"Trying to find the title of a book about FFL in Indochina" Topic

A friend of mine was telling about a book he once read written by a guy who was a battalion or company commander in The French Foreign Legion in Indochina circa Dien Bien Phu. He said the battalion was made up of mainly Germans and they even did some raids into Chinese territory. Does anyone recognise the book?

cheers

FM

Devil's Guard

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Keep looking you can get it cheaper.

I wasn't suggesting he buy that one. But that'll give him the info necessary to find it, ISBN, title, author…

Try, "The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam"

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Devil's guard seems to be an higly fantasy series of book that happens to be set in Indochina, and have no connection with reality. Let your money stay away from it…

OTOH "THe LAst Valley" is probably the best book made on Dien Bien Phu, far superior to the old and riddled with inaccuracies "Hell in a very small place" by Fall (who had a very weird way to do historical researc… comment from Langlais about the supposed parastrooper coup when the officers entered in helmet and weapons in de Castries PC and Fall create a myth.. "it was a battle and we were under constant shelling we all wore helmets and we were were all armed" )

Arrigo

Devil's Guard was a good read … But I'm not sure of it's accuracy. But it is very entertaining … Hell In A Very Small Place & Street Without Joy, both by B. Fall, are generally accepted as "must reads" on the subject of the French in Indo-China. Got my copy of Street Without Joy in the Ft. Benning Book Store at the US ARMY Infantry School decades ago. However, I will have to check out, The Last Valley" if it is considered superior … Thanks for the intel … But I see it was written by Martin Windrow and he is generally accepted as "knowing his stuff" … Which even makes it more of a "must read" …

Fall has a serious problem in reliabilty because he wass presenting his view clouded in history. Some were supported by fact some not and in the latter he nudged the facts a bit. And Fall became the main resource fo US Army knowledge on Indochina… The problem was that Fall knew french and a lot of US officers not so he bave the linke between US Army and French Army. Then during Algeria more and more French officer were invited and worked with the Army to develop COIN doctrine so some stuff bypassed Fall anyway.

Still until Windrow Fall was unchallenged also beacuse he was the only one who had tackled the war in it entirety and in english.

Devil's guard is pure pure fantasy… I have no problem with it… but someone has tried to pass it for real history creating a very very bad situation; it remind me of Galaxy quest…

Just out of curiosity,how do you know Devil's Gaurd is "pure fantasy"?

uhm…

the book is full of errors and inconsistencies the timing are not consequential with real actions and osme of the stories are completely crap…

more importantly the entire premise (the super duper tough ex german unit) is completely off the mark. There a lot of serious academic studies on the composition of the CEFEO and of the foreing units and surprisingly enough the germans are a very sdmall part of the overal french effort, also it was standing policy of the legion to not allow single nationality units. This is documented from Fall's era onward.

Beside that Devil's Guard has been troughly debunked so many times that is not anymore worth of consideration as "history". The author is the Sven Hassel of indochina… Also there is no correlation between what the book says and the whole load of material available on the french experience on indochina.

and if you read some excerpts you will start to think that not even a bad FOW player <joke alert> could have written this!

It is fun in parts, but nowadays except for some crazy people is clearly labelled as a novel.

Arrigo

Well, maybe the historical accuracies are all wrong and the timing and actions in the book don't match( I don't think it's right either) But I have read Recall to Inferno and the excerpts that seem so absurd ,that read like a comic book, are no more unbeleivable than a lot of excerpts from true historical books.
As legion4 said it was very entertaining.
Pete

Yes, I read Recall To Inferno too … again it was entertaining … but certainly was more historically inaccurate then Devil's Guard. But Fun, so to speak … I believe as time went on, as with Fall, some of S L A Marshall's writings were in question too. You don't know who to believe sometimes … I've noticed with history in general, some "accepted facts" turn out to be false in the long run … But unless you were there … you have nothing else to go by … Of course I'm glad I was not at Dien Bien Phu …

I agree with legion 4 assessment, but there is a difference between an historical research and a novel!

Just read the Guard series as "fun" books and do not speculate too much (or think they have been written by real veterans, to be quite honest the entire way of presenting Devil's guard is similar to the way Umberto Eco presented the Name of the Rose, claiming to have found the manuscript, but Eco is clear in explaining this is a literary trick!)

