Post by Legion Etrangere on Jul 10, 2009 6:18:07 GMT -5
Yves Le Bray PFC French Army
January 4, 1965
NEWSWEEK
Vietnam: Fortune's Scapegoat
After the fall of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, a fresh inscription was chiselled in the grey stone War Memorial in the little Breton town of Pleudihen. Lettered in gold, it read: 'Yves Le Bray, mort pour la France.' [died for France]. And on All Saints Day every year thereafter, someone from the Le Bray family joined in the placing of a wreath beside the plaque honouring Yves and other heroes of Pleudihen who had died for France.
Last week, however, who should be sipping 'vin rouge' [red wine] in a local cafe but Yves Le Bray - rather the worse for wear, but still alive......
Le Bray's lost decade began....when he was a 21-year-old PFC serving as a radioman with a French artillery battalion near the port of Haiphong, in North Vietnam. Ambushed while on night patrol, Le Bray spent the next six months in a Communist prison camp. And at war's end, instead of being returned to France like most of his fellow prisoners, he was packed off by the North Vietnamese Government to Langson, near the Chinese border, to become a slave labourer......
Having lost all trace of him, French authorities presumed that Le Bray had been killed in action, and thus it was that his name was added to the 'monument aux morts' [monument to the dead] back in Pleudihen. Eventually, more than ten years after his capture, the French Legation in Hanoi found out about Le Bray, obtained his freedom, and sent him winging homeward aboard an Air France jet.
Following the French defeat in Indochina, the North Vietnamese proclaimed that all the French POWs had been given back to France and that there were no more French POWs in captivity.
Today, the Vietnamese say the same thing about American POWs. Rigidly following the Stalinist model, the North Vietnamese did not consider captured French servicemen as POWs, nor do they consider captured American servicemen as POWs. Rather, the POWs are "war criminals", who in the Stalinist doctrine are stateless individuals.
Thus, the North Vietnamese could and do say they have been holding no Frenchmen, Americans, nor any POWs, while at the same time it is precisely what they have been doing.
January 4, 1965
NEWSWEEK
Vietnam: Fortune's Scapegoat
After the fall of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, a fresh inscription was chiselled in the grey stone War Memorial in the little Breton town of Pleudihen. Lettered in gold, it read: 'Yves Le Bray, mort pour la France.' [died for France]. And on All Saints Day every year thereafter, someone from the Le Bray family joined in the placing of a wreath beside the plaque honouring Yves and other heroes of Pleudihen who had died for France.
Last week, however, who should be sipping 'vin rouge' [red wine] in a local cafe but Yves Le Bray - rather the worse for wear, but still alive......
Le Bray's lost decade began....when he was a 21-year-old PFC serving as a radioman with a French artillery battalion near the port of Haiphong, in North Vietnam. Ambushed while on night patrol, Le Bray spent the next six months in a Communist prison camp. And at war's end, instead of being returned to France like most of his fellow prisoners, he was packed off by the North Vietnamese Government to Langson, near the Chinese border, to become a slave labourer......
Having lost all trace of him, French authorities presumed that Le Bray had been killed in action, and thus it was that his name was added to the 'monument aux morts' [monument to the dead] back in Pleudihen. Eventually, more than ten years after his capture, the French Legation in Hanoi found out about Le Bray, obtained his freedom, and sent him winging homeward aboard an Air France jet.
Following the French defeat in Indochina, the North Vietnamese proclaimed that all the French POWs had been given back to France and that there were no more French POWs in captivity.
Today, the Vietnamese say the same thing about American POWs. Rigidly following the Stalinist model, the North Vietnamese did not consider captured French servicemen as POWs, nor do they consider captured American servicemen as POWs. Rather, the POWs are "war criminals", who in the Stalinist doctrine are stateless individuals.
Thus, the North Vietnamese could and do say they have been holding no Frenchmen, Americans, nor any POWs, while at the same time it is precisely what they have been doing.