Peter M. Dunn

This is a fascinating book, more objective and academic than George Rosie's ("The British in Vietnam"), by a Briton who had served in Vietnam as an officer in the United States Air Force.

It deals with French Indo-China under the Japanese Occupation and governed initially by a Vichy colonial regime.

Eventually in 1944, the government in France was replaced by the administration of Gen Charles de Gaulle and the regime in Hanoi and Saigon changed too.

The Japanese surrounded them, but under their generals the French forces withdrew into the country and conducted a fighting retreat to Dien-Bien-Phu hoping that the Americans would help them: they refused, Brig Gen Claire L. Chennault's 14th Air Force being ordered not to help "from the highest political level" (presumably Roosevelt himself).

The French forces were resupplied from British India by the RAF, flying at the extreme range limits of their planes; two of their Liberator aircraft were shot down one brightly moonlit night by the Americans. The French faced the Japanese in a last stand. Their exhausted remnants managed to exfiltrate to south China, where Chennault against orders proceeded to give them refuge. They later returned to Annam with Admiral Darlan's force.

This left a lasting anger and bitterness with the French, and was part of the underlying melodrama behind Navarre's choice of Dien-Bien-Phu as the place for his show-down with Gen Vo-Nguyen-Giap. Again the Americans refused to resupply them by air.

Eventually, in 1945, the Imperial Japanese Forces had to surrender, and the South Seas Labour Party (that is, the Viet Minh or Vietnamese Communists) came out of the jungle where they'd been hiding and tried to take over.

This worked in Hanoi, where the Surrender was to be taken by the Chinese Nationalist, or Guomindang, Army. It failed in Saigon, because the Surrender there was to be taken by the British.

The advance elements of Maj Gen Douglas Gracey's 20th (Indian) Infantry Division had arrived when the VietMinh took over certain key points. The British troops removed them in short order, and the 30-year long Vietnam War began (this is the dating used by the VietMinh/ViertCong themselves).

The British time there was controversial because having to maintain order in the country, Gracey rearmed the Imperial Japanese soldiers as the Labour government in Westminster had refused to send him the rest of the troops of his division or the relief force of 17 (Indian) Infantry Division both of which were waiting in Malaya.

Colonel Dunn treats the subject with understanding and displays a great deal of respect for the way that the British handled the war, for the Indian, Gurkha and British soldiers, and for General Gracey in particular.

The value of the book, and Colonel Dunn states so in clear words, is that this explicates how the Vietnam War should have been fought by the French and later the Americans.

DR-O, London, 18 Jan 9… (mehr)