AfghanisNAM
In November, 1964 my buddies and I were invited to dinner at the home of a french family in Brest, France. We were there after being at sea during Operation Steel Pike (ref:Wikipedia). Our frenchman host had been in the french army and had fought in Indochina. He described his experiences in that war as brutal and unwinnable. The French were thoroughly defeated at the famous battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and withdrew shortly after from their colony. After a lovely dinner we settled in the living room; enjoyed cognac and discussed politics. Our host finally brought up a subject that none of us knew much about; the involvement of the United States in Vietnam. He wanted to know what we knew of the conditions there and how we saw US intentions. I admitted not knowing very much about the situation other than our military role was advisory-supposedly helping the Republic of South Vietnam but that the Gulf of Tonkin incident this summer was serious. As we were saying our goodnigh...