Thankfully, I learned to form my opinions about the French and the Vietnamese using other sources as well.
In any case, whenever I see someone extolling the FFL over other equally-adept branches of the French military (the Marines, for example) I just have to laugh.
Well, it’s fashionable to slam the French due to their collapse in 1940, but that was more due to incompetent leadership and planning than any cowardice on the part of individual soldiers. Seems it’s a commonly repeated thing to see French troops fighting bravely but in a hopeless situation thanks to their government and generals.
I guess you have to look at 20th- and 21st-century French military history through the lens of World War I and the incredible slaughter the French endured fighting on their own soil for four years. The best of an entire generation were wiped out in the trenches.
}:-)4