Nguyen Ngoc Bich

Nguyễn Ngọc Bích (1911–1966) was a French-educated engineer, a Vietnamese "resistance hero" against the French colonists^{:850. NOTEN.psq1} and "one of the most popular local heroes,"^:122 a French-educated medical doctor, an intellectual and politician, who proposed an alternative viewpoint to avoid the high-casualty, high-cost war between North Vietnam and South Vietnam.

The Nguyen-Ngoc-Bich street in the city of Cần Thơ, Vietnam, was named after him to honor and commemorate his feats (of sabotaging bridges to slow down the colonial French-army advances) and heroism (being on the French most-wanted list,^:122 imprisoned, subjected to an "intensive and unpleasant interrogation"^:122 that left a mark on his forehead,^N.bi1 and exiled) during the First Indochina War.

Upon graduating from the École polytechnique (engineering military school under the French Ministry of Armed Forces) and then from the École nationale des ponts et chaussées (civil engineering) in France in 1935, Dr. Bich returned to Vietnam to work for the French colonial government. After World War II, in 1945, he joined the Viet Minh,^N.bvm and became a senior commander in the Vietnamese resistance movement, and insisted on fighting for Vietnam's independence, not for communism.

Suspecting^N.bs of being betrayed by the Communist faction^N.bs of the Viet Minh and apprehended by the French forces, he was saved from execution by a campaign for amnesty by his École polytechnique classmates based in Vietnam, mostly high-level officers of the French army,^{: 299} and was subsequently exiled to France, where he founded with friends and managed the Vietnamese publishing house Minh Tan (in Paris), which published many important works for the Vietnamese literature.^N.mbl In parallel, he studied medicine and became a medical doctor. He was highly regarded in Vietnamese politics, and was suggested by the French in 1954 as an alternative to Ngo Dinh Diem as the sixth prime minister of the State of Vietnam under the former Emperor Bảo Đại as Head of State,^:84 who selected Ngo Dinh Diem as prime minister. While Bich 's candidature for the 1961 presidential election in opposition to Diem was, however, declared invalid by the Saigon authorities at the last moment for "technical reasons",, he was "regarded by many as a possible successor to President Ngo Dinh Diem". ^{N.pi, N.tcq} Provided by Wikipedia