As we prepare to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the end of the Korean War, which, from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953, ravaged the country from north to south, killing more than two million rare are the French television documents devoted to this conflict.
It is all the more astonishing that this war, which almost led to a third world conflict and still today has concrete resonances on the international scene, saw 3,241 French soldiers take part in the fighting, under the aegis of UN and US Command – 278 of these men lost their lives.
In 2016, a documentary by Cédric Condon and Jean-Yves Le Naour, entitled Korea, Our Forgotten Soldiers, was devoted to the suffering endured by these recruits from very diverse social backgrounds, who came to fight communism and came up against not only a well-equipped North Korean army by the Soviets, but also to its formidable Chinese ally.
In 2017, broadening the spectrum, John Maggio produced Korea, an endless war, a remarkable work at the same time as a salutary lesson in history, recalling that, if the armistice was indeed signed on July 27, 1953, we expect still a peace treaty!
With this unique documentary dedicated to the story of Roland Vassort, Joseph Massin and Claude-Bernard Pous, three French soldiers, three pioneers placed on the front line and fallen in combat on October 6, 1952 in the hell of Arrow Head Ridge faced with Chinese attacks and whose bodies have never been found, Serge Tignères sheds light on this conflict in his own way.
Exciting portraits
With the help of testimonies from veterans who allow us to measure the ordeal experienced by these soldiers, reconstituted battle scenes and American film archives from the period, we plunge into the hell of the outpost of Arrow Head, bombarded without interruption on October 6, 1952 from 7:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. by Chinese artillery, before the waves of assault came to overwhelm the men of the pioneer section. Results of these fights ended in hand-to-hand combat: 22 killed, 17 wounded, 2 prisoners, and these famous 3 missing.
If the documentary looks a little too long at the genetic research undertaken since 2018 and at the excavations organized on the ground of the clashes, the portraits of Vassort, Massin and Pous that are emerging are fascinating.
Arrived in Korea respectively on January 2, April 12 and July 13, 1952, these three men, volunteers like all their comrades and equipped by the Americans, will only live a few weeks in this hell before disappearing, weapons in hand, on this coast of Arrow Head. From extreme conditions (?30 degrees in winter) to the ferocity of the fighting, this Korean war so absent from French collective memory suddenly materializes before our eyes.
