All right, mon général, I only wanted to preserve the wounded. Then de Castries said his final words: Bien, mon général. Close to 10,000 captured troops were to begin the grim death march to the Viet Minh prison camps 300 miles to the east. In fact, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is one of the most significant, not just of the 1950s where supposedly nothing much happened, but of the entire 20th century. Dien Bien Phu was also to be the test for a new theory of Navarre’s. The defence of Dien Bien Phu was a gamble, whose odds were not understood by the French. From then onward the struggle for Dien Bien Phu became a battle of attrition. Even de Castries’ new general’s stars, dropped to him by General Cogny with a bottle of champagne, landed in enemy territory. Reduced to airdrops, without the ability to evacuate their injured and with the location at the absolute limit of French air range, the morale within the camps wasn’t great. Trip Historic was designed to give users a smooth and simple experience that will allow them to find the historic places they’re looking for, from the most well-known sites in the world to incredible historical locations that can’t be found in the guide books. Tens of thousands of young people volunteered to work with the army to open a road to the battlefield despite enemy shelling. The Vietnamese targeted Béatrice in the northern quadrant which fell in hours. Viet Minh soldiers assault French positions at Muong Thanh airport during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in April 1954. In the spring of 1954, eight long and arduous years into the First Indochina War, the French suffered a defeat that was so shameful and shambolic, it remains barely spoken of. Composer Hoang Van, who wrote the song Ho Keo Phao (The Song of Cannon Pulling), will join a pilgimage to the historic site. The French had lost 75,000 men (with another 65,000 injured and 40,000 taken prisoner) and the Việt Minh lost close to 200,000. Gen. Christian de la Croix de Castries, reported the situation over the radiotelephone to General René Cogny, his theater commander 220 miles away in Hanoi, in a high-pitched but curiously impersonal voice, the end obviously had come for the fortress. I feel the end is approaching, but we will fight to the finish. THE END OF FRENCH OCCUPATION Dien Bien Phu was the battle that finally ended the French occupation of Vietnam. The Asians, after centuries of subjugation, had beaten the white man at his own game. In that case, I’ll fortify the command post, the signal center, and the X-ray room in the hospital; and let’s hope that the Viet has no artillery. At his untimely death in 1967, Bernard B. Bernard Fall wrote that in comparison with other world battles, Dien Bien Phu could hardly qualify as a major battle, let alone a decisive one. During his last trip to Vietnam in February 1967, Fall chose to accompany a platoon of the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, on Operation Chinook II, a search-and-destroy mission. ©2020 AETN UK. There were other considerations also. During the first seven years of the war, France had 16 changes of government and 13 prime ministers and not one took any kind of responsibility for strategy, military objective or the colossal failures that ensued. It proved little else but that an encircled force, no matter how valiant, will succumb if its support system fails. The battle of Dien Bien Phu opposed in 1954 the French army and the Vietnamese communist forces of Viêt-minh in the deep plain of Diên Biên Phu, located in the north-west of Vietnam, near the border with Laos. By October 1950, 23 regular Viet Minh battalions, equipped with excellent American artillery coming from Chinese Nationalist stocks left on the mainland, smashed the French defense lines along the Chinese border and inflicted on France its biggest colonial defeat since Montcalm died before Quebec in 1759. The Red Cross took about 850 of the most badly wounded and of the 8,000 or so who walked, less than half survived the journey through a mixture of disease, starvation and then the horrific prison conditions when they finally arrived. The Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the … As it turned out, the Viet Minh had more than 200 artillery pieces, reinforced during the last week of the siege by Russian Katyusha multiple rocket launchers. The results were evident. Fall was born in 1926 and grew up in France. Strongpoint Isabelle never had a chance. To compound matters, almost 6,000 soldiers fighting for France (made up of French, Foreign Legion and Africans of French descent) deserted to caves along the banks of the Nam Yum River, occasionally popping their heads up to steal supplies dropped for the men who stood and fought. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! Soon after French forces arrived at Dien Bien Phu on November 20, 1953, two of General Vo Nguyen Giap’s regular 10,000-man divisions blocked the Dien Bien Phu garrison, while a third bypassed Dien Bien Phu and smashed deep into Laos. Dien Bien Phu: the battle that split Vietnam Save 50% on a BBC History Magazine or BBC History Revealed subscription France’s catastrophic defeat at Dien Bien Phu in northwest Vietnam in May 1954 ended its hopes of maintaining any influence in Indochina and set … There never was, as press maps of the time erroneously showed, a continuous battle line covering the whole valley. Bernard B. The breakout had been detected. It may take a long time, but they can’t get out.’