CONTESTING INDOCHINA: French Remembrance between Decolonization and Cold War

The best-known faces associated with the Dién Bien Phú defeat in 1954, stoic commander Maj or Marcel Bigeard along with selfless medical professionals Major Doctor Paul Grauwin and air ambulance nurse Genevieve de Galard, all endorsed the rightist take that the rank and file had been betrayed by incompetent leadership. Perhaps most importantly, though, Edwards writes that thanks to many years of lobbying efforts from groups such as the ANAI, "the major state-sponsored commemorative sites and events have also promoted the idea of fraternity between the French soldiers and the Indochinese people, both civilians and the military, and have frequently emphasized the positive contributions made by the French colonial state" (89). When Edwards charts the left's attempts to push back against the conservative narrative in chapter 3, it becomes clear that the effort fell short due to its inability to coalesce into a lobby group on par with the ANAI, its political diversity, and its adoption of an unpatriotic take on the war that was unlikely to find sympathy in the corridors of power during an extended period of conservative rule lasting into the 1980s.