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

by Fredrik Logevall

  Two problems remained, however: finding enough bodies to man these many hundreds of strongpoints, and making sure the troops were adequately supplied. To meet the first objective, de Lattre sought and received reinforcements of North African units and Foreign Legionnaires. He knew, though, that Paris would never authorize sufficient numbers of troops for Indochina to do more than hold the line. The money wasn’t there.13 He therefore accelerated what the French were now calling the jaunissement (literally “yellowing”), the building up of the still-embryonic Vietnamese National Army (VNA). At the time of de Lattre’s arrival, these comprised eleven battalions and nine gendarmerie units, and he swiftly ordered the creation of an additional twenty-five battalions, four armored squadrons, and eight artillery batteries. This Vietnamese force would perform the task, so the argument went, of pacifying and defending areas not under effective Viet Minh control, thereby freeing the Expeditionary Corps for offensive action. Many of the best officers and NCOs of the French Army, among them Bernard, volunteered to serve as the necessary initial cadres for these Vietnamese units.14

  For equipment, de Lattre turned to the United States. He took satisfaction from that fact that Washington’s aid had begun flowing more freely, and in particular he welcomed the dispatch of dozens of Bearcat fighters and B-26 bombers, as well as transportation equipment and bulldozers. American artillery shells were also arriving in much larger quantities, as were vital 105mm howitzers. But much more would be needed. From the U.S. liaison office in Indochina, de Lattre requested urgently needed materials. Among the items was an American weapon designed for jungle fighting: napalm. His predecessors had made scant use of this jellied petroleum that ignites on contact, but de Lattre determined at once that it could have enormous utility.15

  III

  IN HIS JUNGLE HEADQUARTERS NEAR THAI NGUYEN, FIFTY MILES north of Hanoi, General Vo Nguyen Giap greeted the news of de Lattre’s appointment with satisfaction, even delight. Always fascinated by military laurels and recognition, Giap viewed the selection of such an illustrious figure as a compliment to himself and to his troops, and he eagerly took up the challenge. “The French are sending against the People’s Army a foe worthy of its steel,” he declared. “We will defeat him on his own ground.”16 Brimming with confidence following his victories in northern Tonkin, Giap now set his sights upon the Red River Delta and Hanoi. His Chinese advisers, flush with excitement about the success of the Border Campaign and of their human-wave attacks against the Americans in Korea, now urged Giap to use the same tactics against the French in Vietnam.

  For some months, a debate had been raging in high Viet Minh councils about whether the time had come to shift to the third and final stage of Maoist people’s war, the general offensive. Did the success in the autumn offensive suggest that conditions were now ripe? Was a “preponderance of forces” in just one area sufficient, or did one need to have it all over the country? How vulnerable were the French in the delta, and would a Viet Minh victory there presage the crumbling of the entire colonial edifice? Senior officials went around and around on these questions; Giap was among those who argued that his forces could move to the third stage before they held absolute material superiority on the battlefield. Others disagreed, but Giap’s advocacy received a boost from the growing rice shortage in Viet Minh–held areas; unless revolutionary forces could expand their presence in the delta, he and others insisted, the food situation would become desperate. (Already the government had ordered people to drastically curtail their consumption of rice so that sufficient amounts would be available to the armed forces.) A fragile consensus emerged to launch the opening stages of what seemed likely to be a protracted and complex offensive. The first stage: a major assault on the delta from the northwest.17

  Giap prided himself on his meticulous preparation for battle, but here he miscalculated—his hubris got the better of him. He gave insufficient thought to his great advantage in the Border Campaign: The French were dispersed and had few lines of communication or transport. But that advantage did not apply in the delta: Here the French were much better placed. While Viet Minh forces moved into position north of Hanoi—sixty-five infantry, twelve artillery, and eight engineer battalions, from the 308th and 312th Divisions, together with civilian porters who brought five thousand tons of rice, ammunition, and weapons—Viet Minh propagandists began posting leaflets around the delta bearing the inscription, “Ho Chi Minh in Hanoi for Tet.” (Tet is the Chinese lunar new year, falling usually in February.) French commanders girded for battle, and their intelligence analysts (especially those of the Service de documentation extérieure et de contre-espionnage, or SDECE) identified the general whereabouts of the enemy’s concentration and the probable attack date.

