In 1954 some 10, 000 French troops surrendered at Dien Bien Phu to a Vietminh army under General Vo Nguyen Giap.
It is, after all, more than 40 years since the French were routed at the battle of Dien Bien Phu.
Eisenhower, offered the French two atom bombs to save Dien Bien Phu.
He survived the 1954 Battle of Dien Bien Phu, where French troops were surrounded and defeated by the forces of the Vietnamese Communists, the Viet Minh.
His desire for his ashes to be scattered at Dien Bien Phu, so that he might lie with his fallen comrades, was refused by the Vietnamese government.
These are some of the code-names from long ago of the defended hill outposts and paratroop drop-zones set in the waving elephant grass of the Indochinese highlands at Dien Bien Phu.
But as Herve Morin this week becomes the first French defence minister to visit Vietnam since Dien Bien Phu, the country's foreign and defence ministries have rejected Gen Bigeard's last request.
Gen Bigeard was a commanding officer during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, where French troops were surrounded and defeated by the forces of the Vietnamese Communists, the Viet Minh.
The reader can almost hear the parachute canopies cracking open as Operation Castor begins on November 20th 1953, when the airborne elite of the French colonial army was first parachuted into the valley of Dien Bien Phu.
He retells the terrible siege of Dien Bien Phu earlier that spring, when the North Vietnamese commander, Vo Ngu-yen Giap, made thousands of porters drag artillery into the hills surrounding a French base, from where they pounded the foreign army.
Now you can see the original cave only if you are the chef of a three-star restaurant, fought at Dien Bien Phu or are a mistress of the president of France and since there are so many of the latter, they're having to cut back.
应用推荐