Czech native and veteran of the French Foreign Legion, Pavel Knihař fought in French Indochina from April 1949 to April 1953. Here he receives the Médaille Militaire for outstanding military service, 16 July 1955.
There was no way that General Henri Navarre could survive the disaster of Dien Bien Phu. He and Commissioner General Maurice Dejean were sacked and replaced by General Paul Ely on 3 June 1954. Ely’s military deputy was none other than Navarre’s predecessor, General Raoul Salan. Navarre retired two years later to write Agonie de l’Indochine. General René Cogny held him responsible for what had happened and sued him.
The Geneva agreement secured the release of both sides’ prisoners of war by the end of 1954. Cold War and anti-imperialist politics played a part in how this was carried out. Interestingly, the Viet Minh treated those captured differently, depending on where they were recruited. This greatly hampered establishing the precise numbers of those they set free and those unaccounted for.
Only French citizens were handed back directly to the French authorities. The Viet Minh returned a total of about 11,000 captured French troops, of whom 3,900 had been taken at Dien Bien Phu. Discounting the legionnaires, this posed the question of what happened to the rest – some 4,100 men. The French government refrained from causing a fuss, for fear it might impede any future releases.
The legionnaires and African colonial troops were repatriated via China and the Soviet Union to their countries of origin. For example, around 1,000 East European legionnaires were returned to communist-bloc states such as East Germany. Some of them then managed to make their way back to their units. The North and West African recruits, seen as fellow oppressed peoples, were subjected to anti-colonial propaganda and encouraged to support nationalist movements once home. The French were understandably not happy with these arrangements, which deliberately undermined the authority of the French military in Africa.
The Viet Minh viewed the French Indochinese troops as traitors to the cause of nationalism and independence. Some were later given the chance to fight for communism, some remained incarcerated, some managed to return home, and others died or were killed. In excess of 26,000 Vietnamese and non-Vietnamese (that included Cambodians and Laotians) soldiers remain unaccounted for. This was a stain on French military honour.
Czech native and veteran of the French Foreign Legion, Pavel Knihař fought in French Indochina from April 1949 to April 1953. Here he receives the Médaille Militaire for outstanding military service, 16 July 1955.
Despite overseeing one of France’s most shocking military defeats, Christian de Castries’s career did not end when he was released. He was quietly sent to West Germany to command the French 5th Armoured Division, before eventually retiring in 1959. Para Pierre Langlais went on to attain the rank of brigadier general, but took his own life in 1986. His comrade, Marcel Bigeard, was sent to Algeria in 1956 to help fight the nationalists. His last military command was in the Central African Republic in the early 1960s. Legionnaire André Lalande fought in Algeria and, likewise, became a brigadier general. Jean Gilles, commander of the airborne troops in Indochina, also survived the scandal and fought during the Suez Crisis and then in Algeria.
The Geneva Accord brought the war in Indochina to an end.