The theme is familiar from other fictional depictions of colonial wars (such as the film Zulu, based on the actual Battle of Rorke's Drift), as well as from Westerns. Though the song is set in the Sahara, Asso was likely influenced by the Battle of Camarón (1867), during the failed French attempt to prop up the regime of the Emperor Maximilian in Mexico - a major founding myth familiar to anyone who served in the Legion. At Camerone, as in Asso's song, there were only three survivors (though there, their lives were spared through their opponents' generosity).