In January 1968, sharing the news with earthquakes, fires, avalanches, and missing submarines, the Vietnamese People’s Army had encircled and was besieging a fortified camp of five thousand-odd American Marines. On Sunday the 28th, press reports were that the defence was being built up hurriedly to ten thousand men or more, that the fortress was being supplied by helicopter under great difficulty with considerable losses, and that a general assault was believed to be imminent. The report concluded with the words: ‘Dien Bien Phu is still a magic word in Vietnam.’
General Giap was believed to be commanding in person. Back in 1953, press reports used to print the ‘General’ between inverted commas.
American air superiority and firepower is, of course, so overwhelming that we are all quite confident in the American authorities who are quoted as saying, ‘A new Dien Bien Phu is utterly impossible.’ It is with no more than faint unease that we recall General Navarre’s omniscience and omnipotence in January 1954.
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Since all but the name is now as good as forgotten, a short aide-mémoire is of some use. Dien Bien Phu is a wide shallow valley, possessing an airstrip, appearing to possess opportunity for manoeuvre, and supposed fifteen years ago to be of great strategic value. It is in the high plateau land of North-West Vietnam, near the Laos border.
French troops occupied the valley. The Vietminh were allowed to invest all the surrounding hills. This had no importance, given the French power in artillery and aircraft. Indeed it was encouraged. The general idea was to attract large numbers of Vietminh troops to a point where they could be destroyed by superior firepower.
Some fourteen thousand French Union troops passed through the valley. Vietminh troops were estimated at roughly thirty thousand.
These French troops, unprepared and largely unprotected, were bombarded with artillery fire of extraordinary intensity. Few among them retained sufficient morale for counter-attack, and the defence of the camp, lasting from March 13th till May 8th 1954, was undertaken by roughly 2,500 élite troops, mostly paratroop units. Legend ran that these were mostly Germans of the Legion: in fact they were a very mixed lot, but largely Vietnamese with French officers, together with elements of Legion, Moroccan and Algerian units of the regular colonial army. The commanders of these bits and pieces came to be called the ‘paratroop mafia’.
This group of relatively junior officers, headed by Lt Colonel Langlais with Commandant Bigeard as his second-in-command, conducted their defence with the utmost resolution. They were overrun only when they had no more ammunition to fire.
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The main source book, for anyone interested, remains The Battle of Dien Bien Phu by Jules Roy. The aptly-named Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall contains the statistics much useful detail. Colonel Langlais, Dr Paul Grauwin and Captain Jean Pouget have written well on the subject. General Navarre, commander-in-chief in Saigon, General Cogny, theatre commander in Hanoi, and many other persons, have published long volumes of explanation and accusation.
Even the shortest account of the battle would be too long and out of place here. But the following remarks which I have collected show buoyant confidence on the French side changing to total abandon. These quotations, printed in chronological order, are taken from press reports and eye-witness accounts.
2nd January 1954: ‘The French Command is certain of inflicting a severe defeat upon the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu.’ (General Cogny to the assembled Press.)
5th January 1954: ‘Dien Bien Phu is not a fortified camp. It is a base for offensive operations.’ (Colonel Castries, the camp commander, to Mr Graham Greene.)
11th March 1954: ‘The hour has come to pass to the attack … Dominate your fear and your suffering.’ (Vietnam People’s Army Order of the Day, signed: Vo nguyen Giap.)
14th March 1954: ‘We go to disaster, and it is my fault.’ (Colonel Piroth, the one-armed camp artillery commander, to Langlais. Next day Piroth committed suicide.)
8th May 1954: ‘No, no, mon vieux, no white flag. You are submerged: you do not surrender.’ (General Cogny, by radiotelephone from Hanoi, to Castries.)