[Palle]

Hi Loktar, you are right indeed. France are generally smart enough not to send 19 year old conscripts to die in some gritty guerrila overseas. There were more units than para and legion in Indochina though.

-Local units in French service, varying in quality from some quite good to quite bad.

-North African regiments, the French army, like other colonial powers, had no qualm about employing full regiments of natives from colonies to fight their wars. Many soldiers fighting for the Free French in WW II and Indochina were Marrocans or Algerians and were in general considered excellent, as were the Senegaleese artillerymen. At Dien Bien Phu, however, the North Africans broke under the strain of siege and became the "Rats of Nam Yun", the thousands of deserters hiding in caves along the banks of the Nam Yun River (I may have the River name wrong) and straining the logistics system further by stealing provisions. Bigeard was later to say that had he had 12.000 Waffen SS troops there instead of the motley garrision they had, he would have held it. I personally suspect he was right in that, the effective fighting force of 5- 6000 Legionnaires and Paras almost held. Though at terrible costs.

-Various local allied units. Generally bad quality, which was not made better by the fact that their leaders were puppets mostly, or played both sides.


In Algeria the Quadrillage system saw local units, conscripts, etc. in garrision around the country and reinforced/relieved by Legionnaires and Paras when there was fighting to be done. So the *fighting* units were the same, except that the Colonial Regiments from the past no longer existed at that stage, as most colonies contributing had been granted some form of independance.

Palle