although the French were allowed to administer it under Japanese supervision. That symbolism was quickly noted in the image-aware Far East. The white man had been defeated and humiliated by the Oriental No longer would an Oriental bow before a white master. Japan had bested France; this was a major event in the history of Indochina, and in Asia as a whole. Despite this setback, U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and British Special Operations Executive (SOE) forces worked well with native troops to defy the Japanese and their Vichy puppets militarily during World War II. Even if the example of guerrilla warfare was not set at this time, it was surely refined and taught to a generation of Vietnamese by these commando experts from England and the United States. 'The Communist troops were among the best we had. They were disciplined, responded well to our training and orders,' recalls former SOE Cpl. Arthur Willis from his experience working with natives in World War II Indochina. 'About the only thing I found at fault with them was their politics." Given the centuries of harsh colonial rule, it's little wonder that socialism. Communism, populism, or anything seeming like self-rule politics appealed to the more literate and outspoken Vietnamese. Consider that the Vietnamese leader most widely admired by the OSS men in the field was Ho Chi Minh, whose major desire, looking beyond Communism, was nationalism. As the famed reporter and Vietnam scholar Bernard Fall wrote: Perhaps the major reason Ho turned to the Communist bloc was because the tight-lipped, tightcollared, United States State Department had its stupid blinders on Had they listened to a few of the boys who sweated in the jungles as junior OSS officers, this mess (the Vietnam War) might not be happening now.