French Indochina War: Reflections for Strategic Resilience

By Simon Huston

Pandemics and military catastrophes illustrate systems fragility and impel strategic reflection. The French Indochina War (FIW) from 1946-1954 furnishes insights with resonance for current infectious, climatic, pollution and economic challenges. Four strategic themes structured an analysis of historical literature. The reasons for the French failure in 1954 involved fundamental regime illegitimacy, political equivocation, intelligence shortcomings, strategic and operational failures but also the determination, strength, and adaptability of the Việt Minh (VM). In 1945, France had re-occupied Vietnam to re-assert its global credentials. Later, Cold War logic and American aid sustained ‘La sale guerre’. But, the conflict merely delayed and bloodied an inevitable post-colonial regime shift. To maintain American aid flows yet retain French regional influence, the commander of the Expeditionary Corps, Henri Navarre, adopted an offensive stance. He sought to crush the VM, breathe life into the moribund French Union and block Võ Nguyên Giáp’s feints on Laos. In November 1954, he inserted a fortified camp at remote Diên Biên Phú (DBP). Operationally, the distance of DBP from Hanoï stretched the French aero-logistical system to its limits.
An analysis of the War itself offers useful strategic metaphors. First, paradigm myopia obscured the injustice of the colonial cause. Likewise, today the limitations of contemporary real estate, extractive, distraction, or surveillance capitalism are manifest. Its horizon is short-term, and it muddles price with value. As in Indochina then and now, in contemporary capitalism, power is dangerously concentrated in unelected monopoly institutions. Just as the Expeditionary Corps struggled to dispel the fog of war, todays’ financial system masks effective tax rates, tonnes of carbon, plastic or e-waste produced or the ratio of director’s to worker’s pay. Then, the French backed Bảo Đại’s corrupt ‘night club’ government. Today many governments appear inept or infected by cronyism. Chicanery, lobbying, tax avoidance and money laundering contaminate financial or government systems. Then as now, solutions involve transparency, foresight, duty, justice, and fiscal reform. The fallen on both sides provide a final metaphor for Baudelaire’s ‘martyrs d’un chemain mauvais’ (martyrs for a lost cause). The futility of sacrifice on the field of battle impels a re-calibration of unbridled consumption and comprador, outsourced production, towards civic duty in sustainable communities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Huston
• Release date: Jul 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005826536

Simon Huston

Author, academic, analyst, accountant. Multidisciplinary research, involving strategy, performance management, sustainable investment, built environments and learning. Thesis in Geographical Science from the University of Queensland (2010). Served as a military medic/paratrooper/reconnaissance driver in Djibouti, Central Africa and Chad. Studied Economics at LSE and Environmental Management at Durham University. Worked as an accountant for Deloitte in UK. Taught across the education spectrum in Kenya and the Middle East (UAE, KSA, Oman). Worked as a commercial analyst for Queensland Government. Subsequently, lectured at The University of Queensland and three UK universities, including Coventry.

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French Indochina War

Reflections for strategic resilience

Simon Huston

Contents

Title Page

French Indochina War: reflections for strategic resilience

Introduction

Copyright

Dedication

Style, abbreviations and conventions

List of figures & tables

Chapter 1: Indochina

Chapter 2: Strategic context

Chapter 3: Insurgency Lea 1947

Chapter 4: The Route Colonial 4 disaster

Chapter 5: Consolidation

Chapter 6: Diên Biên Phú

Chapter 7: Synthesis

Chapter 8: Contemporary resilience metaphors

Bibliography

Appendices

About The Author

French Indochina War: reflections for strategic resilience

Second edition

by

Simon Huston

BSc (Econ) MSc PhD PGCE FHEA ACMA CGMA CPA DELF AALP

Front cover credit: Photo - 6è Bataillon de Parachutistes Coloniaux at Tu Lé, 18-20/10/1952.  Source: Paul Corcuff, ECPAD, Musée de l'Armée, Invalides, 2015. 

Introduction

Pandemics and military catastrophes illustrate systems fragility and impel strategic reflection. The French Indochina War (FIW) from 1946-1954 furnishes insights with resonance for current infectious, climatic, pollution and economic challenges. A combination of pre-exiting conditions, catalysts and operational drivers and sparks caused the cathartic 1954 French defeat.  Pre-conditions included the illegitimacy of the colonial regime, repression that polarised nationalist sentiment.  Economically, pernicious terms of trade suppressed industrialisation but oiled speculation.  One catalyst was the sudden reversal of this policy.  The 1953 devaluation  reflected financial disengagement by France but increased American involvement.  Vacillating  metropolitan and the dubious colonial regime of the ‘night club’ Emperor, Bảo Đại, fuelled political instability. 

