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Indochina War Reenacting


from Wikipedia:

The First Indochina War (also known as the French Indochina War, the The Anti-French War, the Franco-Vietnamese War, the Franco-Vietminh War, the Indochina War and the Dirty War in France and in contemporary Vietnam, as the French War) was fought in French Indochina from December 19, 1946 until August 1, 1954 between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps, led by France and supported by Bảo Đại's Vietnamese National Army against the Việt Minh, led by Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.

Origins of the French Indochina War

Following the reoccupation of Indochina by the French following the end of World War II, the area having fallen to the Japanese, the Viet Minh launched a rebellion against the French authority governing the colonies of French Indochina. The first few years of the war involved a low-level rural insurgency against French authority. However, after the Chinese communists reached the Northern border of Vietnam in 1949, the conflict became a conventional war between two armies equipped with modern weapons supplied by the United States and the Soviet Union.

French Union forces included colonial troops from the whole former empire (Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian, African, Laotian, Cambodian, Vietnamese and Vietnamese ethnic minorities) and professional troops (European of the French Foreign Legion). The use of metropolitan recruits was forbidden by the governments to prevent the war from becoming even more unpopular at home. It was called the "dirty war" (la sale guerre) by the French communists and leftist intellectuals (including Sartre) during the Henri Martin affair in 1950.

Strategy and Loss

While the strategy of pushing the Viet Minh to attack a well defended base in a remote part of the country at the end of their logistical trail was validated at the Battle of Na San, the lack of building materials (especially concrete), tanks (because of lack of road access and difficulty in the jungle terrain), and air cover precluded an effective defense. The French were defeated with significant losses among their most mobile troops, particularly through ambush.

After the Indochina War

After the war, the Geneva Conference on July 21, 1954, made a provisional division of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the Viet Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the south becoming the State of Vietnam under Emperor Bảo Đại. A year later, Bảo Đại would be deposed by his prime minister, Ngô Đình Diệm, creating the Republic of Vietnam. Diem's refusal to enter into negotiations with North Vietnam about holding nationwide elections in 1956, as had been stipulated by the Geneva Conference, would eventually lead to war breaking out again in South Vietnam in 1959 - the Second Indochina War.

{Links}

2nd REI French Foreign Legion
The Living History Group that portrays French Indochina period (1949-1955). For contact: Ken Lee
13th Demi-Brigade, French Foreign Legion
The Living History Group that portrays French Indochina period (1939-1955). For contact: Paul Kendall

 

1946-2000 Main Page | Korean War Units | Indochina War Units
Vietnam War Units | 1946-Present Links 

 

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Moore's Militaria -- 03/05

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