Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

  Ultimately, only some 600 men from the two columns made it back to French lines. The Expeditionary Corps had suffered 6,000 casualties, of whom no fewer than 4,800 were listed as dead or missing. Charton’s column alone lost 75 officers, 295 NCOs, and 2,939 from other ranks. Other combined losses included more than 100 mortars and some 950 machine guns, 8,000 rifles, and 450 trucks. “The disaster of RC4” was by far the most devastating defeat of the war to this point. General Carpentier, stunned and shattered, facing the prospect of informing Paris that the Charton and Le Page columns had been wiped out, flew over the scene and could only say mysteriously, “Everything that could happen has happened.”19

  In author Bernard Fall’s later estimation, it was the greatest French colonial defeat since the loss of Montcalm at Quebec in 1759. General Giap wouldn’t have put it in those words, but he found his own way to register the magnitude of his achievement: He joined his Chinese advisers in a celebratory feast and got drunk for the first time in his life.20

  The engagement also showed something else: that the war had entered a new, intensive, deadly phase, as the Cold War not only internationalized the diplomatic nature of the conflict but militarized it in unprecedented ways.

  To compound the calamity, French posts far from the fighting were simply abandoned. Most important among these was Lang Son, a pleasant town of ten thousand constructed in the French provincial style with wide streets and low yellow-brown houses, and the main post at the eastern edge of the ridge. It was evacuated on Carpentier’s orders on October 17–18. Large stocks of arms, ammunitions, stores, and vehicles were left behind for the Viet Minh to claim—enough to supply Giap’s army for many months.

  By the nineteenth, the French had been driven out of northern Tonkin, from the sea to the Red River. The border to China was completely open, from Lao Cai to coastal Mong Cai. The French fell back on a 375-mile northern perimeter, with Hanoi at its core. Panic swept the French communities in Hanoi and elsewhere in the delta, and there was open talk of abandoning Tonkin entirely. Officials scoffed at the notion, but they quietly made preparations to evacuate all women and children from Hanoi, until ordered to stop by High Commissioner Léon Pignon, who vowed the city would be defended house by house. Some firms nevertheless moved their surplus stocks and archives to Haiphong or Saigon.21 For Carpentier and his underlings in Saigon, most distressing for the future was that the Viet Minh had shown themselves to be so much more than the ragtag, primitive bandit gang of French imagination (or at least rhetoric); they were a serious fighting force, disciplined and courageous, able to move rapidly and maneuver, and willing to take major battlefield losses.

  And indeed, Viet Minh casualties in the Border Campaign (as it came to be called, or bien gioi to the Vietnamese) were extremely heavy—much heavier than was known at the time. Of the 30,000 troops Giap threw into the fight, as many as 9,000, or 30 percent, may have been killed. Not all died on the battlefield. Because of the rough terrain and distances, porters could evacuate only about 6 percent of the wounded to hospitals within six hours; the rest arrived only later, some of them as late as twelve or eighteen hours after going down. Even then, their ordeal was far from over, as they typically had to endure excruciating waits to go into surgery. Many never made it to the operating table. Nor had the DRV’s medical services factored in that they would need also to take care of hundreds of wounded European, African, and North African troops captured in the battle. Many of these soldiers also succumbed, whether from inadequate treatment of their injuries or from illness contracted in the malaria-infested jungles of Cao Bang.22

  Giap’s success was due in large measure to his preponderance of manpower and to atmospheric conditions. At all times he had at least a 3 to 1 superiority in numbers, and at Dong Khe it was more like 8 to 1. Communication between Viet Minh units was excellent throughout, and Giap could move units precisely where they were needed within the battle zone. After some early mistakes, his officers used coordinated artillery fire effectively, and their staff work was efficient. Intelligence agents in the villages used transmitting sets to give precise information on French movements, which allowed Giap to attack at times and places of his choosing. The ground mist so common at that time of year, as the rains were ending, helped as well: It prevented the French from using airpower to assist the two columns. The French Union command arrangements, meanwhile, were vague, and it was never clear who commanded whom. Marcel Le Page, who commanded the Lang Son column, was the wrong man for the job, an artilleryman with little experience in jungle warfare and a tendency toward indecision and self-doubt (qualities duly noted by his men).23

