While the paratroopers had seized the valley, command of Dien Bien Phu fell to a highly decorated fifty-one-year-old cavalryman, Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries—a man who had a reputation for both his dashing bravery and his sexual appetites. The rumor was that he christened Dien Bien Phu's strongpoints with the names of his mistresses. Sadly, under the strain of command and combat, de Castries was to snap, and a hard-boiled, laconic paratrooper officer, Pierre Langlais, would assume de facto control of the battle. He was to be aided by what soon became known as the paratrooper mafia; in the terror and confusion of the collapse of French assumptions, command devolved on the toughest and most competent, while rank counted for little.
Giap was delighted to take up the French challenge. But he refused to play by French expectations. Instead of striking quickly before he was ready, he carried out a careful and meticulous redeployment across the highlands. As Giap recorded: “We came to the conclusion that we could not secure success if we struck swiftly. In consequence … we strictly followed this fundamental principle of revolutionary war: strike to win, strike only when success is certain; if not, then don't strike.”
With the French making the opening move, the Viet Minh shifted their forces to the far western reaches of northern Vietnam. The weather and jungle conditions represented a nightmare, especially when one considers that virtually everything—men, weapons, ammunition—had to move on foot. But Giap and his officers were more than fanatical revolutionaries; by now they were thorough professionals, entirely capable of handling the operational and logistical challenges posed by such a complex redeployment.
Once the Viet Minh had cleared the neighboring highlands, they methodically closed in around Dien Bien Phu until they had it surrounded. Raiding actions by the French brought few results except heavy casualties and, as the Viet Minh arrived in strength on the heights overlooking Dien Bien Phu, the French lost control of everything but the valley. In the valley itself, the garrison continued its desultory work on defensive strongpoints, but the lack of command interest—a reflection of the underestimation of Giap's capabilities—and the macho attitude of elite troops that fortifications were for others hardly made Dien Bien Phu a solid defensive position. Not until March 23 would de Castries ask Hanoi for the basic French engineering manual on the construction of fortified positions. By then the French had already been under attack for ten days. Virtually none of the French strongpoints possessed enough barbed wire to divide their positions into defensible segments. Consequently, when the Viet Minh succeeded in making a breach, the entire position became vulnerable. And the Viet Minh proved very good at exploiting breaches. Further compounding the vulnerability of the defenses was the fact that the French stripped the landscape bare to build field fortifications. Viet Minh observers in the hills now had a clear view of everything that happened in the valley.
By early February the outline of the French defensive system had emerged. In the center, the vital airstrip was surrounded by a series of fortified strongpoints: in the east, Dominique and Eliane; to the north and northwest, Anne-Marie and Huguette; and on the southwest, Claudine. To the north, separated by a considerable distance, lay Gabrielle, while Béatrice, also separated from the center, lay close to the jungle and mountains to the northeast. Finally, six kilometers to the south was strongpoint Isabelle, placed in a swamp that made the living conditions of its garrison miserable. Isabelle provided crucial artillery support for the main French defensive positions, particularly in the killing battles of April, but it lay too far south to support the outer strongpoints in the north, where the first Viet Minh attacks would come. The position in the central garrison consisted of a number of strongpoints that gave 360-degree coverage from trenches connected to a number of bunkers and mortar positions. Each of these defensive bastions—called, for example, Dominique 1 and 2 or Huguette 7—was provided with some barbed wire and mines, but not nearly enough. Moreover, most of the bunkers gave relatively little protection against artillery bombardment.
