In the book Hell In A Very Small Place, Bernard Fall notes that during the last days of the battle of Dien Bien Phu a bunch of French soldier with no prior training in parajumping volunteered to enter the now hopeless battle as reinforcemments.
Fall notes that despite no prior experience with parachute, these last batch of reinforcements had an injury rate of no worse than the prior couple of waves of division of actual paratroopers sent to reinforced the French garrison at the location. Fall concludes that there s no need to give specialized parachute training to soldiers to prevent high injury rates and that its an indication perhaps military should start allowing soldiers who never did any prior training at parachuting to enter the battlefield freely should they volunteer to do so.
I am wondering how much these claims can be trusted? It was written by a journalist who served as a partisan in World War 2 and later became a journalists on the Vietnam Wars, going on the batlefield with troops during the French occupation and later joining American troops in patrols in the jungles in the later USA war. In fact he was killed during an ambush on America soldiers by the Viet Cong around a year after he wrote Hell In A Very Small Place.
Whats your opinion?
Fall notes that despite no prior experience with parachute, these last batch of reinforcements had an injury rate of no worse than the prior couple of waves of division of actual paratroopers sent to reinforced the French garrison at the location. Fall concludes that there s no need to give specialized parachute training to soldiers to prevent high injury rates and that its an indication perhaps military should start allowing soldiers who never did any prior training at parachuting to enter the battlefield freely should they volunteer to do so.
I am wondering how much these claims can be trusted? It was written by a journalist who served as a partisan in World War 2 and later became a journalists on the Vietnam Wars, going on the batlefield with troops during the French occupation and later joining American troops in patrols in the jungles in the later USA war. In fact he was killed during an ambush on America soldiers by the Viet Cong around a year after he wrote Hell In A Very Small Place.
Whats your opinion?