  The first target in what would become known as the Day River Battles was Vinh Yen, some thirty miles northwest of Hanoi on the north side of the Red River, near where it debouched from the highlands. The town was one of Hanoi’s protective bastions; if it fell, the road to the capital would be open. Giap planned to use his two divisions to breach Vinh Yen’s defenses and force a gap, through which his forces could make a dash for Hanoi. On the evening of January 13, two regiments of the 308th assaulted Bao Chuc, a small post near the town held by about fifty Senegalese and Vietnamese who fought to the last man and succumbed after two bayonet counterattacks. A groupe mobile sent to relieve the post was surrounded and likewise assailed by enemy units that had taken up positions on the surrounding hills. It looked like the leaflet vow would be made good.

  De Lattre now took personal charge of the battle. On the fourteenth, he flew right into Vinh Yen in his spotter plane and from there ordered the mobilization of all available reserves and the transfer of troops from Cochin China to the north. On the fifteenth, he sent a groupe mobile of crack North African troops to seize the heights around Vinh Yen. The effort appeared to have succeeded, but suddenly at sundown on the sixteenth, there came wave upon wave of Viet Minh infantry to conquer the hastily dug defenses of the hill line. Merciless hand-to-hand combat ensued, with grenades and tommy guns; casualties were heavy on both sides. De Lattre, returning to Vinh Yen for a second time, realized the gravity of the situation and ordered all available aircraft—both fighter-bombers and transport planes capable of dumping American-made napalm canisters—into what would be the heaviest aerial bombardment of the entire war.18

  Relentlessly, the napalm bombs rained down on the Viet Minh troops, literally roasting thousands of them. Early on January 17, the 312th Division tried a final mass attack; it badly mauled a battalion under Colonel Paul Vanuxem but was blocked by a curtain of roaring napalm. After that, the attacks became spasmodic, then died away completely. The air grew silent. The French looked around in stunned disbelief: They had prevailed; they remained lords of the battlefield. Giap had lost 6,000 dead and 8,000 wounded and had been defeated in the open field. French airpower, using a terrifying new weapon, had proved decisive. A Viet Minh officer wrote in his diary:

  All of a sudden a sound can be heard in the sky and strange birds appear, getting larger and larger. Airplanes. I order my men to take cover from the bombs and machine-gun bullets. But the planes dive upon us without firing their guns. However, all of a sudden, hell opens in front of my eyes. Hell comes in the form of large, egg-shaped containers, dropping from the first plane, followed by other eggs from the second and third plane. Immense sheets of flames, extending over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror in the ranks of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire that falls from the skies.

  Another plane swoops down behind us and again drops a napalm bomb. The bomb falls closely behind us and I feel its fiery breath touching my whole body. The men are now fleeing in all directions and I cannot hold them back. There is no way of holding out under this torrent of fire that flows in all directions and burns everything in its passage. On all sides, flames surround us now. In addition, French artillery and mortars now have our range and transform into a fiery tomb what had been, ten minutes ago, a qu
iet part of the forest.19

  As de Lattre well understood, the victory at Vinh Yen would have been impossible without the timely arrival of American airplanes, weapons, and ammunition. The napalm bombs and howitzers were particularly important, but de Lattre also knew that virtually all the aircraft employed were of U.S. origin, as was much of the artillery. At a triumphant press conference in Saigon on January 23, he lauded the United States for her assistance in the battle. Describing the visit U.S. minister Donald R. Heath had made with him to the combat area a few days before, the French commander said that French officers had “eagerly seized the occasion to voice their gratitude for American supplies.” To Heath privately, he said that the napalm had been crucial.20

