JUNGLE MISSION.

Riesen, Rene.

Published by Thomas Y. Crowell, New York, 1957

About this Item

First US printing. Originally published in France in 1955, this is a poignant account of Riesen's efforts to support the Bahnar Tribe during the First Indochina War. He had worked for Vichy France during World War II and following liberation, received a 20-year prison sentence, but he volunteered to serve in the Bataillon Leger d'Infanterie d'Outre-Mer, where WWII political prisoners could redeem themselves. His account, which epitomizes and challenges the idea of going native, is one that most students and scholars have never read, let alone heard of, and it deserves re-evaluation and a more prominent place among readers. The officers in the 4th Montagnard Battalion assigned Riesen to work with the Bahnar ethnic group in the southern mountain plateau of Cochinchina Ð the French name for their colony in South Vietnam Ð during the First Indochina War. The French used the term "Moi" for the Bahnar, along with the Rhade, Hre, and other groups as an equivalent for "savage," and the Americans would later refer to these tribes as Montagnards during the Vietnam War. Riesen learned their language, their traditions, their rituals, their way of life. He became so much one of them and was so admired by his partisans that they offered him a wife to seal his alliance with them. On orders from his superiors and in the fear of offending his Montagnards and damaging all his good work, he accepted. Later on he was offered a second wife to secure alliance with another tribe as it was customary in the Montagnards way of life. The Hre called him "the Father with white hair". Few Europeans have had the humility or the sympathy to enter so fully into a primitive way of life and to describe native men and women with such intimacy and even tenderness. The events described in this book occurred well before the battle for Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and, in the end, Riesen and the Bahnar achieved limited success against the Viet Minh, and after the French defeat in 1954, Riesen moved on to Algeria for a similar mission fighting Algerian insurgents, where he and his wife were killed in a 1956 insurgent ambush. For his services in French Indochina, Corporal Riesen was awarded the French Croix de Guerre. Illustrated with photographs. Includes an appendix of Moi myths and legends. Translated from the French by James Oliver. Index. Quite scarce. 204 pp. Near fine in near fine dust jacket (crinkling to back cover of dj).

Seller Inventory # 92073

Bibliographic Details

• Title: JUNGLE MISSION.
• Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell, New York
• Publication Date: 1957
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • Travel and Exploration