The basic assumption under which the French fought was that superior firepower—air as well as artillery—would keep the enemy at bay. Counterbattery fire and air strikes would thus dominate and then eliminate whatever artillery the Viet Minh might drag across the jungle highlands. Aerial resupply efforts would then proceed through the small landing strip. In fact, with more than a three-to-one superiority in artillery, the Viet Minh were able to disrupt the landing strip early in the battle, and only a desperate effort by the Americans, who gathered up virtually all the equipment-drop parachutes in the Pacific and sent them posthaste to Hanoi, allowed the French to turn to resupplying their garrison by parachute. But beyond the Viet Minh's artillery superiority lay the fact that their engineers and artillerymen meticulously sited and dug in each artillery piece. What made even the parachute resupply effort a trial was the fact that, through the help of the Chinese, Giap brought substantial antiaircraft capability to the siege. So dense was the flak over Dien Bien Phu that some French pilots who had flown over Germany in World War II thought the Viet Minh were putting up more effective barrages.
Nevertheless, the French felt confident enough about their “artillery superiority” that throughout January and February, they brought in a series of visiting firemen, including their own minister of defense and Lieutenant General Iron Mike O'Daniel, commander of U.S. Army forces in the Pacific. Most visitors, including apparently O'Daniel, left impressed with what they had seen and with the garrison's confidence. By mid-March, Giap and his Viet Minh forces were ready. By now he enjoyed more than a three-to-one advantage over the defenders (approximately 13,000 French and empire troops—many of doubtful utility—against 50,000 Viet Minh). His artillery, which had been harassing the French with increasing severity over the past month, was in place.
At five P.M. on March 13, the Viet Minh artillery opened up with a thunderous roar that not only smashed into Béatrice but blanketed French positions throughout the central sector. Béatrice was of crucial importance, because its possession by the French would keep the Viet Minh artillery and observers back from the airfield. It was defended by the 3rd Battalion of the 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade. Within an hour and a half, the Viet Minh were pressing in on all sides, and the defenders were calling for final protective fire from the main batteries of French artillery (the batteries on Isabelle were too far away to support Béatrice). To add to French woes, Viet Minh artillery destroyed Béa-trice's command bunker and, shortly afterward, the command bunker in the central sector. Of course, one couldn't miss where the main French command posts were, since they had large aerials poking up from the barren earth. By eight in the evening, Giap's soldiers were inside the position and mopping up the legionnaires. By midnight the fight was over; a few survivors made it back to the main positions at daybreak, but the battle had opened with a disaster for the French.
Not only had the defenses on Béatrice collapsed, but the artillery had neither suppressed the enemy's guns nor held off the attacking enemy infantry. It was not for want of trying; the French fired off no fewer than six thousand 105 shells, one quarter of their stock. But the Viet Minh had too many artillery pieces and were too well dug in for anything other than massive artillery superiority to destroy their positions.
Still worse followed on the heels of Béatrice. Over the night of March 14, Gabrielle's garrison thwarted a Viet Minh attack. In the early-morning hours of March 15, a massive barrage further reduced Gabrielle's garrison; as had happened at Béatrice, one of the Viet Minh shells then hit the command post and wiped out most of the staff. Another infantry assault followed up on the bombardment; the main garrison failed to launch an effective relief effort. By midmorning another position had fallen; a few escaped, but most of Gabrielle's garrison of five hundred men were either dead or in Viet Minh hands.
Béatrice and Gabrielle shattered French illusions. French artillery, for all the bravery of its crews, had failed. Counterbattery work had not silenced Viet Minh guns emplac
ed in deep revetments (admittedly limiting their targets to a narrow band); nor had it placed sufficient shells on Viet Minh infantry to prevent them from swamping French positions. The shocking failure of French artillery led Dien Bien Phu's artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, to commit suicide on March 15 to atone for the failure of his guns—a suicide that the paratroop commander Langlais may have encouraged by remarking to him that expiation was in order.
