54 years ago, Dien Bien Phu

[Edmond]

they fought until the last cartridge and the last hand grenade had been used in a last counter attack.
There was no white flag.

http://www.dienbienphu.org/english/index.htm


Dien Bien Phu

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Dien Bien Phu

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21°21'57.10"N
103° 0'26.64"E

French troops

March 13th 10 800 soldiers including supply chain
May 7th 14 014 men including supply chain
2293 KIA, 5195 Wounded in action ,

11 721 prisoners 3 290 survivors, 7801 killed during the death march to reeducation camps and stay in said camps.


Vieth Minh

March 13th 48 000 soldiers and 15 000 in direct supply chain
May 7th 80 000 men including direct supply chain
23 000 to 25000 KIA , 15 000 wounded in action


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Dien Bien Phu 1922

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[Edmond]

Battle of Dien Bien Phu

|

This article by the late Bernard B. Fall is an account of one of the most significant battles to take place in Vietnam.

A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called ‘Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu.

Bernard Fall wrote that in comparison with other world battles, Dien Bien Phu could hardly qualify as a major battle, let alone a decisive one. Yet, he said, that is exactly what it was.

The siege occurred while the 1954 Geneva Conference was ironing out agreements between the major powers, including the future of Indochina. When Viet Minh forces overran Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, it was, according to Fall, the end of French military influence in Asia.

Fall was born in 1926 and grew up in France. Both his parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. He gained firsthand guerrilla warfare experience while fighting in the French Underground from 1942 to 1944.

With the Allied invasion of Europe, Fall joined the French army, serving in the infantry and pack artillery of the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division.

Following World War II, Fall worked as a research analyst at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal.

He first came to the United States in 1951 as a Fulbright Scholar, receiving his Master of Arts and Ph.D. in political science at Syracuse University.

In 1953, in order to engage in field research for his doctoral dissertation, he traveled to war-torn Indochina.

As a former French soldier he was allowed to accompany French forces on combat operations in all sectors of the country.

In 1957 Fall joined the faculty of Howard University as professor of international relations, and he spent the summer of that year in South Vietnam.

Awarded a grant from the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) for field study of Communist infiltration in Southeast Asia, Fall witnessed the outbreak of Communist hostilities in Laos.

He spent the 1961-62 academic year in Cambodia on a Rockefeller Foundation grant. It was during that time that he succeeded in visiting Communist North Vietnam and interviewing Ho Chi Minh. In 1965 Fall again spent the summer with American and Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam.


Among his most important works are Street Without Joy, which became essential military reading about the war with no front lines, and Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu.

In the latter epic, Fall describes in extraordinary detail not only the failures but also the heroism that took place in what he calls one of the most decisive battles of the 20th century.

During his last trip to Vietnam in February 1967, Fall chose to accompany a platoon of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, on Operation Chinook II, a search-and-destroy mission.

From Phu Bai the group moved along the area the French had named La Rue Sans Joie, or Street Without Joy.

It was here, in the area that he had written about with much emotion, that Bernard Fall was killed by the explosion of a land mine, along with Gunnery Sergeant Byron Highland, a Marine combat photographer.

Bernard B. Fall will be remembered by history as one of the foremost authorities on the Vietnam War. He wrote this article in 1964, prior to the publication of Hell in a Very Small Place.

On May 7, 1954, the end of the battle for the jungle fortress of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French military influence in Asia, just as the sieges of Port Arthur, Corregidor and Singapore had, to a certain extent, broken the spell of Russian, American and British hegemony in Asia.

The Asians, after centuries of subjugation, had beaten the white man at his own game. Today, 10 years after Dien Bien Phu, Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam again challenge the West’s ability to withstand a potent combination of political and military pressure in a totally alien environment.

On that day in May 1954 it had become apparent by 10 a.m. that Dien Bien Phu’s position was hopeless. French artillery and mortars had been progressively silenced by murderously accurate Communist Viet Minh artillery fire, and the monsoon rains had slowed down supply drops to a trickle and transformed the French trenches and dugouts into bottomless quagmires.

The surviving officers and men, many of whom had lived for 54 days on a steady diet of instant coffee and cigarettes, were in a catatonic state of exhaustion.


While their commander, Brig. Gen. Christian de la Croix de Castries, reported the situation over the radiotelephone to General René Cogny, his theater commander 220 miles away in Hanoi, in a high-pitched but curiously impersonal voice, the end obviously had come for the fortress.

De Castries ticked off a long list of 800-man battalions, which had been reduced to companies of 80 men, and of companies that were reduced to the size of weak platoons.

[Edmond]

All he could hope for was to hold out until nightfall in order to give the surviving members of his command a chance to break out into the jungle under the cover of darkness, while he himself would stay with the more than 5,000 severely wounded (out of a total of 15,094 men inside the valley) and face the enemy.

By 3 p.m., however, it had become obvious that the fortress would not last until nightfall.

Communist forces, in human-wave attacks, were swarming over the last remaining defenses. De Castries polled the surviving unit commanders within reach, and the consensus was that a breakout would only lead to a senseless piecemeal massacre in the jungle.


The decision was made then to fight on to the end, as long as the ammunition lasted, and let individual units be overrun after destruction of their heavy weapons.

This was approved by the French senior commander in Hanoi at about 5 p.m., but with the proviso that the men in Isabelle, the southernmost strongpoint closest to the jungle, and to friendly forces in Laos, should be given a chance to make a break for it.

Cogny’s last conversation with de Castries dealt with the problem of what to do with the wounded piled up under the incredible conditions in the various strongpoints and in the fortress’ central hospital — originally built to contain 42 wounded.

There had been suggestions that an orderly surrender be arranged, to save the wounded the added anguish of falling into enemy hands as isolated individuals.

But Cogny was adamant on that point:
Mon vieux, of course you have to finish the whole thing now. But what you have done until now surely is magnificent. Don’t spoil it by hoisting the white flag. You are going to be submerged [by the enemy], but no surrender, no white flag.

All right, mon général, I only wanted to preserve the wounded.

Yes, I know. Well, do as best you can, leaving it to your [static: subordinate units?] to act for themselves. What you have done is too magnificent to do such a thing. You understand, mon vieux.

There was a silence. Then de Castries said his final words: Bien, mon général.

Well, good-bye, mon vieux, said Cogny. I’ll see you soon.