  Giap too grasped the importance of the stepped-up American aid to the enemy’s cause. But he was unwilling to admit that Vinh Yen represented a serious defeat, or that it showed his forces unready for a major battle of maneuver. The operation was a close-run thing, he reasoned; the result could easily have gone the other way. Twice more that spring Giap tried to break into the delta; both times he failed. In late March, he sent twenty-one battalions against the French garrison around Mao Khe, a coastal village some twenty miles northwest of Haiphong. The French, undermanned by a ratio of three to one, repulsed the attack, thanks again largely to their command of the air and their superior artillery. Napalm was again used to devastating effect. Losses were high on both sides. The French sustained casualties of roughly 25 percent, and the Viet Minh left more than four hundred bodies on the battlefield. A week later the Viet Minh attacked again at nearby Dong Trieu; again they were beaten back.21

  The third attempt came in late May. This time Giap moved from the south, in a classical maneuver against the French defenses in the southeast along the Day River. The objective was twofold: to capture the rice crops in the area, then ripe for harvesting, and to take the strongly Catholic area around Ninh Binh and Phat Diem, which to this point had proved stubbornly resistant to Viet Minh infiltration. It took the Viet Minh two months to move—mostly by night, to avoid detection—troops and porters and supplies all the way around the delta, and the monsoon rains started before the operation could begin. But Giap was confident, in part because one regiment of the 320th Division had managed to infiltrate behind enemy lines near Thai Binh, where it joined up with regional units in order to attack the French from the rear.

  The assault began on May 29 as Viet Minh units crossed the Day River. They achieved the element of surprise and made initial gains, but de Lattre swiftly organized eight motorized brigades. Heavy fighting ensued, and for days the outcome was in doubt. Some positions around Ninh Binh changed hands several times. But the Catholic militia proved adept at interior defense, and French riverine forces finally cut Giap’s supply lines across the river. By June 6, the French had gained the initiative. Four days later Giap ordered a withdrawal. He left some 9,000 dead and 1,000 captured.22

  He had been outclassed, had shown his inexperience as a general. Cocksure by nature, he had failed to heed what the Vinh Yen defeat had taught about the difficulty of penetrating the delta. Neither he nor his staff yet understood adequately how to move large units or how to handle them in battle. He had sent them into action in open terrain during daylight, which made them easy targets for superior French firepower. He had failed to leave himself with reserve units and thus had no way to exploit sudden opportunities, and his withdrawals from all three operations had been chaotic and slow, causing further Viet Minh casualties. Only belatedly did he grasp what napalm could do to massed formations. Senior party leaders, notably theoretician Truong Chinh, accused Giap of causing needless massacres and of selecting the wrong commanders; even Ho Chi Minh, whose own leadership was called into question, expressed distress at the heavy battle losses. DRV radio broadcasts obliquely criticized the offensives by praising the guerrilla techniques used early in the war, and there were reports of increased desertions from Viet Minh ranks. Even the Chinese, now facing a prolonged fight against the Americans in Korea, sang a different tune than at the start of the year, emphasizing the need for caution. Giap didn’t lose his position, but his authority was undermined. He resolved to steer clear of large set-piece engagements for the foreseeable future and to return to guerrilla warfare.23

  A captured order of the day signed by Giap following the defeats put the matter plainly: “Our troops, who have shown their superiority as guerrillas, should, from now on, not seek massive battle. The general counteroffensive is called off. Regional elements will enter by small groups into towns and reinforce the urban networks. The prize of revolutionary warfare remains the population.”24

  IV

  THEN TOO, IT MATTERED THAT GIAP HAD COME UP AGAINST A FORMIDABLE opposing commander. With each successive victory in early 1951 de Lattre’s prestige rose. His expressions of vanity and his explosions of anger at underlings did not cease—he fired one stenographer with the words, “You don’t know how to dress, Miss, and your hair is dirty”—and in the officer corps murmurings could be heard about the “reckless prima donna” who led them.25 But de Lattre showed again that he was a man of action and courage who feared nobody, and even those who disliked him took their hats off to him. Some journalists likened his Vinh Yen victory to the miracle of the Marne in 1914. Admittedly, he hadn’t gained one inch of new territory, but without him, many were convinced, Hanoi would have fallen to the Viet Minh. To the colons in both Hanoi and Saigon, he was the hero they had long sought; to the politicians and much of the press in Paris, he was the general who might yet save French Indochina. He was Le Roi Jean.

