The decision of the authorities of Hanoi to develop the zone of Dien Bien Phu and to extend its airport on the site of the old combats, which made 4000 deaths on the French side, “makes from now on more than probable the discovery of corpses” of soldiers, explains Paris.
France will repatriate the remains of soldiers who fell in Dien Bien Phu, where the last battle of the Indochina War took place in 1954, the French Secretary of State for Veterans and Memory promised on Tuesday.
“France has an obligation of perpetual burial for all those who died for it (…), except when the families wish to recover the bodies”, reacted Patricia Mirallès before the National Assembly.
“The bodies must be repatriated to mainland France”
“In the particular case of Vietnam, a doctrine has been forged over time, in agreement with the Vietnamese government and the associations of combatants: the bodies must be repatriated to mainland France, in the necropolis of the Indochina war memorial in Fréjus” , she recalled.
“This requires organizing with the Vietnamese authorities the methods of informing the embassy and preserving the bodies when they are discovered”, then the repatriation, detailed the secretary of state.
“The remains found in Dien Bien Phu or elsewhere in Vietnam will find their brothers in arms who are already at the memorial”, assured Patricia Mirallès, who will visit this site on June 8 for the national day of tribute to these dead for France.
After 56 days of bloody fighting, deluges of shells and hand-to-hand confrontations, the battle of Dien Bien Phu ended on May 7, 1954 with the fall of the French entrenched camp, which sealed the end of the French presence in Indochina and the emergence of Vietnam as an independent nation.