. There had been suggestions that an orderly surrender be arranged, to save the wounded the added anguish of falling into enemy hands as isolated individuals. When the siege began, it had about eight days’ worth of supplies on hand but required 200 tons a day to maintain minimum levels. At 5pm, de Castries radioed the French forward HQ based in Hanoi and spoke to Major General René Cogny: de Castries: The Viets are everywhere. During World War II, Japan’s aggression allowed them to take control but the Việt Minh, a national independence coalition led by Hồ Chí Minh, fought the Japanese and by the end of the war had driven them out - only for the French to return and reassert their rule. Today, 10 years after Dien Bien Phu, Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam again challenge the West’s ability to withstand a potent combination of political and military pressure in a totally alien environment. Dien Bien Phu was to be the lock on the back door leading into Laos. Battalion commander Nguyen Dung Chi recalled the events of the final hours of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu: ‘The assault ended in hand-to-hand fighting ... We couldn't see anything any longer, we didn't try to take aim, we just moved forward, jumping from trench to trench, stepping on bodies.’, ‘Silence had fallen on Dien Bien Phu. Cogny: Well understood. But with the existence of a Red Chinese sanctuary for the Viet Minh forces, that became militarily impossible. The day after the battle ended, the Geneva Conference convened with the intention, amongst other geopolitical issues, to settle the outstanding issues brought about by the Korean and First Indochina Wars. The interlocking fire of their artillery and mortars, supplemented by a squadron of 10 tanks (flown in piecemeal and reassembled on the spot), was to prevent them from being picked off one by one. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com Plot Summary | Add Synopsis The U.S.A were about to take on the struggle to control Vietnam. The massive crater they made remains visible to this day. I am responsible. Like Stalingrad, Dien Bien Phu slowly starved on its airlift tonnage. One may only hope that the lesson has been learned in time. Still, as the French themselves demonstrated in Algeria, where they never again let themselves be maneuvered into such desperate military straits, revolutionary wars are fought for political objectives, and big showdown battles are necessary neither for victory nor for defeat in that case. Simultaneously, Navarre had been searching for a way to stop the Viet Minh threat to Laos. They became known as the ‘Rats of Nam Yum.’. Au revoir. What changed the aspect of the war for a time was the influx of American aid, which began with the onset of the Korean War. By the time the battle started in earnest on March 13, 1954, the garrison already had suffered 1,037 casualties without any tangible result. Umberto Eco, Italian novelist (The Name of the Rose). Lessons, it seems, that were not heeded by the Americans as they embarked on their own futile fight in Vietnam later in the decade. It stank with the smell of death but also rotting flesh with all the wounded French soldiers lying there.’. Y… I’ll see you soon. Even the fact, which the unfortunate Navarre invoked later, that the attack on Dien Bien Phu cost the enemy close to 25,000 casualties and delayed its attack on the vital Red River Delta by four months, held little water in the face of the wave of defeatism that swept not only French public opinion at home but also that of her allies. You will fight to the end. All he could hope for was to hold out until nightfall in order to give the surviving members of his command a chance to break out into the jungle under the cover of darkness, while he himself would stay with the more than 5,000 severely wounded (out of a total of 15,094 men inside the valley) and face the enemy. Colonel Charles Piroth, the jovial one-armed commander of the French artillery inside the fortress, had guaranteed that his 24 105mm light howitzers could match anything the Communists had, and that his battery of four 155mm medium field howitzers would definitely muzzle whatever would not be destroyed by the lighter pieces and the fighter-bombers. You understand, mon vieux. Walter Mondale, 42nd Vice President of the United States, Democratic presidential nominee who lost to Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Ambassador to Japan. The First Vietnam War, or Indochina War (1946–1954), was the result of hostilities between the communist Vietnamese and the French who were reluctant to … They can’t get out. Among his most important works are Street Without Joy, which became essential military reading about the war with no front lines, and Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu. You’re not going to shoot anymore? Notwithstanding the embarrassment of such a shambolic defeat littered from start to finish with basic strategic errors, the political fallout was equally as shameful. A Web site about Bernard Fall is at www.geocities.com/bernardbfall. He spent the 1961-62 academic year in Cambodia on a Rockefeller Foundation grant. For a time, a U.S. Air Force strike was considered, but the idea was dropped for about the same reasons that make a similar attack against North Vietnam today rather risky. Militarily, disaster had temporarily been averted. Immediately after the battle ended, the Việt Minh counted 11,721 prisoners which included 4,436 wounded. There was a silence. The outlying posts, which protected the key airfield, were captured within the first few days of the battle. