Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam
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A major U.S. policy document, NSC-124, approved by Truman on June 25, summarized the administration’s position. The United States, it declared, would oppose negotiations leading to a French withdrawal. Should Paris nevertheless prefer such a course, the United States would seek maximum support from her allies for collective action, including the possibility of air and naval support for the defense of Indochina. Should China intervene, her lines of communication should be interdicted and a naval blockade of the Chinese coast imposed. If these “minimum” measures proved insufficient, the United States should launch “air and naval action in conjunction with at least France and the U.K. against all suitable military targets in China.” If France and Britain refused, Washington should consider taking unilateral action.15
III
THE SCENARIOS DID NOT MATERIALIZE, NOT THEN. THE FRENCH stayed in, and the Chinese did not invade. In Paris, leaders in mid-1952 affirmed their full commitment to the war effort and, as they always did during the monsoon season, promised great things for the coming fall campaign. In Vietnam, de Lattre’s successor as commander in chief, Raoul Salan, had been dealt a blow right from the start, having to order the Hoa Binh evacuation in February and then put the best face on the operation. (He described the retreat as a “tactical maneuver” that would free up more of his troops to tackle the danger in the Red River Delta.)
At least Salan had ample Indochina experience on his side. Born in 1899 and raised in the southern city of Nîmes, he had spent much of the interwar period as a captain in the highlands of northern Vietnam and in a remote part of Laos, developing some proficiency in Laotian and taking a Lao common-law wife along the way, then had directed the intelligence service of the Ministry of Colonies. A division commander in World War II, he had served under de Lattre during the Allied landing in Provence and during the final push into Germany. In October 1945, Salan went back to Indochina and was named commander for French forces in Tonkin. The following year he attended the abortive Fontainebleau conference. When the negotiations failed and the war commenced, he resumed command of French forces in northern Indochina, and in the fall of 1947 he played a central role in the preparation and execution of Operation Léa, which almost captured the Viet Minh leadership at Bac Kan. De Lattre, impressed with Salan’s deep experience in Indochina, and with his belief that France without her empire was not France, named him his deputy in 1950. In that capacity, Salan commanded the battles of Vinh Yen, Nghia Lo, and Hoa Binh in 1951.16
Known as Le Chinois and Le Mandarin for his extensive service in the Far East and for his love of Indochinese artifacts and customs—or because of his fondness for smoking opium, which, it was believed, made your skin turn yellow—Salan was elegant, courteous, and reserved; he had about him an air of mystery. As de Gaulle said of him, “there was something slippery and inscrutable in the character of this capable, clever, and in some respects beguiling figure.” Others commented on the mournful, distant quality to his eyes, or his habit of speaking to reporters while caressing his talisman, a small carved ivory elephant. A tactician more than a strategist, Salan was content in his early weeks to order minor sweeps within the Red River Delta but otherwise to allow things to remain as they were. He looked forward to the rains to give him a period in which to plan, equip, and prepare.17
Vo Nguyen Giap likewise was content to lie low after Hoa Binh. He kept up guerrilla activity inside the northern delta, and Viet Minh units remained active in various areas of the center and the south of Vietnam. Terrorist attacks continued, none more brazen than one in late July on a group of French officers and their families at Cap St. Jacques, a resort town of palms and black sandy beaches at the mouth of the Saigon River. During dinner, while white-clad waiters served the main course, a group of Viet Minh soldiers in stolen Expeditionary Corps uniforms rushed in and hurled grenades and emptied Sten guns into the crowded room. When French soldiers arrived on the scene, they found eight officers, six children, two women, and four Vietnamese servants dead, along with twenty-three wounded. Only a lieutenant who played dead and a small boy who hid behind a chair remained unhurt.18
