A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2005 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ France ]
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[The last days of French empire
On May 7, 1954, France was defeated in the decisive battle of the first Vietnam war
By ERIC MARGOLIS
Contributing Foreign Editor
BITCHE, France - This grim little Alsatian fortress town, on the eastern sector of the Maginot Line, is an appropriate place to remember the anniversary of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, a decisive French defeat that marked the beginning of America's own subsequent disaster in Vietnam.
I vividly recall as an 11-year-old seeing a newspaper on a neighbour's doorstep, with a huge headline: "Dien Bien Phu Falls." The date was May 7, 1954. Two decades later - on April 30, 1975 - Saigon fell to the advancing North Vietnamese Army.
France, financed by the U.S., had been battling North Vietnam's Communists and nationalists (Vietminh) since 1946 to regain control of its pre-war Indochinese colonies. Vietminh forces, trained and armed by Communist China, avoided large battles with the French, preferring guerrilla tactics and ambushes.
France's new theatre commander, an elegant desk general, Henri Navarre, sought to draw the Vietminh into a set-piece battle in which his aircraft and guns would grind them up. Navarre selected a remote valley 200 km northwest of Hanoi known as Dien Bien Phu, a strategic position athwart Vietminh communications lines from China and Laos. The plan was military lunacy, and bitterly opposed by Navarre's subordinates. Ironically, the U.S. later duplicated Navarre's folly at the siege of Khe Sanh.
In early 1954, Navarre inserted 14,000 elite troops into the 11-mile-long valley. Forty percent were French; the rest Foreign Legionnaires, North Africans and Vietnamese. The French entrenched themselves in a 30-mile perimeter camp comprised of fortified strongpoints with bunkers and artillery, surrounded by mine fields and belts of wire. In true French style, the strongpoints were named after women - Huguette, Beatrice, Isabelle, etc. - the various mistresses, it was said, of the aristocratic French fortress commander, Col. De Castries. A mobile bordello unit and powdered wine accompanied the troops.
North Vietnam's brilliant supreme commander, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, saw the fortress-loving French had committed a calamitous error by offering battle in a remote location that could not be relieved by ground troops just as the monsoon season was approaching. Giap quickly concentrated 50,000 of his best troops, including the veteran 308th Iron Division, supported by 300,000 porters, and invested Dien Bien Phu at the beginning of March.
The French general staff believed the Vietminh had little artillery and could not move big guns through the mountains of northwest Vietnam. But China secretly supplied the Vietminh with 200 75-mm and 105-mm howitzers, many captured from the U.S. in Korea, as well as anti-aircraft guns and rocket batteries. In a titanic feat of logistics, the Vietminh transported the disassembled guns, 45,000 large calibre shells and 200,000 tons of supplies through dense jungles and over mountains by trucks, ox carts, bicycles and on porters' backs.
Giap dug his guns into caves concealed in the mountainsides overlooking Dien Bien Phu, rendering them virtually immune from French air strikes and counter-battery fire. Giap's artillery poured a steady deluge of fire on the French positions below. Elite Vietminh engineer units began driving a network of flying saps toward the French lines. French counter-attacks were beaten back.
French aircraft pounded the Vietminh with bombs and napalm, but could not stop the determined enemy infantry, nor halt the rain of shells that was turning French strongpoints into little Verduns. Low-lying monsoon clouds blanketed the valley. Low-flying French aircraft were downed by Giap's AA guns. On March 13, "Beatrice" was stormed. The next night, "Gabrielle" was swamped by human wave attacks. Their garrisons died fighting.
By mid-April, the airstrip was put out of action, forcing the French to resupply solely by airdrops. "Eliane" fell. Four thousand French volunteers, many of whom had never before jumped, parachuted into Dien Bien Phu. French doctors performed operations by flashlight in semi-flooded bunkers on the 1,400 seriously wounded. France was transfixed by both the heroism and the agony of its sons at Dien Bien Phu, battling a ferocious foe to whom casualties meant nothing.
Human wave assaults
Foreign Legionnaires, many of them German, fought magnificently, taking over 50% casualties. So did Col. Bigard's tough paratroopers. But the human wave assaults continued.
"Huguette" fell after particularly fierce resistance. Her garrison sang La Marseillaise before dying. U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower rejected French pleas to use the A-bomb against the besiegers.
On May 6, Giap ordered the final assault. That night, as the valley lay wreathed in explosions and smoke, Vietminh troops swamped the remaining French positions, using the bodies of their dead comrades to cross the French wire. Out of ammo, the Legionnaires fought with their bayonets and knives. Waving red flags and blaring bugle calls, the Vietminh overran the last positions.
On May 7, after 57 days of siege, 10,000 French troops surrendered. Most died in captivity. At least 1,500 French died in combat, 4,000 were wounded.
Dien Bien Phu was the worst disaster to befall French arms since the German blitzkrieg of May, 1940. It eerily resembled the defeat and capture of Napoleon III's entire army in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War at Sedan. France's generals have repeatedly proven unworthy of the gallantry of their soldiers.
France went into national mourning. Soon after, France abandoned Indochina, where 100,000 of its men had fallen.
The first Vietnam war was over. The second was just about to begin.
Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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