Publisher's Synopsis
What is Viet-Nam? It is a narrow strip of high hills, swamps, and riceland that runs along the South China Sea. Together with Cambodia and Laos, it formed the area of the French Empire called Indochina. During the Second World War the Japanese took over its administration from the Vichy government. Then in 1946 - at a time when peace was settling over most of the world - war began in earnest in Viet-Nam, when France attempted to reestablish its authority. This quickly turned into a struggle between France together with nationalist elements that looked to France for eventual independence on one side, and a Vietnamese Communist regime on the other - a mean, jungle conflict known in Paris as "the dirty war."