Meanwhile, Viet Minh artillery had blanketed all the French defensive positions. It had destroyed French fighter-bombers on Dien Bien Phu's landing strip or driven them off, while the landing of resupply aircraft was rapidly coming to a halt. Ambulance aircraft and helicopters would continue to land until the end of the month, but from that point on, the garrison was totally cut off except for aerial drops. The fall of Béatrice, which was on high ground, brought Viet Minh artillery to positions looking directly down into the central position, while Gabrielle's loss allowed Giap to set antiaircraft positions on the flight path into the airstrip, making aerial resupply a nightmare throughout the remainder of the battle. To compound the problem of using air effectively, the French remained so dismissive of Viet Minh capabilities that they continued to direct most of the close air support and resupply missions on the radio en clair; the Viet Minh knew what was going on as quickly as did French pilots.
To compound these difficulties in the days after the fall of Béatrice and Gabrielle, most of the T'ai troops on the Anne Marie positions deserted. Nevertheless, there was a slight improvement in the garrison's morale as the legendary Major Marcel Bigeard and his 6th Parachute Battalion dropped into Dien Bien Phu. Bigeard, wrote one American reporter who spent time there, “had the physical presence of a medieval warlord, a tall, lean, hawk-nosed man with a fine disregard for danger and an innate gift for leadership.” But there was little help from Hanoi, where Cogny seems to have spent his time feuding with Navarre and preparing the historical record to show himself in a favorable light. On March 24 he found time to send de Castries the reassuring message that “[T]he rainy season, now close at hand, will compromise [the enemy's] communication lines and will oppose a major obstacle of mud to the development of his field fortifications.” Cogny was wrong on both counts: The bad weather interfered more with French resupply efforts, while Viet Minh defensive positions were on the high ground and thus far less vulnerable to the effects of the monsoon.
But the Viet Minh had suffered heavy losses in the attacks on Béatrice and Gabrielle. With possession of the high ground, Giap turned to strangling the central position. Viet Minh troops began digging approach trenches that would allow them to launch their infantry over shorter distances at the French defenses and therefore suffer fewer casualties. If the Viet Minh were learning, so were the French. Moving out of Huguette and Claudine with support from Isabelle, paratroopers and armor drove to the west of Dien Bien Phu and caught the enemy completely by surprise. Bigeard was at his best; his meticulous planning resulted in a sharp setback to the Viet Minh. But in the end, the French could not take the casualties involved in such ripostes: Aerial resupply was becoming increasingly expensive and less effective, and many of the drops completely missed areas controlled by the French. Their opponents could better bear heavy casualties, and the movement of supplies and reinforcements to Viet Minh forces around Dien Bien Phu continued unabated despite the heavy attacks launched by the French air force.
On the evening of March 30, Giap launched his next series of attacks against the central sector. As had happened on Gabrielle and Béatrice, the Viet Minh began with a heavy artillery bombardment that targeted Dominique and Eliane, as well as French command centers. Following a rolling barrage, Viet Minh assault waves left their approach trenches, so assiduously dug during previous weeks, and destroyed the defenders on Dominique 1 and 2. But they failed to take the third strongpoint on Dominique. Artillerymen on that position remained with their guns and, firing over open sights, blasted the attacking Viet Minh infantry to pieces. Their stand prevented Giap's troops from breaking into the center of the fortress. At the same time, the Eliane position came under heavy attack from the Viet Minh 316th Division; Eliane 1 fell. But a mixed force of Frenchmen, Foreign Legion paratroopers, and Moroccans counterattacked and regained most of the lost territory.
Late on the afternoon of March 31, Bigeard launched one of his patented counterattacks. His troops regained Eliane 1 and Dominique 1, but at a heavy price in casualties and artillery shells. That day, eighteen French 105s fired off thirteen thousand rounds at the attackers. By this point both the garrison and its tormentors were exhausted. Despite desperate calls by de Castries to Hanoi, Cogny was too busy with social engagements to meet with Navarre. In spite of the availability of a battalion of paratroopers, Hanoi dithered away the chance to reinforce Dien Bien Phu at the moment when the Viet Minh were in serious trouble.
