Giap was perfectly prepared to write off any unit that got into trouble, refusing to react to French raids and offensives in order to maintain the initiative. While the Viet Minh did not torture prisoners in the manner of the wartime Japanese, and even made some effort to win them over, captured French troops often starved to death on the basic Viet Minh diet. Cruelty was used with cold deliberation. US foreign service officer Howard Simpson encountered an embittered French planter who was waging a private vendetta against the Viet Minh operating in his area. He had the bodies of Viet Minh couriers laid out neatly in a storeroom designated ‘Cold Meat’. His savagery was born of an attack on his plantation when he was absent, in which the Viet Minh slaughtered his Cambodian guards and humiliated his Vietnamese mother-in-law in front of the workforce. When he returned, the planter saw her, as he thought, buried up to the neck in a mound of earth. By the light of his headlights he rushed to excavate her, only to have her head roll away.16
Amoebic dysentery, malaria, jungle sores and leeches were plagues common to both sides, but undermined the morale of the French Expeditionary soldiers more. Paddy fields were a particular horror. To avoid the punji stakes and other booby-traps lurking under the putty-coloured water, French troops trudged along the embankments, which were often mined with devices improvised from dud French shells and bombs, and which exposed them to sniper fire. Steady attrition, especially from mines, led to retaliation against nearby villages, whose miserable inhabitants had to hope the French would not kill them for not giving them information, for the Viet Minh certainly would if they did.
The French soldiers much preferred life in Saigon, the fabled ‘pearl of the Orient’, to the colder and greyer northern capital of Hanoi. The epicentres of life in the southern capital were along the Rue Catinat, notably the terrace bar of the Continental Hotel. Nets to prevent grenades being lobbed in protected all such premises. This was where French officers in their camouflage fatigues had their last drink before going out on missions, their movements and the takeoffs of aircraft from Tan Son Nhut air base being carefully recorded by Viet Minh agents. Another favourite watering hole and superb restaurant was the Arc-en-Ciel in the Chinese quarter of Cholon, whose nightclub boasted such visiting stars as Charles Trenet and Josephine Baker. Howard Simpson was deeply offended by a notoriously sybaritic army that insisted on life’s pleasures even out in the field, and wrote the following contemptuous doggerel:
Camembert for the Colonel’s table,
Wine in abundance when we’re able.
Indochina may be lost,
Our Colonel eats well despite the cost . . .
. . . Parachute the escargot!
Follow them with old Bordeaux.
And on our graves near Dien Bien Phu
Inscribe these words, these very few,
‘They died for France, but more . . .
Their Colonel ate well throughout the war.’17
Although there were itinerant military brothels, staffed by brave and colourfully dressed women from the Algerian Ouled Nail tribe that honoured the activity as a way of earning matrimonial dowries, many French troops acquired a permanent congai or common law wife, a popular practice too among their Vietnamese comrades, who simply moved their real wives into camps de mariés. The vulnerability this created was manifest, and a third of the French posts that fell were betrayed from within by Viet Minh Trojan whores.18
In what was to become a drearily familiar tactic, the mechanization of the French forces became another Achilles heel. In wooded or hilly terrain, truck convoys were regularly stopped by destroying the lead vehicle, usually a Sherman tank, with bazookas and then assaulting the soft-skinned vehicles from either side of the road. The French never acquired the armoured bulldozers that could have cleared the roads of obstacles in an ambush. The constant attrition on the roads led them to depend more and more on aerial resupply, materials which, when dropped by parachute, were as likely as not to fall into Viet Minh hands. While French air force and naval pilots did their best, there were more planes than pilots, and never enough bombers to make aerial bombardment effective. From 1953 the CIA’s Civil Air Transport front company – the forerunner of the more famous Air America – loaned transport planes and US aircrews with colourful names like James ‘Earthquake’ McGoon. There was also an acute shortage of helicopters – never more than ten until April 1954 – with which to make morale-boosting casualty evacuations.
