While combat intensified on 25 July 1948; the battle of Phu Tong Hoa took place. The combat company of Captain Cardinal resisted heroically and held the line for 9 hours against non-stop assaults of the Viet Minh. In 1950, chef de battalion commander Forget and the entire 3rd battalion disappeared at Cao Bằng on route colonial 4 in a traditional Foreign Legion battlefield. Nevertheless, the regiment was still engaged in combat at Đông Khê, Bac Khan and Điện Biên Phủ in 1954. The regiment had already lost the equivalent of 5 battalions in Indochina. With four new citations, the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment obtained a "fourragère" with ribbon colors of the Médaille militaire, and with colors of the ribbon of the Croix de guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieures. In the Indochina campaign, the regiment had lost seventy-seven officers, three hundred and sixty-four NCOs, three-thousand three-hundred and ninety-six other ranks: a total of three-thousand eight-hundred and thirty-seven Legionnaires.