Militarily,  after the disastrous evacuation of the RC4 in 1950, Việt Minh men and supplies poured across the Chinese frontier.  In 1954, financial constraints and the looming international peace conference sparked Navarre, the new French commander, to gamble on a battle of attrition.  He tried to distract the Việt Minh, betting they would be unable drag artillery to the remote jungle outpost of Diên Biên Phú, but he underestimated their focus determination, strength, and adaptability.  In early December partisans resented the bungled evacuation of Lai Châu.  The entrenched camp’s defences were inadequate and neither 141,500 artillery rounds, infantry sorties nor napalm suppressed VM guns, dug into the surrounding  jungle-clad hills.  The French aero-logistical sub-system was overstretched, and significant parachute supplies fell into enemy hands.  Navarre scattered his reserves on a futile and remote side-show, Operation Atlante.  The Americans prevaricated and refused to unleash their B29 fleet.  ‘Iacta alea est’  - the die was cast.

Four strategic themes structured an analysis of historical literature. The reasons for the French failure in 1954 involved fundamental regime illegitimacy, political equivocation, intelligence shortcomings, strategic and operational failures but also the determination, strength, and adaptability of the Việt Minh (VM).  In 1945, France had re-occupied Vietnam to re-assert its global credentials.  Later, Cold War logic and American aid sustained ‘La sale guerre’.  The conflict however merely delayed and bloodied an inevitable post-colonial regime shift.  To maintain American aid flows yet retain French regional influence, the commander of the Expeditionary Corps, Henri Navarre, adopted an offensive stance.  He sought to crush the VM, breathe life into the moribund French Union and block Võ Nguyên Giáp’s feints on Laos.  In November 1954, he inserted a fortified camp at remote Diên Biên Phú (DBP).  Operationally, the distance of DBP from Hanoï stretched the French aero-logistical system to its limits.  However, Navarre ignored the lessons of Hòa Bình and Nghĩa Lộ (1951), misread Nà Sản (1952) and underestimated VM capabilities.  He also diverted resources to side-show – Opération Atlante.  Giáp realised Navarre had taken the bait and sealed off the besieged camp with five divisions, including an artillery one.  On 13th March, the VM attacked and took the garrison after 56 days on the evening of 7-8th May 1954.  Navarre’s gamble had spectacularly backfired: the VM had survived and dominated. Militarily, the French Expeditionary Corps could have recovered but the psychological blow unmasked regime financial and political bankruptcy.  In June, the bloodbath at Mang Yang Pass confirmed colonial regime vulnerability.  Power drained away to American cronies or the communists.  Whilst French Indochina perpetuated an iniquitous social structure, tainted by racism, symbolic and physical violence, it also protected minorities, spurned dictatorship, and transferred culture and technology.  The French War delayed an inexorable Annamite ascendancy over the Montagnards with the inevitable land use intensification, environmental impacts and cultural subjugation that has now played out.

When analysing the conflict, one is profoundly struck by how anthropogenic pressures have transformed Vietnam’s landscape, the extent of deforestation and wildlife trafficking is troubling.  In 1948, tiger and elephant roamed in tropical forests near Phan Thiết (Ma Lâm), 160km northwest of Saïgon.  Now, suburbia encroaches on degraded coffee fields.  Now, at Cát Tiên, Rhinoceros (sondaicus annamiticus) is extinct.

An analysis of the War itself offers useful strategic metaphors.  First, paradigm myopia obscured the injustice of the colonial cause.  Some, like de Lattre, recognised its corrosiveness and articulated a vision of peaceful transition to full independence.  Likewise, today the limitations of contemporary real estate, extractive, distraction, or surveillance capitalism are manifest.  Its horizon is short-term, and it muddles price with value.  As in Indochina then and now, in contemporary capitalism, power is dangerously concentrated in unelected monopoly institutions.  Just as the Expeditionary Corps struggled to dispel the fog of war, todays’ financial system masks effective tax rates, tonnes of carbon, plastic or e-waste produced or the ratio of directors to worker’s pay.  Then, the French backed Bảo Đại’s corrupt ‘night club’ government.  Today many governments appear inept or infected by cronyism.  Chicanery, lobbying, tax avoidance and money laundering contaminate financial or government systems.  Then as now, solutions involve transparency, foresight, duty, justice, and fiscal reform.  The fallen on both sides provide a final metaphor for Baudelaire’s ‘martyrs d’un chemain mauvais’ (martyrs for a lost cause).  The futility of sacrifice on the field of battle impels a re-calibration of unbridled consumption and comprador, outsourced production, towards civic duty in sustainable communities.

