934. He was first stationed at Kylua, near Lang Son, in Tonkin (Northern Vietnam). He then took command of a French outpost at Chi Ma on the Chinese border. Trinquier returned to France in 1936 and was assigned to the 41st Colonial Infantry Machine-gun Regiment (41e Régiment de Mitrailleurs d’Infanterie Coloniale, 41e RMIC) at Sarralbe, where he commanded a company until he was sent to China in early August 1938.

He served in the French concessions in China, first in Tianjin, then Beijing and finally Shanghai in January 1940, while stationed there he also learned Chinese. Promoted to captain he commanded a company of the French military detachment there until 3 January 1946 under circumstance that had until 1945 become increasingly difficult with the gradual establishment of Japanese administration and troops in China.