Graham Greene came for a visit too. Once again wintering in Saigon, he was on assignment to write a piece on Indochina for The Sunday Times. He flew into Dien Bien Phu early on a Tuesday morning and stayed twenty-four hours. A guide gave him a tour of the camp, whereupon de Castries hosted him for lunch at the senior officers’ mess. The commander, Greene recalled, “had the nervy histrionic features of an old-time actor,” and the novelist observed with fascination de Castries’s reaction when artillery commander Piroth and another officer mentioned the Na San evacuation of the previous year. “Be silent,” de Castries thundered, hitting the table with his fist. “I will not have Na San mentioned in this mess. Na San was a defensive post. This is an offensive one.” Puzzled, Greene asked his guide after lunch what de Castries had meant by “offensive post.” The officer scoffed at the notion. What we need for an offensive base, he told the Briton, is not a fleet of tanks but a thousand mules.44
For Guillain, Greene, and other outside analysts, it was not merely that Dien Bien Phu was much more vulnerable than official optimism allowed, or that the security situation in the Red River Delta remained dire (even though Giap had withdrawn four divisions from that area), or that Operation Atlante to the south was going less well than advertised, or that formerly pacified areas of Cochin China were increasingly under threat.45 These military matters, while important, were not ultimately going to decide the war. The real nub of the problem was political. France, though she had already granted more independence to Bao Dai than Ho Chi Minh in 1945–46 ever asked for, had not convinced the mass of Vietnamese that she would make good on her promise of full sovereignty. Partly for that reason, and partly because of its own dithering and infighting and corruption, the Bao Dai government enjoyed little popular support. In a December shakeup, Bao Dai had inserted his cousin Buu Loc as prime minister in place of the Francophile Nguyen Van Tam, but it had made little difference, perhaps because Bao Dai himself seemed more and more removed from the struggle. When he wasn’t ensconced at his villa on the Côte d’Azur, he looked as if he should be. “How do you think it feels getting oneself killed in the jungle,” complained a young graduate of the École militaire inter-armes in Dalat, “for that man who comes up here to swear us in wearing a Riviera suit, a polka-dot tie, and inch-thick crepe soles?”46
On March 8 began yet another round of negotiations, this one in Paris, between the French government and Bao Dai’s representatives. Back and forth they went on what constituted full independence, on what sort of association the two countries ought to have. A French observer spelled out his side’s interpretation of the Vietnamese position: “Having promised independence to the Associated States, we would have to leave Indo-China even if we won a total victory. So what are we fighting for, and for whom?” To which the Vietnamese replied: And what are we currently fighting for but to preserve your inequitable system?47
The questions still hung in the air a few days later when the anticipated yet still shocking news came in: Dien Bien Phu was under attack.
VI
IT BEGAN LATE IN THE AFTERNOON OF MARCH 13, A SATURDAY. A distant thunder sounded from the hills. Then, within seconds, the ear-splitting noise of high explosives shook the earth in the camp, as 105mm and 75mm howitzers and 120mm mortars rained down from above.48 Strongpoint Béatrice, which for some days had been completely surrounded by enemy approach works, was the initial target, in part because of its crucial location and in part because it was manned by a first-rate unit, the Third Battalion of the Thirteenth Legion Demi-Brigade. “Bunker after bunker, trench after trench, collapsed, burying men and weapons,” one surviving legionnaire at Béatrice said of that first artillery barrage. At 5:10, two Viet Minh regiments from the 312th Division leaped from their approach trenches barely two hundred yards from Béatrice. Savage fighting ensued. At 6:15, Major Paul Pégot, the legionnaire commander, called for artillery fire on areas just in front of his final line of resistance. At 6:30, a Viet Minh artillery round hit the Béatrice command post, killing Pégot and his entire staff. Soon thereafter another shell tore open the chest and ripped the arms off Lieutenant Colonel Gaucher. He died within minutes. (The previous day he had written his wife of the impending attack: “Finally the long wait will be over and hopefully it will end in a positive way.”)49
Their two leaders gone, the men at Béatrice fought desperately to survive, but it was hopeless. At 10:30, the radio of the Tenth Company fell silent. At 11:00, the Eleventh Company radioed in that the enemy was just outside the command bunker. Shortly after midnight, the last radio went dead. Béatrice had fallen, with the French losing 550 men out of 750. Viet Minh dead totaled 600, with another 1,200 wounded.
