France will repatriate the stays of six troopers who fell in Diên Bien Phu | EUROtoday

Published on : 03/30/2024 – 09:06Modified : 03/30/2024 – 09:09

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France will repatriate “in the coming days” the stays of six troopers who fell in Diên Bien Phu, in present-day Vietnam, the place the final battle of the Indochina War passed off in 1954, mentioned the French Ministry of Defense. Armed Friday.

“These are already known remains, kept in three different places”, which had been “reported to the French embassy in Vietnam in 2012, 2021 and 2022”, he laid out in a press launch.

The Vietnamese authorities gave authorization on March 25, and the exhumation of the stays passed off the following day. “Tributes to the dead were paid by the Vietnamese and French authorities at each of the sites.”

After 56 days of bloody combating, deluges of shells and hand-to-hand confrontations, the Battle of Diên Bien Phu ended on May 7, 1954, with the autumn of the French entrenched camp. The battle sealed the tip of the French presence in Indochina and the emergence of Vietnam as an unbiased nation.

4,000 lifeless on the French aspect

“The National Office for Combatants and Victims of War (ONaCVG) will be responsible for conducting anthropo-archaeological analyses” to attempt to establish the stays, the ministry mentioned. The households of the deceased recognized will be capable to receive the restitution of their stays, or go for burial in a nationwide necropolis.

“One of the remains is accompanied by a surname plaque. The analyzes should make it possible to confirm its identity,” specifies the press launch. The unidentified stays will probably be buried within the Indochina War Memorial necropolis in Fréjus.

“Yesterday as today, on our soil or elsewhere, it is the honor of France to always ensure perpetual burial for those who died for it,” declared Patricia Miralles, Secretary of State. to Veterans.

The choice of the Hanoi authorities to develop the Diên Bien Phu space and lengthen its airport to the positioning of the outdated battles, which left 4,000 lifeless on the French aspect, had led to predictions of the invention of recent our bodies.

“Preventive archaeology” coaching was offered to web site managers. But “since then, the French authorities have not been informed of the discovery” of recent our bodies of French combatants.

With AFP