For many people, Dien Bien Phu is always in the mind
of the Vietnamese as well as many other worldwide, a great marking point
of Vietnam in 1954, broke the French efforts in sieging Vietnam and
Indochina.
n an attempt to halt Viet Minh (Vietnam Independence
Association) incursions into Laos, the French commander, Navarre,
decided to establish a "super garrison" at the top end of a valley
called Dien Bien. This was to police the strategic cross-roads between
Laos to the West, Son La to the South and Lai Chau to the
North. He believed that with this base firmly established in the Far
Northwest, he would be able to launch sorties against the Viet Minh, and
greatly reduce their strength in the area. He was to be proved terribly
wrong.
The Viet Minh commander, Vo
Nguyen Giap, finally saw an opportunity for an open confrontation with
the French and started working towards it. By mid 1953, the base was
completed and regarded in French circles as virtually impregnable. With
twelve battalions of French, Morrocan and Algerian soldiers, two
airstrips, a heavily mined perimeter and surrounded by a number of
smaller defensive positions, named Dominique, Elaine, Claudine and
Huguette. These were named, supposably, after the four mistresses of the
base commander Colonel Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries. The
troops within the compound slept fairly soundly at night! The French
even went to the extent of flying in an entire brothel of French women
to keep the soldiers happy!
For Giap and his comrades,
however, the struggle had hardly begun. They embarked on an incredible
logistical feat of dragging up, in pieces, various heavy field guns that
were then hidden in caves and dense forest cover in the hills
surrounding the Dien Bien Phu base. By early 1954, Giap had over 40,000
men in the hills, completely surrounding the base. It was estimated that
just to keep Giap’s men fed, over 250,000 porters were used to ferry
food.
For the French it was their ignorance amongst other
things that led to their downfall. Though they knew the Viet Minh had
some troops in the surrounding hills, nothing was done about it, until
it was too late. On 10 March 1954, to the horror of the French, Viet
Minh shells started landing on the airstrip. Giap possessed a
comprehensive plan, first if which was the neutralisation of the
airstrips, thus completing the siege. The French were taken completely
by supprise, and after the first day of shelling, an assault was made on
Gabrielle. By midnight 13 March, Beatrice had fallen. The fighting was
fierce, with the Viet Minh often following up hours of shelling with
human wave tactics, incurring shocking casualties. At times the fighting
was hand to hand and always chaotic, with the French utterly frustrated
by their inability to hit Giap’s well-concealed guns.
Within five days, both the
airfields had been completely destroyed and the garrison could only be
re-supplied by airdrops, an increasingly perilous pastime, proven by the
wrecked planes on the ground. As the Viet Minh edged closer and closer
in trenches, the airdrops increasingly fell into Vietnamese hands. The
position was becoming truly desperate.
At the start of April there was a lull in the
fighting during which Navarre parachuted in some of his crack troops
adding to his garrison now totalling about 16,000. Giap also brought in
his reserves, edging his forces up towards the 50,000 mark. The French
were desperate and they appealed to the US for assistance, preferring
bomber strikes from their bases in the Philippines. By this stage the US
was funding 78% of the French war effort, so they hardly had unstained
hands. They came back with a proposal for limited tactical nuclear
strikes on the Vietnamese positions along with a series of strikes on
China, fearing ‘another Korea’, all of which would be performed on
French behalf. Thankfully this insanity was avoided by the British
giving the idea a big no and congress getting cold feet. In the end
there was nothing forthcoming from the US.
For the French, the end was
near. On 4 May following a series of attacks, the Viet Minh attacked
with a force previously unwitnessed and by 8 May the garrison finally
surrended. By this stage the conditions within were unimaginable, with
maggots in the wounds of the injured and an incredibly demoralised
fighting force. It was estimated that during the battle 7,000 French and
close to 20,000 Vietnamese had lost their lives. This loss finally
caused the French to withdraw from Vietnam.
Dien Bien Phu now bears few scars except for the
occasional scattered tank to bear witness to its horrendous past, though
it is still one of the remotest areas you could visit. The hilltribes
living around the area of Dien Bien Phu make up 70% of the regions
population, and the ethnic minority groups include the Black Thai, Nung,
Meo, Loa and others.