The French initially fared better at Gabrielle. That first night the 312th Division made two separate attempts to take the strongpoint; both were repelled. Anne-Marie likewise held fast in the face of three separate assaults, though at heavy cost. At daybreak on the fourteenth, an impromptu truce was agreed to, allowing both sides to collect their dead and wounded. The entire garrison was stunned by the previous night’s events. Gaucher was dead, Béatrice in enemy hands. The supposedly invincible Thirteenth Demi-Brigade, which had fought Rommel’s Afrika Korps to a standstill at Bir Hakeim, had seen one of its battalions overrun—in a few hours. To make matters worse, the attack had not even been a surprise—radio intercepts had picked up both the date and the hour of the attack. Just as the French had always anticipated, the battle had begun when it was still light enough for Viet Minh artillery to find its targets, but too late for Bearcat fighters based at Dien Bien Phu to intervene effectively. For many days, moreover, enemy movements had made clear that Béatrice and Gabrielle would be the initial targets. (See map on this page.)
What de Castries and his subordinates did not know, however, was the full extent of enemy preparations. Since that crushing disappointment seven weeks earlier, when their commander in chief had canceled the attack mere hours before it was set to start, Viet Minh soldiers and porters had been hard at work, day after bruising day. General Giap ordered that artillery positions be better prepared, that more ammunition and supplies be on hand, and that overwhelming supremacy in men and firepower be established; only then would the operation commence. Huge effort was expended installing 75mm and 105mm guns in casements sunk into the forward slope of the hills surrounding the basin. It was riskier than the conventional deployment on the reverse slope, but it promised a bigger payoff: The gunners would be able to fire “down the tube” at the French targets. Many guns were placed singly in deep and narrow casements, thus preserving the integrity of the rock as protection from aerial attack and artillery fire. If done right, only the cannon’s mouth protruded when engaged. To draw enemy fire and air attacks, dummy guns were built and positioned. All the while, artillery officers and their Chinese advisers carefully mapped the French defenses and determined the coordinates of specific targets. Periodic shelling of the garrison in February and early March allowed gunners to fine-tune their targeting.50
Simultaneously, Giap ordered the digging of a vast trench system around the camp. The shovel now became the prime weapon, as hundreds of men toiled day and night to dig trenches and tunnels, often under fire and often advancing only five or six yards in a day. By early March, French listening posts were reporting the disconcerting sound of thumps and scrapes by shovels close to the camp’s perimeter. By March 12, the workers could be seen in broad daylight, brazenly digging under the protection of lookouts. By then, the trenches had snaked their way toward the fortress, in one observer’s words, “like the tentacles of some determined, earthbound devilfish.”51
Anxious to reduce the enemy’s air capabilities at the source, Giap ordered daring commando raids on French airfields in the Red River Delta. In early February, a handful of Viet Minh soldiers crawled through the drainage pipes undetected and entered the Do Son air base south of Haiphong, where they proceeded under the cover of darkness to destroy five Dakotas and one hundred thousand liters of fuel. On February
20, after some American air force technicians had arrived at the base (part of the two-hundred-man contingent authorized by Eisenhower in late January), it was discovered that infiltrators had contaminated the fuel stocks by pouring water in the tanks. On March 4, commandos entered Gia Lam air base and placed gasoline satchels wired with explosives under ten Dakotas, destroying all of them. Despite elaborate defenses at Gia Lam, all but one of the infiltrators got away. Three days after that, Viet Minh units destroyed four B-26 bombers and six Morane spotter planes at Cat Bi airfield, home to another contingent of uniformed U.S. mechanics. On March 10, Viet Minh guns shelled the Dien Bien Phu airstrip for the first time, and on the twelfth, the eve of the attack, a handful of commandos slipped past the garrison’s defenses to destroy some of the steel grilling of the airstrip—and, while they were at it, to confirm specific target locations for the Viet Minh artillery.52
