For the next seven months following the Black River battles, the French largely remained in their strongholds and the fighting was sporadic. The mobile groups bravely ventured forth to keep the supply lines open, but the area under French control gradually shrank. Their only notable success occurred in central Annam with Operation Sauterelle, conducted on the coast above the Perfume River and Hue. This, and a subsequent operation, accounted for 3,000 Viet Minh killed or captured.
Giap waited for the monsoon to end, as he was planning to take the French positions on the Nghia Lo ridge. This operation was to be a repeat of the Cao Bang-Lang Son disaster of 1950. Giap gathered his 308th, 312th and 316th divisions, with the intention of launching simultaneous attacks on the towns of Nghia Lo, Gia Hoi and Van Yen. In mid-October 1952, Nghia Lo was overrun by human-wave attacks of the Viet Minh 308th Division. The Viet Minh triumphantly photographed a group of eight, apprehensive-looking French officers who were captured during the fighting.
It was clear, with the loss of Nghia Lo, that it would be impossible to hold the other forts in the T’ai Hills. This led to the evacuation of the remaining French outposts and again paratroops were sacrificed to cover the retreat toward the Black River defences.
Under Major Marcel Bigeard, the 6th Colonial Parachute Battalion was dropped to reinforce the post at Tu Le. They were to protect the withdrawal of the 1st T’ai Mountain Battalion, 17th Moroccan Tabor and 3rd Battalion, 1st Moroccan Rifles. The paras were attacked on 20 October 1952, forcing them to conduct a fighting retreat towards the Black River. They ran into an ambush set by the 312th Division. Two days later, the paras, having lost 60 per cent of their strength, reached their destination.
The French defences covering the vulnerable Laotian border were now stretched extremely thin. General Salan knew that the defensive line would not hold in the face of a concerted communist attack. Initially, he had assumed that Giap’s attacks were a feint, and that he would turn and strike at the delta once more. Instead, Giap headed southwest. Salan planned to intercept him by moving northwest to block the communists, and force them away from the Black River toward the delta and into open battle. He chose as his area of attack the line of the Clear River northwest of Hanoi.
Dubbed Operation Lorraine, this was to involve the largest French force to date, some 30,000 men. This consisted of four mobile groups, a paratroop group, and supporting units of armour, artillery and engineers. Their task was to seize the Viet Minh supply depots at Phu Doan, Yen Bay and Tuyen Quang, nearly 160km outside the delta defences and deep inside enemy territory. Giap, however, had good intelligence and knew exactly what the French were intending. Nevertheless, he persisted with his push into the T’ai country. As far as he was concerned, his enemies were simply putting their necks in the noose. To delay the French and act as a blocking force, Giap deployed the 36th and 176th regiments.
Lorraine was designed to be executed in four stages. Opening on 29 October 1952, the first would establish a bridgehead towards Pho Tho, 32km to the north, with a task force from Trun Ha on the Red River northwest of Son Tay. In the second, another task force, heading north along Route Coloniale 2 from Viet Tri to the north of Son Tay, would link up at Phu Tho and expand the bridgehead. These two groups would then fight their way further north through Chang Muong towards Phu Doan, where a parachute jump by Airborne Group 1 would meet up with them. Also, forces would push up the Red River to prevent the Viet Minh from escaping westwards. The third stage would involve the destruction of the enemy supply dumps in the Phu Doan area as well as engaging enemy fighters. The fourth, and rather optimistic phase, would be the exploitation of the captured land corridor between the Red and Clear rivers.
Three Red River bridgeheads were secured by 4 November 1952 and mobile groups 1 and 4 headed towards Route Coloniale 2. Delaying actions by Viet Minh regional troops meant that the link-up did not occur until the following day. However, the lack of opposition from regular Viet Minh divisions encouraged the French to press on.
Early on 9 November, the combined task forces, with armoured cars and tanks in the lead, pushed up Route Coloniale 2. In the meantime, the 3rd Dinassaut sailed up the river towards the drop zone. By mid-afternoon, 2,350 paras, belonging to the 1st and 2nd Foreign Legion parachute battalions and the 3rd Colonial Parachute Battalion, had successfully landed in the Phu Doan area where they rendezvoused with the naval force.
Resistance at Phu Doan was light, and with the arrival of the mobile groups, French forces confirmed the village was indeed a major Viet Minh supply depot. They captured a large quantity of supplies, including heavy weaponry such as anti-aircraft guns and mortars. To the embarrassment of French intelligence, they also discovered quantities of Soviet-supplied Molotava trucks. These were being used to move supplies to Viet Minh field units. The French then sent patrols west to Yen Bay on the Red River and to Tuyen Quang to the northeast.
At this stage, Salan should have withdrawn, but instead he opted to conduct stage four of Operation Lorraine, possibly still hoping to force Giap to commit. Salan had successfully captured valuable enemy supplies, but the absence of the Viet Minh’s main force meant that his units were now stretched out along a vulnerable and ultimately useless strip of land, well outside the relative safety of the delta defences. The French now moved to extend this corridor by pushing on to Phu Yen, well north of Phu Doan.
Giap, rather than counterattack to retake Phu Doan, was content to wait it out. He instructed the majority of his three regular divisions to remain on the Black River. Just two regiments were sent toward Yen Bay. Giap also moved to pressure Salan to withdraw by authorizing the 304th and 320th divisions, to the north and south of the delta, to conduct guerrilla attacks to distract the French.