  He was also the proud father. In early May, he had personally decorated Bernard with the Croix de Guerre, and he never hesitated to wax lyrical before reporters and others about the young man’s exploits in the field. In one such session, with a Belgian journalist on May 30, in the midst of the fighting in Ninh Binh, the general discussed the battlefield situation and referred with particular pride to the role being played by Bernard, who was leading a platoon of Vietnamese troops. The interview was nearing its end when an assistant burst into the room, his face ashen. De Lattre took one look at him and, before the aide could open his mouth, exclaimed: “Bernard is dead!”26

  It was true. Bernard had been killed earlier that day, on the banks of the Day River near Nam Dinh. His company had been ordered to hold a rocky hillock, and during the night Bernard had taken up a position on the summit, along with a Vietnamese corporal and a French lieutenant named Mercier. Sometime after one o’clock, the corporal was wounded in a small-arms firefight, and soon thereafter Viet Minh troops could be seen advancing in the plain below. At about three o’clock, mortar shells began to fall near the rock; one found its mark, mortally wounding Mercier and instantly killing Bernard. The wounded corporal helped carry the bodies to a cave at the foot of the rock, then returned to his post to continue the fight.27

  De Lattre was shattered. To his wife, then in Paris, he telegraphed: “Forgive me for not having been able to protect him.” A few days later he flew back to France with the casket containing his only son. A funeral followed at the Chapel Saint-Louis, at the Invalides, and at the request of Madame de Lattre, the service also honored all Frenchmen who had fallen in Indochina. The next day Bernard was buried at his father’s birthplace, Mouilleron-en-Pareds.

  In time, the devastating effect of the son’s death on the general’s outlook would become clear for all to see. Initially, though, he masked his despair, stressing at every opportunity that both his Christian faith and his faith in the importance of France’s mission in Indochina were undiminished. Bernard had given his life for the most noble of causes, he insisted—perhaps, some thought, a bit too insistently.

  Upon his return from France, he threw himself into his tasks with even more energy than before, driving his aides to exhaustion. (There were subtle hints too that his own physical stamina was suffering—a sign, perhaps, that the cancer that would claim his life was already at work within. He still toiled dee
p into the night, but his vigor slackened in the later hours.) Dissatisfied with the pace of construction of the De Lattre Line, he committed more manpower to the task. Concerned about the level of Viet Minh infiltration inside the delta, he ordered stepped-up efforts aimed at “cleaning” the interior. These “nettoyage” sweeps achieved considerable success but did not attain the full effect because of the absence of any civil organization capable of taking control of “cleansed” areas. De Lattre blamed Bao Dai’s government, headed by Prime Minister Tran Van Huu, for this absence, for not doing enough to build up an effective administrative structure, and for failing to arouse broad popular support. He demanded the immediate firing of ministers he considered ineffectual; Huu, widely regarded as among the most pro-French of officials, resisted.28

  The old Franco-Vietnamese political problems had in fact not gone away. From his very first speech in Vietnam, on December 19, and at all points thereafter, de Lattre had stressed that Vietnam was free and that his mission was merely to help it protect that freedom. Imperial control was no more. As he told Huu and other Vietnamese ministers during a tour of the Vinh Yen battlefield in mid-April: “Some of you may look upon these blockhouses as the outward sign of the permanence of the French occupation. On the contrary, Mr. Prime Minister, they are the ramparts behind which the independence of Vietnam will be built up.”29 Huu was skeptical, as were others in his entourage. For them, as for a great many non-Communist Vietnamese that spring, France still showed scant signs of granting Vietnam anything that looked like real independence. The French had ceded control of the treasury and the customs service to the Bao Dai administration, but the high commissioner’s office plainly exercised ultimate control on key issues, not least those pertaining to the war effort. His dictatorial methods also had begun to grate. Many Vietnamese accordingly still took a wait-and-see attitude—not least Bao Dai himself, who spent much of the first half of the year on the French Riviera, polishing his tennis game. For his part, Huu, a competent administrator who lacked charisma, had little following among the people and seemed largely unperturbed by the fact.