Very true … both books are novels, set during the French experience in Indo-China. Fun to read … but don't take it as historically accurate. Save for there were German WWII vets in the FFL at the time …

There is this too,

Overview
The book's anti-communist overtone is set in the opening chapter and is evident in one of the opening statements referring to the communist Viet Minh, "we met the real subhumans in Indochina." The constant justification of SS atrocities, compared to those perpetrated by the Allied powers--as well as the almost-unbelievable fighting ability of the characters--has led some left-wing critics to denounce Devils Guard as Neo-Nazi propaganda. The story is told in the words of "Hans Josef Wagemueller," who fights as an officer in the Waffen-SS during the Second World War. The story begins with the capitulation of Germany in 1945, while Wagemueller is fighting the Red Army and partisans near Czechoslovakia. Wagemueller escapes the Allied powers in post-war Europe by fighting his way west and using underground connections to reach France, where he joins the Foreign Legion. Wagemueller reunites with two former sergeants from his former German unit, Bernard Eisner and Erich Schulze, and is sent to French Indochina. In Indochina, Wagemueller and his comrades are incorporated into mixed Legion units that included many French territorial troops. However, under the command of French Colonel Simon Houssong, Wagmueller is put in command of an all-German battalion (around 900 troops) comprised of former Nazi troops who, like Wagemueller, fled to the Legion. Their mission is to disrupt the Viet Minh in their rear supply areas, far from cities and French-controlled zones. For more than three years, the battalion runs a highly-successful and brutal guerilla war against the insurgent Viet Minh across northern Indochina, Laos and southern China. In one such case, "the battalion of the Damned" escorts a supply column north through enemy-held territory by forcing Viet Minh prisoners and family members to ride in the column's trucks, tanks and jeeps to insure safe passage. In other situations, poison, torture and natural resources are used.

Fact or Fiction?
It is debatable as to whether or not the book is exaggerated fact, or outright fiction. The book is presented by Elford, as the words of Wagemueller, who lived in east Asia at time of the book's publication. In the preamble, Elford claims to have met the man and arranged for him to dictate the events of his military life into a microphone over 18 days. It is documented that ex-SS soldiers both joined the French Foreign Legion and fought in the French Indochina War, although the book's claim that a unit comprised solely of Germans is unsupported by evidence presented by many Legion historians, records and books (such as Bernard Fall's Hell in a Very Small Place and Street Without Joy) on the French Indochina War. Skeptics have stated that the "Nazi's in Indochina" myth came from communist bloc sources during the war. Elford claims his only contribution to the book is in the capacity of an editor, changing the names of soldiers and military verbiage. Critics however, point to the fact that much of the military power possessed by the characters is anachronistic, the SS seems to have almost superhuman-fighting ability and the heavy anti-communist dialogue (as well as supposed war crimes being committed by whosoever the protagonists kill en masse). The access to military records should also allow for the exact tracing of units in which Wagemueller and his comrades served, but only the name of Wagemueller's unit in eastern Europe, the 21st Special Partisanjaeger Commando, is mentioned in Devil's Guard. Supporters point to the fact that Elford is following Wagemueller's request that his details not be made traceable. Critics also point to the serialization of the book (it spawned two sequels, despite the fact the original ended near the end of the war, at Dien Bien Phu in 1954).

Popularity
In recent years, the demand for the book has far outstripped supply and a used copy would typically fetch EUR/USD100 (around £60) on eBay, Amazon.com or other auctioneer. Hailer Publishing began reprinting Devil's Guard, Devil's Guard II: Recall to Inferno (1988) and Devil's Guard III: Unconditional Warfare (1991), in 2005.

Main characters
Horst Altreiter, Bernard Eisner, Simon Houssong, Rudolf Krebitz, Karl Pfirstenhammer, Helmut Riedl, Victor Schenk, Erich Schulze, Han Josef Wagemueller, Gia Xuey

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That pretty much covers it … I didn't know about # III … Who are they fighting for and with in III ?

To be fair to Bernard Fall, he was also writing more or less contemporaneously with the events described & he really catches the atmosphere of the era IMHO. Personally I'd read both Fall and Windrow, whose book benefits from 40 odd years of additional research. Here's a link to a Rand Corp summary of the French Indochina war link

A similar discussion from Axis History Forum link

Good point Huw … I was thinking the same … You will see that in a lot history too. Writings that were done during the time of the events vs. those written much later. And yes, Fall IMO certainly, as you said, " catches the atmosphere of the era". So I guess the short answer is read Fall then Windrow then for fun Elford … Getting the good, the bad & the ugly of the topic …

I was taken in by the Devil's Guard when I was 18, thinking it to be an actual memoir, but then I was taken in by Leo Kessler's memoirs of Kuno von Dodenburg as well!