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance. To achieve this, the French commander in chief, General Henri Navarre, had to win a victory over the hard core of Communist regular divisions, whose continued existence posed a constant threat of invasion to the Laotian kingdom and to the vital Red River Delta with its capital city of Hanoi and the thriving port of Haiphong. said the Viet Minh in French. This also proved to be an illusion. It was to little avail to say that France had lost only 5 percent of its battle force, that the equipment losses had already been more than made good by American supplies funneled in while the battle was raging and that even the manpower losses had been made up by reinforcements from France and new drafts of Vietnamese. Over 55,000 soldiers were sent into battle, and 260,000 labourers and 27,400 tons of rice were put on standby. All of that rode on Dien Bien Phu: the freedom of Laos, a senior commander’s reputation, the survival of some of France’s best troops and — above all — a last chance to come out of that frustrating eight-year-long jungle war with something other than a total defeat. The battle was the culmination of Operation Castor, a larger plan by the French commander, General Navarre, to lure General Giap and his Peoples Army of Vietnam into a conventional battle to finally destroy their combat power and break the military resistance against French colonial rule. It was here, in the area that he had written about with much emotion, that Bernard Fall was killed by the explosion of a land mine, along with Gunnery Sergeant Byron Highland, a Marine combat photographer. This article by the late Bernard B. Rabindra Hazari. In the spring of 1954, eight long and arduous years into the First Indochina War, the French suffered a defeat that was so shameful and shambolic, it remains barely spoken of. But Cogny was adamant on that point: Mon vieux, of course you have to finish the whole thing now. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. It proved little else but that an encircled force, no matter how valiant, will succumb if its support system fails.’. Both his parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. When, on March 13, 1954, at 5:10 p.m., Communist artillery smothered strongpoint Beatrice without noticeable damage from French counterbattery fire, Piroth knew the fortress was doomed. Fall is an account of one of the most significant battles to take place in Vietnam. In one last push, the Việt Minh laid charges directly in front of the last of the French positions. With communism now a menace at both ends of the Far Eastern arc, the Indochina War changed from a colonial war into a crusade — but a crusade without a real cause. During the night of March 14-15, he committed suicide by blowing himself up with a hand grenade, since he could not charge his pistol with one hand. Dien Bien Phu was situated in a valley in Northern Vietnam, surrounded by mountains. Belligerents: France & The State of Vietnam vs Viet Minh, ‘You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.’. But as the position shrank every day (it finally was the size of a ballpark), the bulk of the supplies fell into Communist hands. Dien Bien Phu was ‘the only pitched battle to be lost by a European army in the history of decolonisation. And to destroy those divisions and prevent their invasions into Laos, one had to, in American military parlance, find ’em and fix ’em. As a former French soldier he was allowed to accompany French forces on combat operations in all sectors of the country. Four of the eight strongpoints were from one to three miles away from the center of the position. Not long after, the Americans rocked up but that’s for another time. They were divided into groups dependent on their health and those who could were marched on foot 600 km (roughly the distance from London to Edinburgh) to prison camps in the north and east of the country – intermingled with Việt Minh soldiers to discourage the French from attempting bombing raids. A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu. On May 7, 1954, the end of the battle for the jungle fortress of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French military influence in Asia, just as the sieges of Port Arthur, Corregidor and Singapore had, to a certain extent, broken the spell of Russian, American and British hegemony in Asia. As it turned out, the Viet Minh artillery was so superbly camouflaged that to this day it is doubtful whether French counterbattery fire silenced more than a handful of the enemy’s fieldpieces. General Navarre felt that the way to achieve this was by offering the Communists a target sufficiently tempting for their regular divisions to pounce at, but sufficiently strong to resist the onslaught once it came. This Battle Analysis is written to illustrate the importance of logistics to complement tactical decisions with the war fighter on the battleground. The sheer magnitude of preparing that mass of supplies for parachuting was solved only by superhuman feats of the airborne supply units on the outside — efforts more than matched by the heroism of the soldiers inside the valley, who had to crawl into the open, under fire, to collect the containers. Originally, the fortress had been designed to protect its main airstrip against marauding Viet Minh units, not to withstand the onslaught of four Communist divisions. The surviving officers and men, many of whom had lived for 54 days on a steady diet of instant coffee and cigarettes, were in a catatonic state of exhaustion. The net effect of Dien Bien Phu on France’s military posture in Indochina could not be measured in losses alone. This battle, of which the Viet-minh was victorious, marked the end of the Indochina War (1946-1954), but also that of French hegemony in this region. The combat is confused and goes on all about. From Phu Bai the group moved along the area the French had named La Rue Sans Joie, or Street Without Joy. In the latter epic, Fall describes in extraordinary detail not only the failures but also the heroism that took place in what he calls one of the most decisive battles of the 20th