Keywords

Strategy, foresight, French Indochina, RC4, Nà Sản, Diên Biên Phú, paratroops, 1er B.E.P., 2è B.E.P., Vietnam, ecological transformation

Copyright

Copyright © 2021 Simon Huston. All rights reserved.

This work is registered with the UK Copyright Service:

Registration No: 284741921 (2021)

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.  This is a work of fact. 

Associated with Pearl Orient project, Registration No: 284731838 (2019); Legion paratroops: Indochina and Algeria

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Dedication

To all those young men on both sides of the French Indochina War who died or were mangled.  As development transforms Vietnam and suburbia encroaches on former jungles or paddies, lest we forget the drama and sacrifice that washed over this landscape, now occasionally marked by overgrown graves, else obliterated.

À tous ces jeunes hommes des deux côtés de la guerre d'Indochine française qui ont été tués ou mutilés. Alors que le Vietnam se transforme et les banlieues s'étendent sur d'anciennes jungles ou rizières, n'oublions pas le drame et les sacrifices qui ont marqués ce paysage, parfois indiqués par des tombes envahies par la végétation, sinon effacés.

Gửi đến tất cả những thanh niên thuộc cả hai phe trong Chiến tranh Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, những người đã bị giết hoặc bị cắt xén. Khi sự phát triển biến đổi Việt Nam và các vùng ngoại ô trải dài trên những cánh rừng hoặc cánh đồng cũ, chúng ta đừng quên sự kịch tính và hy sinh đã phủ lên cảnh quan này, giờ đây đôi khi được đánh dấu bởi những ngôi mộ mọc um tùm, những ngôi mộ khác bị xóa sổ.

Style, abbreviations and conventions

French language quotes or anglicised versions of Vietnamese place names are italicised (unless terms are familiar).  Many acronyms, military units, battles, personalities, or geographical locations have hyperlinks to bookmarks in the Appendix that provide definitions or explanations (italics for geographic locations or technical terms but regular font for people’s names).  It is acknowledged that hyperlinked explanatory tables are not comprehensive but rather provide the reader with some useful preliminary guidance.

At random in text and appendices, several abbreviation varients are adopted for French battalion numbers: 

e.g. 2è B.E.P., 2 ⁰ B.E.P. , 2BEP or 2nd BEP.

A ‘?’ in the notes indicates uncertainty or limited authority (testis unus, testis nullus).

Measurements: Unless otherwise specified, aircraft tonnage refers to the American short ton (~907kg) with its conventional symbol ‘sh. t.’ abbreviated to ‘t.’  The symbol ‘p.’ designates the Indochinese currency, piastre.  Otherwise, for measurements standard conventions are adopted (e.g., kilometre = km; feet = ft.)

Rank abbreviations: SLT: Sous-Lieutenant; LTN: Lieutenant; LV: Lieutenant de vaisseau ; CNE: Capitaine; CDT: Commandant; LCL: Lieutenant-Colonel; COL: Colonel; GEN: Général

List of figures & tables

Figure 1: Conventional and irregular forces of French Union.

Figure 2: Colonial troops (including G.T. 802) board SS Pasteur at Mers el Kébir, 28/09/1949.  Source: Robert Tison, 1949.

Figure 3: Battle at Banh-Hine-Siu wounded young Vietnamese paratroopers (3rd BPVN), Laos, January 1954. Source: Pierre Ferrari, ECPAD, LAOS-54-07-R232.

Figure 4: Evolution of French Union manpower (C.E.F.E.O. & Associated States). Source: Author, adapted from Tertrais, 2002.

Figure 5: Evolution of French financial engagement in the War.  Source: Author, 2021, using data from Tertrais 2002, VII.35, Tables 19 & 20.