A few minutes later, de Castries’ radio operator methodically smashed his set with the butt of his Colt .45 pistol.

Thus the last word to come out of the main fortress, as it was being overrun, came at 5:50 p.m. from the radio operator of the 31st Combat Engineer Battalion, using his code name: This is Yankee Metro. We’re blowing up everything around here. Au revoir.

Strongpoint Isabelle never had a chance. While the main defenses of Dien Bien Phu were being mopped up, strong Viet Minh forces already had tightened their grip around the 1,000 Legionnaires, Algerians and Frenchmen preparing their breakout.

At 9:40 p.m., a French surveillance aircraft reported to Hanoi that it saw the strongpoint’s depots blowing up and that heavy artillery fire was visible close by.

The breakout had been detected. At 1:50 a.m. on May 8, 1954, came the last message from the doomed garrison, relayed by the watchdog aircraft to Hanoi: Sortie failed — Stop — Can no longer communicate with you — Stop and end.

The great battle in the valley of Dien Bien Phu was over.

Close to 10,000 captured troops were to begin the grim death march to the Viet Minh prison camps 300 miles to the east. Few would survive. About 2,000 lay dead all over the battlefield in graves left unmarked to this day.

Only 73 made good their escape from the various shattered strongpoints to be rescued by the pro-French guerrilla units awaiting them in the Laotian jungle.

Eight thousand miles away, in Geneva, the Vietnamese and Red Chinese delegations attending the nine-power conference that was supposed to settle both the Korean and the Indochinese conflicts toasted the event with pink Chinese champagne.

What had happened at Dien Bien Phu was simply that a momentous gamble had been attempted by the French high command and had backfired badly.

The Indochina War, which had broken out in December 1946 after Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces felt that France would not agree to Vietnam’s eventual independence, had bogged down into a hopeless seesaw.

Until Red China’s victorious forces arrived on Vietnam’s borders in December 1949, there had been at least a small hope that the French-supported Vietnamese nationalist government, headed by ex-emperor Bao Dai, could wean away from the Communist-led Viet Minh the allegiance of much of Vietnam’s population.

But with the existence of a Red Chinese sanctuary for the Viet Minh forces, that became militarily impossible.

By October 1950, 23 regular Viet Minh battalions, equipped with excellent American artillery coming from Chinese Nationalist stocks left on the mainland, smashed the French defense lines along the Chinese border and inflicted on France its biggest colonial defeat since Montcalm died before Quebec in 1759.

Within weeks, the French position in northern Vietnam had shrunk to a fortified perimeter around the Red River Delta, a continuous belt of Communist-held territory from the Chinese border to within 100 miles of Saigon. For all practical purposes the Indochina War was lost then and there.

What changed the aspect of the war for a time was the influx of American aid, which began with the onset of the Korean War.

With communism now a menace at both ends of the Far Eastern arc, the Indochina War changed from a colonial war into a crusade — but a crusade without a real cause. Independence, given too grudgingly to the Vietnamese nationalist regime, remained the catchword of the adversary.

Militarily, disaster had temporarily been averted.

The key Red River Delta was more or less held by the French — at least during the daytime, for at night the enemy was everywhere — and the rice-rich Mekong Delta in South Vietnam, where anti-Communist Buddhist sects were fighting on the French side, was held more solidly by Western forces in 1953-54 than in 1963-64.

In Laos the situation was just as grim then as it is now: The Laotian and French forces held the Mekong valley and the airfields of the Plain of Jars, and the enemy held the rest.

Only Cambodia, then as now, was almost at peace: Prince Sihanouk (then king) had received independence from France in 1953 and galvanized his people into fighting against the guerrillas.

They were so successful that, at the ensuing Geneva cease-fire conference, Cambodia did not have to surrender a province as a regroupment area for Communist forces.

This totally stalemated situation required the French to create a military situation that would permit cease-fire negotiations on a basis of equality with the enemy.

To achieve this, the French commander in chief, General Henri Navarre, had to win a victory over the hard core of Communist regular divisions, whose continued existence posed a constant threat of invasion to the Laotian kingdom and to the vital Red River Delta with its capital city of Hanoi and the thriving port of Haiphong.

And to destroy those divisions and prevent their invasions into Laos, one had to, in American military parlance, find ‘em and fix ‘em.

General Navarre felt that the way to achieve this was by offering the Communists a target sufficiently tempting for their regular divisions to pounce at, but sufficiently strong to resist the onslaught once it came. That was the rationale for the creation of a garrison at Dien Bien Phu and for the battle that took place there.


There were other considerations also. Laos had signed a treaty with France in which the latter promised to defend it. Dien Bien Phu was to be the lock on the back door leading into Laos.

Dien Bien Phu was also to be the test for a new theory of Navarre’s. Rather than defend immobile lines, he wanted to create throughout Indochina land-air bases from which highly mobile units would sally forth and decimate the enemy in his own rear areas, just as the Viet Minh guerrillas were doing in French rear areas.

All of that rode on Dien Bien Phu: the freedom of Laos, a senior commander’s reputation, the survival of some of France’s best troops and — above all — a last chance to come out of that frustrating eight-year-long jungle war with something other than a total defeat.

But Navarre, an armor officer formed on the European battlefields, apparently (this was the judgment of the French government committee that later investigated the disaster) had failed to realize that there are no blocking positions in [a] country lacking European-type roads.
Since the Viet Minh relied largely on human porters for their frontline units, they could easily bypass such bottlenecks as Dien Bien Phu or the Plain of Jars while bottling up the forces contained in those strongholds.

The results were evident. Soon after French forces arrived at Dien Bien Phu on November 20, 1953, two of General Vo Nguyen Giap’s regular 10,000-man divisions blocked the Dien Bien Phu garrison, while a third bypassed Dien Bien Phu and smashed deep into Laos.

On Christmas Day 1953, Indochina, for the first time in the eight-year war, was literally cut in two.

The offensive stabs for which Dien Bien Phu had been specifically planned became little else but desperate sorties against an invisible enemy. By the time the battle started in earnest on March 13, 1954, the garrison already had suffered 1,037 casualties without any tangible result.

Inside the fortress, the charming tribal village by the Nam Yum River had soon disappeared along with all the bushes and trees in the valley, to be used either as firewood or as construction materials for the bunkers. Even the residence of the French governor was dismantled in order to make use of the bricks, for engineering materials were desperately short from the beginning.

