The British occupation of Vietnam:

Even before the Japanese surrender, Communist led Vietminh forces had been taking control of the northern provinces of Vietnam. When the war finally ended after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietminh marched into Hanoi. The forces entered the city on 19 August to a tumultuous reception. Soon afterwards, on 2 September, the Communist leader, Ho Chi Minh, proclaimed Vietnamese independence from French rule in front of a crowd of half a million people. Ho's expectation was that the victorious Allies would accept this fait accompli and that the French would have to negotiate on Vietminh terms.

While the Vietminh were strong in the north, in Saigon and the south they faced a challenge from rival nationalist and socialist organisations, including a strong Trotskyist movement. They warned that independence could only be achieved through struggle and the Allies could not be trusted. The Vietminh established a provisional government in Saigon, the Committee of the South, but when the British arrived it had still not succeeded in gaining undisputed control of the city.

South Vietnam had been placed under British control at the Potsdam, conference of July 1945. The British commander, Lord Mountbatten, sent over 20,000 troops of the 20th Indian division under General Douglas Gracey to occupy Saigon. The first soldiers arrived on 6 September and increased to full strength over the following weeks. The Committee of the South attempted to open negotiations, but was ignored. As Gracey later boasted, 'I was welcomed on arrival by the Vietminh. I promptly kicked them out.' Instead he set about driving the nationalists off the streets, banning meetings and demonstrations, closing down the Vietnamese press, prohibiting Vietnamese from carrying weapons and restoring Japanese curfew regulations. On 23 September, with his connivance and under his protection, French troops staged a coup. They seized public buildings, including the town hall, and made widespread arrests. This provoked fierce resistance.

Saigon was paralysed by a general strike and fighting broke out in many parts of the city. Barricades were erected and poorly armed rebels attempted to fight it out with heavily armed British troops. For a while it looked as if the British were in danger of being cut off from reinforcements when Vietnamese forces nearly succeeded in overrunning Tan Son Nhut airfield. They were driven off. While this fighting continued the Vietminh took the opportunity to destroy the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement, executing its leaders.

At last the British secured control of the city but only after the liberal use of artillery, the deliberate burning of areas held by the rebels and the rearming and use of surrendered Japanese troops. According to Edmund Taylor, an American officer in Saigon at the time, the city reminded him 'of a town newly occupied by Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War'.

After the city was cleared fighting continued on the outskirts and into the surrounding countryside. Here once again use was made of Japanese troops in an effort to keep down British casualties. The orders issued by Gracey instructed his troops to 'always use the maximum force available to ensure wiping out any hostiles... If one uses too much no harm is done'.

By the end of December--as large numbers of French troops began arriving--British withdrawal began. Gracey himself left at the end of January but the last British soldiers were killed in Vietnam in June 1946. Altogether 40 British and Indian troops were killed and over a hundred were wounded. Vietnamese casualties were officially 600 killed but unofficially three or four times higher.

Gracey had saved Vietnam for the French and thereby precipitated a war of national liberation that was to last another 30 years.