Figure 6: Manuscript structure and application of Sun Tzu’s Chinese Four Schools

Figure 7: VM E.-W. logistic axis from Cao Bằng to Tuần Giáo.Source: Author, Google Maps, 2020.

Figure 8: Privateer and 10-man crew, 1954.  Source: Anciens Cols Bleus et Pompons Rouges, Opérations de guerre, Indochine, Vol. 7, J. Laffrat (2016).

Figure 9: Hanoï  (Viet-Nam).  Source: Catalogue No: 027291502, Bibliothèque du Ministère des Colonies, Collection ASEMI (Asie du Sud-Est et Monde Insulndien).

Figure 10: Zones controlled by the VM in 1950 & 1954, illustrating the progressive deterioration in geographical dominance of the colonial power.  Source: Le Monde, 1954.

Figure 11: Early colonial rail infrastructure system in Tonkin. Source: Doling, 2012.

Figure 12: Moah montagnard, 1954. Source: Association Nationale des Anciens et Amis des Forces Françaises de l'ONU BC/RC 156RI.

Figure 13: Opposite ends of the social spectrum in rubber plantation of Xa Bang. Source: Nadal, L'Annuaire du Syndicat des Planteurs de Caoutchouc de l'Indochine, 1926.

Figure 14: 1er Bataillon de Parachutistes Vietnamiens, en route for jump on Tây Ninh, 1952. Source:  ECPAD, Défense.

Figure 15: Bac Maï, 1954. Source: Forum La Guerre d'Indochine, Collection Général Lapiche, Bruno.BKLX, 2020.

Figure 16: River Systems of Tonkin. Source: Kmusser, 2010, Wikimedia.

Figure 17: Les LCM (Landing-Craft-Material) of Dinassaut 8 patrols the Bassac River, Mékong Delta, Can Tho Region, 1952. Source: ECPAD, Défense.

Figure 18: Cao Bằng defensive dispositions & aerodrome. Source: photo aérienne Armée de l'air, 1950.

Figure 19: Situation Groupment Bayard on 1-3/10/1950, Nà Kéo Massif. Source: Author 2021, using Google Earth, Chergé, 2020; Martin, 2014c; More Majorum, 2017; Sergent, 1982.

Figure 20: Battles in hills around Dong Khé, Quang Liêt path and Coc-Xa 4-8/10/1950. Source: Author, using Google Earth, Chergé, 2020; Martin, 2014c; More Majorum, 2017; Sergent, 1982.

Figure 21: Contemporary view of cliffs of Coc Xa. Source: Martin, 2014b.

Figure 22: 2è B.E.P. column in Nghĩa Lộ region, Oct 1951.  Source: BKLX, chemin-de-memoire-parachutistes.org, 2020.

Figure 23: VM assault of the highlands, Opération Lorraine and Battle for Nà Sản, autumn 1952. Source: Bruno LC, 2009.

Figure 24: 6è Bataillon de Parachutistes Coloniaux at Tu Lé, 18-20/10/1952.  Source: Paul Corcuff, ECPAD, Musée de l'Armée, Invalides, 2015.

Figure 25: Explosion of VM arms dumps, near Ky Lua, Lạng Sơn, during Opération Hirondelle, 17/07/1953 at 16:00 or 17:30?. Sources: Corcuff, P. ECPAD, TONK-53-59-R33; Bigeard, 2004.

Figure 26: La Cuvette, showing main runway, distance to Isabella and road to Laos. Source: Google Maps, 2020.

Figure 27: Opération Castor, November 1954. Source: Life Magazine

Figure 28: Luang Prabang on the Mekong River.  Source: Ranavand, Ateliers de la Péninsule, Mixay et al., 1994.

Figure 29: DBP aero logistical system from Hanoï  (Bach-Maï & Gia Lâm) or Haïphong (Cat Bi & Do Son).  Source: BrunoLC, 2011.

Figure 30: French defensive dispositions at DBP.  Source: Weapons and Warfare.

Figure 31: Opération Pollux, CNE Cabiro, Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes, Phu Ya Tao Hill, 13/12/1953.

Figure 32: 8è B.C.P penetrates the undergrowth 5km north of DBP on 01/02/1954. Source: ECPAD, Défense.

Figure 33: Main aerodrome at DBP under bombardment, view looking south towards Isabella. Source: ECPAD, Défense.

Figure 34: Opération Condor, Column Crèvecœur, 25/04-10/05/1954. Source: Photo de René Adrien, collection Jacques Allaire, ECPAD, Défense.

