On This Day: French troops smash communist forces in Vietnam in battle that would lead to 24 years of fighting

MARCH 28, 1951: French troops smashed Vietnamese communist forces on this day in 1951 – yet a civil war that would lead to more than three million deaths would drag on another 24 years.

France, which had regained its Indochina colony from Japan following World War II, defeated insurgent Viet Minh forces at the Battle of Mao Khe.

French forces, led by World War II hero Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, ended the fray with bloody hand-to-hand street fighting that cost hundreds of lives.

A British Pathé newsreel shows the imperial power’s incredible firepower advantage over the rebels as planes rained down bombs and paratroopers fired shells.

Hundreds of Vietnamese prisoners of war – just some of the 3,000 the French claim to have captured – were also filmed with their hands above their head.

Yet, despite France’s belief that they had smashed the communists, the victory would not prove a decisive one.

The First Indochina War, which had been fought since 1946, would drag on another four years until 1954 when the French finally quit the country.

Rebel leader Ho Chi Minh, who had seized the north of the country from the Japanese during World War II, initially agreed to French rule to prevent Chinese entry.

At the time, he famously said: 'I prefer to sniff French s*** for five years than to eat Chinese s*** for the rest of my life.'

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In the end, it took eight years of war to rid the peninsula of the Europeans, who had first established their colony in 1887.

Following France’s exit, the country was split between a communist North Vietnam and capitalist South Vietnam.

The North began a terrifying land redistribution programme by killing 172,000 alleged landlords – with up to 500,000 others dying as a result.

In 1957, Ho, who had travelled widely and close to both Soviet and Chinese communists, encouraged southerners to rise up against dictator Ngo Dinh Diem.

The North Vietnamese Army supplied insurgents with Chinese and Soviet weapons via the covert Ho Chi Minh trail through mostly neighbouring Laos and Cambodia.

A proxy war between Cold War rivals began when the U.S. decided to counter the communist threat by arming and providing technical expertise to the South.

American President Lyndon B Johnson launched Operation Thunder and finally sent ground troops to fight in Vietnam in 1965 - a year after the NVA invaded the South.

But by 1968, following the Tet Offensive by communist forces, the war was beginning to look unwinnable for the U.S., despite it committing 500,000 soldiers.

The same year also marked the height of the protest movement, culminating with an eight-day riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

Violent demonstrations also took place in London in 1968 – notably with 117 policemen injured after a crowd of 6,000 tried to storm the U.S. Embassy in October.

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Other protests included boxing legend Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army and fight in Vietnam after saying 'no Vietcong ever called me nigger'.

He was banned from fighting in every U.S. state and lost his passport, meaning he could not fight anywhere, which forced him to forfeit his heavyweight title.

Among the 210,000 other 'draft dodgers', 30,000 young American men evaded conscription by fleeing to Canada.

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A further 2.2million men, of whom a quarter served in the Vietnam Combat Zone, were successfully drafted into the armed forces during the era.

In 1973, America, which lost 58,000 lives during the controversial Cold War conflict, finally pulled all its forces out in what was seen as a deeply humiliating exit.

The war, which led to the deaths of up to 3.1million people in total, ended on April 30, 1975 after the North seized Saigon, which is now known as Ho Chi Minh City.