Giap’s attack plan involved three phases. In the first phase, the outlying posts of Béatrice, Gabrielle, and Anne-Marie would be overrun. Viet Minh forces would then close in on the main positions crowded around the airstrip and the camp’s headquarters. The final phase would involve an attack on whatever remained, including the other outlying strong-point, Isabelle in the south. To undertake the operation, Giap had at his disposal the PAVN 308th and the 312th Divisions, both complete, as well as two regiments of the 316th, one regiment of the 304th, plus the 351st Heavy Division. The 308th was in the hills to the east and the 312th to the north. The 316th, recently returned from its incursion into Laos, waited in the background for the time being, while the 304th occupied the heights to the east of Isabelle.53
Nothing was left to chance. “We had observed everything and made a minute study of the terrain several nights before the attack, using models too,” a Viet Minh officer later told a French interviewer. “Every evening, we came up and took the opportunity to cut barbed wire and remove mines. Our jumping-off point was moved up to only two hundred yards from the peaks of Béatrice, and to our surprise your artillery didn’t know where we were. Finally, some Tai deserters had given us a lot of information.”54
In Giap’s mind, a great deal would hinge on the outcome of the initial attack on March 13. Victory on Béatrice would galvanize his men and prepare them to handle the inevitable setbacks later on, while conversely French morale would likely plummet if a strongpoint were lost right at the start. Ceaselessly Giap and his lieutenants hammered home the message to their men that they could win, that they would win; only an early victory, he knew, would really convince them. He had taken to heart the veteran warrior’s maxim: “Always win the first fight.”55
VII
COLONEL DE CASTRIES, EVIDENTLY HIMSELF A BELIEVER IN THE maxim, was despondent on the morning after Béatrice succumbed, his mood matching the heavy gray clouds overhead. Already there were murmurings about his performance the previous night, about his tentative messages to the strongpoints, his decision to remain holed up in his command post the entire time, his failure to launch a vigorous counterattack. Now he had to fashion a plan, and fast, for the onslaught would resume within hours. One key strongpoint was gone, and hundreds of men with it. The airstrip had been rendered more or less unusable, pitted with holes and bristling with pieces of broken grids like the teeth of a saw. Chief gunner Piroth, meanwhile, had used up six thousand rounds of 105mm howitzer shells, or about a quarter of his total stock, in trying to answer Giap’s furious and deadly artillery barrage.
Piroth’s demeanor was worrying. Hitherto the picture of steadfastness, of breezy self-assurance regarding what his guns could accomplish, the forty-seven-year-old had become a morose automaton overnight. He seemed to be in trance, several officers later recalled, unable to comprehend what was happening. De Castries was concerned enough that he asked the chaplain to keep an eye on him. Later in the day, Colonel Pierre Langlais, Gaucher’s successor as commander of the central sector, happened by Piroth and saw the vacant stare.
“Is everything all right?” Langlais asked.
“We’re done for,” the artillery chief murmured. “I’ve told de Castries he must put a stop to it all. We’re heading for a massacre, and it’s my fault.”56
That night the Viet Minh resumed the attack. Heavy fighting continued throughout the night on Gabrielle, defended by the Fifth Battalion of the Seventh Algerian Regiment and a heavy mortar company of the Legion. The Viet Minh gained several footholds, but the tenacious Algerians just managed to hang on to part of the position. Early on March 15, the French launched a counterattack, using a new parachute battalion (the Fifth Vietnamese) that had been air-dropped in on the fourteenth, to restore the situation on Gabrielle. But the action, though supported by seven Chaffee tanks, was undermanned and poorly planned and had to be abandoned in the face of major losses. Gabrielle too was gone, with the loss for the Algerian battalion of 540 dead, 220 captured, and 114 escaped. The Viet Minh counted 1,000 dead. Heavy shelling by Viet Minh guns had made a shambles of French earthworks, not only in the northern sector but in the center too. As in the worst days of Verdun in 1916, enemy shells ground the whole top layer of soil into fine sand and caused bunkers and trenches to implode.57 French defensive fire, meanwhile, though more effective than on the first night, still had not proven equal to the task.