  And, of course, the human and material aid provided by the Chinese, both before and during the campaign, mattered enormously. Measuring exactly how this assistance influenced the course of events remains to this day difficult, however, and care should be taken to avoid exaggeration—it’s worth recalling that the French garrisons along the RC4 were isolated and highly vulnerable even before the PLA’s arrival, with each convoy completely at the mercy of guerrillas lurking in the hills and gorges along the road. Giap in later years would acknowledge the important material and training assistance provided by the Chinese in 1950, while insisting that he and Ho Chi Minh were the chief decision makers. They and they alone chose where and when to attack, and they hung tough when Chen Geng urged caution or delay.24 Maybe, but Giap would not have been able to strike remotely as hard, or leave the French nearly as bloodied, without the support provided by his northern neighbor.

  In late November, Carpentier ordered several operations to try to regain the initiative. Little was accomplished. In one action, commanded by Charton and designed to encircle and destroy several Viet Minh battalions thought to be operating around two villages in Thai Binh province southeast of Hanoi, bad weather delayed the drop of paratroopers by two hours, which meant the planned encirclement of the villages was not completed. When Charton’s men arrived, the villages were deserted. The next day the French searched seven or eight other villages in the same area; these too were more or less empty, as residents could be seen running away at the approach of troops. Even people working in the fields disappeared without a trace. No enemy soldiers were ever spotted, and no weapons uncovered. French troops did note, though, that most of the villages had pro–Viet Minh posters and pictures of Ho Chi Minh.25

  III

  THE FRENCH FACED A STARK NEW REALITY. THE CAO BANG DISASTER, beyond the enormous loss of blood and treasure, beyond the immediate humiliation of having been out-generaled and out-fought by a supposedly inferior enemy, showed that in this war, time was not on France’s side. The strategy of isolating the Viet Bac and of reducing the areas under Viet Minh control had not succeeded; to the contrary, Ho Chi Minh’s government now had firm control over a huge swath of Tonkin and threatened the rest; it also remained a formidable presence in many parts of Annam and Cochin China. French commanders might not wish to admit it, at least not without a few drinks in them, but an outright defeat of the enemy was now almost impossible to imagine. He had solidified his hold on the Viet Bac and had at least tacit support of the mass of the population there, and he had a powerful neighbor to the north, ready and willing to help his cause.

  Which is not to say Ho was invincible. The Viet Minh had scored a stunning victory, but their strength in late 1950 should not be overestimated. Giap’s army, now formally named the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN), had long and difficult supply lines, and it still lacked much of the equipment, including airplanes, of a modern army. Its food supplies were, as almost always, a source of concern. Nor were the Viet Minh yet in a position to make a serious play for the big prize, the Red River Delta, and it’s doubtful that Giap at this stage would have been able to rapidly and immediately dispatch from one place to another the troops required to reinforce a success or avert a disaster. French Union forces, meanwhile, were about to be bolstered by an infusion of aircraft and other materials from the United States.26

  French offici
als were quick to remind themselves and one another of these points. Maybe too quick. Certainly, there could be no talk of quitting, of seeking a fig-leaf diplomatic settlement with Ho that would allow an exit from the morass. France’s credibility was on the line, as was the personal credibility of her leaders. And one could speak as well of partisan credibility being at stake. France from 1947 to 1951 had a string of coalition governments, each one standing to the ideological right of its predecessor. Indochina was one reason for this rightward drift. Unbending resolve to tackle the Viet Minh became pivotal to the MRP, the dominant party in these coalitions, which feared a disastrous hemorrhage of support to the Gaullist Rassemblement du peuple français (RPF) if it bowed to Socialist and Communist demands for negotiation with Ho Chi Minh. The declining influence of the French left in colonial and defense policy was critical to the French choices in Indochina that resulted in adherence to the Bao Dai solution, refusal to pursue direct negotiation with the Viet Minh leadership, and greater attachment to U.S. Cold War imperatives, as American military aid became fundamental to the continuation of the French war effort from this point on.27