Major André Sudrat, the chief engineer at Dien Bien Phu, was faced with a problem that he knew to be mathematically unsolvable.

By normal military engineering standards, the materials necessary to protect a battalion against the fire of the 105mm howitzers the Viet Minh now possessed amounted to 2,550 tons, plus 500 tons of barbed wire.

He estimated that to protect the 12 battalions there initially (five others were parachuted in during the battle), he would need 36,000 tons of engineering materials — which would mean using all available transport aircraft for a period of five months.

When he was told that he was allocated a total of about 3,300 tons of airlifted materials, Sudrat simply shrugged his shoulders.

In that case, I’ll fortify the command post, the signal center, and the X-ray room in the hospital; and let’s hope that the Viet has no artillery.

As it turned out, the Viet Minh had more than 200 artillery pieces, reinforced during the last week of the siege by Russian Katyusha multiple rocket launchers.

Soon the combination of monsoon rains, which set in around mid-April, and Viet Minh artillery fire smashed to rubble the neatly arranged dugouts and trenches shown to eminent visitors and journalists during the early days of the siege.

Essentially, the battle of Dien Bien Phu degenerated into a brutal artillery duel, which the enemy would have won sooner or later.

The French gun crews and artillery pieces, working entirely in the open so as to allow the pieces all-around fields of fire, were destroyed one by one; replaced, they were destroyed once more, and at last fell silent.


The artillery duel became the great tragedy of the battle. Colonel Charles Piroth, the jovial one-armed commander of the French artillery inside the fortress, had guaranteed that his 24 105mm light howitzers could match anything the Communists had, and that his battery of four 155mm medium field howitzers would definitely muzzle whatever would not be destroyed by the lighter pieces and the fighter-bombers.

As it turned out, the Viet Minh artillery was so superbly camouflaged that to this day it is doubtful whether French counterbattery fire silenced more than a handful of the enemy’s fieldpieces.

When, on March 13, 1954, at 5:10 p.m., Communist artillery smothered strongpoint Beatrice without noticeable damage from French counterbattery fire, Piroth knew the fortress was doomed.

And as deputy to General de Castries, he felt he had contributed to the air of overconfidence that had prevailed in the valley prior to the attack. (Had not de Castries, in the manner of his ducal forebears, sent a written challenge to enemy commander Giap?)

I am responsible. I am responsible, he was heard to murmur as he went about his duties.

During the night of March 14-15, he committed suicide by blowing himself up with a hand grenade, since he could not charge his pistol with one hand.

Originally, the fortress had been designed to protect its main airstrip against marauding Viet Minh units, not to withstand the onslaught of four Communist divisions.

There never was, as press maps of the time erroneously showed, a continuous battle line covering the whole valley. Four of the eight strongpoints were from one to three miles away from the center of the position.

The interlocking fire of their artillery and mortars, supplemented by a squadron of 10 tanks (flown in piecemeal and reassembled on the spot), was to prevent them from being picked off one by one.

This also proved to be an illusion. General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to take Dien Bien Phu by an extremely efficient mixture of 19th-century siege techniques (sinking TNT-laden mineshafts under French bunkers, for example) and modern artillery patterns plus human-wave attacks.

The outlying posts, which protected the key airfield, were captured within the first few days of the battle. French losses proved so great that the reinforcements parachuted in after the airfield was destroyed for good on March 27 never sufficed to mount the counterattacks necessary to reconquer the outposts.

From then onward the struggle for Dien Bien Phu became a battle of attrition. The garrison’s only hope lay in the breakthrough of a relief column from Laos or Hanoi (a hopeless concept in view of the terrain and distances involved) or in the destruction of the siege force through massive aerial bombardment.

For a time, a U.S. Air Force strike was considered, but the idea was dropped for about the same reasons that make a similar attack against North Vietnam today rather risky.

Like Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu slowly starved on its airlift tonnage.

When the siege began, it had about eight days’ worth of supplies on hand but required 200 tons a day to maintain minimum levels.

The sheer magnitude of preparing that mass of supplies for parachuting was solved only by superhuman feats of the airborne supply units on the outside — efforts more than matched by the heroism of the soldiers inside the valley, who had to crawl into the open, under fire, to collect the containers.

But as the position shrank every day (it finally was the size of a ballpark), the bulk of the supplies fell into Communist hands.

Even de Castries’ new general’s stars, dropped to him by General Cogny with a bottle of champagne, landed in enemy territory.

The airdrops were a harrowing experience in that narrow valley, which permitted only straight approaches.

Communist anti-aircraft artillery played havoc among the lumbering transport planes as they slowly disgorged their loads.

A few figures tell how murderous the air war around Dien Bien Phu was: Of the 420 aircraft available in all of Indochina then, 62 were lost in connection with Dien Bien Phu and 167 sustained hits.

Some of the American civilian pilots who flew the run said that Viet Minh flak was as dense as anything encountered during World War II over the Ruhr River.

When the battle ended, the 82,926 parachutes expended in supplying the fortress covered the battlefield like freshly fallen snow — or like a burial shroud.

The net effect of Dien Bien Phu on France’s military posture in Indochina could not be measured in losses alone.

It was to little avail to say that France had lost only 5 percent of its battle force, that the equipment losses had already been more than made good by American supplies funneled in while the battle was raging and that even the manpower losses had been made up by reinforcements from France and new drafts of Vietnamese.

Even the fact, which the unfortunate Navarre invoked later, that the attack on Dien Bien Phu cost the enemy close to 25,000 casualties and delayed its attack on the vital Red River Delta by four months, held little water in the face of the wave of defeatism that swept not only French public opinion at home but also that of her allies.

Historically, Dien Bien Phu was, as one French senior officer masterfully understated, never more than an unfortunate accident.

It proved little else but that an encircled force, no matter how valiant, will succumb if its support system fails.

But as other revolutionary wars — from Algeria to the British defeats in Cyprus and Palestine — have conclusively shown, it does not take pitched, set-piece battles to lose such wars.

They can be lost just as conclusively through a series of very small engagements, such as those now fought in South Vietnam, if the local government and its population lose confidence in the eventual outcome of the contest — and that was the case both for the French and for their Vietnamese allies after Dien Bien Phu.

Still, as the French themselves demonstrated in Algeria, where they never again let themselves be maneuvered into such desperate military straits, revolutionary wars are fought for political objectives, and big showdown battles are necessary neither for victory nor for defeat in that case.