Colonel Piroth fell into extreme despair. “I’m completely dishonored,” he muttered to a fellow officer. “I have guaranteed de Castries that the enemy artillery couldn’t touch us—but now we’re going to lose the battle.”58 Perhaps too he remembered his dismissive assertion to Marc Jacquet on January 26: “I have more guns than I need.” Sometime that morning of March 15, Piroth slipped away to his dugout. Being one-armed, he could not charge his pistol. He lay down on his cot, pulled the pin from a grenade with his teeth, and clutched it to his chest. De Castries initially tried to keep the circumstances of the death secret, reporting to Hanoi that Piroth was killed by enemy action. But news of the suicide leaked out and soon spread from one unit to the next.59
The morgue to which Piroth’s body was taken had long since filled to capacity. Scores of corpses lay jumbled together, on stretchers or on bare ground. In the surgery, Drs. Grauwin and Gindrey, stripped to the waist, had been operating almost nonstop for two nights and days. Within hours on the night of March 13–14, the hospital, located near the camp’s headquarters complex, had been crammed with wounded, many of them needing urgent attention to major trauma. French, legionnaires, Algerians, Africans, and Vietnamese; officers and men—all waited their turn in the cramped space, amid the stench of vomit and blood and voided bowels and bladders. The surgeons fought to save limbs and avoid the onset of gangrene, but for some it was already too late: That first night Grauwin and Gindrey carried out fourteen amputations. At one point, Grauwin complained that the battalion aid posts were sending him all their wounded rather than trying to treat them—until he learned that they too were overflowing. Some ambulance drivers had even risked the dangerous journey all the way up from Isabelle.60
TWO MEMBERS OF THE SIXTH COLONIAL PARACHUTE BATTALION RUN FOR COVER AT STRONGPOINT ISABELLE ON MARCH 16, THREE DAYS INTO THE BATTLE. (photo credit 18.2)
March 15 was a low point for the men of the garrison, for—astonishing though it may seem in hindsight—their spirits in the days thereafter began to lift, or at least stopped sinking. There was a sense that they had weathered the worst of the storm. Even after Anne-Marie fell on the seventeenth (the Tai battalion serving as the backbone of its defense having deserted), many French officers saw no reason why victory could not come in the end. Giap might have gained effective control of the northern sector, but he had suffered enormous losses in doing so, with as many as 2,500 dead in the mass frontal assaults of the first days. Surely he could not keep that up. His success against the northern strongpoints, moreover, would be harder to replicate against the heart of the garrison’s defenses in the center.
And indeed, Giap had his own problems, the high number of battlefield dead being only one. His ammunition
was running low, as was medicine for the wounded. His units had only one full-fledged surgeon, Dr. Ton That Tung, who with his team of six assistants had responsibility for some fifty thousand men. Head injuries due to lack of steel helmets were a particular problem, and the situation was not made easier by the swarms of yellow flies that laid eggs in the wounds. The infirmary was infested with ticks, and there was an acute shortage of beds. The feeder roads built through the jungle in December and January, deteriorating under the French aerial attacks and the rains, were kept open, but passage was often excruciatingly slow, with high casualties among sappers, truck drivers, and laborers. Especially deadly were the latest American-supplied antipersonnel bombs. As the first phase of Giap’s three-phase battle plan drew to a close on March 17, his political officers accordingly took up the task of maintaining troop morale. Harangues and patriotic speeches hammered on the twin points: No lives had been given in vain, and victory must be achieved at any cost. Declared Giap in his special message to the troops: “His [enemy] morale is affected, his difficulties are numerous, but don’t underestimate him. If we underestimate him, we’ll lose the battle.”61
In Hanoi and Saigon, meanwhile, Cogny’s and Navarre’s staffs were left reeling by the previous days’ developments, as were High Commissioner Maurice Dejean and his aides. They now began to whisper the impermissible: that all might be lost. The comparative lull in fighting that began at Dien Bien Phu on March 17 was welcome news, as was the profession of optimism on the part of some commanders in the camp, but overall the situation looked extremely grim. Only the rapid intensification of air support to the garrison, together with a breakthrough in Operation Atlante, Navarre concluded, could avert out-and-out disaster.62 The airstrip had been rendered more or less unusable, so now the imperative was parachuting supplies and men, and somehow evacuating wounded. In addition, it would be essential to attack the enemy’s rear, harassing his supply lines, cutting his communications, neutralizing his artillery batteries, and drawing a ring of death around the garrison using napalm. Dejean immediately approached the U.S. embassy in Saigon for the top-priority dispatch of more B-26 bombers, Bearcat fighters, and C-47 transports. He also asked for American authorization to use the borrowed C-119s—with French crews—for the “massive use of napalm.”63
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