Algeria and Vietnam

From mchale@gwu.edu Mon Nov 26 17:21:22 2001

Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2001 17:22:03 -0500

From: mchale <mchale@gwu.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Algeria and Vietnam

List:

I was wondering if any of you are familiar with Algerian accounts of service in Vietnam during the First Indochina War. And conversely, as I understand that some south Vietnamese soldiers served in Algeria,I would also be interested to find out if you know of any memoirs or articles on that topic.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

Shawn McHale

Assistant Professor of History and International Affairs

The George Washington University

e-mail address: mchale@gwu.edu

From kleinen@pscw.uva.nl Mon Nov 26 17:21:27 2001

Date: Wed, 07 Nov 2001 12:24:36 +0100

From: John Kleinen <kleinen@pscw.uva.nl>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

Shawn and List:

Below you will find the details of a conference we organize at the end of the month in Amsterdam. Among the French specialists we invited you will find some with enough background about your question.

In 1953 the total of French and Associated States forces counted 375,000 out of which 29,500 were labeled as North Africans and 18,000 as Black Africans (e.g. Senegalese), 4,500 of them KIA's and 2,500 MIA's. From a file of the SHAT archives, quoted in an article in Le Figaro (on the occasion of the Boudarel case in France in 1991), I learnt that nearly 40,000 soldiers went into captivity after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, out of which 6080 Africans and North Africans and 14,060 "autochtones du Corps Expeditionaire Francais". Maroccan and Algerian soldiers later participated in the struggle for independance in their respective countries, on both sides.

Our website:

http://www.iias.nl/iias/agenda/decolonisation.html

John Kleinen

X Dr John Kleinen X

X Universiteit van Amsterdam X

X Anthropology-Sociology Department X

O.Z. Achterburgwal 185 1012 DK Amsterdam

Tel.:+31 205252742/2504;Fax.:+31 205253010/3658;

Fax/Tel (Home): +31206760852

http://www.iseas.edu.sg/pubnew.html

From dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au Mon Nov 26 17:21:56 2001

Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 12:26:57 +1100

From: David Marr <dgm405@coombs.anu.edu.au>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

John,

Are you sure about that 40,000 number? My recollection (without yet checking) is that about 10,000 surrendered at DBP. I doubt if 30,000 went into captivity at other locations, but suppose it's possible. Can you clarify?

David Marr

From wturley@siu.edu Mon Nov 26 17:22:04 2001

Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2001 10:04:55 -0600

From: William S. Turley <wturley@siu.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

If I had time to comb through materials I gathered over 20 years ago, I might be able to add some clarity on this point, but memory will have to do. John's numbers for Africans and North Africans are correct, however only a fraction of those who were repatriated "later participated in the struggle for independence in their respective countries." A defecting PAVN officer with some knowledge of this whom I interviewed in 1973 said, if recall correctly, that the specific number of Algerians that the Vietnamese reindoctrinated, trained and returned to Algeria via the Soviet Union and E. Europe, with the understanding that they would join the FLN, was 1800. Presumably not all of these followed through. Of course others may have eventually hooked up with revolutions back home on their own. But this is a shaky memory.

Bill Turley

--

William S. Turley

Department of Political Science

Southern Illinois University

Carbondale, Illinois, USA 62901-4501

phone: (618) 453-3182

fax: (618) 453-3163

From kleinen@pscw.uva.nl Mon Nov 26 17:22:41 2001

Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2001 20:55:55 +0100

From: John Kleinen <kleinen@pscw.uva.nl>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

Dear David, Bill and list members,

Anthony Clayton in The Wars of French Decoloniziation (1994) says that in DBP: French 3000 KIA, 10,000 taken prisoner; 2000, mostly Thai, deserted. On Viet Minh side casualties have been estimated at 8,000 and 15,000 wounded.

Service historique de l'armee, quoted in le Figaro, 6 May 1991:

Prisoniers 39.888 dont "non rendus" par le Viet Minh: 29.954.

Francais 4995

Legionaires 5349

Africains, Nord-Africains 6080

Autochtones du CEF 14060

Autochtones des Etats associes 9404

(source: Benjamin Stora, Imaginaires de guerre, Algerie-Viet Nam, en France et aux Etats-Unis (1997), table on page 39.; on page 38 Stora qualifies this number by saying "40,000 taken prisoner during the war" and "9000 liberated in 1954, as a consequence of the Geneva accords", which means that they not necessarily have been taken POW in DBP). Detailed information in Michel Bodin, Le Corps expeditionaire francais en Indochine, 1945-1954, le soldat des forces terrestes, 1991 (not checked by me).

