It's easy to miss, but Char was literally kicked out of the military for letting Garma get killed. At the time, he was serving under Dozle, who was in charge of Zeon's Space invasion force. Dozle, who took the loss the hardest was so pissed off by Garma's death that he discharged Char for not doing enough to save Garma. Bare in mind that none of the Zabis, except maybe Kycilia who later calls him out on it, suspect that Char actually set up Garma. If they had, he'd probably have been executed.
Kycilia, who understood the value of having an ace pilot like Char, then took him under her wing secretly. Kycilia was in charge of Zeon's Earth Invasion forces. It is during this time that Char was sent to and Indian brothel to check out a potential Newtype Zeon HQ had heard rumors of. That Newtype was Lalah, whom he escorted to the Flanigan Institute. For a time gave up his quest for revenge against the Zabis. If Char himself is to be believed, it's partially because after Garma's death he wasn't feeling too good about the whole thing. He genuinely liked Garma. But of course, meeting Lalah also had a pretty profounced impact on him.
There is a really nice image of Lalah being picked up from brothel. It's from some old One Year War artbook I can't remember the name of. I'll try and find it.