Enter the Americans
Although the Pentagon had major reservations about how the French were conducting the war, adoption of the domino theory led them, grudgingly, to provide ever greater assistance, theoretically under cost-effective scrutiny by the burgeoning Military Assistance and Advisory Group (MAAG) headed by Generals Thomas Trapnell and his successor John ‘Iron Mike’ O’Daniel. No strings were attached to a tranche of $150 million in 1952 when it dawned on the Americans that the French might ‘leave us holding the baby’. In addition the prospect that France might reduce its contribution to the defence of Western Europe acted to blackmail the US into underwriting French operations in Indochina. US funding climbed from 40 to 75 per cent of France’s war costs by October 1952. The Americans became more visible, cruising the streets in their black sedans, while poolside parties in the grounds of US-rented villas became the places where power lay. The French responded with their usual proud ingratitude, treating ‘les Amerloques’ (crazy Americans) with cool indifference or ill-concealed hatred born as much of resentment about the US role in liberating France in 1944 as of the conceit that their experience as colonialists gave them unique insight into how to win the war in Indochina.19
The Eisenhower administration inherited involvement in Indochina from its predecessor and, like any new broom, sought to inject vitality into what it chose to depict as the Truman gang’s failing investment. There was much manly talk about refusing to pick up the tab which had enabled the French to ‘sit in their Beau Geste forts on champagne cases’, and that it was time ‘to put the squeeze on the French to get them off their fannies’. This translated into calls for an expansion of the Vietnamese National Army and for a new commander who would go on to the offensive.
General Navarre tried to conceal his lack of practical experience with Gallic hauteur. At his welcoming reception in the Continental an American official gave him a book by the Chindit commander ‘Mad Mike’ Calvert, which Navarre disdainfully passed to an aide. American assessments were surprisingly optimistic about the new arrival, although one report said: ‘There is an eighteenth-century fragrance to him . . . One almost expects ruffles and a powdered wig.’ He was personally wealthy and, in addition to his storied name, Navarre’s chic blonde wife was descended from Marshal Murat. ‘Logically victory is certain,’ Navare told his staff with staggering hubris, ‘but victory is a woman. She does not give herself except to those who know how to take her. One cannot win without attacking.’20 He decided to fight during the May-to-October monsoon season, to force the Viet Minh into a pitched battle some time in 1954, weakening their hand in the negotiations for which secret preliminary talks were already taking place. The US provided another $400 million for the Navarre Plan, which met with early successes, including wiping out an entire Viet Minh division sent to infiltrate the Red River Delta.
Dissatisfied with these reactive fire-fighting operations, Navarre determined to build on Salan’s initiative to create more heavily manned artillery fortresses with airstrips as the rocks against which the Viet Minh waves would break, or, should they concentrate their forces against one of them, as the anvils on which the hammer of a relief force under the Red River area commander General Cogny would smash them. At the same time he also planned Operation Atlante, in which mainly Vietnamese forces with a French spearhead would deliver a long coastal strip in Annam from the 30,000 Viet Minh who controlled it. Navarre believed he could overcome the strategic incoherence of pursuing divergent objectives with air power. Overstretchin
g French resources while seeking a ‘decisive’ battle that would hinge on the effectiveness of air supply was madness, but nobody appears to have whispered the word ‘Stalingrad’ in his ear.
