Far Outliers

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 655-679:

Meanwhile, the enemy drew ever closer. Two weeks earlier Vo Nguyen Giap had abandoned mass assaults in favor of grignotage, or “nibbling away” of the French positions, in a replay of the trench warfare tactics of the Ypres salient in World War I. Hundreds of sappers were deployed to push assault trenches ever closer to the fortifications, a practice, Giap told associates, that would allow the Viet Minh “completely to intercept reinforcements and supplies.” Lead elements would dig a deep hole at the bottom of the trench and pass the dirt to the rear, where it would be immediately put in sandbags, while other workers brought forward logs and wooden beams to provide the diggers with overhead cover. It was a simple, beautifully efficient system. On most nights the defenders of Eliane could hear the clinking of picks and shovels almost under their feet, sometimes with their naked ears and sometimes using crude geophones made of a combination of wine canteens and medical stethoscopes. This too was reminiscent of Passchendaele forty years earlier, when German troops heard miners from Wales digging beneath them on Messines Ridge, in preparation for blasting them out.

Why did Giap shift tactics? With the French seemingly on the ropes in the second week of April, why did he not seek a swift and conclusive victory, a coup de grâce? Mostly because neither he nor his subordinate commanders could accept the casualty rates the French had been inflicting on them in the first month of the fighting. They needed a respite. Of the total number of dead and wounded that the Viet Minh suffered during the battle for Dien Bien Phu, close to half had been suffered already by April 5. Roughly four thousand of these were fatalities. Many of the losses occurred during intense fighting on strongpoints Dominique, Eliane, and Huguette, but French aerial attacks also could have devastating effect. C-47 transports were equipped with depth-charge racks to allow napalm drums to be unloaded swiftly. These were fused to explode twenty yards above the ground. Larger C-119s swept low, then pulled up abruptly while napalm cans slid out. The actual damage done by these attacks was often marginal, especially when poor weather and antiaircraft fire made accurate targeting impossible, but the mere anticipation that such a weapon could fall from the sky was acutely unnerving to defenders.

By mid-April, various reports indicated growing despondency among Viet Minh troops. Fiery speeches by political commissars about sacrifice, duty, and the need to stamp out Franco-American imperialism were duly given, but these worked best on new recruits anticipating quick success; they rang hollow to weary veterans of the frontal attacks who had witnessed comrades being slaughtered all around them and who themselves might have sustained wounds. French radio intelligence picked up agitated dispatches from lower-unit commanders reporting that some units were refusing orders, and a Viet Minh deserter told the French on April 20 that new recruits were despondent about the difficulties of the struggle. The commissars had to press all the harder, especially at recovery stations where soldiers were convalescing, insisting that the fight must go on as long as necessary, regardless of losses.

Many of the new recruits had walked to Dien Bien Phu, often in groups of about a hundred, usually for long distances through difficult terrain, only to find conditions worse after they arrived. Though the People’s Army had the luxury of rotating units between the trenches and rest areas in the surrounding jungle, this brought only limited relief. Even in the rear areas, men generally slept only on bamboo mats or banana leaves on plastic mats. Few had mosquito nets, and malaria was endemic. Quinine to treat the illness was in short supply, so much so that soldiers would have to pass around a cup of water containing one dissolved tablet, take a sip, and send it on. When the rains started for real about April 25, the conditions deteriorated, and not only for those in the trenches. Sickness increased, and the situation for the wounded, deplorable to begin with, deteriorated further. Gangrene cases proliferated. Ton That Tung remained the only real surgeon on his side, and along with his six assistants he waged a hopeless struggle to treat the wounded, lacking modern drugs and instruments and sometimes forced to operate while standing knee-deep in water. As before, head injuries were a particular problem, and Tung taught the assistants his method of removing foreign bodies by suction and then closing the skull. With no electrocoagulators at their disposal, the team resorted to touching the blood vessels with white-hot platinum wire.

...

THE ASSAULT BEGAN ON MAY 1, AT THE USUAL TIME: LATE AFTERNOON. All day long evidence had accumulated in General de Castries’s command bunker that something was afoot, and by early afternoon the deadly smell of all-out assault hung in the air. Probing attacks down the trench lines were being made in greater strength, and radio intercepts detected the presence of Viet Minh battalions in concentration. The previous three nights had seen more downpours, and on April 29 some parts of the garrison reported three feet of standing water in the trenches. Their boots and clothing perpetually soaked, the men were also hungry, for everyone was now on half rations. April 30 brought a modicum of good news, in the form of an agreement by the American crews from CAT to resume their C-119 flights, in exchange for a promise from the French Air Force to do a better job of suppressing enemy flak (a promise it failed to keep). Supply drops increased dramatically that day and on May 1, and when the assault began, there was again three days of food available, along with desperately needed ammunition.