John Kleinen

From magic_rettig@hotmail.com Mon Nov 26 17:23:52 2001

Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 21:36:28 +0000

From: Tobias Rettig <magic_rettig@hotmail.com>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Vietnamese soldiers in Algeria and Morocco before 1930/1, and in 1956-1960

Dear Shawn McHale and List Members,

the conference on colonial soldiers at the University of Amsterdam sounds co-organised by John Kleinen sounds very interesting. It might be interesting to add, for historical perspective's sake, that Vietnamese soldiers belonging to the 53th and 55th BMIC served in Morocco (campaign against Abd El Krim) in 1925/1926. (Maurice Rives, Eric Deroo. Les Linh Tap. Histoire des militaires indochinois au service de la France, 1859-1960. Paris: Lavauzelle, 1999. Page 86.)

The same book (pages 126f. ) mentions the presence of a small Commando

D'Extreme Orient of about 200 men, mainly belonging to Indochinese ethnic minorities, in Algeria between 1956 to 1960. There are some pictures of them in the book. The French officer commanding them, Captain Guy Simon, was heading the Association Nationale des Anciens d^ÒIndochine when I was in Paris in 1998/9; he probably still is.

In 1930, in the wake of the Yen Bay mutiny and the ensuing crackdown on indigenous troops, ^Ñmore than four hundred tirailleurs will be sent to disciplinary companies in Tonkin or ALGERIA [my emphasis]^Ò, writes the Chronique coloniale of August/September 1930. It is not clear whether and how many Indochinese soldiers actually were sent there. It would be interesting to know whether they would have known that the exiled emperor Ham Nghi was living there.

Before the Great War (I write this from memory, so some details might be incorrect), a naturalised French aviator and fighter pilot from a wealthy and pro-French Cochinchinese family, Do Huu Vi, tested his aircraft in North Africa (Morocoo, I believe). He served in the French Foreign Legion after having gone to Saint Cyr officer school. Vi flew fighting and bombing missions during World War One. He was shot down, severely wounded, but wanted to fight again. His injuries preventing him from flying again, he was killed on one of France^Òs many battlefields. In the late 1930s Vi, who could not have served in Indochina due to his Vietnamese origins, was discovered by the colonial state as a symbol for boosting Vietnamese loyalty in the face of an increasingly hostile international environment by dedicating a post stamp to his memory.

North Africans serving in Indochina: if I remember correctly, this practice dates back at least to the 1880s.

Hopefully, this has been of some use,

Tobias

From hhtai@fas.harvard.edu Mon Nov 26 17:24:35 2001

Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 15:24:22 -0500

From: Hue-Tam Ho Tai <hhtai@fas.harvard.edu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

From Le Monde Diplomatique, May 1991 (I need to check exact date in my file):

As of 1 July 1954, troops under French control totalled 561,000. These included:

76,000 French

82,000 Africans

100,000 colonial troops

303,000 troops from the 3 national armies of Laos, Cambodia and Associated

State of Vietnam.

Viet Minh troops as of 1953 were estimated at 139,000, including 14,000 deployed in Laos and Cambodia. Plus 20,000 Chinese volunteers and several hundred Soviet advisors.

Dead or missing:

French: 5,867

Associated States: 18,714

Viet Minh casualties not estimated.

wounded: French; 64,125

Associated States: 13,000.

Viet Minh wounded not estimated.

Batle of Dien Bien Phu:

Dead:

French; 10,000

Viet Minh: 1,500

Wounded:

French: 4,000

Viet Minh: 15,000.

Economic Costs:

Direct French costs: FF 2,385,000,000.

American Subsidies: FF 8,530,000,000.

PRC + USSR subsidies to Viet Minh 1950-1954 estimated to roughly equal US subsidies to French.

Hue-Tam Ho Tai

From HPHSZB01@phd.ceu.hu Mon Nov 26 17:24:46 2001

Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2001 11:50:13 +0100

From: Balazs Szalontai <HPHSZB01@phd.ceu.hu>

Reply-To: vsg@u.washington.edu

To: Vietnam Studies Group <vsg@u.washington.edu>

Subject: Re: Algeria and Vietnam

I have some doubts concerning the data on Viet Minh troops. While they themselves may have had 139 000 soldiers, Qiang Zhai's book, "China and the Vietnam War", does not write about tens of thousands of Chinese volunteers in this period of the Indochinese conflict (it was certainly true for the mid-1960s). I also find unlikely that the Soviets had so many advisors there that time. Soviet involvement in Indochina was quite insignificant in the early 1950s as Stalin had other issues in mind.

Best regards,

Balazs Szalontai