French pilot Michel Marszalek fought in the battle of Dien Bien Phu half a century ago, but until this week had never set foot in the Vietnamese city which has come to epitomise the end of French rule in Indochina.
The 73-year-old veteran, who flew 115 missions over Dien Bien Phu in a C-47 Dakota, was in the mountain-ringed city to remember his own fallen comrades as it celebrated the 50th anniversary of the epic victory over the French on Friday.
"I don't recognise this place," Marszalek told reporters, referring to the hotels, restaurants, shops and Internet cafes in the city of 60,000 people.
PHOTO: AFP
All he recalled from his sorties half a century ago were glimpses of paddy fields and rustic wooden houses from the air.
Undeterred by unrelenting rain, some 15,000 people crowded Dien Bien Phu's main stadium yesterday to watch military parades, variety shows and listen to rousing speeches.
"We are sharing the joy and victory with the people of France and the peace-loving people of the world," Defense Minister Pham Van Tra told an enthusiastic crowd of mostly Vietnamese.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, whose guerrilla tactics were made famous by the Dien Bien Phu rout, sees broader significance in the event.
"It was a victory for colonized countries all over the world," the 93-year-old four star general said in March.
It was on May 7, 1954 that a rag-tag group of Viet Minh accepted the surrender from the better equipped forces led by General Christian de Castries after a bloody 56-day siege. The victory marked France's withdrawal from Indochina.
Giap estimated French forces -- who included a multinational French legion comprised of Germans, Italians, North Africans, Thai and even Vietnamese -- suffered 16,000 casualties.
The Viet Minh, a coalition of communists and nationalists, lost around 10,000.
The actual tallies will probably never be known. Other accounts, including The Last Valley by Martin Windrow published this year, note about 9,000 French forces were marched away as prisoners, and perhaps half died or disappeared.
The French have taken a low-key approach to the 50-year anniversary, with President Jacques Chirac and Ambassador Antoine Pouillieute attending a ceremony in Paris yesterday to honor the fallen.
At a seminar about the legendary battle, one of many events that Vietnam has hosted since March for the anniversary, Pouillieute focused on the lessons learned rather than the defeat.
"The profound relations between Vietnam and France have often been happy, sometimes cruel, but never mediocre," the envoy said at the seminar last month.
Two embassy officials will lay a wreath at the French monument in Dien Bien Phu, a white obelisk within a courtyard of trees that lies along a small road surrounded by houses. It was the former location of the French military hospital.
Marszalek will also lay his own wreath at the monument and is taking back soil from A1 Hill (Eliane 2) where France made its last major stand. The French gave women's names to a number of hills where they were entrenched.
While recounting stories of the battle with tears, Marszalek, accompanied by his wife who had lost her fiance at Dien Bien Phu, also paid tribute to his former enemy.
"The bravery that these people showed to defend their country is incredible," he said.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
The death toll from a shooting in western Afghanistan rose to 11 on Saturday, after gunmen targeted civilians at a picnic spot in Herat, the provincial authority said. Bullet marks were visible on a wall of the Sayed Mohammad Agha Shia shrine, while bloodstains marked a blanket abandoned at the scene. “Eleven people have been recorded dead and eight others wounded from Friday’s incident, with the condition of two of the wounded reported as critical,” Herat’s information office said in a statement. The update raises a toll of seven killed provided on Friday by the Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs
RSS