Just before five o’clock in the afternoon, the artillery barrage commenced. More than one hundred Viet Minh field guns opened up over the whole area of the camp. Bunkers and soggy trenches collapsed under the bombardment, many of their occupants buried alive. After three hours, the firing slackened, whereupon the entire 312th and 316th Divisions stormed up the eastern hill positions of Eliane and Dominique and the 308th targeted Huguette. Dominique 3, defended by a motley mix of Algerians and Tai, fell quickly, and by 2 A.M. Eliane 1 had succumbed as well. In nine hours of fighting, the garrison had lost 331 killed or missing. Was this the beginning of the end? Senior French commanders feared it was. Colonel Langlais wired Hanoi soon after the assault began: “No more reserves left. Fatigue and wear and tear on the units terrible. Supplies and ammunition insufficient. Quite difficult to resist one more such push by Communists, at least without bringing in one brand-new battalion of excellent quality.”

...

What a task they faced! Giap’s attacking force consisted of four infantry divisions, plus thirty artillery battalions and some one hundred guns. In response, the defenders could offer very little except the courage and fortitude borne of desperation. In this respect it was to their advantage that their perimeter had shrunk: It now consisted mostly of portions of Huguette, Claudine, and Eliane, perhaps one thousand yards square, plus the isolated Isabelle three miles to the south. To cover the approach to the hospital, which that morning held more than sixteen hundred wounded, and improvised strongpoint christened Juno had been created between Claudine and Eliane. Total troop strength stood at roughly 4,000, though in terms of infantry in the central sector it was closer to 2,000. There were Foreign Legion and Vietnamese parachutists, Moroccan Rifles, Tai from various dissolved units, French paratroop battalions (half of them Vietnamese), Arab and African gunners, and, down on Isabelle, still some Algerians. The greatest concentration of men, some 750 parachutists, was deployed at the point of maximum import and danger, the top of Eliane.

At four P.M., the Viet Minh artillery bombardment began. Its purpose was mostly to cover the assembly of assault infantry in forward positions, and it featured the unleashing of a wholly new weapon in the 351st Heavy Division’s arsenal: the “Stalin Organs.” Modeled on the twelve-tubed Katyusha rocket launchers that the Red Army had used with devastating effect against the Wehrmacht in World War II, these projectors announced their presence with the terrifying screeching noise of their rockets, which one legionnaire likened to the sound of a passing train. The explosions that followed were louder and often more destructive than those of shells of larger caliber, for the explosive made up a greater proportion of the rocket’s weight. Several of the rockets scored direct hits, destroying munitions stores, pulverizing sodden earthworks, and doing serious damage to the medical supplies depot. That night the garrison’s senior medical officer cabled Hanoi: “Situation of the wounded extremely precarious due to flooding and collapse of several dugouts.… Urgent need of all medical supplies; my stocks are destroyed.”

...

Sometime before eleven (accounts differ on the exact time), a massive explosion shook the earth under Eliane 2. In a tactic reminiscent of the Union at Petersburg in 1864 and the British at the Hawthorn Redoubt in 1916, the Viet Minh had driven a mine shaft under Eliane 2 and loaded it with three thousand pounds of TNT. Veterans recalled a muffled rumbling under their feet, followed after a pause by a giant geyser of earth and stones thrown into the air. The garrison suffered massive casualties, but the key French blockhouse did not fall, and the Viet Minh foolishly paused before advancing. This delay gave the defenders under Captain Jean Pouget precious time to man the lip of the crater and open a murderous fire on the approaching infantry. Three hours later, with Pouget’s men still holding out, he asked for reinforcements. He could hold Eliane 2, he told HQ over the wireless, with just one additional company. None was available, replied the major on the other end. “Not another man, not another shell, my friend. You’re a para. You’re there to get yourself killed.”

