Word: indochina
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...rule in Algeria, then founded and led the terrorist Secret Army Organization, which fought Algerian independence with a campaign of bombings and assassinations, including several attempts on the life of President Charles De Gaulle; in Paris. Famous as France's most decorated soldier, Salan commanded colonial troops in Indochina in 1952 and 1953; he was named French dele gate-general in Algeria when De Gaulle came to power in 1958. De Gaulle proceeded toward independence and ousted Salan, who later went underground. Captured in 1962 and sentenced to Life in prison, he was pardoned by De Gaulle...
...moved. In fact, a 17-year-old darkroom assistant in London had applied too much heat as he dried Capa's negatives, destroying 98 of the 106 images and blurring the others, including Capa's now famous shot. In 1954, Capa was killed on assignment in Indochina when he stepped on a mine. The fumbling young darkroom assistant in London, Larry Burrows, went on to become a famous photojournalist himself, winning the Robert Capa award for his heroic 1960s coverage of the Viet Nam War. In 1971, Burrows was killed in a helicopter crash in Laos...
...liquidated by others. India, Malaya, Kenya and other imperial outposts demanded and won the right to govern themselves. France's General De Gaulle, who had simply been notified of D-day rather than invited to help lead the attack, imperiously reasserted French claims to rule Lebanon, West Africa and Indochina. The Dutch vainly tried to cling to Indonesia. But the days of such European empires were irrevocably ending. A Third World was struggling to be born...
...Viet Minh and their French-educated leader Ho Chi Minh. By 1954, with Viet Minh control spreading across the countryside, the French chose the valley of Dien Bien Phu to make a decisive stand aimed at checking the Communists. Instead, the one set-piece battle of the seven-year Indochina war led to the slaughter of 1,500 Frenchmen and, at home, to the loss of political will to continue the campaign. To General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander of the attacking forces, who is now 71, the Viet Minh victory was "the toll of a bell heralding the decline...
...press conference in Hanoi, the legendary General Giap, a smiling but still tough, grand fatherly figure who engineered the victory, attributes the Vietnamese military triumph to "a succession of surprises" that forced General Henri Navarre, the French commander in chief in Indochina, to make a stand at Dien Bien Phu. "Why were we successful?" he asks. "President Ho Chi Minh found a path: the combination of the struggle for national independence and the struggle for socialism." In a nearby sugar-cane field, close to where hundreds of French soldiers are said to be buried, the Vietnamese are erecting a modest...