The thorn in the side of American and British relationships, in the Far East.

French Indo-China is what we now know as Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.  The politics surrounding the treatment of this French colony was to deny SOE any positive action until 1943 and that was to be short lived

Roosevelt was unhappy with the support of the colonial ideals and so was very reluctant in supporting the French in retaining its territories in the Far East. Brittan however was just the opposite, and sided with the French.

But Brittan had a problem with this, in order to support the Free French movement in France, it also had to acknowledge General Charles De Gaul as its self proclaimed leader, whom Churchill distrusted and disliked.

Early in 1943 De-Gaul placed General Pechkoff as his man in China with overall responsibility for resistance. This created an opening for SOE who immediately put one of their own who was already familiar with the territory, Captain de Langdale.

With this SOE and the French army co-operated in building up resistance units and stockpiling arms and munitions.

On the 16^th December 1943 Roosevelt summoned the representatives of Brittan, Russia, China, Turkey Iran and Egypt and informed them that France should not regain her control over Indo-China.

This was a godsend to the Japanese, who saw it as a slap in the face to Britain, China and the French themselves; “a bigger mistake could not have been made.” and gave them confidence to take over.

Mountbatten was alarmed by Roosevelt’s strand, even Selbourn head of SOE requested that Churchill approach Roosevelt, he refused point blank until June 1944 when it was believed that Force136 had a chance in Indo-China.

Only then did Churchill agree to a meeting with the Americans Joint Chiefs of Staff, but Roosevelt once again shot the proposal out of the sky not realising just what he had done and what a coup he had handed to the Japanese.

Churchill took the matter into his own hands, he had to, and he agreed that SOE should go it alone. On the French side General Blaizot was ordered to meet Mountbatten and an agreement was made between the French and British.