Pouget did not die. After acknowledging the major’s message, he announced his intention to sign off and to disable the radio. A Viet Minh operator who had been eavesdropping broke in and told him not to wreck the set just yet—a song was coming on. Through the static Pouget could hear the strains of “Chant des Partisans,” a wartime anthem of the French Resistance. “The swine,” he grumbled, grasping the irony. He put three bullets through the radio and went out to join his men. A few minutes before five o’clock, he and his last handful of soldiers were surrounded and captured.

The end was near. On May 7, the sun went up for the last time on the fortified French camp. Eliane 4 and 10 were still holding out at daybreak, but by midmorning both were gone.

...

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. The Viet Minh had won. Vo Nguyen Giap had overturned history, had accomplished the unprecedented, had beaten the West at its own game. For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle.

This last paragraph seems to be an astounding claim. Has the author never heard of the 1905 Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War? Or the 1842 Retreat from Kabul and other British defeats during the many Anglo-Indian wars. Did the Russian Empire suffer no defeats as it expanded across Central Asia? Did the Dutch VOC suffer no defeats in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Cambodia, and Formosa? The colonial era and its many wars started long before the 20th century.

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 662-666:

Keeping the United States out of Vietnam meant cultivating support for the DRV internationally, and that too argued for being open to diplomacy. Alienating world opinion by forswearing the chance for peace would be unwise. “We have always followed the situation in the world” and “coordinated with the wishes for peace of the people of the world,” one official said. A negotiated agreement would therefore be a “victory” as it met “the pressing needs of the world’s peace lovers.” In the view of deputy prime minister and foreign minister Pham Van Dong, the DRV needed “the sympathy and the support of all peoples” to contain its enemies and protect its sovereignty.”

Party officials were less keen to talk about yet another possible consequence of a prolongation of the fighting, namely that the struggle would become increasingly fratricidal over time. Already now, Vietnamese were killing other Vietnamese in larger numbers. Viet Minh strategists remained confident they had the vast majority of people on their side, and they were as contemptuous as always of what party documents habitually referred to as the “puppet army” created by the French, but in quiet moments they expressed concern about the changing nature of the war. The revolutionary cause they championed was based on the principles of national unity and derived its legitimacy from its status as the only real representative of the populace. In the spring of 1954, the revolution was not yet seriously threatened, but how would things look in six months or a year, or in two years?

Above all, Ho Chi Minh knew, negotiations for an end to the war would have to be attempted in Geneva because his patrons in Moscow and Beijing said so. Repeatedly since the end of the Berlin conference in February, the Communist giants had made clear their desire for a political solution in Indochina and had even made their continued material and rhetorical backing of the war effort contingent on the DRV declaring a willingness to seek peace. The Soviet Union still sought improved relations with the West and also hoped to induce France to agree to a tacit quid pro quo—Moscow’s help in facilitating a settlement in Indochina in exchange for Paris saying non merci to the proposed European Defense Community. China, for her part, viewed the Geneva meeting as an opportunity to solidify her membership in the great-power club and to forestall an American military intervention near her southern borders. Both Communist powers perceived as well a chance to drive a wedge between the Western powers. Said premier and foreign minister Zhou Enlai on February 27, during a meeting with his associates in the Foreign Ministry: “While France seems interested in reaching a peaceful solution to the Indochina issue, the United States is not. Therefore, it seems that France is reluctant to let the United States put its nose into Vietnam.”

But how to reach such a “peaceful solution”? The Kremlin came down early on the side of partition, a Korea-type solution that would temporarily divide Vietnam in half. Such a solution would respect France’s continuing strength in Cochin China while also acknowledging the Viet Minh’s effective control of large areas of Tonkin and Annam. It would serve China’s security needs as well, by forestalling an American intervention and by giving her a friendly “buffer” state on her southern frontier. And it would stop the war, if not forever, at least for a time. Already in late January 1954, Moscow instructed its ambassador in Paris to float the partition idea with French leaders. “There would be a provisional armistice line drawn at the 16th parallel,” a U.S intelligence assessment said of this Soviet overture, and “the French would evacuate Hanoi and the Tonkin Delta.” The French reacted with caution but did not rule out the idea, and the Soviets were further encouraged when the British government in subsequent weeks began making supportive noises about partition.

