At the age of 18 Rachet enlisted in the army after his father's suicide. Upon his return, and being stripped of his inheritance due to family disputes, he began to work at whatever he could find until he got a job at the U.S. embassy in Paris. In the early 1960s, Rachet, who had no formal qualifications, used the knowledge he had acquired over 20 years to approach a number of archaeological luminaries such as
Abbé Breuil, and even to direct the archaeological excavations at the Gallo-Roman villa of La Pépinière2 near
Villiers-le-Duc (Côte-d'Or). There, he met a budding 17-year-old archaeologist, Marie-Françoise, and fell in love with her. The couple married a few months later, in 1961, and together they had eight children. The couple wrote several specialized works, such as ''L'Archéologie de la Grèce préhistorique
and Le Dictionnaire de la Civilisation grecque'', which were published by Marabout and Larousse. Until the early 1980s, the couple and their children lived frugally on the little money they earned from their scientific books, managing to make very long journeys by van to all the countries of the Mediterranean, and in particular to the Middle East, where Guy Rachet met the famous archaeologist
André Parrot at the site of Mari, in Syria. == Success and recognition ==