70 years ago this month.
January 1954 – French Indochina. Legionnaires of the recently reformed 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1er Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes) crouching, stationary, during a patrol west of a little hamlet in the heart-shaped Mường Thanh Valley called Diên Biên Phu, long before it was infamous.
Daniel Camus/ECPAD/Defense Ref. : NVN 54-9 R43
Note the floppy chapeau de brousse bush hats, TAP 47 “lizard” camo, and hallmark MAT-49 SMGs: the French Indochina experience at its peak.
Formed at Khamisis, Algeria on 1 July 1948, 1er BEP shipped out to Indochina just four months later and would remain in the embattled colony during its entire existence. It was reportedly full of hard cases with prior combat jumps, including several former SOE/OSS types, Sky Soldiers, Paras, Paracadutisti, and Fallschirmjäger who has served under a half dozen flags in the Big Show.
They would make a series of spectacular airborne raids and jumps that have been all but lost to history including dropping 580 men into Haiphong on 18 March 1949, landing two companies at Phu Doan and another at Tuyen Quang during Operation Pomone I in April 1949 to destroy Viet Minh depots, 412 men at Phu Lo Xoc at the end of that month, a full battalion-sized raid on Phu Doan on 7 May 1949, captured Tinh Luyen in an 18 August 1949 airdrop, dropped a company to reinforce Hoa Binh in November 1949, raided Quang Nguyen on 20 April 1950, was involved in the brigade-sized mass drop (along with 2d BEP and 3d BPC) on Phu Doan during Operation Marion on 11 September 1950, and dropped in the tragic rescue at That Khe in October where an entire company was annihilated and its others decimated, leading the battalion to be disbanded on December 31, 1950.
Reformed, they lept into Cho Ben in November 1951 in Operation Tulipe.
Bled out, they had to be reformed extensively over the next two years.
They were only at full strength and para-qualified in November 1953 when they were pinned to Operation Castor– seizing the Mường Thanh Valley and fortifying Diên Biên Phu near the border of present-day Laos, essentially Giap’s backyard.
On D-Day on Castor, 20 November 1953, 2,650 men of GAP; 2/1 RCP, 1 & 6 BPChoc parachuted into the valley, meeting up with 25 pathfinders of GCMA who had landed the night prior. On D+1, 1,400 men of our 1er BEP, along with 2 GAP, and 8 BPChoc parachuted in. D+2 saw 485 Vietnamese paras of 5 BPVN leap in followed by a mortar company and light artillery battalion.
Castor was carried out with five squadrons of WWII-era C-47 Dakotas and one of recently supplied (CIA manned) C-119 Flying Boxcars. In all, just over 5,000 men would be parachuted into the valley in four days– the largest combat airdrop for any country since the Varsity jumps over the Rhine in March 1945.
It would be 1er BEP’s final jump.
Dien Bien Phu, René Pleven, Minister National Defense, presents decoration to fanion 1st BEP Feb 1954. Three months later the unit would no longer exist and the pennant was destroyed rather than be captured
Captain Cabiro, commander of the 4th company of 1st BEP (Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes) is smoking a Gauloises cigarette. Note the Luger P08 he picked up in 1944 and the American handie-talkie radio
Indochina 1954, Officers newly reformed 1er BEP. TAP 47 lizard camo, Mauser bayonet, US M1 helmets, and handie-talkie
Indochina War, Dien Bien Phu, January 1954. A lieutenant of French 1er BEP recon unit.
With every member of the battalion either killed, wounded, or captured at Diên Biên Phu during the later 54-day siege of the outpost in 1954, 1er BEP would be reconstituted in name only on 18 May 1954– two weeks after the battle.
Following a shift to Algeria during the French withdrawal from Indochina it would be redesignated the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er Régiment Etranger de Parachutistes, 1er REP) in September 1955, a unit that earned further glory in the Suez and fighting in North Africa only for that unit to be dissolved for good for its part in the 1961 Algiers putsch against De Gaulle.
The regiment’s parade song was “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”), by Edith Piaf.