Giap now shifted to the west. While attacking Dominique and Eliane, the Viet Minh were also pressuring Huguette. By early morning of April 2, they had pushed the defenders on Huguette 7 into a small bunker on the corner of the strongpoint; but a French counterattack, supported by tanks, drove the Viet Minh off the position to the northwest of the airstrip. Over the night of April 4–5, it was the turn of Huguette 6, and again Viet Minh regulars gained control of most of the strongpoint despite a steady dribble of reinforcing small units. But in the early-morning hours a French counterattack, supported by all of the remaining French artillery, hit the Viet Minh 165th Regiment before it had consolidated its position. The French had learned that if they were going to regain a position, they had to strike immediately with what was at hand, rather than wait to get everything ready. In this case, what was ready were two companies of Bigeard's paratroops, each with barely eighty men. Nonetheless, their counterattack hit the Viet Minh when they were most vulnerable, and with the support of deadly artillery fire, the French drove the Viet Minh out.
The French had weathered Giap's second offensive. They had lost some of the outer strongpoints of the central position, but they maintained its integrity. The cost had been heavy, in both reserves of ammunition and the steady attrition of the garrison. The driblets of reinforcements hardly made up for the casualties, especially since the parachute bureaucracy in Hanoi insisted that the resupply efforts adhere to peacetime procedures. On the night of April 3–4, Langlais threw away the rule book and ordered transport aircraft circling above to drop their reinforcements directly on the central fortress rather than on a regulation drop zone. When the drop commander objected, saying that such an action was not in accordance with regulations, Langlais exploded: “Merde! You can tell Colonel Sauvagnac that I'll take the responsibility for the drop-zone violations. Drop those men!” The arrival of 305 paratroopers, with only two dead and ten wounded, justified Langlais's gamble. In addition, the garrison was feeling the loss of specialists, such as artillerymen and tankers. Langlais forced the authorities in Hanoi to drop these men in (provided they were willing) without jump training. Again, the losses were small.
If Giap was facing his own problems, most of which arose from the heavy casualty bill, he was not willing to take the pressure off the garrison. He aimed to finish Dien Bien Phu before the Geneva Conference on the future of Vietnam convened in mid-May. That conference, attended by the foreign ministers of China, France, Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States, was supposed to solve the problems raised by the Korean and Indochinese conflicts. In the end, it did nothing about Korea, divided Vietnam, split off Cambodia and Laos, and created the potential for another conflict.
On the other side of the world, a major policy debate was raging in Washington. The debate was between those who believed that the United States should intervene with airpower to prevent a French defeat at Dien Bien Phu— in particular the secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur B. Radford—and those who believed that such involvement would lead to the commitment of ground forces in a war that was not in Ameri
ca's strategic interest. Radford argued that a major raid out of the Philippines by a large force of B-29s would turn the tide at Dien Bien Phu and gain the French the breathing room needed to survive until the peace conference at Geneva convened. The journalist and historian Bernard Fall suggests that at Clark Field the U.S. insignia on some B-29s may have been painted out and replaced with the French tricolor circles.
But to the anguish of the French, Radford's position ran into substantial opposition elsewhere in the American military. In particular, General Matthew Ridgway and Lieutenant General James Gavin (both former commanders of the 82nd Airborne and among the most outstanding combat leaders of World War II) did not believe that any number of air raids would suffice to bail the French out at Dien Bien Phu, and that the inevitable result of such attacks would be the commitment of U.S. ground forces to Indochina. They argued that the United States should not involve itself in a colonial war, where the costs in lives and treasure would bring no commensurate gain in strategic, economic, or political terms. They felt—to paraphrase Omar Bradley about war with China in 1951—that Vietnam was the wrong war, in the wrong place, and at the wrong time. In retrospect, their strategic calculus was on target, and they did not find it difficult to win over President Dwight Eisenhower. The United States would stand aside as the French garrison went down to defeat. There would be no American strikes in the Dien Bien Phu area until the summer of 1965, when Operation Rolling Thunder began.
The Cold War Page 36