French Foreign Legion paratroopers mopped up and killed Viet Minh guerrilla troops in Mao Ke, near Hanoi, Vietnam, from March 23 to March 28, 1951, during the Indochina conflict.

　　French Foreign Legion paratroopers mop up and kill Viet Minh guerrilla troops in Mao Khê, near Hanoi, Vietnam, from March 23 to March 28, 1951, in the Indochina conflict. Approximately 2,000 to 3,000 Viet Minh were killed, while about 40 French troops were killed and about 150 were wounded in action. Bodies of Vietnamese guerrillas littered the fields of Mao Khe, where in 1949 the deployment of French conscripts overseas was banned and the foreign contingent consisted of veterans of the Nazi German SS (SS) and other units. Former SS members had fought against partisans on the Eastern Front in World War II. They became effective fighters in French Indochina, however, foreign troops were not politically acceptable in the French home country.

　On the Vietnamese coast, huge numbers of French soldiers lost their lives on the roads and rivers, which were often ambushed by guerrilla forces. Air resupply became essential, and the French relied on AAC-1 transport planes, and after 1952 on transport planes provided by the US military. As the Viet Minh and Vietnamese People's Army acquired more sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, their supply sources were also dangerous and unreliable.

　Few French troops had any counterinsurgency experience. The French tactic was to divide the enemy territory into a grid and scramble attack forces into squares. The French army built hundreds of reinforced concrete fortifications throughout the north, forming the de Lattre line in 1951. The tactical problem was that the Vietminh were not land-locked and retreated or attacked. Defensive fortifications tied large numbers of French soldiers to isolated and vulnerable locations. For the French, army and naval river assault divisions and airborne commando groups used rapid deployment tactics. The best corps soldiers and paratroopers were continuously utilized as the elite on the battlefields where the fighting was most intense.

　The Vietminh, formed on May 19, 1941, was a Vietnamese independence movement organization that fought in the First Indochina War, seeking independence from French colonial rule. The Viet Minh were built as a regular army, and the PAVN's expansion was rapid, with some 154 battalions organized by 1951. They knew the terrain and the people of Vietnam well and had the support of the people. The French had failed fatally, and the PAVN was able to survive and fight with limited resources. There were thousands of volunteers, and supplies were reliably hand-delivered to the combatants. They were able to absorb huge numbers of casualties without weakening their political will or strategic boldness. In pointing out the failures of the French army, the Viet Minh were a revolutionary army. The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was later referred to as the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) during the Vietnam War against the United States.