The Chinese too were attracted to the idea. Beijing’s ambassador in Moscow, Zhang Wentien, told Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov on March 6 that a division along the sixteenth parallel would be “very advantageous” for Ho Chi Minh and as such “should be accepted if it is put forward officially.” A few days later Zhou Enlai told Ho via telegram that conditions were ripe for a greater emphasis on the diplomatic struggle, and that, no matter what the likely outcome of the Geneva Conference, “we should actively participate in it.” Partition should be seriously considered, Zhou went on, because “if a ceasefire is to be achieved, it is better that a relatively fixed demarcation line be established so that [the Viet Minh] can control an area that is linked together.” As for where the line ought to be, the Chinese statesman singled out the sixteenth parallel as “one of our options.”

The VWP Politburo met three times in March to discuss negotiating strategy for Geneva, more specifically the notion of partition. Details from the meetings are sketchy, but we can guess that the sessions were stormy. Earlier in the month, the DRV ambassador in Beijing, Hoan Van Hoang, had shown little enthusiasm for partition when his Soviet counterpart brought up the matter. How can you find a demarcation line, Hoang asked, when there are no front lines? Over time, though, as the early assault on Dien Bien Phu failed to yield a decisive victory, the thinking in the Politburo swung in favor of partition, or at least against outright opposition. Members agreed to consider the possibility, so long as the division was temporary. The demarcation line would reflect the balance of military forces and would be as far south as possible. A party statement avoided mention of partition but extolled Geneva as “a victory for the forces of democracy” that, “together with big victories in the military field,” would make “our people in the occupied areas happy, and the puppets confused and concerned.” VWP instructions concerning the May Day celebrations stressed the need to encourage the people to write petitions to the government to express their “support of the Geneva Conference with a view toward finding ways for peacefully solving the Korean problem and putting an end to the war in Indochina.”

Still, it must have been with mixed feelings that Ho Chi Minh in late March arrived in Beijing, accompanied by Pham Van Dong, the DRV’s deputy prime minister and foreign minister, for a pre-Geneva strategy session. His powerful allies were telling him to take half a loaf rather than the whole thing, even though his forces were winning on the battlefield. This was hardly what he wanted to hear, even if he had his own reasons for exploring a compromise diplomatic settlement. He and his comrades had not fought for seven-plus years to gain only partial control of the country. Now he had to listen as Mao and Zhou urged him to score a victory at Dien Bien Phu and thereby achieve results at Geneva, but they also cautioned him to have “realistic expectations” regarding how much could be achieved in the negotiations—shorthand, in all probability, for the estimation that the DRV would not come away from the conference with control over all of Vietnam. The Vietnamese, according to Chinese sources, agreed on both points.

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 641-643:

[John Foster] Dulles produced a draft letter, addressed to [George] Bidault, stating that while U.S. intervention at Dien Bien Phu was now impossible, Washington was nevertheless ready to move “armed forces” into Indochina, provided France and other allies so desired, for the purpose of defending Southeast Asia. The letter was handed to Eden, who skimmed it and passed it on to Bidault. Several minutes ticked by as he read it and considered his options. He was still primarily interested in Dien Bien Phu, and he remained leery of internationalization, but perhaps this was a way to salvage something out of the wreckage. He cleared his throat and said yes, he would be prepared to receive the letter formally.

Suddenly events stood at a new watershed: United Action was back with a bang, and the war seemed about to be internationalized. [Anthony] Eden quickly interjected that his government did not feel bound by the Dulles-Eden communiqué of April 14 [1954] to intervene in the Indochina War. He could promise no more, he said, than to return to London at once to consult with his cabinet colleagues. But the foreign secretary understood that the crucial moment had arrived; as he noted in a cable to the Foreign Office just before heading to the airport: “It is now quite clear that we shall have to take a decision of first-class importance, namely whether to tell the Americans that we are prepared to go along with their plan or not.” Just prior to departure, he received a call from Maurice Schumann, the French secretary of state for foreign affairs, advising him that both Laniel and Bidault hoped he would gain approval from his colleagues to proceed “on the lines desired by Mr. Dulles.”

The dilemma was acute, as [Sir Evelyn] Shuckburgh observed in his diary that evening: “If we refuse to cooperate with the US plan, we strain the Alliance. If we do as Dulles asks, we certainly provoke the bitterest hostility of India and probably all other Asiatic states and destroy the Commonwealth. Also, a war for Indo-China would be about as difficult a thing to put across the British public as you could find.”

