 Following his graduation as an officer, he took up various overseas postings in the Portuguese Overseas Empire.In the 1960s Lemos Pires was posted to Algeria (then a French colony), where he studied French military counter-guerrilla techniques.After Algeria he was posted as part of the 114th Battalion to Portuguese Angola, which was in the midst of a conflict for independence, and where he took part in the early stages of the early colonial war.