After the war, the post reverted to French control, but from an early point Viet Minh units operated in the area. In late November 1952, with the Viet Minh 316th Division and 146th Regiment closing in, General Salan ordered Dien Bien Phu to be evacuated. Almost immediately he made plans to retake it. His top-secret directive number 40, issued on January 10, 1953, read in part: “The reoccupation of Dien Bien Phu must constitute in the forthcoming period the first step for the regaining control of the Tai country and for the elimination of the Viet-Minh from the area west of the Black River.”2 Though Salan lacked the means to undertake this operation before he relinquished command to Henri Navarre, the idea took hold in the French High Command that Dien Bien Phu was key to the defense of northern Laos and especially the royal capital of Luang Prabang. The most likely invasion route, strategists reasoned, would be from Tuan Giao, where the Viet Minh had a modest forward base, through Dien Bien Phu, and then over the border and down the Nam Ou valley to Luang Prabang.
In addition, Dien Bien Phu could be further vindication—following the example of Na San in 1952—of the theory of the base aéro-terrestre (“air-ground base,” or, in American military parlance, “airhead”), by which a small number of air-supplied “hedgehogs” would be planted in the path of the advancing enemy and held for only limited periods by mobile units from the general reserve. For Salan, certainly, Na San was the shining symbol of French ability to withstand a massive Viet Minh assault on a prepared defensive position, and he made an early convert of Navarre. If Giap could again be goaded into a major battle as at Na San, and could again be forced to sacrifice thousands of men in vain, in a region of supposed Viet Minh domination, it would enhance France’s position in the negotiations to come. It would also respond to American pressure for more aggressive military action.
The establishment of a strongpoint in northwestern Tonkin was advantageous for a third reason: It would provide crucial assistance to the Tai and Hmong tribal partisans who had operated with success against Viet Minh forces for some years. Navarre held a romantic attachment to this tribal “resistance,” likening it to the activities of the French Resistance against the Germans in occupied France, and he argued that strengthening the tribes militarily could free up regular troops for mobile operations. Herein lay also a fourth consideration: The tribes were a source of opium, which was important to the French to finance their special operations section and which, when it fell into enemy hands, was used to fund Viet Minh special operations and arms purchases. Retaking Dien Bien Phu would ensure that the opium crop remained in effective French control.3
Beyond all this, perhaps there was yet another, final reason to make a stand here, less important to Navarre, who was after all still new to Indochina, than to his subordinate officers, many of whom had deep experience in the region. They felt a sense of attachment to this part of the world—to the sheer beauty of the landscape, to the tribal minorities whose leaders they had befriended, to the captivating young women with the swaying gaits who put leis of flowers around their necks. The peoples of these mountains and valleys were in peril and moreover had little love for the Viet Minh; France had a solemn duty to protect them.
Later on, after everything went wrong, French commanders would attack one another over the strategic purpose of reoccupying Dien Bien Phu.4 The myth would take hold that top officials were from the start divided on whether the operation should be undertaken at all. In reality, the French command initially acted at Dien Bien Phu with a large degree of unity and with faith that the enterprise could succeed. On July 24, 1953, top civilian and military leaders—among them Navarre—meeting in Paris reached consensus on the importance of defending northern Laos if at all possible.5 That desire grew still stronger in October, when Laos signed a mutual defense treaty with France that cemented Laotian ties to the French Union and Giap’s forces thrust into eastern Laos. The Paris government hoped to sign similar treaties with Cambodia and Vietnam; the prospect of doing so would be much diminished if Laos was left to her fate.6
Nor is it easy to credit the postwar claim by Navarre’s principal subordinate and commander of the Tonkin theater, Major General René Cogny, that his initial (grudging) support for the plan to retake Dien Bien Phu was based on his belief that it would be a lightly held “anchor point” used primarily to support mobile operations by local tribal forces. Cogny’s primary concern was always the Red River Delta and making sure that he had maximum resources there, but the archival record shows quite clearly that he endorsed the base aéro-terrestre concept. His personal dislike for Navarre, which was real and which would in time turn to a deep and abiding hatred, should not obscure the fact that initially the two men largely agreed. For Cogny no less than for Navarre, the concept had the virtues of being versatile and of having both a defensive and offensive purpose: It was a “hedgehog” that would thwart a major attack, and it was an “anchor point” that would support mobile operations in the enemy’s rear.