Eden and his team landed at 10:20 P.M., got into two waiting cars, and drove straight to Churchill’s country estate, Chequers, arriving shortly before midnight. There to greet them was the prime minister, wearing a silken two-piece suit covered by a dressing gown. Drinks were distributed, whereupon Eden laid out the essentials of the situation. Churchill heard him out, then ruminated on “our glorious Empire, our wonderful Indian Empire, we have cast it away”—the implication being, thought Shuckburgh, why should Britain fight for a decrepit French colonial effort after that? Then a cold supper, during which general agreement was reached that Britain should reject the American request. In London the following morning, the cabinet, in a rare Sunday meeting to which the chiefs of staff were also summoned, needed little persuasion to confirm the rejection. The chiefs of staff said the proposed action would be ineffective and added that even a total collapse in Indochina would not decisively affect the British position in Malaya. The domino theory did not hold.

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 593-596:

“The Eisenhower administration has decided that Indo-China will not be allowed to fall into Red hands—whatever the cost,” declared The Wall Street Journal the next day. Echoed U.S. News & World Report: “Blunt notice is given to Communists that [the] U.S. does not intend to let Indochina be gobbled up, even if it means big war.” The New Republic, commenting on Eisenhower’s approval of the text, likewise said the address could have only one possible meaning: “The administration has decided to do whatever is necessary to win in Southeast Asia—if necessary it will commit US ground forces.” And in The New York Times, the lede of James Reston’s front-page news analysis read, “The Eisenhower Administration has taken a fundamental policy decision to block the communist conquest of Southeast Asia—even if it has to take ‘united action’ with France and other countries to do so.” How did Reston know this? Because “the highest authority” told him so.

Of course, Southeast Asia was not the same as Indochina, so the Times and The New Republic may have been hedging their bets slightly on what the immediate implications were for the fighting in Vietnam. But that distinction was lost on many observers, as was the distinction between intervening with airpower at Dien Bien Phu (which Dulles in particular doubted would do much good) and elsewhere in Indochina. On Capitol Hill, the predominant reaction to the speech—especially among Democrats—was surprise and uncertainty. Was the administration trying to lead the nation into war? And what was “United Action” precisely? “I followed Secretary Dulles’s speech very carefully,” remarked Democratic senator John Stennis of Mississippi, “and I have not been able to decide exactly what he means by ‘united action.’ ” Senator Arthur Watkins, a Republican from Utah, warned the White House not to follow Truman’s example “and take action without consulting the Congress.”

Misgivings came also from a more unexpected quarter in the aftermath of the speech: the Joint Chiefs of Staff. On March 31, Admiral Radford convened a meeting of the group to ascertain his colleagues’ views about recommending the commitment of U.S. naval air and air force units for the defense of Dien Bien Phu—and, by extension, their views of the Indochina struggle more broadly. If he expected full support for such a recommendation, he was soon disappointed. None of the other service chiefs was keen on the idea. General Matthew Ridgway, chief of staff of the army, said any benefits to be accrued from intervention to support the garrison would be outweighed by the costs. The use of airpower at Dien Bien Phu would not decisively affect the military picture in Vietnam, Ridgway said, but would greatly increase the risk of general war. Nor did the army chief like the way Radford had introduced the matter. “Unless the question emanated from proper authority,” he continued, “any such recommendation—for or against—was clearly outside the proper scope of the authority of the JCS.” To advocate a specific policy would be to “involve the JCS inevitably in politics.”

Underlying Ridgway’s opposition, and that of his subordinates in army intelligence, was a deeply skeptical view of what the use of airpower could accomplish in Vietnam. Dismissed as a parochial argument by some, as reflecting a desire to rationalize an institutional army viewpoint, it was in fact a reasoned position. To Ridgway, recent history showed clearly that airpower alone could not effectively interdict lines of communication if the adversary had the resources and the motivation to keep supplies moving, as the Viet Minh clearly had. The Italian campaign in World War II had demonstrated this, as had Korea. In Indochina, moreover, the obstacles were greater, for unlike in Italy and Korea the approaches to the front were not constricted by a peninsula. The Viet Minh had shown time and again the relative ease with which they could overcome French aerial interdiction efforts, and there was little reason to believe aircraft operating from American carriers would have markedly more success. The imminent start of the rainy season, with its heavy cloud cover and low ceiling, would further reduce effectiveness.

