As soon as we landed in Hanoi my four collaborators and I -even have been taken prisoner by the Japanese, without our American companions making a move to oppose the capture, by a common enemy who has been capitulating for a week, of Allied officers with whom they have been collaborating for several months! .. .
Blindness, clumsiness or stupidity? Be that as it may, the U.S.A. will later measure the scope of this blunder, the far-reaching and heavy consequences of which they still suffer today.
Forced to give in to the blackmail the Japanese are indulging in on the safety of my compatriots, I resign myself to accepting a
quarantine (which is, in effect, internment). However, I set the condition of being housed, with my companions, in the palace of the general government.
This presence of French officers in what remained the symbol of French sovereignty was first of all interpreted as a sign of France's return. It had the effect of bringing a respite to the exactions of which our compatriots were the victims.
We remained twelve days at the palace, under Japanese and Vietnamese guard, powerless to assert the rights of France , powerless to bring any comfort to our compatriots, apart from a radiotelegraphic link with difficulty re-established with the metropolis, while in these decisive days Vietnam was inexorably tilting towards communism. Twelve days, during which the Americans, too busy taking up the grievances of the Francophobic elements and consolidating the men of Ho Chi Minh in power, contented themselves with making sure by a few quick visits that we were still out of to assert the rights of France in Indochina!
I often think that the astute Vo Nguyen Giap, future winner of Dien Bien Phu and today he still Grand Master of the Army of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, must sometimes savor the memory of that day when, flanked by the American mission, he had the red flag of the Viet Minh hoisted over the citadel of Hanoi! If we consider what followed and continues to this day, how much bitter regret must the men of the O.S.S. who believed then to be in the anti-colonialist line traced by the Roosevelt administration, and who, in fact, eliminating France, made way for the communism they are fighting today!
William Boyd (Bill, as he liked to be called) Kennedy Shaw , in his 1945 work dedicated to the LRDG , his experience in the desert, a territory where deprivation was the order of the day but which, however, became a scenario dominated by the men of this unit, fundamentally for exploration, although