  Broader public opinion in France played little part in determining this firm posture. The country paid attention to Indochina because of the French troops engaged there, and there was despair at the immense loss of life in the October defeats, but one could still speak in late 1950 of a general indifference to questions affecting Southeast Asia and the Far East. On foreign affairs, most voters were far more concerned about Germany, about France’s eastern frontiers, and about building up the armed forces to resist yet another invasion across the Rhine. Many expressed opposition to the Indochina War on the narrow grounds that the expenditures of manpower and money there took away from this preparation at home. But the unpopularity of the war did not yet translate into mass active opposition, and thus politicians could act with a considerable degree of impunity.

  And so, in the fall of 1950, with one notable exception, no new voices were raised in French governmental circles in favor of immediate negotiations leading to withdrawal. The exception was Pierre Mendès France, an articulate leader of the Radical Party (which, despite the name, was a party of the center-left). Decrying the government’s inertia, Mendès France called the war an exercise in futility, one that moreover was exacting a huge cost in blood and treasure. “It is the entire conception of our action in Indochina that is false,” he declared from the rostrum in the Assembly, “for it is based on a military effort that is insufficient … to bring about a solution by force and on a policy that is incapable of assuring us the support of the people.”

  Things cannot continue like this.… There are only two solutions. The first consists in realizing our objectives in Indochina by means of military force. If we choose that, let us at least avoid illusions and pious lies. To achieve decisive military successes rapidly we need three times as many troops in the field and a tripling of appropriations, and we need them very quickly.… The military solution is a massive new effort, sufficiently massive and sufficiently rapid to anticipate the already considerable development of the forces opposed to us.

  Mendès France went on to enumerate the sacrifices that would be required in order to give this option a realistic chance: new taxes, conscription, a reduction of defenses in Europe, a slowdown in productive investment, and the impossibility ultimately of opposing the German rearmament sought by the United States. Would it not be better, he asked, to choose the second option, involving a negotiated settlement with Ho Chi Minh? “An agreement involves concessions, broad concessions, without doubt more significant than those that would have been sufficient in the past. One may reject this solution. It is difficult to apply. But then we must speak the truth to the country. We must inform it of the price that will have to be paid to bring the other solution about.”28

  The plea fell on deaf ears in the corridors of power. Disengagement short of victory would insult the memory of the Frenchmen who had died defending the cause, top civilian and military leaders insisted, a stock argument they would use time and time again in the months to come (as would, beginning in the mid-1960s, their American successors). It would simply be necessary to try harder, to perform better—and to do so under new French leadership in Hanoi. Carpentier, commander in chief of the French Expeditionary Corps and thus ultimately responsible for the Cao Bang disaster, was recalled, as was High Commissioner Pignon, who had vacillated before endorsing the decision to withdraw completely from the border region. In their place, Paris sent General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, a World War II hero who was given both titles: commander in chief and high commissioner. He would turn out to be an inspired choice, as we shall see, at least with respect to the former title.

  French leaders also now committed themselves to something they had hitherto resisted: the formation of a Vietnamese national army. They had made a few halfhearted moves in this direction in 1948 and 1949, but the French High Command held sole responsibility for the conduct of operations and for Vietnam’s internal security. In November 1950, the existing Vietnamese forces, all of which served under French officers, totaled only eight battalions. None was at full strength, and all were underequipped. But the autumn calamity called into question all previous assumptions; for many French officials, it became glaringly obvious that an increase in trained Indochinese manpower would be essential to turn the tide against the Viet Minh—for political and economic no less than military reasons. More manpower was essential, yet it could not come from France or elsewhere in the empire. Accordingly, in November 1950, a Vietnamese Military Academy was opened, its mission to train one hundred and fifty Vietnamese officers per year. Its leaders announced plans to form four Vietnamese divisions during 1951, partly from newly enlisted recruits and partly from existing French-officered units.29