Figure 35: The post of Dak Doa in Annan before its fall on night of 17-18/02/1954.  Source: Association Nationale des Anciens et Amis des Forces Françaises de l'ONU BC/RC 156RI.

List of tables

Table 1: Representative estimates of Indochina War manpower & casualties.  Source: Author, 2021.

Table 2: Breakdown of estimated casualties from various sources.

Table 3: Evolution of War costs and French relative financial engagement. Source: Author, 2021 using data from Tertrais, 2002, VII.35, Tables 19 & 20.

Table 4: DBP order of battle, frontline fighting forces

Table 5: Estimates of French Union strength and losses at DBP from various sources.

Chapter 1: Indochina

Soldats qui reposez sous la terre

Et dont le sang donné m’a laissé des remords,

Dites-vous simplement : « c’est notre Capitaine

qui se souvient de vous… et qui compte ses Morts. »

Vicomte Emmanuel Raymond de Borelli.

Capitaine de laLégion Etrangère.

Tuyen-Quang 1885.

Initiation

In 1789, ten days after revolutionaries stormed La Bastille in Paris, four French ships docked at Vũng Tàu in Cochinchina to help restore the deposed emperor, Nguyễn Ánh, to his throne (Daughton, 2006; Faure, 1891).  A priest, Pigneau de Béhaine, had orchestrated this French military entanglement.  It was not however, the first religiously inspired visit to Indochina. Over four hundred years earlier, probably in 1322 [Note 1], a Franciscan missionary Odoric de Pordenone of Udine had briefly landed in Quy Nhơn (Cordier, 1891; Yule, 1913).  From the XVII century French proselytization spread.  In 1857, after the execution of two Spanish priests, Napoléon III ordered Admiral Rigault de Genouilly to attack Tourane (Da Nang) (Poitevin, 2011). In September 1858, troops from his Franco-Spanish fleet captured the city but the Vietnamese soon surrounded and pinned down the invaders.  However, De Genouilly with the bulk of his fleet slipped away to seize Saïgon, the entrepôt  for the country’s Mekong rice bowl.  On  17th February 1859, the French fleet breached fortifications along the Sông Soài Rạp and soon captured the metropolis.  Although the initially occupation of the colony cost only a few ground troops, the French presence in Cochinchina endured.

In 1862, by the Traité de Saïgon, the then Vietnamese Emperor, Tu  Duc, ceded three provinces of Cochinchina to France.  By 1867, after a secret treaty with Thailand, Admiral de La Grandière had annexed almost all Cochinchina and parts of Cambodia.  In 1868, LV (naval lieutenant) Francis Garnier explored the Upper Mekong and realised the importance of Tonkin and its commercial artery, the Red River (Song Hong), for trade with China.  However, the pacification of Tonkin proved challenging.  Although Garnier captured Hanoï’s citadel in 1873, Chinese-financed irregulars (Pavillons Noirs) decapitated and emasculated him.  The French pulled out and renounced Annam in exchange for recognition of their claim on Cochinchina and navigation rights on the Red River.  However, the Annanese Emperor reneged on the treaty, so the French steadily escalated their military presence until, by 1883, they had 15,000 troops stationed in the colony.  By 1884, Vietnam was conquered and, in 1887, incorporated into French Indochina.

At the end of the nineteenth century, L'Indochine française extended across the protectorates of Cambodia, Laos, Annam, and Tonkin with a land area of 749,045km2 (France is 86% of this area).  Before WW1, only a few mandarins opposed colonisation, but in 1908, fiscal abuses and the exploitation of forced labour sparked rebellion and terrorism.  During The Great War itself, France sent 92,311 Vietnamese to support the motherland (mainly as labourers but also in combat and transit battalions) of whom ~12,000 died (Poitevin, 2011).  The War increased extractive pressure on the colony that sparked numerous but ineffective anti-French revolts, including at Thái Nguyên in 1917.  After WW1, the French undertook some desultory and fragmented reforms but maintained a firm grip on power, reinforced by ruthless repression of any nationalist sentiment.  After an insurrection at Yen Bay in February, on 17th June 1930, they guillotined 13 nationalist rebels led by Nguyên Thai Hoc.