The Viet Minh threat to northern Laos and its lucrative opium traffic determined where Navarre would seek his decisive battle: at Dien Bien Phu, a collection of hamlets of 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants strung along a remote valley with a small airstrip in the north-west corner of Vietnam, five miles from the Laotian border and about 185 miles from the Red River Delta. The project was originally Salan’s, who had planned to squeeze the Viet Minh between Dien Bien Phu and another bastion at Nasan, which had withstood an all-out assault in December 1952. Yet in August 1953 Navarre evacuated Nasan on the grounds that it was too costly to resupply even though, unlike Dien Bien Phu, it was not commanded by surrounding hills.21
Bizarrely, it was Dien Bien Phu’s vulnerability that appealed to Navarre. When his subordinate commanders expressed strong reservations about the site, Navarre replied that it was supposed to tempt the Viet Minh to attack, making it the poisoned bait in what he hoped would be a huge trap.The first step was to clear the valley of the under-strength Viet Minh division that had moved into it a year earlier, accomplished with ease because the French had broken the Viet Minh operational cipher, which enabled them to plot the whereabouts of enemy forces. Incredibly, this intelligence coup was leaked to the press and, when Giap directed five new divisions towards Dien Bien Phu, he used a new cipher.22
Navarre initially thought in terms of using Dien Ben Phu as a safe haven from which to launch powerful thrusts against the Viet Minh, while also signifying a strong presence to encourage bolder action by T’ai guerrillas. Such forays ceased in mid-February 1954 after one massacre too many. The remnants of the T’ai had to walk more than forty miles to Dien Bien Phu, where they proved completely unsuited to the static warfare they were co-opted into. Rather than think again, Navarre decided to use the fortified valley as an Asian Verdun, against whose defences the Viet Minh would be cut to pieces. The human cost of this would make the Viet Minh political leadership more amenable in the peace talks which were about to commence in Geneva in April 1954.
On the other side, Giap did not realize that the Chinese had already decided to endorse a Soviet-inspired ‘peace offensive’ to resolve both Korea and Indochina. As they had done in Korea before the armistice talks, the Chinese wanted one major offensive to maximize their ally’s position at the talks and did not really expect the outright victory that Giap was to achieve at Dien Bien Phu.23
‘Annihilate Them Bit by Bit’
Airborne insertions played a greater part in the First Indochina War than they have done in any conflict since. The day before his paratroopers dropped into the Dien Bien Phu valley on 21 November 1953, Navarre learned that the French government had refused his request for the reinforcements he needed for this and related operations, even as Operation Atlante also got under way on the coast of Annam. Navarre and Cogny went ahead with the Dien Bien Phu plan (Operation Castor) anyway, the first of many decisions that made sense only if Navarre felt confident that he could pin any defeat on the despised politicians.24 The Paras quickly took control of the valley, which is about eleven miles long and three miles wide around the winding Nam Youm River. Over the coming days Navarre dropped more paratroops, and then flew in a division-sized force numbering over 10,000 men; further reinforcements during the battle brought the Dien Bien Phu garrison to around 15,000.
The first task of troops that preferred dash to digging was to build an enormous central camp on the west bank of the river, repair the larger of the two heavily sabotaged airstrips and cover it with welded metal plates, and transform a series of outlying hills into redoubts that would be covered by the artillery concentrated in the central camp. On average the hills were 130 feet high, and each had to be cleared of trees and brush to create clear fields of fire for the bunkers. Dismantled tanks were reassembled after being flown in by transport aircraft, along with anti-aircraft guns to be used against the expected massed infantry assaults. The fortress had a water-purification plant, ample fuel and large ammunition dumps. Much of the work was done by a couple of thousand former Viet Minh, who had opted for hard labour rather than life in a prison camp.
Legend has it that the resulting forts were named after the many mistresses of Colonel Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix des Castries, the fifty-one-year-old former cavalry officer and Moroccan Spahi commander who would command the defence of Dien Bien Phu. Anne-Marie, Béatrice, Claudine, Dominique, Eliane, Gabrielle, Huguette (containing the main airstrip) and Isabelle (with another) were duly cleared and fortified. Each had numbered internal strongpoints – Eliane 1, 2, 3 and so on. It must have looked an impressive sight to the streams of visiting dignitaries who were flown in, but it soon became a muddy hell when the monsoon rains began and water streamed down from the surrounding heights, where Giap’s troops were to enjoy a comparatively dry existence.