century. Awarded a grant from the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) for field study of Communist infiltration in Southeast Asia, Fall witnessed the outbreak of Communist hostilities in Laos. Since the Viet Minh relied largely on human porters for their frontline units, they could easily bypass such bottlenecks as Dien Bien Phu or the Plain of Jars while bottling up the forces contained in those strongholds. As a French colonel surveyed the battlefield from a slit trench near his command post, a small white flag, probably a handkerchief, appeared on top of a rifle hardly 50 feet away from him, followed by the flat-helmeted head of a Viet Minh soldier. French artillery and mortars had been progressively silenced by murderously accurate Communist Viet Minh artillery fire, and the monsoon rains had slowed down supply drops to a trickle and transformed the French trenches and dugouts into bottomless quagmires. VNA/VNS File Photo By early March 1954, enemy troops numbering more than 16,000 had gathered in Điện Biên Phủ, including the most elite military units in Indochina. Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the decisive engagement in the First Indochina War (1946–54). And all around them, as on some gruesome Judgment Day, soldiers, French and enemy alike, began to crawl out of their trenches and stand erect for the first time in 54 days, as firing ceased everywhere. While the main defenses of Dien Bien Phu were being mopped up, strong Viet Minh forces already had tightened their grip around the 1,000 Legionnaires, Algerians and Frenchmen preparing their breakout. He estimated that to protect the 12 battalions there initially (five others were parachuted in during the battle), he would need 36,000 tons of engineering materials — which would mean using all available transport aircraft for a period of five months. Legend has it that Navarre’s deputy, Colonel Christian de Castries who was supposedly irresistible to women and described by author Grahame Greene as having the ‘nervy histrionic features of an old-time actor’ named the camps after his mistresses: Eliane, Béatrice, Anne-Marie, Gabrielle, Huguette, Claudine, Epervier, Dominique, Francoise and Isabelle. Photo: Vietnam People's Army museum/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA. They were so successful that, at the ensuing Geneva cease-fire conference, Cambodia did not have to surrender a province as a regroupment area for Communist forces. Fall will be remembered by history as one of the foremost authorities on the Vietnam War. The victory of the Vietnamese precipitated the collapse of French colonial rule in Indochina and forever redefined the perception of what nonconventional armies could accomplish. Eight thousand miles away, in Geneva, the Vietnamese and Red Chinese delegations attending the nine-power conference that was supposed to settle both the Korean and the Indochinese conflicts toasted the event with pink Chinese champagne. On May 7, 1954, however, the struggle for Indochina was almost over for France. World. They can be lost just as conclusively through a series of very small engagements, such as those now fought in South Vietnam, if the local government and its population lose confidence in the eventual outcome of the contest — and that was the case both for the French and for their Vietnamese allies after Dien Bien Phu. Their century of colonial rule in Indochina – now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – was over. Essentially, the battle of Dien Bien Phu degenerated into a brutal artillery duel, which the enemy would have won sooner or later. The history of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is utterly fascinating, as are the historic sites associated with it and you can read all about the most famous historic sites in Vietnam on TripHistoric. In 1957 Fall joined the faculty of Howard University as professor of international relations, and he spent the summer of that year in South Vietnam. A few figures tell how murderous the air war around Dien Bien Phu was: Of the 420 aircraft available in all of Indochina then, 62 were lost in connection with Dien Bien Phu and 167 sustained hits. Historian Jean-Pierre Rioux said that Dien Bien Phu was ‘the only pitched battle to be lost by a European army in the history of decolonisation’ and it cost the French their Empire. History. Fall was widely considered the greatest civilian expert on the war in Vietnam. For all practical purposes the Indochina War was lost then and there. Inside the fortress, the charming tribal village by the Nam Yum River had soon disappeared along with all the bushes and trees in the valley, to be used either as firewood or as construction materials for the bunkers. The airdrops were a harrowing experience in that narrow valley, which permitted only straight approaches. A few minutes later, de Castries’ radio operator methodically smashed his set with the butt of his Colt .45 pistol. They then turned their attention to Anne-Marie and Gabrielle which took a couple of days but they too were overrun and with them, the use of the airfields. By normal military engineering standards, the materials necessary to protect a battalion against the fire of the 105mm howitzers the Viet Minh now possessed amounted to 2,550 tons, plus 500 tons of barbed wire. An Dien Battle. In amongst all theperma-famous culture references was the line ‘Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock’ and it’s probably fair to say that this one may have got some people stumped. A French newspaper from 1954, with the headline ‘Dien Bien Phu is a tomb’. After eight years of fighting and with the French strategists propped up by American money, they tried tactic after unsuccessful tactic but eventually ran out of