During WWII, the Japanese unsettled the colonial status quo and became the effective masters of the colony.  On September 22, 1940, the Vichy colonial regime agreed that Imperial Japan could station 30,000 troops in Indochina and use its airports.  Effectively, the colony became the logistical hub for the Japanese military in Southeast Asia.  In 1941, the Communist Party of Indochina created a paramilitary league for the independence of Viêt Nam, the Viêt-Minh (VM).  Its leader was a hard-line communist, educated in Moscow - Hô Chi Minh (HCM).  As defeat in the Pacific loomed the Japanese disarmed the French and installed a puppet government under the nominal suzerainty the former Vietnamese EmperorBao Dai.  Towards the end of WWII in summer 1945, the Allied blockade, Japanese exactions and meteorological conditions resulted in severe famine in Tonkin.  Over two million people died but HCM ordered the VM to attack Japanese rice depots and turn the grain over to the people.  An action few Vietnamese forgot.

As WWII ended, the French returned, intent on resurrecting their moribund Empire.  However, the colonial epoch was over. Disgruntled by French myopia, Bảo Đại abdicated on 25th August 1945.  He remonstrated with De Gaulle:

‘Le seul moyen de sauvegarder les intérêts français … est de reconnaître franchement l’indépendance du Vietnam et de renoncer à toute idée de rétablir ici la souveraineté ou une administration française sous quelque forme que ce soit.’   (Charles DE Gaulle, Goscha, 2011, p. 52). 

On 2nd September 1945, the day the Allies officially accepted Japan’s surrender on USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay, HCM declared independence at Ba Dinh square in Hanoï.  As Major Archimedes Patti (101 Detachment, O.S.S.) looked on, Ho castigated the double yoke of Japanese and French imperialism that had crippled and starved his nation.  At the time, most Vietnamese were delighted, although many worried about HCM’s penchant for communism or the response of their erstwhile colonial masters.

However, on 11th September advance party for Operation Masterdom - a brigade of the 20th Indian Division flew into Saïgon from Hmawbi Field, Burma, via Bangkok.  The next day, elements of 5e RIC (5è Régiment d'Infanterie Coloniale) landed at Saïgon.  Shortly afterwards, MAJ GEN Gracey the allied commander himself arrived but, faced with riots and an incipient revolution, he declared martial law and backed the French.  On 21st September, Gracey re-armed 1,400-1,500 French colonial infantry (11è RIC) imprisoned by the Japanese in March.  The next day on 22-23rd September 1945, in frenzied and confused street fighting, French troops, ancillary légionnaires, British Gurkhas and Japanese troops, gunned down rebels, women and children in central Saïgon.  Some of the 20,000 French civilians joined the rampage.  In revenge, in the upmarket suburb of Tam Dinh, an enraged rebel mob took around 300-400 European and Eurasian civilians as hostages.  Many were horribly mutilated, raped or murdered - probably around 40 but as many as 150 (Goscha, 2011, p. 202; Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2004, p.14).  The rebels were disparate and disunited.  The Việt Minh (VM) denied involvement in this massacre and implicated Binh Xuyen, a Vietnamese criminal brotherhood, whose leader they subsequently murdered [Note 2] (Goscha, 2011, p. 202).  On 26th September, VM guerrillas accidentally killed a 28 year old O.S.S. officer LCL Dewey at a roadblock – the first American death of the Vietnam conflict.  Although considered ‘subversive’ by Gracey, Dewey realised colonialism was moribund and sought compromise.  Just before he died, he advised his own government to ‘clear out’ of SE Asia (Burns & Novick, 2017).  Ironically, Dewey’s untimely death deprived the VM of the one man who may have prevented the War.  In disarray, the rebels retreated 30km north to Thủ Dầu Một and, in an ‘atmosphere of violent ideological totalitarianism’, the VM murdered dissenting nationalists (Ngo Van Xuyet, 2006). 

Around a week later, on the 5th of October 1945 at 15:30, General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque disembarked in Saïgon.  He only disposed of 900 colonial troops, remnant légionnaires and a handful of sailors but, later that month on 15th, the first detachments of his Second Armoured Division arrived.  Then, in the middle of November, lead elements of the 9th Colonial Division (D.I.C.) docked inSaïgon, ahead of the first aircraft shipments (later that month).  Thinly spread, allied troops nevertheless fanned out over Cochinchina (Southern Vietnam) while negotiations with the VM stalled.  On the night of 3rd January 1946 at Biên Hòa, hundreds of VM fighters assaulted the British base but were machine-gunned on