There were, to be sure, other potential sites for such bases in the highlands region. Na San was an obvious contender, but its location was not ideal, as the Viet Minh were now capable of easily outflanking it; in August, Navarre indeed ordered the evacuation of the Na San garrison for redeployment elsewhere. Lai Chau, the Tai tribal capital, also received consideration, but its location was problematic. Situated a mere thirty miles from the Chinese border, it was far from the main route into Laos, and its stunningly dramatic topography made it difficult to supply by air. And relatively easy air supply would be of central importance to the sort of operation gestating in Navarre’s mind. Better placed than either Na San or Lai Chau, he and his commanders concluded, was Dien Bien Phu, especially as it had a reasonably good airstrip already in place. Although the site was ringed by mountains, the French—who considered themselves the master artillerists of the world—deemed these to be beyond artillery range, even if occupied by enemy forces. Machiavelli’s famous admonition to always control the high ground did not apply. Giap would have no choice but to bring whatever artillery he had into the valley itself, where it would be pounded to bits by French counterbattery guns and aviation.
In Paris, however, nerves were on edge. The civilian leadership was in no mood to launch a major military operation. On November 15, Marc Jacquet, minister for the Associated States, embarked for Saigon. He told Navarre, cryptically: “The fall of Luang Prabang would make impossible the prosecution of the war.” What did he mean? Let Laos fall in order to stop this war, which was costing France so much and which should be terminated? Or, to the contrary, keep Laos? Navarre chose the second interpretation. “After all,” he said, “Dien Bien Phu will not cost me anything more than Na San cost Salan.”7
Then, on November 18, Rear Admiral Georges Cabanier arrived in Saigon, sent by Paris to inform Navarre that he should try nothing extravagant and that, in any case, there was no longer any money in the treasury for the war. Possibly, Cabanier was even to tell Navarre to halt military operations and leave everything to the politicians, who would seek a cease-fire and negotiations. But Navarre was in Hanoi. He kept Cabanier waiting, fearing the admiral’s message. For by then he had given the order: Dien Bien Phu would be retaken. Already two weeks before, Navarre had instructed Cogny to begin planning for the operation, to be code-named Castor. Cogny had obliged, over the objections of his staff. Colonel Jean Nicot, commander of the transport arm of the French Air Force, registered his opposition on November 11; he could not, he said, guarantee a steady flow of supplies to Dien Bien Phu. Navarre was unmoved. On the seventeenth, he met all of his major subordinate commanders, who one by one registered their concerns regarding Operation Castor. Cogny was among them. Navarre listened politely, then asked, “Is it possible?” Everyone murmured that it was. Very well, then, the commander in chief replied, the operation would take place in three days, weather permitting.8
At 8:15 A.M. on Friday, November 20, 1953, about sixty Dakotas took to the air one after the other from a Hanoi airfield, their noses
painted blue, yellow, or red. Flanked by B-26 Invaders, they formed a column seven miles long. A little more than two hours later, at about 10:35, the first of them appeared from behind the crests above the basin. Twenty-two hundred “paras” (paratroopers), the cream of the French Expeditionary Corps, proceeded to drop into the valley north and south of the village. The operation, commanded by gruff, one-eyed Brigadier General Jean Gilles (he carried his glass eye in his jacket pocket when he jumped), was carried off with the loss of 15 dead and 53 wounded. The Viet Minh lost 90 men before giving way and allowing the French to dig in.9
THE FIRST LANDED “PARAS” KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON THE DESCENT OF THEIR COMRADES, AS OPERATION CASTOR BEGINS, NOVEMBER 20, 1953. (photo credit 16.1)
II
THE NEWS OF THE FRENCH REOCCUPATION OF DIEN BIEN PHU CAUGHT Viet Minh commanders by surprise. When word reached Vo Nguyen Giap, he was just preparing to present the 1953–54 offensive campaign to his division commanders at a forest camp in the Dinh Hoa district of Thai Nguyen province. The plan had taken shape over several months and was the product of considerable high-level discussion, involving also Chinese advisers. At the Fourth Plenum of the Communist Party (formally, the Vietnamese Workers Party), held in January 1953, senior strategists had determined to strike where the enemy was weak, in order to force the French to disperse their troops to the greatest extent possible, as far away from the Red River Delta as they could be lured. That was a main motivation behind the Laos invasion in the spring, and it remained the operating assumption throughout the summer. Giap gave close consideration to mounting a major operation against the heart of French defenses in the Red River Delta, but both he and Ho Chi Minh worried that the all-important “balance of forces” in the delta still tilted against them.
