France Dien Bien Phu Medal - Need Help

[alex82]

This medal is in my collection for a wile, unfortunately I'm not an expert in Indochina colonial medals. I know the history about DDP, I even visited DDP once on a travel to vietnam . I bought this medal in Hanoi in a small backyard shop after askin myself thru the city to find old medals fo houers. To cut to the point; was this only avardet to the veterans of the Battle? If i remember Bernhar B. Fall's "Hell in a very small place" right there were only about 12000 defenders. So, is this hard to find, expensive?

Thank you

a l e x

[Ed_Haynes]

The medal is the French colonial medal, the M?daille comm?morative de la campagne d'Indochine.

For more, see http://www.france-phaleristique.com/indo.htm

The clasps, as far as I know, are quite unofficial inventions.

Nothing Vietnamese.

Edited April 28, 2009 by Ed_Haynes

[alex82]

Sorry, so I posted in the wrong section is it possible to move this add to the french section thanks for the info!

[Ed_Haynes]

Done. No problem. Good to see this.

[noir 7]

I confirm that it is the Medaille comm?morative d'Indochine (Indochina Service Medal), which is different from the Colonial Medal.

The two claps are unofficial: it exists no claps for this medal.

Noir 7

[alex82]

Thank you Noir 7

What do you guys mean with "unofficial"? Who made them? Are these fakes?

[Paul L Murphy]

Thank you Noir 7

What do you guys mean with "unofficial"? Who made them? Are these fakes?

These were made by the same manufacturers as the official clasps (people like Arthus Bertrand etc) and were available for private purchase by the soldiers involved. It would be incorrect to call them fakes but the French authorities never authorised them. There are quite a few unofficial clasps like this over the course of French colonial history. The problem with them is that without paperwork you cannot authenticate if the recipient of this particular medal was actually at Dien Bien Phu or if somebody just paired the items together to make it look good. The same problem exists with official clasps as well unless you get the award certificates to support the medal.

[alex82]

Ok, this brings some light in the dark!

Thank you! :cheers:

[PKeating]

An Indochine clasp was authorised for the Colonial Medal but it was of the so-called 'oriental' design rather than rectangular, like the Extreme-Orient clasp in the following photograph. Some veterans who spent the war in Indo-China in an uneasy co-existence with the Japanese or who participated in combat against the Japanese at the very end of the war made a point of attaching Indo-China bars to their 1939-1945 War Medals, as the ribbon bar in the photograph shows. The Extreme-Orient clasp, seen on this so-called Free French-type Colonial Medal, of a smaller size than the normal medal, covered French personnel who had seen service in the Far East during WW2 but some veterans, particularly of the battles at the end, felt they deserved special recognition, hence the anomaly. As for the clasps on the Indo-China Medal, I can see a veteran of Dien Bien Phu sticking an official clasp on his medal but the Indochine clasp strikes me as redundant, for obvious reasons.

PK

Edited May 1, 2009 by PKeating

[PKeating]

Here is another EXTREME ORIENT clasp on another small ?Free French-issue? Colonial Medal, part of a pair with a 1939-1945 War Medal with the clasps FRANCE and ENGAG? VOLONTAIRE. They are in a period frame with a Colonial Medal certificate issued in Saigon in 1947 to Sergent Roger Loncle of the French Air Force?s Compagnie de Garde de l?Air 595.

The C.G.A 595 was tasked with securing Tan Son Nhut airport, near Saigon, after the Japanese surrender in August 1945. French armed forces had co-existed uneasily with the Japanese armed forces during their occupation of Indo-China and there would have been a contingent of French guards stationed at Tan Son Nhut. This unit might have been the Compagnie de Police S?curit? Tan Son Nhut. Some sources say that the C.P.S. Tan Son Nhut was redesignated C.G.A 595bis, then C.G.A 595 and, later, C.G.A 31/191.

I am inclined to believe that C.G.A 595 was the unit designation of the 150-strong contingent airlifted to Tan Son Nhut in August 1945 and that some of these men were drawn from Free French Forces in Europe. This would explain the presence of the FRANCE clasp on Loncle?s War Medal. The ENGAG? VOLONTAIRE clasp indicates that Roger Loncle volunteered, either for the regular French forces in 1939 or for General de Gaulle's Free French Forces after the armistice with Germany. Loncle could probably have gotten away with sticking an Indochine clasp on his 1939-1945 War Medal but he evidently didn't bother.

To digress for a few moments, the document itself is interesting as it is signed by General Raoul Salan, Commander-in-Chief of French forces in Indo-China in the early stages of the First Indo-China War. Salan would later gain notoriety for his r?le in, amongst other things, the attempted coup d??tat against President de Gaulle in 1961. The rebels took control of Algiers and other major centres but the putsch des g?n?raux, as it is also known, was suppressed before they could carry out their planned airborne assault on central Paris.

Along with others, Salan was charged with treason and condemned to death in absentia. On the run, he and others founded the OAS or Organisation de l?Arm?e Secr?te, best-known to those unfamiliar with postwar French history through the opening scenes of Day of the Jackal, when OAS men spray de Gaulle?s Citro?n DS with machinegun fire.

Salan was captured in 1962 but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He and other officers were amnestied in 1968 and released. In 1982, their ranks and honours were restored in a move by the socialist Mitterand government that enraged many of France?s committed lefties. However, Mitterand himself had a chequered past, as one of the relatively few Vichy officials awarded the Ordre de la Francisque by P?tain before he reinvented himself as a R?sistance hero.

French politics and history are nothing if not complicated?

PK

[alex82]

wow, thanks that is some fine and interesting research!