The White House took note of the alarms raised in Congress and among the service chiefs. During a press conference on March 31, Eisenhower, after affirming his “complete agreement” with Dulles on Indochina policy, said he “could conceive of no greater disadvantage to America” than to send U.S. forces “in great numbers around the world, meeting each little situation as it arises.” That phraseology, of course, signified little about what he might do or not do in Indochina, but some interpreted it as an attempt to soothe congressional concerns. The next morning the president told the NSC he was troubled by the division of opinion within the JCS regarding Radford’s air strike plan but then said the intervention question was not for the Joint Chiefs but for “statesmen” to answer. And the decision would have to be made soon. But not by the full NSC—Eisenhower announced he would not delegate the decision to the NSC but would pursue it after the meeting with a smaller group in the Oval Office.

No records of this second meeting have been found, but it must have been a dramatic session. Two days earlier, on March 30, General Vo Nguyen Giap had launched the second phase of his attack plan on Dien Bien Phu, and the reports coming into the White House were ominous: The garrison had suffered withering blows in two nights of savage fighting, much of it at strongpoints Eliane and Dominique. Radford’s prediction of an imminent Viet Minh conquest seemed to be coming true. The transcribed summaries of Dulles’s telephone conversations from later in the day indicate that a sense of urgency pervaded the second gathering, and that those in attendance agreed on the need for a meeting with the bipartisan congressional leadership. The tenor of these telephone conversations, following on the heels of the NSC and Oval Office meetings, implied the very real possibility of implementing the Vulture plan or some variant. Eisenhower, shortly after the second session, told two newspaper chieftains over lunch that he might have to send squadrons from two aircraft carriers to bomb the Reds at Dien Bien Phu—then added, “Of course, if we did, we’d have to deny it forever.”

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 530-534:

THERE FOLLOWED TEN DAYS OF RELENTLESS PREPARATION, AS ferocious as any in the history of warfare. The general mobilization of labor initiated a month earlier now took on a breathtaking pace. For on this day, January 14, nothing was yet ready. The artillery was not in place on the crests above Dien Bien Phu, and the trails to get it there had not been made ready nor even fully marked out. Farther away, huge tasks remained to get materials to the highlands, from the Chinese border at Mu Nam Quam over Provincial Route 13 to the Red River and thence via Provincial Route 41 to the area of Dien Bien Phu—a total distance of almost five hundred miles. All along this route, engineering crews and soldiers, assisted by porters, worked day and night to clear and widen and repair the roads and to keep convoys moving. The route was divided into eight sections, their endpoints marked by major obstacles such as ravines or waterways where checkpoints were set up. The Russian-made Molotova two-and-a-half-ton trucks, now numbering about six hundred, as well as a smaller number of American Dodge trucks captured by the Chinese in Korea or the Viet Minh in Vietnam, traveled only one section each; at the checkpoints, their contents were taken off by porters and reloaded on the vehicles assigned to the next stretch.

French aircraft were a constant menace, and the casualties among the porters, though never published or perhaps tallied, were undoubtedly high. (A particular menace: the new American antipersonnel bombs that spread lethal showers of small steel splinters.) But the work continued, as thousands of porters stood ready to fill in the craters or build bypasses; French crews reported with dismay that the cuts they succeeded in making in roads were often repaired within hours. To complicate the pilots’ task, elaborate efforts were made to camouflage the route wherever possible. Log bridges were constructed just under the surface of a stream to hide them, and treetops were pulled together with ropes and cables to screen the roads. Vehicles were covered with leafy branches, and tire tracks were rubbed out as soon as the trucks had passed. A primitive but effective air-warning system was fashioned, whereby spotters in treetops clanged alarm triangles or blew whistles to warn of approaching planes (none of which were jets and thus could be heard well in advance of arrival). Pilots would report seeing long lines of truck headlights suddenly go dark, long before they reached the target.

When bomb damage or natural obstacles proved too great to overcome quickly, porters were called in to carry loads themselves, often over considerable distances. They would don makeshift shoulder pads and bamboo carrying rigs, and frequently they would team up. Photographs exist of four-man teams using shoulder poles to carry the barrels and the breechblocks of 75mm Japanese mountain guns up steep wooded hillsides.

Bicycles, for years a favored mode of transport for the Viet Minh, were again called into service. Most were French-made, manufactured at Saint-Étienne or in the Peugeot factories. A specially equipped bicycle—with wooden struts to strengthen the frame and bamboo poles to extend the handlebars and the brake levers—could take more than an elephant could carry. “We mobilized all available supply bicycles,” Vo Nguyen Giap would recall, “reaching a total of 20,000.”

