Christmas, 1946
In the Indochinese back country

Jacques Caron is from Noyon, in the Oise (department in France). He is the son of a city employee who handled ration coupons and joined the resistance very early on. He is himself a liaison agent and assists his father in the production of false papers by developing photos in his small clandestine darkroom. In 1944 at age 18, he joins up for the duration of the war. After the liberation of France, he leaves for Indochina.

Upon joining our battalion, the captain had us write a paper. He was quite astonished to read in mine that I left my native Picardy without regret, having decided to pull my weight. I acquired a reputation of being a serious type which earned me the assignment of whorehouse guard during our four-month wait in Marseilles!
Finally, on 16 January, 1946, we boarded the « Andes ». We arrived at Cholon on 11 February following a voyage that started off with a memorable storm. Four-fifths of the complement being thus out of commission, I experienced the only period in which I could eat my fill, since I don’t get seasick.
Barely off the ship, I am immediately assigned to the 4th section of the 13th company of the 4th BMEO. We must retake the land taken by the Viets who were trained by the Japanese in the region of Bokéo, Plei-ku, An-Khe, Kon Plong…which was totally destroyed and which we again occupied in November 1946. For two weeks I enjoy a « luxurious » hut with bed, table and shelves…
Between field operations I kept a journal as best I could in which relate the experience of the immensity of Nature and the dangers of guerilla warfare, but also the monotony of a very Spartan daily existence, frugal food, and the panic attacks of some among us, all of which build character.
It isn’t often that on your 20th birthday you come face-to-face with a tiger!
Luckily he’s not hungry!
My replacement isn’t due until February of 1947, and there’s no question of letting up on the pressure, but at the moment of my first Christmas in the field, I, who proudly left my country without looking back, am caught up in homesickness.
I’m not the type to let things get me down, so one week before December 25th I began to think. What could improve the day-to-day grind? Bread is what I miss most, but I need an oven.
Wandering around base I noticed a termite-mound a few hundred yards away… Ideal for a bread-oven, I immediately said to myself. I check its sturdiness: like concrete! Since this project is now irrevocably underway, one swift kick and all the little critters are gone.
I go back to find a crowbar to dig out a chimney; it’s tough going because I’m all alone, but there’s no way I’m going to tell anyone of my project! I have a troop of native riflemen who trust me completely – peaceful types, attentive and devoted… It’s with them that I’ll spend New Year’s Eve.
The oven is ready, but to make bread, one not only needs flour and water, no problem there, but also yeast, and I have none. In a moment of discouragement I give up on the dough.
A few days later I absently tasted it and notice it to be acidic. I lit a nice wood-fire in my termite mound and removed the embers a few hours later. In go the lumps of dough; a plank serves a door… A half hour later I can’t believe my eyes or my nose: beautiful, plump and golden loaves!
And my riflemen? Christmas has no meaning for them… But an operation is in the works which has them concerned… They therefore decide to go hunting with the idea of offering up a sacrifice to appease the spirits. They capture a wild pig and upon my return to camp, with my nice warm bread, the beast is already on the spit and giving off a wonderful aroma of roasted meat.
The locals gather around. In the middle of the incantations I hear: “sergeant Caron….. sergeant Caron…”.
One of the riflemen, Tchoun, whom I had taught a few words of French, explains to me that they’re saying: “you not dead”…
It’s a divine feast in every sense of the word, because in passing out my bread and in view of the fact that it was Christmas, I felt a bit like Jesus of Nazareth. Not a crumb is left over! As for the roast pig, it does not cause me to miss our traditional turkey.
For a vegetable we had potatoes baked in the ashes, which had been ordered (and paid for in advance) from a Chinese from An-Khe who had gone shopping in Saigon and who faithfully delivered them to me a month later.
Let’s not forget the beverages: water, tea, and a local rotgut made of fermented wheat which I soon learned that the best way to tolerate it was to swallow it in one gulp.
The next day, back to serious business. We go out in the field again. “My” Tchoun follows me, putting his feet in my footprints…. I am still alive.

The Army Theater
22 Taberd Street Saigon

By Henri Darré, then corporal and movie projectionist.

Artists, actors, singers, comedians, illusionists, musicians… in 1947 there was a group of about 50 of us, men and women, in this theater at:
32, Taberd Street in Saigon.
We lived in the dressing rooms located all over the inside of the theater, while about a hundred Vietnamese who were there to clean the theater and to act as servants for each of us lived under the stage and in the out buildings.
Theatrical and music hall productions were reserved for military personnel, and were sometimes mixed, that is to say open to the Vietnamese.
I remember that our director, captain Saron, a close friend of André Roussin, had managed to get that playwright’s piece, « La Petite Hutte »(« The little Hut »), produced in Saigon before even being shown in Paris.
My talents as a musician saw me into the theater’s orchestra in 1947, and my friends and had the opportunity to play on Radio Saigon, which was controlled by the French Army.

Tony Muréna

My godfather Tony Muréna (published by Léon Agel – Paris) had come to Radio Saigon at the end of 1947.
He played in Cambodia in 1948 before King Norodom Sihanouk, himself an accordion-player.

Christmas 1948
Army Signal Corps
(Camp Petrusky – Saigon)

In 1947, after general Leclerc had left, the shantytowns returned and with them attacks on servicemen. Every night we were lulled by the sharp sound of jungle drums, apparently played for death vigils.
The Signal Corps was thus set up in this place where about forty soldiers were trained in the use of 16 mm DEBRIE projectors.
The service was made up of about ten GMC trucks fitted out with a powerful generator on a trailer and intended to supply electricity for proper projection.
Each team of three, all drivers, projectionists, and if necessary, combatants.
Each team had a precise destination, most often in forward positions held either by the (Foreign) Legion, by the National Police, or by the others….
Each team went out for about three weeks. I say about, because you had to get in and out. A vehicle-mounted machine gun opened the road for us each time we moved but sometimes teams wouldn’t come back, having been the victims of a fatal ambush in one of those fragile outposts in a region where one Indochinese out of two was on the payroll of the Viet army, either out of conviction or out of fear.
Today, morale isn’t at its highest, because about twelve of us from the Signal Corps have been given new assignments to combat units.
Reinforcements from France being non-existent, headquarters draws from all the Services. Some will go to Tonkin, others to Annam, to Cambodia, or to Laos, as did my friend Lavier. I have been assigned to join the 2nd BMEO at Soc Trang, in the Mekong delta.

Each of us is thinking that tonight is Christmas Eve in France. For us it will remain routine, dust, mosquitoes… For the most part this Christmas Eve will be observed in the outposts where nothing special is planned: Saigon is under siege.
I’m luck to be able to go join my friends from the orchestra at the military base where a dance is to be given. I won’t go back until the next day because it isn’t wise to enter or leave the base at night. The huts which General Leclerc had ordered destroyed in within a radius of one kilometer of the camp in 1945 have returned, along with the freeloading Viet riflemen.
Christmas Day starts off sad and no notable change is to be expected in the immediate future. Tomorrow each of us will take his pack and will rejoin, more often than not by his own means, his assigned unit.
As for myself, I got lifts from military trucks, as well as civilian trucks protected by convoy. I even traveled a few kilometers in an Indochinese truck full of ducks, by way of My-Tho, Ben Tre, Mo Cay, Vung Lien, Vinh Long, Cai Von and finally Can Tho, where I arrived on December 28.
The roads being cut and Soc Trang being surrounded by the Viets, I didn’t make it back to my base until 3 January 1949, by way of creeks on a Navy gunboat. …