This now seems finally to have been understood in the South Vietnam war as well, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara may well have thought of Dien Bien Phu when he stated in his major Vietnam policy speech of March 26, 1964, that we have learned that in Vietnam, political and economic progress are the sine qua non of military success….

One may only hope that the lesson has been learned in time.

On May 7, 1954, however, the struggle for Indochina was almost over for France.

As a French colonel surveyed the battlefield from a slit trench near his command post, a small white flag, probably a handkerchief, appeared on top of a rifle hardly 50 feet away from him, followed by the flat-helmeted head of a Viet Minh soldier.

You’re not going to shoot anymore? said the Viet Minh in French.

No, I’m not going to shoot anymore, said the colonel.

C’est fini? said the Viet Minh.

Oui, c’est fini, said the colonel.

And all around them, as on some gruesome Judgment Day, soldiers, French and enemy alike, began to crawl out of their trenches and stand erect for the first time in 54 days, as firing ceased everywhere.

The sudden silence was deafening.

At his untimely death in 1967, Bernard B. Fall was widely considered the greatest civilian expert on the war in Vietnam.

His Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu and Street Without Joy are still on the short list of the most essential books about the French phase of the war, and are indispensable to understanding the American phase.

A Web site about Bernard Fall is at www.geocities.com/bernardbfall.

[Edmond]

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives...uscripts/fa_fall.htm (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Archives+and+Manuscripts/fa_fall.htm)


http://www.dailymotion.com/related/8144319/video/x1zjot...-schoendoerffer_news (http://www.dailymotion.com/related/8144319/video/x1zjot_dien-bien-phu-schoendoerffer_news)

http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x25k8j...trait-signe-sch_news (http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x25k8j_dien-bien-phu-un-portrait-signe-sch_news)

http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x4ujum...0-ans-plus-tard_news (http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x4ujum_dien-bien-phu-10-ans-plus-tard_news)

http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x4501p...dien-bien-phu-b_news (http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3338093/video/x4501p_la-chute-de-dien-bien-phu-b_news)



http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=uU07lpXKEYI&eurl=http://d...legion-etrangere.htm (http://fr.youtube.com/watch?v=uU07lpXKEYI&eurl=http://dienbienphu.xooit.com/t1432-La-legion-etrangere.htm)



Pour finir, un grand classique http://www.dailymotion.com/related/3369682/video/x33axi_la-317eme-section

[SBL]

^Excellent posts, buddy.

I know I've plugged it before, but I really recommend the book Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot by Howard R. Simpson to anyone that's interested. It's a fascinating read.

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i228/Captainbadd/dbphu.jpg

[JoeyCape1977]

Brave men. Thanks for a great post.

[STuG]

Good posts.

One author has described the battle as "Verdun without the sacred way", that has a poignant elegance to the words i think.

Bernard Falls works are required reading of course, but if you can find it, a worthy companion is "The last valley" by Martin Windrow.

Brave men indeed.

[Hollis]

Great post, thank you.

H.

[RevengeSeeker]

Would have loved to see these kinds of pics in the photo section. Thanks!

[Hollis]

Would have loved to see these kinds of pics in the photo section. Thanks!


A side note, a friend who was in CAG, one of his PFs (popular forces) was in the Viet-Minh. He had interesting stories of that time.

[Kitsune]

Interestingly, of the Foreign Legion involved in the battle, a good part was German.

[Loke-Gao-Zhu]

Chinese and Viet Minh brothers forever,

Kudos to the brave Viet Minh who kicked out the colonists!

[SBL]

Chinese and Viet Minh brothers forever,

Kudos to the brave Viet Minh who kicked out the colonists!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

Period of Chinese domination (111 BC - 938 AD) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam#Period_of_Chinese_domination_.28111_BC_-_938_AD.29)

The size of your mouth exceeds your grasp of history.

[Loke-Gao-Zhu]

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/prc-vietnam.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War

Period of Chinese domination (111 BC - 938 AD) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Vietnam#Period_of_Chinese_domination_.28111_BC_-_938_AD.29)

The size of your mouth exceeds your grasp of history.

If political actions justify the mentality of the Chinese race for you, that's fine by me.

[SBL]

If political actions justify the mentality of the Chinese race for you, that's fine by me.

I tend to think the two are closely related.
Also I like how you've turned it into a race issue. I was just pointing out the irony in your statement. But since we're discussing it ,I'd be interested in hearing how the mentality of the Chinese race is any different from everyone else's.

[gaijinsamurai]

Loke, you are an excellent ambassador for your people!

[Kitsune]

Loke seems to have forgotten that Chinese and Vietnamese have been old enemies for centuries (despite the fact that the Vietnamese have adopted a lot of the Chinese culture) and that, just after the Vietnamese had fought against the French and then the Americans, they fought in another war against the Chinese.

[baboon6]

Good posts.

One author has described the battle as "Verdun without the sacred way", that has a poignant elegance to the words i think.

Bernard Falls works are required reading of course, but if you can find it, a worthy companion is "The last valley" by Martin Windrow.

Brave men indeed.

Yes, The Last Valley is definitely worth reading.

[gaijinsamurai]

^ Damn! I just saw that book this weekend, and passed on it! I'll have to try to remember which bookstore it was in, and try to go back before it's gone!

[STuG]

Interestingly, of the Foreign Legion involved in the battle, a good part was German.


Just to address this point.

Certainly ex-German troops served in the Legion, that is a matter of historical record, but over the years their numbers would seem to have been....overstated. Plus, just because a Legionnaire has a German name, this does not automatically (as many suppose)make him a WW2 Veteran!

For example, a fairly poorly researched book which gave tenuous "support" to this notion is called "Verkaufte Jahr" by Hans E Baur.Amongst the many photos he alleged were of Veteran German Legionnaires was a photo of a grave of containing a German Legionnaire, sadly for him he had preformed no primary research himself and failed to note that the Legionnaire whose grave is shown, 2e Classe Horst Voigt of the 2e REI, was born in May 1932, making him all of thirteen when World War II ended! (The information on Voigt is posted on the French governments Indochina casualty database.)


The author George Lepre a few years ago spoke concerning the whole "Germans in Indochina" topic, his comments i post here for your continued information.

"Michels, Porch, and Fall are without a doubt among the finest Legion historians. Each one of them has researched the SS in Indochina question and reached the same conclusion, i.e. that the story has been blown out of proportion by post-war novelists (unintentionally) and by Communist propagandists (intentionally).

