'Aussie Rick'’s Comments (group member since Jun 12, 2009)

'Aussie Rick'’s comments from the THE WORLD WAR TWO GROUP group.

Darya Silman wrote: "
Meat Grinder: The Battles for the Rzhev Salient, 1942–43 by Prit Buttar (release date:..."

I have a copy on order already :)

In the end an excellent list of authors!

Marc wrote: "I'm going with this one as soon as I finish my current read:

Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of El Alamein"

That will most likely be my theme book as well Marc :)

For those who are interested in joining in the October theme read (El Alamein or the Torch landings) the thread/page is now open for discussion/comment:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

The October theme read is any book or books of your choice, including novels, that covers the Battle of El Alamein or Operation Torch in 1942.

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - French efforts to crush Ho's army by military means may have back-fired:

"The 'French colonialists' fanned the nationalist flames for the 'Vietnamese communists'. The sustained bombing the French unleashed from mid-1952 added raw hatred to the mix. Napalm blasts that had already started in the delta in early 1951 followed the PAVN into highlands and continued right through the battle of Dien Bien Phu, killing untold numbers of soldiers and civilians. Ngo Van Chieu almost choked on his anger and hate when his men uncovered the corpse of a calcinated baby in a napalmed town somewhere west of Nghia Lo: 'What punishment awaits for those who allow small children to die burned in their cradles by a fire thrown from the sky!' From one end of the DRV to the other, French planes bombed dikes, dams, canals, and animals. Talk of 'total war' might have looked good in Hanoi or Paris, but in applying such tactics the French drove thousands of Vietnamese into Ho's camp. And then there were those terrible 'things' that happened in the borderlands. If the French rightly commemorate the horrible day in mid-1944 when the Nazis took hundreds of innocent lives in a village called Oradour-sur-Glance, then Vietnamese remember some of the terrible things that happened when the French army rolled through their villages during this conflict. The anticommunist singer and songwriter Pham Duy wrote a deeply moving ballad in the late 1940s called 'The Mothers of Gio Linh' in memory of their sones killed during a French raid on this village. Enemy soldiers decapitated them and put their heads on pikes in the middle of the village to let the people of Gio Linh know who was in charge."

The Mothers of Gio Linh:
https://indochine.uqam.ca/en/historic...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - Below is a detailed article on the Battle of Hoa Binh, which the author stated was a French victory, but ultimately, it was a Pyrrhic one.

https://www.historynet.com/the-hoa-bi...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - The first recorded use of napalm during the French-Indochina War at the Battle of Vinh Yen. Lucien Bodard, a French war reporter reported:

"And then, just below a strangely geometric ridge, a huge ball of fire the color of an orange sun rose up. It was as if it had emerged from the earth itself, though it tumbled towards the ground before unfolding like a tablecloth over one side [of the ridge]. In a matter of seconds, licked by this tongue of flames, everything was on fire, and then nothing was left except for enormous trails of oily and black smoke. It only took a minute for the 'thing' to burn the entire hill and for me to understand what it was: napalm. I had just witnessed its first use in Indochina, the first harvest for this incandescent liquid. De Lattre had done it. It was the secret weapon which he had mentioned to me, which he now counted on and which he had finally dared to use. Only a few weeks earlier, the French spoke with horror of this product capable of creating infernal flames of Gehenna, promising never to use it in Asia. They swore it on their honor. But de Lattre had no shame. On the contrary, he even instructed the censors not to cut any account of it from journalists' copy, but instead to encourage them to make the case for widespread use of this twentieth century version of Ancient Greek fire."

The Battle of Vinh Yen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_...

Great story about the exploding latrines, no wonder they were called 'thunderboxes' :)

Bryan wrote: "It sounds like an important book, AR. I will have to add it to my pile."

It's a book that needs to be read but it's also a book that will make you angry and depressed.