The Viet Minh commander’s main concern was the coming fall campaign. Having suffered bloody failures in the delta, he looked for more favorable terrain. He had his eye on the Tai highlands, an almost inaccessible area of mountain gorges, grass-cloaked plateaus, and dense jungle in northwestern Tonkin along the border with Laos. Although far from the delta, these uplands, covering an area the size of Vermont, were dotted with small French posts, and the Viet Minh had thus far failed to generate support for their cause among the roughly three hundred thousand Tai tribal inhabitants. Large-scale operations in this region could plant the necessary infrastructure for political action and moreover would force Salan to choose between abandoning the frontier and exposing northern Laos, or defending it. It would be an agonizing choice for the French, Giap knew: If Salan accepted battle in the northwest, he would draw crucial resources away from the delta to fight in an area desperately short of airfields and passable roads for his motorized troops.19
Giap’s Chinese advisers helped shape his planning for the Northwest Campaign. It could hardly be otherwise, given China’s crucial role in the military effort. Beijing’s military aid to the Viet Minh in 1952 increased over the previous year and included some 40,000 rifles, 4,000 submachine guns, 450 mortars, 120 recoilless guns, 45–50 antiaircraft guns, and 30–35 field guns, along with millions of rounds of ammunition and tens of thousands of grenades. The Chinese Military Assistance Group (CMAG), meanwhile, continued to assist Viet Minh generals in the field and to train Viet Minh NCOs and officers at centers in Yunnan province. It all added up to powerful Chinese influence. In early 1952, CMAG officials advocated a major autumn offensive in the northwest, and top Beijing leaders concurred. “It is very important to liberate Laos,” said Liu Shaoqi, one of Mao’s principal lieutenants.20
In September, following the Lao Dong Politburo’s decision to formally approve the Northwest Campaign, Ho Chi Minh secretly visited Beijing. He and Mao agreed on a two-stage strategy, whereby Viet Minh forces would focus first on the border region and the “liberation” of Laos, then on moving southward to increase pressure on the Red River Delta. They further agreed that the operation would begin with an attack on the Nghia Lo ridge, a watershed between the Red and Black rivers, along which the French had several small garrisons. Clearing this area would put the Viet Minh a giant step closer to the Laotian border to the west. Whether Giap had objections to this initial concentration is not clear—certainly he too saw Nghia Lo’s importance—but he went along with it.21
That same month Giap concentrated the 308th, 312th, and 316th Divisions (at least thirty thousand men) on the east bank of the Red River, between Phu Tho and Yen Bai. The French did not yet know it, but his mission was to take Nghia Lo. As in previous operations, the troops had moved mostly by night and—in view of the French mastery of the air—had put tremendous emphasis on camouflage. In addition to wearing palm-leaf helmets with camouflage nets on them, Viet Minh soldiers carried disks of wire netting on their backs, adorned with the foliage of the terrain through which they passed. When the terrain changed, each soldier had the responsibility of changing the camouflage of the man directly ahead of him. The result: French air reconnaissance failed to pick up more than vague signs of activity. Occasionally, a small group of men advancing single file through the high grass would be identified by French pilots, but by the time the plane made a second sweep, they would be gone, swallowed up by the surrounding foliage. “I just know the little bastards are somewhere around here,” said one reconnaissance pilot, in a standard gripe. “But go and find them in that mess.”22
Still, French commanders had the uneasy feeling that something was afoot. The rainy season was ending, and Giap was certain to move. But where? Intelligence reports suggested it would be somewhere west of the Red River, but both the strength and direction of his thrust remained frustratingly unclear. That is, until October 15,
when a regiment of the 312th Division surrounded the small French garrison at Gia Hoi, twenty-five miles southeast of Nghia Lo. The French command saw the danger to the posts along the ridgeline and on the following day dropped Major Marcel Bigeard’s Sixth Colonial Parachute Battalion into Tu Le, located roughly at the midpoint between Gia Hoi and Nghia Lo. Its mission was to cover the retreat of French forces to forts on the west bank of the Black River.