Every supply bicycle was initially capable of transporting 100 kilograms, and this was later increased to 200 or even 300 kilograms. One civilian coolie laborer from Phu Tho named Ma Van Thang was able to transport a total of 352 kilograms on his bicycle. The carrying capacity of transport bicycles was more than ten times greater than that of porters carrying loads on “ganh” [bamboo or wooden] poles, and the amount of rice consumed by the people transporting the supplies was reduced by a similar amount. The superiority of the transport bicycles also lay in the fact that they could operate along roads and trails that trucks could not use. This method of transportation greatly surprised the enemy’s army and completely upset his original calculations.

But the most dramatic feats were accomplished at the end, after the trucks had snaked their way to the endpoint, at Na Nham on Route 41. From here, in order to avoid detection by the French, the artillery pieces had somehow to be dragged to their emplacements, on a trail that ten days before the attack date had still to be blazed. Unloaded from the trucks, the cannons were to be transported through a chain of mountains without going through a valley, in order to cut through the foothills of the 1,100-meter-high Pu Pha Song mountain; then they were to descend again in the direction of the Pavie Piste, which linked Dien Bien Phu to Lai Chau, which they would cross near Ban To; then they were to scale another new height in order to position the battery at Ban Nghiu, from where they would fire on the French garrison at point-blank range.

...

It took seven days and nights of nonstop labor to get the heavy guns in place, with the use of block and tackle, drag ropes, and braking chocks to keep them from careening back down the slopes. The half-ton 75mm mountain guns were not the problem; they could be broken down into eleven loads that, while heavy and cumbersome, were manageable. The 105mm howitzers, however, represented an almost absurd challenge on inclines that reached as steep as sixty degrees. Commander Tran Do of the 312th Division was among the infantry pressed into this “silent battle” of “cannon-pulling” of the 105s. “Every evening when the white fog … began to descend over the plains, columns of human beings set out on the road,” he later wrote. “The [six-mile] track was so narrow that if a slight deviation of the wheels took place the artillery piece would have fallen into the deep ravine. The newly-opened track was soon an ankle-deep bog. With our own sweat and muscles, we replaced the trucks to haul artillery pieces into position.”

Fatigue and lack of supplies were a constant concern, Tran continued. Meals consisted only of rice, often undercooked, as the kitchens had to be smokeless by day and sparkless by night. And yet the work went on: “To climb a slope, hundreds of men crept before the gun, tugging on long ropes, pulling the piece up inch by inch. On the crest, the winch was creaking, helping to prevent the piece from slipping.” Then it got worse: “It was much harder descending a slope. The sight was just the reverse: Hundreds of men held onto long ropes behind the piece, their bodies leaning backwards, and the windlass released the ropes inch by inch.” In this way, whole nights were spent toiling by torchlight to gain five hundred or a thousand meters.

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 485-487:

For the French commander Nixon offered mostly praise, but he lamented Navarre’s failure to utilize the VNA effectively and his reluctance to accept American advice regarding how the native army should be trained. Even here, though, the vice president was sympathetic to the French dilemma. He told a group of State Department officers:

Deep down I sense that Navarre, and Cogny, the Field Commander, and the other field commanders I talked to on the scene at the present time have very little faith in the ability of the Vietnamese to fight separately in independent units which don’t have French noncoms. That may be a cover for the fact that the French naturally have a reluctance to build up a strong independent Vietnamese army because they know that once that is done and once the Vietnamese are able to handle the problem themselves, that despite all the fine talk about the independence within the French Union—when that time comes, the Vietnamese will kick out the French.

My own opinion, of course, as I have expressed it publicly, and I believe it very strongly, is as far as the Vietnamese and the Cambodian and Laotians are concerned, and weak as they are and weak as they will be, even with their national armies, that their only hope to remain independent is to have their independence within the French Union, which the French are now willing to give, but which, unfortunately, they have not been able to sell to the Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians.

On negotiations, the vice president again spoke frankly, while again ignoring the contradictions. Diplomacy should be firmly resisted, he asserted, for it would inevitably lead to Communist domination of Indochina. The French “cannot get out,” and “we cannot have them get out because if we do the Communists—the Viet Minh are the only ones capable of governing, the only ones capable of controlling the country”—would take over. “So what we end up with here is a hard choice. It is a real risk and a real gamble, but what we end up with here, with all that is at stake, it seems to me we have to continue our military aid and, in that connection, I think the military are going to be as flexible as they can be, and, if there is any doubt, they will put in the additional material equipment that is necessary.”