The best book on this subject is Dr. Eckard Michels' Deutsche in der Fremdenlegion, 1870-1965: Mythen and Realitaeten. Those of you who have read this masterwork will surely agree that the author is an outstanding and exhaustive researcher.

I think we should be careful not to confuse "SS" with "Wehrmacht" in this context, because former Wehrmacht members did serve in the Legion in Indochina. Legion recruiters began looking for volunteers in French POW camps in 1943 and the French zone of Germany beginning in the summer of 1945. Michels provides two figures regarding the number of Wehrmacht POWs inducted into the Legion in the period 1945-1946: one of these is 3000, given by the Allied High Commission; the other is 5000, which he calls a "maximum" figure.

Officially, former SS men could not enlist in the Legion. The Deuxieme Bureau interrogated prospective volunteers and inspected their arms for bloodtype tattoos (we know of course that not every SS man had this tattoo, but many did). However, a small number of ex-SS men did manage to gain entrance in 1945 and 1946. When the PCF and other Communist parties around the world heard of this, they had a field day. Enraged French government officials demanded a crackdown, and this took place in 1947. This is when the French officer gave the figure of "60 or 70" former SS serving in the Legion.

Professor Michels attempted on three different occaisons to obtain access to the Legion's own archive at Aubagne to explore this question further but he was refused admittance. However, the American historian Douglas Porch was permitted to see most of their files, and his overall conclusion was that few ex-SS men served in the Legion. I think that Porch's research has great weight, as he had assistance from the cream of French military historians, including of course Andre-Paul Comor.

Professor Fall's writings about the Legion are important because he personally visited units in the field and spoke with Legionnaires. However, it should be noted that by the time of Operation Castor (Dien Bien Phu - 1954), many if not most of the German Legionnaires who had enlisted in 1945 and 1946 had either deserted or completed their five-year contracts, so they were already gone. The desertion stories are fascinating in their own right; some Legionnaires enroute to Indochina jumped from their transport ships as they were passing through the Suez Canal, whereupon the French military police would open fire on them in the water."

I hope you find this of interest.

[domokun]

http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z69/Quickload/Indochine/IndoMAS38.jpg


http://i192.photobucket.com/albums/z69/Quickload/Indochine/Indo50MAS482eBEP.jpg


Edmond thanks for interesting articles.

On the other hand, could someone identify these SMG's. Thanks in advance.

[STuG]

Hello,

you have posted examples of the MAS 38 & MAS 48.

[Kitsune]

@STuG




Thank you for your information. What I know is that various people, who have been in Indochina at the time, say that whenever you had to do with Foreign Legion there, you heared German and could converse with them in that language.

Anyhow, that most of the German foreign legionairs would have been former SS or Waffen-SS is apparently just a myth. It seems, most were former Wehrmacht POWs who had been offered to join up with the foreign legion to fight for France in Indochina. Reasons to do this were that some had grown up with war and did not know what to do else. The other reason was apparently even more down to earth: the French tended to treat German POWs very badly, they were continously starved. This way you could at least hope for regular meals.

But yes, there were also those who had been mere children in WWII (like Horst Voigt you mentioned above) and now as young man joined up with the Legion because they wanted "adventure" (and at the same time to escape a homeland that was still in ruins to a good part). Back then, things were still much different then they are today, and places like Indochina were still very exotic, like another world. And with travelling to other countries as a tourist being not as common as it is today, this was a chance to see something different.

There is of course the even greater myth saying that most of the troops at Dien Bien Phu would have been Germans - but of course only a part of the soldiers on the French side were Foreign Legion, while much was made up out of French colonial troops and paras which consisted of course out of French soldiers in any case.

[baboon6]

The majority of French colonial and Foreign Legion units at Dien Bien Phu also included a large proportion of Vietnamese, usually a company or two in each battalion, to make up the numbers. These troops were besides the Vietnamese units themselves and locally-recruited irregulars. Then there were the North African units-Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian, and also some Senegalese amongst the artillery contingent.

[gaijinsamurai]

Yes, The Last Valley is definitely worth reading.

Got it!










123456789

[Belial]

Edmond thanks for interesting articles.

On the other hand, could someone identify these SMG's. Thanks in advance.


Mle 38 (7.65 SMG first issued shortly before WW2)
http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/PM%20Mle%2038.html


MAS Mle 48-C3 (9mm SMG prototype)
http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/PM%20MAS%2048-C3.html
Pretty modern looking for a late 1940's weapon :p

[T3ngu]

good post.............

[klong]

In 1975, my friends and me were drinking in the "Royal Tiger Tavern" in Wellington, New Zealand. There was a very drunk military officer, alone, at a table near us. The military and the peace loving long hairs started talking. What I have never forgotten is this :

He said "Do you know who the best soldiers in Vietnam were ? The ex Wehrmacht. They would go into a village, check what's happening, ask a lot of questions about enemy locations etc. They would receive no useful information. They would move on. After some time, they would return to the village, and wipe out everybody."

Another reason to hate war. However, the officer knew a lot more about it than I do.

[Kitsune]

Yeah, it sure is damn annoying if you ask politely for the way and some joker sends you into a completely wrong direction. I really hate it, when that happens...

[Connaught Ranger]

In 1975, my friends and me were drinking in the "Royal Tiger Tavern" in Wellington, New Zealand. There was a very drunk military officer, alone, at a table near us. The military and the peace loving long hairs started talking. What I have never forgotten is this :

He said "Do you know who the best soldiers in Vietnam were ? The ex Wehrmacht. They would go into a village, check what's happening, ask a lot of questions about enemy locations etc. They would receive no useful information. They would move on. After some time, they would return to the village, and wipe out everybody."

Another reason to hate war. However, the officer knew a lot more about it than I do.

So a drunk officer in bar tell's you some hype and you believe it??:roll:

No way to substantiate the story, from a person who was never there.

Connaught Ranger:)

[Hollis]

So a drunk officer in bar tell's you some hype and you believe it??:roll:

No way to substantiate the story, from a person who was never there.

Connaught Ranger:)


maybe that officer was John Kerry..........

[Maj C]

or maybe they've read the "Devil's Guard" too many times!!!!

when I was young I took it at face value but now I realize what a load of tripe it was...kind of similar to "Wheels of Terror"! :)

[STuG]

"Devils Guard" has so much to answer for....