The following day, October 17, at five P.M., two regiments of the 308th Division attacked Nghia Lo with heavy mortar support. Within an hour, the post fell, as thick cloud cover kept French aircraft away. Sporadic fighting continued through the night, but by sunlight the result was clear: The French had lost seven hundred men, as well as the anchor of their ridgeline. The entire line now collapsed, as other, smaller posts on either side of it gave way or were abandoned. Covered by the Sixth Parachute Battalion, which fought a furious rearguard action, each French detachment fled for the safety of the Black River forts. Most units made it and were lucky that Giap’s logistical difficulties kept him from pressing home his advantage. Low on ammunition and rice, his troops exhausted, he bypassed the fortified French posts and instead sent a force to the northwest, toward the small French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. (It would be overrun in November.)23
As for the paratroop battalion, it was given up for lost. Miraculously, though, some members, including Bigeard, survived and were much celebrated when they straggled back behind French lines. They had started out carrying their wounded on bamboo stretchers, but when the litter carriers had grown too exhausted, the wounded were left to their fate. Pro-French partisans who followed the trail of the battalion and its pursuers reported seeing it lined at intervals with the severed heads of paratroopers on bamboo stakes.24
In Paris, while the press fumed, Defense Minister René Pleven acknowledged before the National Assembly that the fall of Nghia Lo was “painful for our prestige,” but he insisted that neither France’s “means to fight” nor her “ability to maneuver” had been lost.25 Not lost, perhaps, but severely impaired. For the French High Command, the result was reminiscent of the border defeats of October 1950, even if this time the French human and territorial losses were lower. A dispirited French reserve officer summed up the feeling of many: “It looks as though from now on the Indo-Chinese war is to be a permanent nightmare.”26
In order to reclaim the initiative, or at least divert the Viet Minh from the Black River, Salan launched an offensive along the line of the Red and Clear rivers, northwest of Hanoi. By attacking the enemy base areas around Phu Tho, Phu Doan, and Tuyen Quang, he hoped to cut Giap’s lines of supply and communication and destroy his stores, and thereby compel him to draw back from the Tai highlands. Operation Lorraine, launched on October 29, was the largest offensive France ever attempted in Vietnam, involving some thirty thousand men and as many planes, tanks, and artillery as could be scraped together from around the delta. The operation began well, as the French quickly seized Phu Doan and Phu Yen Binh and found sizable stocks of weapons and ammunition. (They also found proof of Soviet aid, in the form of four Molotova trucks and several Russian-made antiaircraft guns.) But Giap refused to engage. He did not turn his main force back from the Tai country, instead sending mostly regional units to harass the road-bound French. He was convinced that the French would be hampered by their long supply lines, and that Salan would be forced to order a withdrawal.27
He was right. On November 14, the French commander, realizing that his salient was too narrow to hold, called a halt to Lorraine. The withdrawal was a precarious operation—as withdrawals typically are—for the Viet Minh now sensed an opportunity. Salan had to rely on his greater speed to carry out the retreat, but he was utterly dependent on a single road, the RC2, parts of which ran through forested country and dangerous defiles vulnerable to ambush. Sure enough, on the seventeenth, a Viet Minh regiment sprang a major ambush on groupes mobiles 1 and 4 at the Chan Munong Pass. The column was trapped all day and suffered three hundred casualties. Further fighting ensued at various points along the road, until the column finally hacked its way back into the delta. Operation Lorraine was a miserable failure, costing some 1,200 Expeditionary Corps casualties altogether and failing to draw Giap into major combat. What’s more, the Viet Minh commander had taken advantage of the French diversion of resources to the operation to increase infiltration behind the De Lattre Line.28
IV
AN EXULTANT GIAP ARTICULATED WHAT HE IMAGINED TO BE SALAN’S frustrations: “In such a war, where is the front?” He answered himself by quoting Pascal: “L’ennemi est partout et nulle part” (“The enemy is everywhere and nowhere”).29
That was indeed the feeling of the French Union commanders and the soldiers who fought under them. In the Tai highlands, as in so much of Vietnam, the terrain and vegetation gave the Viet Minh the choice of seeking or refusing combat, of quickly dispersing when danger arose and reassembling later. Masters of night movement and champions of concealment, they seemingly could spring on the French units at any time, in any place. It wasn’t true, of course—the highlands area was a vast expanse, and Giap’s forces occupied only a tiny fraction at any one time—but the basic uncertainty about the enemy’s precise whereabouts (radio intercepts provided general locations) was extremely stressful to Salan’s men. That the local tribal population here was much less pro–Viet Minh than elsewhere in Tonkin provided little comfort, for the locals hardly seemed all that pro-French either.
