It is the showdown between the French and the Viet Minh that took place in 1954 that is the subject of this account.

ECONOMIST: The war in Indochina

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.

BBC: French Gen Marcel Bigeard dies aged 94

In the nineteen-forties, the Communist insurgency in Vietnam bedevilled the French until, in 1951, the Viet Minh strategist Vo Nguyen Giap switched to conventional warfare and promptly suffered a series of defeats.

NEWYORKER: How David Beats Goliath

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.

BBC: Vietnam rejects French officer's ashes request

Seven years into a vicious, expensive, politically unpopular and largely ignored war being fought thousands of miles from Paris, the French expeditionary force under General Henri Navarre was under pressure from its political masters at home to grasp the military initiative from the Chinese-backed forces of the Viet Minh.

ECONOMIST: The war in Indochina

Legislation passed last year allows Viet Kieu to purchase property in Ho Chi Minh City.

CNN: Stops and Starts

During the Vietnam War, NVA and Viet Cong forces famously used the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos and Cambodia to attack the South, while U.S. forces were usually prohibited from chasing them back across the border.

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