Talk:Battle of Route Coloniale 4

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this is the 2nd battle of RC4

the first occured in October 9th 1947. the french won the first battle. cao bang-rc4-lang son. source: french defense archives. Cliché Online 23:49, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Belligerents

Legion is part of the French army, no need to separate it from France. I deleted Legion icon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.190.97.85 (talk) 12:01, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Planning New Edits

I just finished the book The Quicksand War by Lucien Bodard, which covers this battle extensively. I'm planning to edit and expand this article using this source.

Planned list of edits:

Side Panel Info Add French commanders to list of belligerents: Colonels Constans, Le Page and Charton Detail the French strength

Intro section Expand on geography and significance of the RC4, possibly refer to the first battle of the RC4 in 1947 The book contains several detailed maps that are extremely useful for this article, I'm wondering if it would be kosher to scan these in? I think I could pretty easily reproduce them too if that's necessary.

Section 1: RC4 in the First Indochina War Expand on strategic importance of the RC system and inherent geographic weaknesses. Potentially split the China stuff into a separate section since it's important but doesn't have to do with RC4 directly. Expand on Carpentier vs Alessandri prior to operations. Expand Carpentier's reasoning for the planned link-up at Dongkhe, method of waiting to evacuate Cao Bang. Add section for Vietnamese strategy and preparation for the battle.

Section 2: Battle of the RC4 Potential to greatly expand this section, especially Charton's movement through the jungle and linking up with 1st BEP in the hills outside Dongkhe. Correct dates (Group left Caobang Oct 3, not Oct 1). Add Viet Minh movements going on at the same time.

Section 3: Aftermath Potential to greatly expand, can potentially split into French and Vietnamese perspective.

Notes Add information for the reference to Martin Windrow's book (I think this is The French Indochina War 1946–54, 1998, Osprey publishing, but I'm not sure - the source is only 48 pages long and ostensibly covers the entire war from 46-54 so I doubt how much detail it provides on this specific battle) Add Quicksand War by Lucien Bodard ^[1] (printed in France in two volumes as L'Enlisement, and L'Humiliation) Add Vietnamese sources from the Vietnamese page.

This is will be my first attempt at major expansion of an article, if anyone has any suggestions, etc. I would really appreciate it.

At a glance the Vietnamese page for this article has MUCH more information that the English version, I'll try working with a translation of this as well.

Doarn Crewans (talk) 15:09, 18 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

References

^ Quicksand War, Lucien Bodard, 1967, Little, Brown & Co, translated by Patrick O'Brian

Merger proposal - merge Battle of Đông Khê into this page

Battle of Đông Khê apparently took place from 15-18 September 1950 and clearly was the initial phase of this battle. There really isn't much detail to Battle of Đông Khê, nor any inline refs and the entire page seems to be covered by this page, so I believe that anything there should be merged into here and the page deleted or changed to a redirect to this page. Mztourist (talk) 10:22, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

No comments received so I have gone and deleted Battle of Đông Khê and replaced it with a redirect to this page. Mztourist (talk) 10:23, 7 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Quicksand War, Lucien Bodard, 1967, Little, Brown & Co, translated by Patrick O'Brian

[1]