(AFP) The French Ministry of Defense has announced that it will repatriate from Vietnam the bodies of six soldiers who died in Dien Bien Phu, the country’s last stronghold in colonial Indochina.
The statement added that the surgery would take place “within the next few days.”
Dien Bien Phu in northern Vietnam was the site of an epic battle against Vietnamese communist forces in 1954 that brought about the end of the French colonial empire in Indochina.
Vietnamese fighters surrounded the French troops, who were equipped with superior weapons, and bombarded them with heavy artillery.
Thousands of soldiers on both sides were killed in less than two months in fierce fighting in a remote and rugged valley.
The presence of six bodies “preserved in three different locations” had been reported to the French embassy in Vietnam in 2012, 2021 and 2022, the ministry said.
Vietnamese authorities approved the repatriation on March 25 and announced that the body had been exhumed the next day.
Unknown: The Vietnamese flag flies over the French position (General de Castrie) during the final attack of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam War, May 7, 1954 (Photo courtesy of Apic/Getty Images)
The ministry said experts will have to examine the bodies upon their return to France to identify the five people and confirm the identity of the sixth person who was named and buried.
Families will then be able to claim their relative’s remains or choose to have them buried in a national cemetery.
Those whose names were not revealed will be buried in a cemetery for soldiers who died in the 1946-1954 Indochina War.
Vietnam’s victory over France at Dien Bien Phu split the country into a communist-controlled northern government led by revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh and a pro-American southern government.
It set the stage for a 20-year war that ultimately ended with the defeat of the United States in the Vietnam War and unification in 1975.
The region once known as French Indochina is now Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
