Ranking French military officer and colonial administrator sent to Indochina to restore French rule after World War II. Graduated at the top of his class at the Colonial Academy (École coloniale) in 1928 and the holder of a law degree from École nationale des langues orientales vivantes, Cédile was one of the “best and the brightest” of the French colonial administration. He was also a military man. He served as a reserve officer at Saint-Cyr in 1931 and was named second lieutenant in the 24ème Régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais stationed in France. Between 1932 and 1940, he worked in the French colonial administration of Cameroon. Mobilized in 1939, he joined Free French forces when General Philippe Leclerc arrived in Cameroon. Cédile commanded a company of colonial troops. In 1941 and 1942, he participated in the military campaigns in Libya and Tunisia as part of the Bataillon de marche no.5. His unit was present during the battle of El Alamein in October 1942. In July 1943, as a captain, he became cabinet director to René Pleven and served as chief of cabinet to the commissioner for the Colonies first in Algiers, then in Paris following the liberation of France. He then moved on to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) in March 1945 as the head of the French Military Mission in South East Asia, linked to the South-East Asia Command led by Lord Louis Mountbatten. Cédile closely studied British policy towards Burma; he was attached to the staff of British Brigadier Biggons, director of Civil Affairs for Burma. With the defeat of the Japanese, Cédile became commissioner for the French Republic in Cochinchina and Southern Annam. He served in this capacity from August 1945 to October 1946. On orders from Charles de Gaulle to oversee the restoration of French sovereignty to Indochina as rapidly as possible, Cédile parachuted into southern Vietnam on 24 August 1945, but was captured by the Vietnamese upon his landing and turned over, stripped naked, to the Japanese. Released, Cédile contacted Vietnamese nationalists such as Tran Van Giau to discuss the 24 March Declaration on Indochina though he did not inform his Vietnamese interlocutors that he was in charge of re-establishing French colonial control over Saigon and Cochinchina as a representative of the Provisional Government of the French Republic. With the arrival of British forces in September, Cédile collaborated closely with General Douglas Gracey, who allowed Cédile to engineer a coup de force on 23 September 1945. Thanks to Foreign Legion troops liberated from Japanese internment, the French were able to push the Viet Minh out of Saigon in a chaotic frenzy that effectively initiated hostilities between the French and the Vietnamese below the 16th parallel. Cédile was a supporter of Cochinchinese separatism and served as advisor to the new High Commissioner Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu. Cédile left Indochina in 1947 with the rank of major. In Paris, between 1947 and 1948, he served as director of the Agence de l’Indochine before resuming his colonial career in Africa. A decorated officer and colonial administrator, he was elected in 1976 a member of the Académie des Sciences d’Outre-mer filling the chair left vacant by Léon Pignon.