The Chinese too argued for a more cautious strategy centered on the northwestern highlands. “We should first annihilate enemies in the Lai Chau area, liberating northern and central Laos, and then extend the battlefield gradually toward southern Laos and Cambodia, thus putting pressure on Saigon,” the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee declared in a telegram in August. “By adopting this strategy, we will be able to limit the human and financial resources of the enemy and separate the enemy’s troops, leaving the enemy in a disadvantageous position.… The realization of this strategic plan will surely contribute to the final defeat of the colonial rule of French imperialists in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Of course, we need to overcome a variety of difficulties and prepare for a prolonged war.”10
The Chinese role in the decision to avoid a major clash in the delta should not be minimized, but neither should it be exaggerated. Responsibility was shared. Just as the Navarre Plan grew out of joint U.S.-French planning, so did the Chinese and Viet Minh consult each other over which course to take at this critical juncture. Certainly, Ho and Giap could not ignore Chinese recommendations. For one thing, Beijing’s aid had increased markedly over the previous year. For most of 1952, the monthly average was 250 tons, but by December it had risen to 450 tons. (U.S. aid to France, by contrast, now exceeded 8,000 tons per month.) In January 1953, the amount reached 900 tons, much of it in the form of arms and ammunition and motor vehicles. And with the end of the fighting in Korea in the summer, PRC aid could flow still more freely. Chinese military advisers and technicians also came across the border in larger numbers, while Vietnamese were sent in the other direction to undertake wireless and antiaircraft training in southern China. (In theory, at least, the antiaircraft weapons, mostly Russian 37mm, were to come in with a trained team of twenty operators per gun.)11
In October, Ho, Giap, and the other top party leaders met in high secrecy, around a bamboo table in a bamboo house on the side of a heavily forested hill in Thai Nguyen province. So sensitive were they to potential leaks that the party note taker was denied entry. By now reasonably well-informed about the details of the Navarre Plan—they were, as always, assiduous readers of the French press, and their intelligence network reached close to the French High Command—they formally agreed to concentrate during the coming campaign season on the northwest, where, as they saw it, the enemy was weak but would feel compelled to make a stand. In the process, he would spread his forces thinner and become more vulnerable to guerrilla and other attacks in his rear.12
“When you close your hand you make a fist that can strike a powerful blow,” Ho Chi Minh told the assembled, opening and closing his raised right hand as he spoke, and with a cigarette in his left. “But if you spread your hand out, it is easy to break your fingers, one by one. We must find a way to force the solid bloc of enemy mobile groups to spread out into a number of pieces so that we can gradually annihilate them, one at a time, thereby causing them to suffer complete defeat.”13
Truong Chinh, the party’s senior theoretician, concurred. “The Tonkin lowland is the place where enemy forces are hard, where their defenses are stiff,” he argued.
