Indochina War Veterans

[dienbienphu]

HI Y'ALL,



Its been a while since I posted on this forum but I figured now is as good a time as any to remember my interest and commitment to the Indochina War and its community. School has been keeping me busy week after week and weekend activity's have been hectic, however as summer grows near I realize another neglected commitment, Boy Scouts. I have been so fortunate over the last couple of years to be blessed with many quick rank advancements and at this time I have attained the Rank of Life Scout. This is, for those who don't know, the rank just before Eagle Scout (the highest rank). Required for this rank are such diverse elements as 26 required Merit Badges and even more electives, commitment to the Troop, and of course the Eagle Scout Project. Put simply this is a shit ton of paper work to accomplish a completely self led community service project. I have been struggling with this every free moment I get, trying to come up with an untested in unique idea, the going had thus far been tough. HOWEVER... I have found promise in the Library of Congress and their Veterans History Project, to me it offers a great new idea and preserves history of past wars thus offering a great service to the community. To add to this uniqueness I thought to myself, "What about the veterans of Indochina, they have no recognition in American society even though they are so important to our Vietnam War!". So I started digging for contact information for veterans, names, numbers, anything. Out of 450,000 French soldiers who went to Indochina I found... literally nothing. Maybe I didn't look hard enough and maybe I looked for the wrong things but I couldn't find anything.



QUESTION:



Does anyone know where I can find any French veterans that would be willing to share their story's and participate in such a project?



If you have anybody that would be of help, PLEASE comment on this post and I will contact you, also I can answer any and all questions in concern of the any information noted above.



   THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP,



      Morgan

[dienbienphu]

Really?! Not a single person?!?! Geez, they really must be rare...

[lew]

Considering that they are well into advanced-age, and most of us forum members are in the Western Hemisphere, I doubt if many of us would have come into contact with any.

[dienbienphu]

Yeah I don't know what I was expecting to find, your point is 100% correct.

[lew]

Unfortunately, them's the breaks. I have seen a few posting on a French-language forum, but, unless they were an officer, they didn't receive any English language training in the military at that time. Whether they learned English or not outside of the military is a crap shoot.

[Kenneth]

Not an answer to your inquiry but you never know who you'll run into in this world. I once knew a man who took part as an officer in the last mounted operation of the British Army in WWII, which was in Palestine. Later, he competed in the Olympics for Canada. I also met once at his house at a Christmas party a man who had been a Polish cavalryman in WWII and had competed in the 1936 Olympics. Also at the same party was a man who had served in 2HCR, 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment, in WWII (but who never competed in any Olympic games). But the main point is, none of us ever talked about WWII.