Conclusion

The French consul in Da Nang, Jacques Boizet, took a trip to the DMZ late in the winter of 1962. An experienced Asia hand who had grown as cynical of the Kennedy administration’s war effort as most of his French colleagues by this point, Boizet often shared with Roger Lalouette blindingly simple observations, usually delivered with literary panache, in a format that no American Foreign Service officer would have dared submit to his superior. Boizet’s journey north to the frontier took him to an old colonial-era bridge on the Ben Hai River that served as a border crossing between the Vietnams. Different flags flew on opposite sides of the river, surrounded by obligatory signs denouncing the regime that controlled the other half of the country. Officials had gone so far as to mark every last centimeter of their territory by painting their zone of control on the bridge in the proper national color, red for the communist northern section and green for the southern noncommunist span, just as one would expect on the front line of a Cold War divide....