[pacifist]

Loke seems to have forgotten that Chinese and Vietnamese have been old enemies for centuries

Which makes me suspect that Loke isn't chinese.

[Edmond]

0123456789

[Edmond]

Mle 38 (7.65 SMG first issued shortly before WW2)
http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/PM%20Mle%2038.html


MAS Mle 48-C3 (9mm SMG prototype)
http://armesfrancaises.free.fr/PM%20MAS%2048-C3.html
Pretty modern looking for a late 1940's weapon :p

I only see now someone perfectly answered.

All SMGs except Thompson derived from the MP 18 in one way or another
Here is some eye candy
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7811043/m/589109167

[gaijinsamurai]

I'm reading Martin Windrow's The Last Valley now. Excellent book. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested the Dien Bien Phu or the French-Indochina War.

[boone]

I'm reading Martin Windrow's The Last Valley now. Excellent book. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested the Dien Bien Phu or the French-Indochina War.
I'm on it.

[gaijinsamurai]

^ Let me know how you like it!

[KoTeMoRe]

Yay for communism. Hey that's not terrorist propaganda ;).

[kawaiku]

any on read Hell in a Very Small Place?? That was my first book on the French-Indochina war and specifically on Dien Bien Phu. was a very good read. and not to mention, good posts Edmond!!

[Para]

What very few people know is the Britain re took that area from the Japanese in 1945 and they used there soldiers and the Japanese soldiers to put down the uprising. Now they where there for over an year while the French trained up and equipped their forces to take over. It was suggested when the French took over that they should tread lightly and see how things go. The French then wanted to assert them self's again in the area and it soon returned to chaos.

[oldsoak]

We did the same in Malaya btw. We disarmed the MPCP, and used the Japanese troops - including their Kempitai to keep the lid on the locals until we got more troops in - which needless to say went down a storm with the ethnic Chinese.

[gaijinsamurai]

any on read Hell in a Very Small Place?? That was my first book on the French-Indochina war and specifically on Dien Bien Phu. was a very good read. and not to mention, good posts Edmond!!

Good book! That, and Howard Simpson's book on Dien Bien Phu are considered to be the classics when it comes to the battle.
If you haven't read it yet, I strongly encourage you to read Bernard Fall's other book, Street Without Joy, about the overall war in Indochine.

[SBL]

Good book! That, and Howard Simpson's book on Dien Bien Phu are considered to be the classics when it comes to the battle.
If you haven't read it yet, I strongly encourage you to read Bernard Fall's other book, Street Without Joy, about the overall war in Indochine.

I've been plugging that since I read it about 2 years ago. Good book!

[gaijinsamurai]

By the way, Howard Simpson was at Dien Bien Phu.

[SBL]

By the way, Howard Simpson was at Dien Bien Phu.
Says so in the book.p-)

[gaijinsamurai]

^ I figured you already knew that!

[kawaiku]

Good book! That, and Howard Simpson's book on Dien Bien Phu are considered to be the classics when it comes to the battle.
If you haven't read it yet, I strongly encourage you to read Bernard Fall's other book, Street Without Joy, about the overall war in Indochine.
I have been meaning to get Street Without Joy, as is, I have so many other books to read, adding another like his to list will kill me haha..also I've been looking for other good reads on Vietnam. Do you know of any?? I think there is one about the 173rd Airborne Regiment(can't remember the exact number of the regiment) or something that I've had my eye on also.. I've read the Hill Fights for Khe Sahn which was also a good book about Vietnam.

(sorry if my spelling is off a bit)

[Hollis]

I have been meaning to get Street Without Joy, as is, I have so many other books to read, adding another like his to list will kill me haha..also I've been looking for other good reads on Vietnam. Do you know of any?? I think there is one about the 173rd Airborne Regiment(can't remember the exact number of the regiment) or something that I've had my eye on also.. I've read the Hill Fights for Khe Sahn which was also a good book about Vietnam.

(sorry if my spelling is off a bit)


The Bac Biet were real hot about Khe Sanh being another Dien Bien Phu. They sure got that wrong. Tied up something like two divisions of NVA. It was a major psychological blow that they could not take it.

[kawaiku]

The Bac Biet were real hot about Khe Sanh being another Dien Bien Phu. They sure got that wrong. Tied up something like two divisions of NVA. It was a major psychological blow that they could not take it.
Yea they were, I was quite surprised that they had the edge, before the siege really took place, over the Marines in surprise ambushes and attacks. Yet they never got the gander up and couldn't take Hill 116S (or whatever it's number was) will the northern hill was theirs.
As for the psychological blow, I never heard of that one. I've always heard that is was a diversionary action to advert attention away from the Tet Offensive, I think it was. My memory is fuzzy with Vietnam actions as I have never really got into that war, so sorry for any inconveniences.

[Mynameischarlie]

If France/Western countries would have let Vietnam ( & Laos & Cambodia ) become independent after WW2 and would have offered development aid, millions lives could have been saved in the next three decades in Indochina.

[Hollis]

Yea they were, I was quite surprised that they had the edge, before the siege really took place, over the Marines in surprise ambushes and attacks. Yet they never got the gander up and couldn't take Hill 116S (or whatever it's number was) will the northern hill was theirs.
As for the psychological blow, I never heard of that one. I've always heard that is was a diversionary action to advert attention away from the Tet Offensive, I think it was. My memory is fuzzy with Vietnam actions as I have never really got into that war, so sorry for any inconveniences.

The NVA put a lot of Talk into taking Khe Sanh. In Viet-Nam the holding of Khe Sanh meant something, In the states.... Tet was a loss. Thanks to the spineless politicians and media.

[SBL]

If France/Western countries would have let Vietnam ( & Laos & Cambodia ) become independent after WW2 and would have offered development aid, millions lives could have been saved in the next three decades in Indochina.

Thanks for that.:roll:

[gaijinsamurai]

Ho Chi Minh would have still been the likely leader of a post-WWII Vietnam. Though a committed Marxist, he had pro-US feelings. The question is, would he have allowed himself to come under the influence of Mao and Stalin, or have been more like Tito, who kept Yugoslavia independent and with some freedom for it's people?

[gaijinsamurai]

Thanks for posting those pics, Thing!
I would really like to visit Vietnam, and especially, Dien Bien Phu.