The terrain caused other problems for the Expeditionary Corps. There were few clear landmarks, and maps of the region were approximate, making navigation difficult at best. Usable roads were essentially nonexistent, and French units often found themselves wielding machetes to cut paths through the thick forest vegetation. In the valleys, the bamboo slowed movement, as did the tall elephant grass on the ridges. Although mules were sometimes available for heavy weapons and radios, troops generally had to lug their own food, water, and ammunition. Shortages abounded, not least with respect to rations.
“We lived on rubbish—fish heads and rice,” recalled one legionnaire. “We were parachuted in some food once, and we could see that the tins had been painted over. A friend got a hold of a tin and made a hole in it with his bayonet. A sort of green mist flew out. [I] scraped off this painted layer … [underneath] it said in French, ‘For Arab troops, 1928.’ ” Some patrols operating in the hills could go weeks without seeing their supplies replenished, during which time they had to worry not merely about the Viet Minh but about countless other enemies as well. There were the fearsome tigers of lore, often heard if not often encountered, and poisonous snakes and scorpions. Stinging insects of various kinds were a constant menace, as were bloodsucking leeches and burrowing ticks. And there were rats, big and savage, that could find their way even into a jungle fort’s bunkhouse to bite through a sleeping soldier’s boot into his foot. This is what the helplessly wounded and abandoned French soldier most dreaded: not that enemy troops would find him, but that he would be set upon by the rats.30
Or if not the rats, the ants. “If you were really wounded badly,” the legionnaire observed, “there was an old German saying, ‘Magen Schuss, Kopf Schuss—ist Spritzer’ (Belly shot, head shot—it’s an overdose job). They’d give you a shot of morphine—that was your lot.… We had these collapsible ampoules and we used to stick them in a chap’s cheek. You gave them an overdose if they’d got their legs blown off—you’re 300km from anywhere—what are you going to do? The chap would be covered in ants in a moment.”31
The Viet Minh were by no means immune to these terrors. The myth arose among French Union soldiers that the enemy was in his natural element in these highlands, able to move swiftly and easily through even the most difficult terrain and to subsist on the most meager of rations. In fact, most Viet Minh troops were not from the region at all, but from the coastal plains and the two deltas. They too were unfamiliar with much that they encountered and had to adjust to the twilight under t
he jungle canopy and to the new living conditions. They suffered hardships of their own and had their own nightmares about jungle creatures, about being left wounded and alone in the dense brush. No less than their European foes, the Viet Minh forces were vulnerable to disease—to malaria, dysentery, cholera, and typhoid—which, if it did not kill them, could leave them incapacitated for weeks or months, and could spread from one unit to another. And, like all soldiers at all times, they needed food and equipment; at various times during the Northwest Campaign, they had to endure severe shortages of both.
But endure they did, or at least the vast majority of them. In the first month of the fall campaign, they proved themselves superior to the French at every turn, demolishing them on the Nghia Lo ridge and handily turning back the challenge of Operation Lorraine. When Giap, not long thereafter, hosted an American Communist at his headquarters, he offered his (self-congratulatory) reasons for these Viet Minh victories. “If we have to we can put all our supplies on our back,” Giap told Joseph Starobin, a member of the Communist Party USA and foreign editor of the Daily Worker who later would publish two slavishly pro–Viet Minh books on his experiences in Indochina. “For short distances, one peasant can carry enough provisions for one soldier.” The Northwest Campaign, he went on, was conducted in an area of “relatively vast distances for a country like ours. Two hundred, two hundred and fifty kilometers in width, three rivers to cross—the Clear, the Red, and the Black rivers. We had to move deep into the valleys to hit the heart of the French positions.… We had to cross thirty streams, some of them two hundred and fifty yards wide, and make our way over very high mountains.” It was brutally difficult, and captured French officers “told us later they could not understand how we could have done it. They did not comprehend how our forces could appear … hundreds of kilometers from our bases. One French officer said it was a surprise to see our peasants carrying supplies for the Army, without soldiers guarding them. For the French always have to guard their porters.”