It took time for Giap to divine the significance of what Navarre was doing at Dien Ben Phu. When he did, he was inclined to accept the challenge of the major pitched battle the French had been seeking since the time of de Lattre. In early December the Communist Party leadership and their Chinese and Russian advisers agreed with his plan to mount only harassing raids while spending months preparing the battlefield. Artillery was to play a major part in the battle and Mao reassured Giap that there would be no limit on the supply of shells from China. When he was ready, the Chinese Central Military Commission recommended that he should not make an all-out general assault, but instead progressively isolate individual enemy positions ‘to annihilate them bit by bit’.25
The preparatory phase took about three months. Giap had to move 25,000 men and their equipment 300 miles from the hills of the Viet Bac and the southern Delta, with his supply lines stretching some 500 miles from the Chinese border. Over 100,000 porters took the perilous and precipitous jungle routes, lugging dismantled artillery pieces up and down steep slopes with the aid of ropes, and built concealed roads with streams bridged by logs hidden below the water’s surface for 600 Russian trucks to move vast quantities of food and ammunition. Extreme precautions were taken against aerial surveillance. At the first sound of aircraft engines, spotters in the tree tops used triangles and whistles to halt the convoys in camouflaged way stations. Even if they had seen them, French pilots had too little fuel to loiter for any meaningful time over an area so far from their land and sea bases. This was soon to be the least of their problems, as Giap also positioned anti-aircraft batteries to cover the limited number of air approaches to the valley. Aircraft that successfully ran the gauntlet would then be shelled on the airstrip. The Chinese also emphasized the importance of guarding against airborne forces being dropped to attack the besiegers from outside the perimeter.
During the preparatory period Giap must have felt like a cat pondering a bowl full of oblivious goldfish. Undisturbed by French patrols, the Viet Minh were even able to use the darkness to excavate deep gun emplacements on the forward slopes of the hills around Dien Bien Phu to give the guns direct lines of fire, as Giap’s gunners lacked the training to fire effectively from reverse slopes. One by one the guns were set up and aimed over open sights, and then the gunners waited inside their dugouts like the cannon crews of Napoleonic-era warships. Giap himself moved into a cave 300 feet deep. Every feature of the fortress was carefully logged, sometimes by Viet Minh commandos who crept around inside the main camp at night, with particular attention paid to command bunkers bristling with radio antennae.
After dark on 13 March 1954 Giap opened his attack with a colossal artillery barrage, including fire from 155mm cannon that the French had thought it impossible for the enemy to bring to the party and which outranged their own battery of 155mm howitzers. Viet Minh sappers had dug assault trenches right up to the wire, and then used waves of troops to overwhelm the outermost redoubts, Béatrice from the Legion that
night and Gabrielle the following day, despite the French firing around 30,000 shells in support of them. During the night of 14–15 March Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Piroth, the one-armed French artillery commander who had been confident his guns could keep the Viet Minh at bay, killed himself by holding a grenade to his chest.
Anne-Marie was held by T’ai troops who had been showered with leaflets telling them they could leave without hindrance. In the morning of the 17th most of them did and the remainder retreated to the main camp. The loss of the northern redoubts closed two avenues of approach to the airstrip and not long afterwards Isabelle, too far south of the main defensive perimeter, was cut off. It became extremely perilous to land or even to fly low enough to make accurate parachute drops. Navarre and Cogny had never envisaged such an outcome and lacked sufficient parachutes, a matter rectified when the Americans flew in 60,000 chutes from the Philippines. But as the anti-aircraft fire forced supply planes to fly higher, their cargoes were as likely to land in the hands of the Viet Minh as inside the fortress perimeters. After a while the valley floor was strewn with thousands of piles of white silk and shattered crates. The Americans had a device that delayed the opening of parachutes to ensure greater accuracy, but the French never acquired it.26
There was a two-week lull while Giap called in 25,000 reserves and replenished his depleted supplies of ammunition. While sporadic skirmishes and artillery exchanges never ceased during this lull, the Viet Minh concentrated on surrounding the remaining redoubts with a spider web of assault trenches. On 24 March Castries’ chief of staff was flown out of Dien Bien Phu after suffering a nervous breakdown and Castries himself effectively surrendered command to the tough commander of the Airborne Group, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Langlais. Lower down the ranks others were cracking up in different ways, and by the end up to 3,000 internal deserters hid in the reed-covered banks of the Nam Youm River, scurrying forth at night like rats to filch food from the littered battlefield. On 28 March the last aircraft to land at Dien Bien Phu, a Dakota taking out wounded, was destroyed on the runway.
Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965 Page 27
