 Carion's youth was spent in his parent's farm fields, where he was constantly reminded of World War I as the family often found dangerous, unexploded shells left over from the conflicts in the fields.He had also heard of the stories in which French soldiers would leave their trenches at night to meet with their wives in the surrounding German-occupied towns and return to fight the next morning.After passing his baccalauréat, he joined an engineering school affiliated to the French ministry of agriculture.