Battalion of the Damned - Waffen-SS Unit Vietnam War

TL;DR

France recruited imprisoned WWII collaborators and SS veterans into a secret penal battalion to fight communist insurgents in Vietnam starting 1948.

Key Points

• 1.The myth of a large SS Foreign Legion in Vietnam is mostly exaggerated. Only 3,000–4,000 former Waffen-SS slipped through French Foreign Legion screening out of 20,000–30,000 German recruits; the rest were regular Wehrmacht veterans, comprising 40–60% of the Legion in Indochina.
• 2.The true SS unit in Vietnam was BOM, a penal battalion of French collaborators. Formed in May 1948 after the Justice Ministry surveyed prisons, nearly 4,000 volunteers came forward — including Milice members, LVF soldiers, and Waffen-SS Charlemagne Division survivors — all serving years matching their remaining prison sentences.
• 3.BOM's operational history was brief but bloody. The first company deployed December 1, 1948 to Cambodia for guerrilla-clearing operations, then moved to South Annam in March 1949; by July 29, 1949, BOM was dissolved and reorganized into two 'March Companies,' with men used as suicidal training instructors for pro-French Vietnamese guerrillas.
• 4.The Charlemagne Division was the origin of most SS volunteers. French SS recruitment began in 1943, forming a 1,688-man regiment that suffered massive Eastern Front losses, then merged with the disbanded LVF to create the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade SS Charlemagne, which famously fought in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.
• 5.Survivors of BOM were ultimately rehabilitated through combat service. Despite no formal amnesty initially, commanding officers illegally promoted men to NCO rank; by 1951 some were commissioned as officers, and those surviving Indochina and Algeria returned to France as free men, having 'paid their dues' to the state.