I know the place is very remote. How long does it take to get there from Hanoi?

[James]

I'm interested in visiting Vietnam too.

[gaijinsamurai]

By the way, what areas of Dien Bien Phu did you visit, Thing? (Dominique, Huguette, Isabelle, etc.)
Were there many tourists there?
How did it feel?

I'm very interested, as well as envious!!!

[gaijinsamurai]

Well, if you have to have a sore arse, better to get it from riding a scooter than being in prison! (just kidding!)

Damn, this makes me want to go even more!

[gaijinsamurai]

I'm reading Martin Windrow's The Last Valley now. Excellent book. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested the Dien Bien Phu or the French-Indochina War.

It took about three weeks, but I finally finished the book today. It was fvcking fantastic.
I've got a lot of respect for the men who fought on both sides, but I must say, I especially respect the defenders who fought for the French, the majority of whom were native Vietnamese, Moroccans, Algerians, and Legionnaires. The one soldier who particularly stands out is Lt. Col. Langlais, who was in effect, the leader of the besieged French in all but name. Until the bitter end, he rallied his men and served as a fine example of leadership under the stress of combat and overwhelming odds.

Everyone praises the Viet Minh for hauling their artillery through the jungle mountains and fighting without regard to their own well-being, but just as mush credit is due to the French, for holding on to the outpost for as long as they did.

[Edmond]

A common mistake, it is not because a unit is called Regiment de Tirailleurs Algériens that it is composed of Algerians. The majority was metropolitan French and more than half the members of Foreign Legion were French (sometimes registered as Belgian or Swiss because of the recruiting rules of the FL)

Here is a good presentation of the Order of Battle http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataille_de_Di%C3%AAn_Bi%C3%AAn_Phu#Le_GONO_.28Groupement_Op.C3.A9rationnel_du_Nord-Ouest.29

Cheers!

[LordTyphus]

It took about three weeks, but I finally finished the book today. but I must say, I especially respect the defenders who fought for the French, the majority of whom were native Vietnamese, Moroccans, Algerians, and Legionnaires.


I really can't respect the non-French elements, especially the Germans. They were the reason for the eventual defeat. Many actually deserted to the enemy.

It is not known but the Vietnamese won that battle by a thread. There was a point during the battle when they'd considered negotiating a peace deal but the Russian and Chinese convinced them otherwise and brought in more artillery. Our supposed ally, the Americans, did jack-**** when we requested air-strikes.
Never trust anyone again!

We lost but I'm glad we killed so many.

[Edmond]

The German and generaly speaking the Europeans who fought in the FL fought well and to the last cartridge. The Vietnamese fought valliantly as well even the PIM (Prisonniers Internés Militaires, VC Prisoners used for logistics), the BPVN surprised everybody.
Those who deserted or most of the time did not fight and took shelters near the Nam Youn river were mainly african or north african troops..
The French command asked too late for the air support, refused the way US envisioned it and generally speaking most of the light weapons and artillery came from US after the second half of 1953. The western world understood too late what was at stake there.
There is no joy in killing the enemy, only sociopaths and keyboard warriors can write the words you wrote.

[LordTyphus]

The German and generaly speaking the Europeans who fought in the FL fought well and to the last cartridge. The Vietnamese fought valliantly as well even the PIM (Prisonniers Internés Militaires, VC Prisoners used for logistics), the BPVN surprised everybody.
Those who deserted or most of the time did not fight and took shelters near the Nam Youn river were mainly african or north african troops..
The French command asked too late for the air support, refused the way US envisioned it and generally speaking most of the light weapons and artillery came from US after the second half of 1953. The western world understood too late what was at stake there.
There is no joy in killing the enemy, only sociopaths and keyboard warriors can write the words you wrote.

There's no joy killing the enemy? From what planet are you from? Venus? Oh, that cesspit of politically correct Europe. Do you know how the Normans conquered England? By popping the eyes off all rebellious peasants and killing off nearly one-third of their population through starvation. Now you know why they still hate us! Hatred is heritary.

There's no such thing as wrong or right, just who decides what's wrong or right. And you're wrong if you think you can put the blame on France for the US betrayal of us. They had bloody carriers within strike distance.

[ren0312]

One question, were ARVN soldiers and officers really incompetents, or was it just the way that it was portrayed in the media that led to this perception, and that the truth was different.

[Edmond]

They were not incompetent, they fought a different way and the political decisions weighed in too much in the military chain of command.
ARVN/VC was not an easy game except when entrapped in a battle he did not choose to fight.

[Billy No Mates]

There's no joy killing the enemy? From what planet are you from? Venus? Oh, that cesspit of politically correct Europe. Do you know how the Normans conquered England? By popping the eyes off all rebellious peasants and killing off nearly one-third of their population through starvation. Now you know why they still hate us! Hatred is heritary.

Hatred isnt heriditary,we don't hate the French for Norman excesses anymore than we hate the Danes for raiding us or Romans for colonising us...not everyone in the world spends their time brooding over real or imagined historical wrongs....

[SBL]

About 20 hours on the back of a scooter up and up and up through the mountains and the mist and the rain :) my arse was never the same afterwards :(

Great posts, The Thing. I'd like to make it up there one day, as well. Thanks for sharing!

[SBL]

Hatred isnt heriditary,we don't hate the French for Norman excesses anymore than we hate the Danes for raiding us or Romans for colonising us...not everyone in the world spends their time brooding over real or imagined historical wrongs....
I tend to think there's enough 'brooding' going on in the world to at least suggest it's the more natural (read:appealing,at least initially) choice to make.

[Billy No Mates]

I tend to think there's enough 'brooding' going on in the world to at least suggest it's the more natural (read:appealing,at least initially) choice to make.

I agree it used to seem rather appealing and entirely natural to spend all day every day fiddle faddling with my dinkle but ultimately i came to realise it wasn't at all healthy.....
Any way i won't say anymore lest i detract from whats been a very interesting topic .

[gaijinsamurai]

A common mistake, it is not because a unit is called Regiment de Tirailleurs Algériens that it is composed of Algerians. The majority was metropolitan French and more than half the members of Foreign Legion were French (sometimes registered as Belgian or Swiss because of the recruiting rules of the FL)

Here is a good presentation of the Order of Battle http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataille_de_Di%C3%AAn_Bi%C3%AAn_Phu#Le_GONO_.28Groupement_Op.C3.A9rationnel_du_Nord-Ouest.29

Cheers!