Hence Nixon’s determination, while in Vietnam, to strike only upbeat notes, to urge Navarre on, and to trumpet the robust health of the French Union. The stakes were huge, and victory must come. Now was no time to give up. And indeed, though Nixon’s optimistic pronouncements did little to lift spirits in metropolitan France, where the charcoal autumn sky matched the prevailing mood, they had a noticeable effect on colons and high French officials in Saigon and Hanoi. Navarre and Dejean had more of a bounce in their step after hearing him extol them for the job they were doing and simultaneously admonish the Vietnamese to keep their nationalist ambitions in check. The new U.S. aid package, Nixon had promised them, would soon make itself felt on the ground. How soon was soon? Nobody knew for sure, but Navarre and the high command took satisfaction from the fact that the campaigning season was by now well under way and Giap had yet to launch a major attack anywhere. In past years, he would have moved sooner than this. French intelligence speculated that he felt insufficiently strong to attack in the delta, and that he would concentrate his attention on the highland region of northwestern Tonkin.

Navarre was determined to meet the threat. Rather than concede the highlands and husband his resources for the defense of the deltas and of Annam in the center, he moved to take on the enemy here, in the remote and menacing northwest. As part of that effort, he ordered the reoccupation of a post near the Laotian border. This seemingly innocuous action would trigger a series of moves and countermoves in several world capitals and ultimately bring the war to its climax. The post bore the unlikely name of “Big Frontier Administrative Center,” or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu.

From Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam, by Fredrik Logevall (Random House, 2012), Kindle pp. 462-463:

THE KOREAN ARMISTICE, SIGNED ON JULY 27, HAD A DEVASTATING effect on French thinking, causing a further slackening of the will to continue the fight. Marc Jacquet, the minister for the Associated States, told British officials a few days later that his compatriots were nonplussed: They saw the United States securing a truce in Korea and Britain trading with China and could not understand why their allies should expect them to continue a war in Indochina in which there was no longer a direct French interest. France, he said, wanted the future Korea peace conference extended to cover also Indochina and sought Britain’s help in that regard. He added that American aid for the French war effort was insufficient and speculated that Laniel’s government was the last that would continue the struggle.

Bernard B. Fall, a French-raised World War II veteran who would in time become one of the most astute analysts of both the French and American wars, and who would be killed while accompanying U.S. Marines on a mission near Hue in early 1967, saw firsthand the effect of the Korean truce as he toured Vietnam in 1953 in order to conduct field research for his Syracuse University doctoral dissertation. Born into a Jewish merchant family in Vienna in 1926, Fall lost both parents at the hands of the Nazis and joined the French underground in November 1942, at age sixteen. As a maquisard he soon got a taste of what it meant to fight a guerrilla war against an occupying force. Later, he saw action in the First French Army under de Lattre before being shifted—thanks to his fluency in German—to the French Army’s intelligence service. A stint as a researcher for the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal followed, whereupon Fall resumed his studies, first at the University of Paris and then in Munich. In 1951 he arrived in the United States, the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to pursue graduate work at Syracuse. During a summer seminar in Washington in 1952, Fall’s instructor encouraged him to pursue research on the Indochina struggle, about which little scholarship had as yet been produced.

Fall took up the challenge with zest. He recalled in an interview in 1966: “By pure accident, one sunny day in Washington, D.C., of all places, in 1952, I got interested in Viet-Nam and it’s been sort of a bad love affair ever since.”

On May 16, 1953, Fall arrived in Hanoi, carrying a military-style duffel bag and with his precious Leica camera and a new shortwave radio slung over his shoulder. Granted special access as a former French army officer, Fall accompanied units on combat operations, attended lunches and dinners with officers, and kept his eyes and ears open. The signing of the Korean armistice, he later wrote, “brought a wave of exasperation and hopelessness to the senior commanders that—though hidden to outsiders—was nevertheless obvious.” For no longer could it be said that France was fighting one front of a two-front war, necessary for the defense of the West. Washington had broken the deal: It had agreed to a separate peace in Asia. And now the Chinese, being no longer preoccupied in Korea, could turn their focus southward. About Navarre, meanwhile, Fall heard mostly complaints—he was timid and uncommunicative, many in the officer corps said, disliked even by his own staff—and few commanders had much good to say about the fighting abilities of Bao Dai’s Vietnamese Nationalist Army.