This photo shows two Vietnamese paratroops in French service during the French Indochina War, circa probably about 1952-54, when many of the French Union Forces' units in Viet-Nam, Cambodia and Laos were increasingly made up, in some cases, up to around 50% or so, of locally-recruited troops. Additionally, all three governments of the nominally-independent State of Viet-Nam, Kingdom of Cambodia and Kingdom of Laos had their own armed forces deployed against the Viet-Minh, Khmer Issara(Free Khmer, or Free Cambodians)and the Pathet Lao(the Laotian Communists allied with the Viet-Minh). In that regard, as well as a number of others, the French Indochina War was as much a civil war inside those three countries, as it was a war of anti-colonial liberation, similarities that it shares with quite a number of various wars of independence over the centuries, including our own American Revolution.