According to Windrow's book, the majority of enlisted men fighting at Dien Bien Phu were non-French. He writes that due to political sensitivities and a lack of support on the home front, conscripts from metropolitan France were normally not sent to Indochina.
To be honest, I don't know who is correct between you and him. You obviously know a lot about the battle, as does he. It is not unusual for writers to make mistakes, even respected authors and historians. That's why, with any subject in which I have a deep interest, I ussually try to have as many references as possible.

[gaijinsamurai]

I really can't respect the non-French elements, especially the Germans. They were the reason for the eventual defeat. Many actually deserted to the enemy.

It is not known but the Vietnamese won that battle by a thread. There was a point during the battle when they'd considered negotiating a peace deal but the Russian and Chinese convinced them otherwise and brought in more artillery. Our supposed ally, the Americans, did jack-**** when we requested air-strikes.
Never trust anyone again!

We lost but I'm glad we killed so many.

Like Edmond wrote, the Germans generally fought well. As for the Americans not doing more with air support: well, at the time, it was your war, not ours. CIA-contracted American pilots were already flying countless air support missions in order to drop much-needed troops and supplies into Dien Bien Phu, and many lost thier lives in the process. Thanks for the gratitude!

[baboon6]

A common mistake, it is not because a unit is called Regiment de Tirailleurs Algériens that it is composed of Algerians. The majority was metropolitan French and more than half the members of Foreign Legion were French (sometimes registered as Belgian or Swiss because of the recruiting rules of the FL)

Here is a good presentation of the Order of Battle http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bataille_de_Di%C3%AAn_Bi%C3%AAn_Phu#Le_GONO_.28Groupement_Op.C3.A9rationnel_du_Nord-Ouest.29

Cheers!

From what I understand most of the Metropolitan and Legion units had large Vietnamese contingents to make up the numbers.

[Edmond]

According to Windrow's book, the majority of enlisted men fighting at Dien Bien Phu were non-French. He writes that due to political sensitivities and a lack of support on the home front, conscripts from metropolitan France were normally not sent to Indochina.
To be honest, I don't know who is correct between you and him. You obviously know a lot about the battle, as does he. It is not unusual for writers to make mistakes, even respected authors and historians. That's why, with any subject in which I have a deep interest, I ussually try to have as many references as possible.

The French in Indochina was a professional force entirely made of volunteers. There was a fierce debate about the draft.
This is a common mistake with anglo saxon authors to see the fighting troops composed of non French, especially the american writers who see Legionnaires everywhere.
The British and the German are more accurate and serious in their researches.
The acccess to the archives of Service Historique des Armées is easy and allows to even find the service booklet of a named individual.

[Edmond]

From what I understand most of the Metropolitan and Legion units had large Vietnamese contingents to make up the numbers.

Not really, what they had in DBP were PIM, Prisonniers Internés Militaires, means captured VC used for logistical purpose, especially the artillery. Some decided to fight alongside the French and did well.

The Vietnamese had a fighting unit, the BPVN , Bataillon Parachutiste du Viet Nam, they fought with gallantry.

[baboon6]

Not really, what they had in DBP were PIM, Prisonniers Internés Militaires, means captured VC used for logistical purpose, especially the artillery. Some decided to fight alongside the French and did well.

The Vietnamese had a fighting unit, the BPVN , Bataillon Parachutiste du Viet Nam, they fought with gallantry.

Besides the PIMs, Windrow says that pretty much all Legion, Colonial and Metropolitan units had Vietnamese members, in many cases up to half the battalion. Some had these Viets in separate companies, others spread them around the battalion. The aim was to firsly make up the numbers and secondly train cadres for ANV units. This practice was referred to as "jaunissemant" (hope I have spelled that correctly). Some units even changed designations- 3 BPC became 5 BPVN (the unit you talk about above) of the ANV (the nominally independent Vietnamese army), obviously it was over 3/4 Vietnamese by this stage. He quotes Vietnamese names in Legion unit casualty lists, amongst other sources. Incidentally these "volunteers" as they were called in Legion units did not wear the white kepi but a white beret, of course more normal in the field was a bush hat or steel helmet. About 35% of the garrison of DBP were Vietnamese (regular or irregular), 25% Legionairres, the rest French, North African or West African. ( I will post the figures later, don't have the book on me, along with other info).

[Edmond]

in many cases up to half the battalion is grossly exagerated.

Jaunissement exactly refers to the practice you describe, Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam were Etats Associés and their nascent armed forces had 260,000 members being trained in 1954. But only around 30,000 Asians fought alongside the French, roughly 15% of the CEFEO (235,000)

Another point is that any personal engaged as North African unit member is not automatically an Arab, almost all the officers and NCOs being metropolitan or of European descent (pieds noirs) as well as many soldiers.

Half of the Foreign Legion personal is French.

The Legion accounts for 12% of the forces in 1946, 6% in 1954.

[baboon6]

If half the Legion personnel were French and, as oft-quoted, half were German, that doesn't leave much space for anyone else does it?

Anyway, here are the figures both Windrow and Fall provide for GONO (the division-level HQ for DBP), including both the original garrison and reinforcements:

French mainland- 2810 (18.6%)
Foreign Legion- 3931 (26%)
North African- 2637 (17.5%)
West African- 247 (1.6%)
Vietnamese (regular)- 4052 (26.8%)
Vietnamese (auxiliary)- 1428 (9.5%)

These figures may not be 100% but no-one has come up with anything better.

When 1 BEP dropped at DBP in November 1953, it was 653 all ranks strong, of whom 336 were Vietnamese. 6 BPC had about 200 Viets out of 651. II/1 RCP had 420 out of 827.

[pacifist]

I once saw a document about a finnish guy who fought in Dien Bien Phu. He was a bit of a racist and didn't think highly of arabs. He said they were first to surrender in Dien Bien Phu and could only wave their hands and yell and weren't very good soldiers.

[baboon6]

I once saw a document about a finnish guy who fought in Dien Bien Phu. He was a bit of a racist and didn't think highly of arabs. He said they were first to surrender in Dien Bien Phu and could only wave their hands and yell and weren't very good soldiers.

The performance of Algerian and Moroccan units varied greatly, depending on their leadership and the experience of the soldiers. The Moroccan engineers for example were solid throughout the battle, while one Algerian battalion had a particularly bad reputation.