ideas. Well, good-bye, mon vieux, said Cogny. What had happened at Dien Bien Phu was simply that a momentous gamble had been attempted by the French high command and had backfired badly. The offensive stabs for which Dien Bien Phu had been specifically planned became little else but desperate sorties against an invisible enemy. The battle of Dien Bien Phu (DBP) was a decisive engagement during the Indochina War (1946-54). He also positioned 30 battalions – around 40,000 battle troops – in a ring of steel around the camps, ably supported by a further quarter of a million porters, road gangs and auxiliary soldiers who carried the food, supplies and equipment up the steep slopes. The decision was made then to fight on to the end, as long as the ammunition lasted, and let individual units be overrun after destruction of their heavy weapons. Stephen Decatur, American naval hero during actions against the Barbay pirates and the War of 1812. Mr and Mrs Christmas: A short history of a very festive surname, Strictly plague dancing: The dancing mania of 1518, Curse of Oak Island recap and what’s coming up in season 8, Lesser known facts about The Battle of the Somme. But what you have done until now surely is magnificent. In 1954, French forces in French Indochina sought to cut the Viet Minh's supply lines to Laos. Battle music: Vietnamese soldiers pull a heavy cannon over a slope to the battle of Dien Bien Phu. 08/May/2020. Dien Bien Phu was the decisive battle of the First Indochina War. That was the rationale for the creation of a garrison at Dien Bien Phu and for the battle that took place there. The garrison’s only hope lay in the breakthrough of a relief column from Laos or Hanoi (a hopeless concept in view of the terrain and distances involved) or in the destruction of the siege force through massive aerial bombardment. Exact figures are understandably hard to come by and may never be known but officially, just 3,290 men were repatriated some four months later. But ultimately, it would not end the fighting immediately or in the long term, with decades of war in Vietnam yet to come The victory the French were so sure of was turning into a humiliating defeat. On Christmas Day 1953, Indochina, for the first time in the eight-year war, was literally cut in two. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Portuguese and Dutch had been milling around but both were driven out by the locals and then in 1615, the French arrived. In fact, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is one of the most significant, not just of the 1950s where supposedly nothing much happened, but of the entire 20th century. His Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu and Street Without Joy are still on the short list of the most essential books about the French phase of the war, and are indispensable to understanding the American phase. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu. 4. Initially viewed by the French colonial administration as nothing more than a peasant uprising, they were confident of a quick and decisive victory but it proved to be anything but. The siege occurred while the 1954 Geneva Conference was ironing out agreements between the major powers, including the future of Indochina. Laos had signed a treaty with France in which the latter promised to defend it. One cannot understand the full significance of the battle of Dien Bien Phu without situating it in its Franco-Vietnamese, international, and military dimensions. General Vo Nguyen Giap decided to take Dien Bien Phu by an extremely efficient mixture of 19th-century siege techniques (sinking TNT-laden mineshafts under French bunkers, for example) and modern artillery patterns plus human-wave attacks. At the same time Việt Minh commander Võ Nguyên Giáp, widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s finest military strategists, blocked all roads in and out of the town so it became only accessible by air. We’re blowing up everything around here. At 9:40 p.m., a French surveillance aircraft reported to Hanoi that it saw the strongpoint’s depots blowing up and that heavy artillery fire was visible close by. First the French side. In an effort to bring the war to an end, both sides threw everything into one final and ultimately decisive fight – the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Rather than defend immobile lines, he wanted to create throughout Indochina land-air bases from which highly mobile units would sally forth and decimate the enemy in his own rear areas, just as the Viet Minh guerrillas were doing in French rear areas. Dien Bien Phu, 1954, was the final battle of the first Indo-China war. (Had not de Castries, in the manner of his ducal forebears, sent a written challenge to enemy commander Giap?). He gained firsthand guerrilla warfare experience while fighting in the French Underground from 1942 to 1944. ‘Unstoppable waves’ of 25,000 machine gun-toting Việt Minh infantry engaged the last 3,000 able-bodied French garrison soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat in and around the trenches and ruined fortification and by the afternoon of May 7th, it was over. De Castries ticked off a long list of 800-man battalions, which had been reduced to companies of 80 men, and of companies that were reduced to the size of weak platoons. French Prime Minister René Mayer was a strong believer in strengthening France’s role in Europe and the Atlantic community. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took place in northern Vietnam in 1954, marked a major turning point in both the First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh independence movement and the general position of European colonial powers in South-East Asia.
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