Unauthorized?

This is coolbert:

Here from the book "Dien Bien Phu" another instance of the crossbow as used in modern warfare.

As employed by the French irregular fighting force in Indo-China, the GCMA.

GCMA analogous to American Special Forces ["Green Berets"], fighting an unconventional war against the Viet Minh, often employing weaponry chosen for stealth, to include the crossbow:

"The GCMA was fighting a unique type of warfare, calling for a special type of soldier. Capt. Deodat Puy-Montbrun was one of them. Four times wounded, holder of nineteen citations and a commandeur de la Legion d'honneur at thirty-six, Puy Montbrun led his mixed-race command group on innumerable hazardous operations behind enemy lines. Slipping ashore on moonless nights or dropping into jungle clearings armed with silencer-equipped weapons, infrared night scopes, handguns, and fighting knives."

. . . .

"Puy-Montbrun's men, the ultimate masters of stealth, sometimes used a crossbow. 'Imagine,' he recalls with a laugh, 'if I'd told the headquarters' operations division that!'"

Crossbows as used by the montagnard tribesmen of Indo-China. Crossbows described in the Robin Moore book "The Green Berets" as used for hunting monkey. Also could be used for HUNTING HUMANS AS WELL!

Fighting knife tactics and methods as employed by a variety of martial arts forms and practiced by the GCMA troopers or their montagnard charges?

Keep it simple and keep it quiet!

[I recall reading of American Huey helicopters in Vietnam returning from a low-level mission and finding crossbow bolts stuck in the bellies of the "choppers"! Apocrypha or otherwise I cannot say.]

coolbert.