In other battlefields the enemy’s dispositions are relatively weak and exposed, but they cannot abandon these areas, and this is especially true for the mountain jungle region. If we launch an attack into the Northwest region we will certainly draw in enemy forces and force the enemy’s strategic mobile force to disperse to defend against our attack.… The enemy may only be able to bring in supplies and reinforcements by air. If we can overcome the problems with logistics and supplies, our forces will have many advantages fighting up there and we will be capable of attaining and maintaining military superiority throughout the entire campaign, or at least in a certain sector of the campaign area. In that way we may be able to win a great victory.14
Behind these confident assertions was a genuine concern that comes through even in the official accounts of the meeting. Despite seven years of immense sacrifice, of constant hardship and deprivation, the goal of “complete victory” (toan thang) remained far, far away. The sagging support for the war in metropolitan France was encouraging, but militarily the French held pretty good cards, especially in view of their strong positions in the Red River Delta and in Cochin China. With Washington’s recent decision to massively increase U.S. aid to the French cause, a continuing stalemate on the battlefield was not out of the question.15 Then too there was the buildup of the Vietnamese National Army. The conferees heaped disdain on this French attempt at “using war to nourish war, using Vietnamese to fight Vietnamese,” as one delegate put it, but it’s clear that they worried about the implications of an expanded VNA, one that, if still inferior in all respects to their own People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), might show greater commitment and fighting ability than previously, and greater popular support. Victory would still come in the end, the delegates assured themselves and one another, but the task was far from finished.
Ho Chi Minh, hinting at possible morale problems among troops in the coming operation, concluded the meeting by noting that some soldiers, after the previous campaign in the highlands, had put their hands together and bowed toward the mountains and the jungles in a gesture of thanks and respect. These troops would have no desire to return to the area, Ho said, and they would have to be convinced of the importance of the mission. They would also need adequate supplies, including warm clothing: “Have we completed the sewing of this new style of padded jacket that I am wearing?” he asked. “When will we issue them to the troops? I want you men to go back and check on this. Warm jackets must be issued to each of our troops before they move out for this campaign.”16
The decision made to concentrate on the northwest, Giap in the midautumn resisted Navarre’s attempts to goad him into a major engagement in and around the delta. On October 14, Navarre personally supervised the launching of Operation Mouette (Seagull), directed at the important enemy supply center of Phu Nho Quan, just south of the delta. Six groupes mobiles, backed by tank and amphibious battalions as well as two French Navy marine units, broke through the limestone hills of Ninh Binh in a pincer movement designed to encircle the PAVN 320th Infantry Division. Regiments 48 and 64 stood fast and even coun
terattacked the vastly stronger French Union forces, in order to allow vital supplies and matériel to be removed from Phu Nho Quan. With that task completed, the Viet Minh troops withdrew again into the countryside, and the French entered a deserted town. All along the line, they had run into stiffer resistance than expected but without engaging the bulk of the enemy force. The 320th, considered less well equipped and trained than the 308th and the 312th, had been mauled, but it was far from decimated. Yet again the Viet Minh had shown their maddening ability (in French eyes) to slip away from serious trouble.17
Giap also ordered his ten-thousand-man 316th Division to leave its staging area near Thanh Hoa and move up the Song River toward Lai Chau.18 That force was still en route when word of the Castor airlift operation reached the Thai Nguyen meeting. Clearly taken aback by Navarre’s move, Giap told his assembled commanders: “This is an operation that works to our advantage.” But he also expressed uncertainty about Navarre’s intentions. According to a Vietnamese account of the meeting, Giap peppered subordinates with questions: Was this a temporary incursion? Did Navarre order it because he had learned of the movement of the 316th toward Lai Chau? Were the parachutists dropped into Dien Bien Phu to support Lai Chau, or would Navarre now abandon Lai Chau and move those troops to Dien Bien Phu? If the Viet Minh reacted strongly, would Navarre reinforce the airhead into a powerful entrenched camp like Na San, or withdraw? And how precisely were the French units deployed in the valley?
Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam Page 45
