Many an officer who shipped out to Saigon carried with him a dog-eared copy of “Street Without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946–1954,” published in 1961. In early 1968, when it seemed possible that American forces could be in for a disastrous siege at Khe Sanh, officers scrambled to get their hands on “Hell in a Very Small Place,” Fall’s searing account of the siege at Dien Bien Phu, 14 years earlier, in which the French suffered the decisive loss in their own struggle to control the country.
Bernard Fall: The Man Who Knew the War | Fredrik Logevall
The French Foreign Legion celebrates the battle of Camaron Sidi bel Abbès, 1957.
If you do watch it, ponder where it was filmed, what was about to happen in the short years thereafter, and whether loyalty is always a good thing.
an excerpt from Fall's Street without Joy
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