I'm sure I'm not the only person who perused the shelves for a book who gawked with gratitude that someone took on Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam. The book is not news for the astute military historian, which wouldn't include me, but Martin Windrow's book is a interesting and somewhat devious read, filled with premonitions that beyond the introduction, which is all I have read so far, will be insight into how the British Foreign Legion (where he hails from) manipulated America into the war and set up the Great Backstab through King Crimson.
The tug on the heart begins the moment the book begins. My sympathies are entirely with the people of Vietnam, who fought off the Japanese, then the French then my own country. Windrow states that the symbolism of Dien Bien Phu became an obsession for France because of the Occupation by Hitler and all the humiliation attending; he neglects immediately to point out that France learned the wrong lesson and should have pitied, sympathized with and supported Indochina in their movements for independence.
It is shocking how difficult it is to simply curl up on the couch and consign yourself to his hands, which are gifted, knowledgable and helpful as he leads with purpose. However after admitting that France's response was gutteral and fused to the tragedy of German invasion, their defeat, he asks how much differently would it have turned out if France had won at Dien Bien Phu, pining away that such questions are useless anyway. It wouldn't have been nearly so useless if he had the courage to have asked the right question.
What if France had the sense not to go after Vietnam to bite someone just because Hitler bit them?
The tragedy at Dien Bien Phu is a sad, sad story, bitter. America had stopped Worldwide Communism in Korea but at a terrible price to our credibility as contributors to world peace by mutual understanding. In Vietnam all we had invested in creating a strong America tempered by wisdom came to nothing and opened our history to review about the methods and real goals of even the Korean War.
The Last Valley is particularly revealing for the role the an English played pulling strings behind the scenes about France, leading America into disaster and then humiliation by the very an English who gloated from afar.
Learning about Dien Bien Phu won't change history but it is sure to illuminate even more vividly The Great Backstab.