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - From the chapter; The Levee en Masse and War Communism:

"Between 1950 and 1954, the DRV territories from Zone IV northwards, people-powered work teams repaired 3,670 km of roads, created 505 km of new ones, and repaired or improved 47,000 meters of bridges. When it came to specific battles, the mobilization of civilians may have only lasted a few weeks before the fighting stopped, but the levels of human mobilization achieved during those powerful spirts were mind-boggling. For the Battle of Cao Bang, which occurred only eight months after the third plenum had closed, the Vietnamese communists mobilized 121,700 people, who collectively provided over 1.7 million workdays clearing roads and delivering supplies. Three-hundred-thousand laborers made the Battle of Vinh Yen possible a few months later by clocking up an astonishing 2.8 million days of work. Two other major battles in 1951, each part of the General Counter-offensive, rounded up people in vast numbers - the Dong Trieu and the Day campaigns mobilized almost 300,000 people for a combined total of 3.6 million days of labour. This massive mobilization of porters and road workers continued until the end of the war. In all, between 1950 and 1954, the state requisitioned over 1.5 million people, who provided a total of almost 50 million days of transport and road work. The government classified these civilian laborers as 'fighter laborers' (chien si dan cong) and not as colonial-era 'coolies'. We do not know how many, mainly young, men were called up to serve in the People's Army between 1950 and 1954, but the number must have exceeded half a million out of a total DRV population of 10 million."

The Battle of Cao Bang:
https://indochine.uqam.ca/en/historic...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - The so called 'salt wars':

"Salt wars also broke out. In the early years of the war, especially when the French shifted their attention to fighting in the north, their salt fields in the south became immediately vulnerable to Vietnamese attack. In 1947, Vietnamese commandos attacked and killed the director of the Hon Khoi salt pit located near Nha Trang. The French counterattacked and retook the field. They immediately fortified its defenses, given that it supplied three-quarters of Indochina's total annual salt consumption. The renewed security drive at Hon Khoi included the construction of ten new military posts, seven watchtowers, and the deployment of 170 full-time, heavily armed militiamen. This military investment accurately reflected the importance of maintaining the salt monopoly for the colonial state. The French army then went on the offensive in early 1949 when it forcibly seized the DRV's salt pits in the south at Baria and Bac Lieu, but not before the Vietnamese had flooded 35,000 tons of water into those same fields to render them unusable. To hurt the DRV's salt production elsewhere, the French air force began dropping fuel oil on enemy salt laid out to dry. The goal was to ruin it for consumption."

The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam by Christopher E. Goscha

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - The author mentioned the Haiphong incident in which the French Navy shelled the city and port of Haiphong over a customs dispute between French and the Vietnamese:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiphon...

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - The war in the cities:

"As in the north, southerners also turned to civilian women and children to serve as transporters, guides, and information-gatherers. In 1947, an all-female 'Minh Khai Platoon' came to life in this way, named after the communist heroine the French executed outside Saigon in 1941, Nguyen Thi Minh Khai. This platoon numbered thirty young women aged between eighteen and twenty-two. Most of them came from poor urban or semi-rural families and usually worked as street hawkers. Also created was the 'pip-squeak' class. It supplied boys and girls to serve as scouts, guides, and messengers in Saigon-Cholon. AS in the north, most were orphans, aged between eleven and sixteen. Together, women, teenagers, and children passed into and out of the city carrying directives, money, mail, small arms, grenades, and explosives."

Nguyen Thi Minh Khai:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nguy%E1...

Great post Doubledf99.99, I've heard of 'Tree jumping' used during the Malayan Emergency as well.

Mike wrote: "Theresa wrote: "G.J. Meyer is great!"

Good to know! I also have his A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 unread so far."

Me too Mike!

Ben Macintyre usually provides a good story, so I hope you enjoy the rest of the book.

Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies by Ben Macintyre

Some nice books there Dimitri! I like the looks of the last book :)

Mike wrote: "Nice pickup AR. After reading Blood And Iron, this campaign needs more books on my shelf."

I'd recommend Paul Ham's book on Kokoda and David Cameron's trilogy but not too sure how available they would be in the USA.

"The Road to Dien Bien Phu: A History of the First War for Vietnam" - I found this bit of information of interest:

"During the Battle of Hanoi, Vietnamese authorities expanded the use of civilians for wartime purposes to include children. Nowhere was this more evident than in the creation of the 'Children's Guard' (Ve Ut). It consisted of 175 children, many of whom the famine of 1944-45 had orphaned. The army did not recruit them to fight as combatants per se. It was their knowledge of the urban topography (backstreets, alleys, markets, and bridges) that made them invaluable guides, messengers, and scouts. As a result, they were integrated into the regular army and militia's operations. Aged between eight and fourteen, a dozen or so worked for the capital regiment."

The author also makes this point:

"Of course, using children in wartime was not a 'Vietnamese' or an 'Asian' phenomenon. One has only to think of the dangers drummer boys and young messengers endured during the American Civil War (the youngest in the Union Army was nine)."

The Ve Ut (‘Children’s Guard’):
https://indochine.uqam.ca/en/componen...