OPERATION MASTERDOM BRITISH GENERAL SERVICE MEDAL FRENCH INDO CHINA 1945 +WW2

Offered is an interesting 'Viet Minh' action General Service Medal to Lance Naik Ram, who whilst serving with the 17th Dogra's took part in the fighting against the Vietnamese guerillas in the immediate post war era of 1945-46

General Service Medal (1918), with clasp S.E.ASIA 1945 – 46, impressed named 8420 L/NK. RANJHA RAM, 4 BN. DOGRA R.

Qualifying dates for S.E. Asia 1945 -46 clasp: French Indochina: 3 September 1945 to 28 January 1946.

The 4^th Battalion 17^th Dogra Regiment was part of the 20^th Infantry Division (India) who were deployed there as part of Operation Masterdon.

The British area of occupation was the area south of the 16th parallel – Southern Vietnam, Cambodia and some of Laos. The Chinese Nationalist Army was responsible for northern Vietnam. Major General Douglas Gracey and 20th Indian Division arrived in Saigon in early September 1945. The division’s new role in Saigon, Operation Masterdom, was to establish control, provide support for the French authorities and disarm the Imperial Japanese Army. However, the division had minimal intelligence about the Japanese Army in the area, let alone the Viet Minh – the resistance movement known as the League for the Independence of Vietnam. Until March 1945, the Vichy French had worked alongside the Japanese authorities but Ho Chi Minh had declared independence from the returning French on 2 September 1945.

Gracey was much criticised at the time for imposing martial law, but it was seen as an impossible situation that the division had been sent to sort out, with the French viewing them as peace enforcers and the Viet Minh seeing them as aiding the French colonial oppressors. There was serious fighting between the division and the Viet Minh. The division established control in Saigon as well as providing support for the French. By November, the soldiers were able to return to their original objective of disarming the Japanese as the French army largely took over internal security roles. Indeed the French officers and men were criticised by Gracey for their colonial and racist attitude towards Indian soldiers. Between October 1945 and January 1946, the division suffered more than a hundred casualties, forty soldiers had died in the period, and 54,000 Japanese troops had been disarmed with an estimated 2,000 Viet Minh deaths. The division began to leave Saigon in early February, with effectively the last remaining units gone by the end of March 1946.