  The announcement was of course an admission of weakness, tacit acknowledgment that the Expeditionary Corps as presently constituted was not up to the job. But the move gave desperate war planners in Paris a reason to hope both that their great and growing military manpower needs could be met and that Bao Dai’s anemic government could, by fielding its own army, enhance its popular support. The ordinary villager was weary of the war, French analysts believed, and wished for nothing more than peace and security. If Bao Dai could exploit this desire, if he could convince the peasantry that he would provide that security, he might be able to swing public opinion in his favor. But for that argument to have any chance of working, he needed to be his own man. And to be his own man, he needed Vietnamese troops. Far too many villagers were reluctant to enter areas held by the Expeditionary Corps. Many of them chose instead to back the Viet Minh, not out of ideological conviction but because they were Vietnamese.

  It was a disingenuous argument, of course, inasmuch as France was still unwilling to let Bao Dai be his own man, still unwilling to grant his government real independence. But certainly Paris officials were right to see a Vietnamese national army as essential; without it, there could be no hope of weaning significant non-Communist Vietnamese support away from Ho Chi Minh’s cause. And if the creation of such a force could cause the Americans, who had long favored the proposition, to boost their military and other assistance to the war effort, so much the better.

  On that score too, many French officials saw some reasons for hope in the midst of their late-autumn gloom.30 The pivotal U.S. decision to provide aid to the French military effort had preceded the outbreak of fighting in Korea, but the war there shaped the nature of the U.S. aid program in key ways. On the first day of the North Korean attack, June 25, 1950, President Truman ordered that assistance to Indochina be increased and accelerated; on the thirtieth, the day U.S. troops were committed to combat in Korea (as part of a UN force), eight C-47 transport planes arrived in Saigon with the first shipments of American matériel for the French.

  The Korean fighting also formed the backdrop for a July mission to Indochina headed by John Melby of the State Department and Major General Graves
B. Erskine of the Marine Corps. Their report, though critical of what Erskine in particular saw as the defensive posture and mind-set of the French, concluded that the war could be won with an infusion of American material assistance. (It was a standard feature of such U.S. “survey missions” during the war: They almost always returned with a “can-do” recommendation for positive action, no matter how intractable the problem might seem to outside observers.) By early August, military supplies sufficient to equip twelve infantry battalions were en route by ship to Vietnam. To oversee the delivery of this expanded American assistance, and to “evaluate French tactical efficiency in the use of U.S. equipment,” the administration created the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), whose first contingent of officers and enlisted men arrived in Saigon in September, and the Special Mission for Technical and Economic Assistance (STEM), which began its work the same month. Significantly, the French ruled out any kind of training role for MAAG and made clear they would allow no American interference in the conduct of the war.31

  UN forces in Korea reeled under the onslaught in those early weeks. But General Douglas MacArthur’s bold landing at Inchon in mid-September stopped the North Korean advance, and his counterattack in the following weeks drove them back almost to the Chinese frontier. In mid-October, however, the first Chinese units crossed into Korea, and on November 25 they began a vigorous offensive, driving U.S. troops before them. For Truman and his advisers, Chinese entry was a body blow. It raised the stakes in all of Asia. Mao’s China had to be contained, not merely on the Korean peninsula but anywhere it seemed to threaten. Sniping at the French for their colonial policy in Indochina, though it did not cease entirely, suddenly seemed to many in Washington a self-indulgent luxury. As one high-level internal document put it, the military situation in Vietnam “is so grave as to require the very highest priority of the United States.” In October, a shipment of forty Hellcat fighter aircraft arrived in Vietnam, and in November, the administration accelerated deliveries to Indochina of ninety Bearcat fighters and forty-one B-26 bombers, as well as transportation equipment and bulldozers. These commitments made the size of the military assistance program for Indochina second only to the support for U.S. combat forces in Korea.32