debor044

Vichy France's "small war" with Thailand in 1940-1941 is one of the most unique campaigns and micro conflicts in the greater military history of World War Two (1939-1945). Marshall Pétains shakes Adolph Hitler's hand, 1941 The Vichy collaborators in France and abroad formed a coalition/puppet government with their conquerors in the North of France while a 'free' southern zone was established rule by Vichy following the defeat of the French Army and the capture of Paris. The Vichy army fought rather poorly against their former Allies in North Africa while helping to cement fascist rule throughout occupied metropolitan France and Algeria. Thousands of miles away in French Indochina where French rule had been established by imperial conquest beginning in 1862 as French Cochinchina (Vietnam), the Vichy government collaborated nominally with the Japanese in fear of being ousted by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) forces who were already poised to invade the region ...

On 19 May 1883, the Battle of the Paper Bridge (Cầu Giấy, Hanoi) was fought between a French column led by Commandant Henri Rivière (b.1827-1883) and the Black Flag Army led by Liu Yongfu (b.1837-1917), a southern Han Chinese bandit, mercenary-soldier, and revolutionary. The Black Flag army ended Rivière’s expedition into the Tonkin (North Vietnam), then a tributary state of the Qing Empire (China and it Imperial provinces, 1644-1912) with a stunning ambush near what was called the Paper Bridge (Pont du Papier) outside modern day Hanoi in Vietnam. Background France’s early campaigns fought in Northern Vietnam from 1881-1889 form just the tail-end of a greater narrative of Franco-Vietnamese and Franco-Sino (Chinese) conflict for control over the Tonkin (Tonquin or Tongkin) province of North Vietnam. The Battle of the Paper Bridge (Cầu Giấy) in 1883 was arguably the first major conflict in France’s commitment to conquer and pacify what became Vietnam and French Indochina (1896-1954). The...

The Khmer Empire in what is today Cambodia came to rule almost all of Southeast Asia as one of the most powerful empires and warrior-monarchies of the 12th and 13th centuries. Even though the history of the period is elusive as there are few surviving written accounts, there are however several important historical military & warfare lessons which can drawn from the early Angkorian or Moha Nokor period. Historically it has been established that the Khmer Empire came to dominate great portions of the region between 1000-1432 AD, growing through conquest and the fostering of diplomacy to secure existing and acquire new tributary territories. The Khmer (Angkorian Empire) at War This Cambodian empire in Southeast Asia was predeceased by both the Funan and Chenla states which had been petty kingdoms exisiting before the 8th century, their power centering around the Mekong Delta. Dominated by three major ethnic groups, the Mon, the Cham and the Khmer peoples, the cultures of the region w...

On this day in 1966 the Battle of Long Tan was fought in Vietnam between elements of 6 th Royal Australian Regiment (6 RAR), D company, and NVA/Viet Cong forces during the Vietnam War (1955-1975). The more than three and half hour battle was fought in the ruins of an old French rubber plantation between ANZAC (Australian-New Zealand, mostly Australian) forces and Viet Cong and regular North Vietnamese Army forces. Australian soldiers prepare for evacuation in a Iroquois chopper The forces engaged that day at Long Tan consisted of 105 Australians, plus a 3 man New Zealand artillery team, of the 161 Field Battery who fought in a vicious skirmish in the rain and mud, against a 2,500 or more strong force of Viet Cong irregulars and regular NVA forces from the North. RAR soldier with a US M60 machinegun While on a routine patrol in the province members of D company clashed with a VC platoon purely by chance, stumbling into one another on the trails of a rundown rubber plantation, a late 19...