Dien Bien Phu

[Gunz]

62 years after Navarre made his great error...and after many brave French soldiers died as a result. The writer visited DBP last month.

Vietnam's Agincourt

And a collection of images

60 Years Since The End Of The Battle Of Dien Bien Phu | Getty Images

 

[metalmom]

Very interested in DBP . Great article-just read the 1st article so far.Very surprised about the CIA contractor pilots. Had no clue about that.

I think that would be a worthy subject for another thread.

Great post.

 

[AWP]

Go buy this book and thank me later.

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam: Martin Windrow: 9780306814433: Amazon.com: Books

 

[Devildoc]

Go buy this book and thank me later.

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam: Martin Windrow: 9780306814433: Amazon.com: Books

I have it along side of Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall.

 

[Devildoc]

Very interested in DBP . Great article-just read the 1st article so far.Very surprised about the CIA contractor pilots. Had no clue about that.

I think that would be a worthy subject for another thread.

Great post.

The OSS (which morphed into the CIA) trained Giap and Ho Chi Minh during WWII. Its presence really never left Vietnam. I went to a campus lecture a long time ago....late 80s?...in which there was a panel discussion of the CIA in VN; the panelists included a couple former CIA employees that essentially lived in VN from 1948-1972.

 

[Devildoc]

double tap....

 

[AWP]

I have it along side of Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall.

You could read the book in my link and Street Without Joy and call it a day on the French experience in Vietnam. Seriously. The sad thing is this knowledge was available to our policy makers and they committed us to that place. We had a roadmap to failure and basically followed it to a T.

 

[Devildoc]

A lot of American politicians and policy-makers did not appreciate Fall's writings. They felt he was too sympathetic to the North Vietnamese and anti-American. He was, however, one of the most prolific writers about both the French and American wars in VN. If I was a fancy-pants academic and could teach a class on the Vietnam war, his books would be on the reading list.

 

[Gunz]

We thought our money and firepower would make a difference.