By 14 November 1952, Salan’s tanks and infantry had reached Phu Yen. It was at this point that Salan, realizing he was dangerously exposed, ordered the withdrawal. Three days later, they had reached Phu Doan without mishap. By now though, two of Giap’s regular regiments had reached the midway point between the village and Phu Tho, thereby blocking the French retreat. They were deployed south of the village of Chan Muong in the Chan Muong gorge. This was a steep-sided, jungle-covered defile, through which Route Coloniale 2 passed. It was ideal for an ambush.
Men of the 2nd Battalion, 2nd Foreign Legion Infantry Regiment, the 4th Battalion, 7th Algerian Rifles, and of the Bataillon de Marche Indochinois (a mixed French, Cambodian and Vietnamese unit) drove straight into the trap that was initiated by mortar bombs raining down on them. The French, although suffering heavy casualties in the following enemy infantry assault, quickly rallied and counterattacked. The Viet Minh were expelled from the gorge and the Chan Muong Valley, but the French lost 56 dead, 125 wounded and 133 missing. It was not a good start.
This set the pattern for the next week, as the French struggled to escape south to the safety of the De Lattre Line. The route to Phu Tho was blocked, however, so they turned east and then south toward Viet Tri. The Viet Minh counterattacked again on 18, 20 and 24 November, inflicting yet more casualties.
The French had completely withdrawn all their Operation Lorraine forces back across the Red River by 1 December, having lost 1,200 men. Despite the disruption of Giap’s supply lines, Operation Lorraine could be seen as nothing but a complete and costly failure.
This victory, however, made Giap overconfident when he turned his attention back to French strongholds in the Black River valley. Looking at his maps, he decided to attack the isolated French base at Na San. He was partly emboldened by the French failure to adequately supply Operation Lorraine from the air. His diversionary attacks, and the need to sustain the outlying garrisons, had ensured that Lorraine was beyond the French air force’s capabilities.
While Operation Lorraine was underway, Colonel Jean Gilles was tasked with building a fire-support base in the Na San valley in Son La Province, to the west of the Black River. This was on Route Provinciale 41, which ran from Hanoi, across the river at Hoa Binh, through the town of Son La, and north to the French stronghold at Lai Chau. It was to be a fully fortified aéro-terrestre (air-land) base. The intention was, once again, to draw Giap into open battle with a very sizeable entrenched French force, backed by aircraft, artillery and mortars.
Vo Nguyen Giap inspecting Viet Minh during August Revolution celebrations, 1945.
In October 1952, the valley, surrounded by hills, hosted a single French outpost and a small airstrip. By the end of November, thanks to the efforts of the French air force, Na San had a garrison of some 15,000 men. Gilles employed the le hérisson (hedgehog) tactic. His defences consisted of thirty point d’appui (armed positions) that formed an outer and inner ring surrounding the airfield and headquarters, offering mutually supporting fields of fire. Each had good all-round defence, strengthened by trenches, sandbags, barbed wire and mines.
Gilles multi-national forces comprised three battle groups that included Algerian, Moroccan, T’ai and Vietnamese troops, as well as Foreign Legion infantry and paras. They were able to called on dive-bombers from the French navy and bombers from the air force. Artillery included 105mm howitzers and 81mm mortars. This ensured that Na San packed a powerful punch.
Just as Salan had hoped, Giap was provoked into attacking the base using his 308th, 312th and 316th divisions. Giap appreciated that French air power necessitated night attacks, but he knew that if his men could take the airfield then the base would be cut off and helpless. His assault opened at 8.00 pm on 23 November 1952, when a regiment from Colonel Vuong Thua Tu’s 308th Division unsuccessfully attempted to take point d’appui 8 that formed part of the inner ring. They tried twice, but on each occasion, they were driven back. Then, until the end of the month, Giap conducted night attacks, probing French defences, looking for weak spots.
At 8.00 pm on 30 November, nine Viet Minh battalions attempted to storm positions 22bis and 24 in the outer ring, which lay either side of the main French headquarters.
The latter position, on the west bank of the Black River, held on for three hours before surrendering. The 225 men of the 2nd T’ai Battalion holding 22bis endured nine hours of attacks before they were overrun. Barely a squad managed to find their way back to the airfield.
The following day, Gilles fought to retake both these lost positions, utilizing the massed fire power available to him, which included a total of six artillery batteries. After an opening barrage, Foreign Legion paratroops secured 22bis. It took the 3rd Colonial Airborne Battalion seven hours of tough fighting to retake 24. That night, Giap launched an all-out attack on a number of positions, with 21bis and the large defensive-position 26, again in the outer ring, bearing the brunt of the assaults. The Viet Minh’s human waves were greeted with flares, bombs, napalm and shells.
The attacks suddenly stopped mid-morning on 2 December. Two days later, Giap, having sustained almost 3,500 casualties, withdrew his battered divisions. Despite suffering about 500 casualties, the French were convinced that their fortified base aéro-terrestre and le hérisson was a war-winning formula. In the case of Na Son, it was heavily reinforced and kept resupplied entirely by air. As a consequence, it was not overrun and held out, while inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. The net result of this though, was it convinced French planners that they could keep isolated ‘air-heads’ resupplied from the air – this optimism was to have disastrous results at Dien Bien Phu.
French hearts and minds efforts were never successful.