Can anyone shed some light on why some French paras wore green berets and some wore red during this time period? I originally thought green denoted the foreign legion, but this seems to be false. I haven't found any clear answers in historical accounts, and a novel I am reading (To A Silent Valley, written by a correspondent who was at Dienbienphu) has a scene where paras are wearing both colors at a meeting, so it's not as if one color was replaced by the other.
shareI think the French soldiers wearing green berets you're referring to are probably Legionnaires, not paratroopers, seen getting off the ship at Marseilles at the same time as the paras (who wear red berets).
French Foreign Legion paratroopers did fight in French Indo-China, however -- the 1st and 2nd Foreign Legion Parachute Battalions, converted from a French "demi-brigade" of Parachute Commandos in 1947.
Green berets are " commando de marine" ( marine's elite troops) and red berets are paratroopers.
shareThe green beret is worn by both the legion paratroops and the Navy commandoes.
The red beret was worn by the regular paratroops and then by the Navy troop commandoes (not the same thing, although it's a bit confusing).
The French air force parachutists wear a dark blue beret.
The Foreign Legion wore green berets, and in the later stages of the Algerian War, the Legion infantry adopted them as well.
The Colonial paras preferred "Lizard" caps of camouflage, but these do not seem to have caught on among Legion paras (according to Martin Windrow's book on legion uniforms). Red berets were worn when, presumably the need for camouflage was less.
The French Air Force also had paras, who briefly wore a dark blue beret in the 1950s but soon reverted to red as well.