Jules Roy. The Battle of DienBienPhu.
Roy served as an officer in the French Air Force.
Neil Sheehan’s introduction.
American generals trying to shore up the South Vietnamese government in 1963 and, defeat the Viet Cong, maintained “the same false optimism the French generals had professed during the first Indochina war.” (xi)
General Navarre had little respect for General Giap. Navarre practiced “classic military axioms” believing that he would then defeat the Vietminh. Giap had no logistics. “French artillery and Air Power would pulverize any artillery the Vietminh.” This would be the final battle to crush the Vietminh. (xv)
Navarre did not believe his intelligence units which told him of four Vietminh battalions moving into DienBienPhu. He accused them of “pessimism.” (xvii)
Jules Roy
Even a general questioned the reason for fighting in Indochina. Nobody cared about Vietnamese independence. Vietnamese could buy their way out of military service. New officers chose to be assigned to administrative positions so that “they could fill their pockets.” (5)
A former classmate of Henri Navarre asked him,”what the hell have you come to this shit hole for?” (7)
The war decimated the French officer class. In addition, over “twenty thousand soldiers were missing.”
De Lattre asked, if the war against communism in Indochina is so important they why aren’t French soldiers volunteering; why are the French using mercenaries from the Foreign Legion?
“Dienbienphu did happen all by itself. It was thought about. It was talked about. Tons of typing paper and pounds of gray matter were used to weigh pros and cons of the affair. Opinions were not alway unanimous. Discussions about it were even violent.” (23)
The thought among some French officers was that Dienbienphu would be a “drain on manpower.”
The French military leadership believed that the Vietminh were too far from their bases to continue a long battle. This turned out to be untrue. (30)
French staff officers maintained that Dienbienphu would not be successful because its defense relied on European methods of warfare which were useless in Indochina. (31) In addition, Giap would be able to supply his forces with food from nearby villages instead of transporting it long distances as the French imagined. (32)
DienBienPhu had a history of warfare and was taken over by the French in 1887. It is made up of about a “hundred or so villages and hamlets are occupied by about ten thousand inhabitants, who live on the rice from their fields, a few vegetables, poultry and pigs.” (37)
Giap believed DienBienPhu extremely important. There was a Japanese airfield. The French wanted to use that. No French official evaluated the situation competently. (38)
The French parachuting arrival in DienBienPhu terrified the peasants. (43)
Roy describes Giap as unimpressive in appearance. Very confident. So confident that this former history teacher believed he could create an army to “stand up to a well-equipped European army. Followed the military dictates of Mao Zedong. And, he knew the land better than the French because it was his land. (51) Ariel Sharon argued the same as to why the Israelis were so successful. (See his autobiography)
He created an army “ready to sacrifice themselves for the triumph of the revolution.” (52)
Giap made sure he was never vulnerable to attack and when he attacked it was “from a position of obvious superiority.” He studied and he learned from his mistakes. (52)
He vehemently hated the French for executing his wife. (52)
The French army destroyed the houses of the Vietnamese villagers. (57)
Generals Navarre and Salan would not believe that the Vietminh capable of massive mobilization of their forces and supplies. (60)
Navarre and Giap believed they had to do battle at Dienbienphu. (68)
In late 1953 the Vietminh could march 20 miles per day toward Dien Bien Phu. “Nothing distinguished officers from the troops. . . . simply men to whom certain functions had been given.” (71)
“Each soldier carried his weapon, sometimes a non recoil gun or mortar tripod, a bag, a thirty-pound bundle of rice over one shoulder, his individual shovel, water bottle and a little salt in a bamboo tube. . . . Not all soldiers had footware . . . sandals cut out of tires.” (71-72)
The base at “Beatrice” was considered incredibly strong. However, it was so “isolated” that determined enemy shock troops could take it. Nevertheless, the French believed their own mythology: “the superiority of the French genius, a blind faith in firearms and the invisibility of the Foreign Legion.” (78-79)
December 31, 1953, General Navarre realized that the Vietminh had completely surrounded his bases at Dien Bien Phu. The French couldn’t even leave their camps. (94)
Both Navarre and Giap faced difficulty obtaining fresh troops and supplies. (102)
Dien Bien Phu would be the first large scale battle for the Vietminh. (104)
The French High Command embraced the ideas that Giap had never attended a Staff College; “that the Viets never attacked when they found themselves equally matched”; that “Giap had no artillery, that if he had he would not know how to use it.” (104)
“The bicycles [of the Vietminh], as Military Intelligence [French] had known for three years, served as transport. It was calculated that a bicycle could carry between two and two and a half times the weight of a man pushing it. . . . With these bicycles, it was no longer a question of counting in pounds, but in tons.” Navarre chose to ignore this. (105)
Navarre was also frustrated that the French Air Force did not “stop Vietminh divisions from pouring toward Dien Bien Phu.” (110)
By January 27, 1954, unknown to the French command, Vietminh artillery was already in place. (125)
The French laughed at the idea that the Vietminh could have formidable artillery. Col. Piroth always said, if the Vietminh did have artillery, as soon as they fired their shell, Piroth would “smash it.” Navarre did not understand artillery and thought the French Air Force would compensate. In any event, a battle at Dienbienphu would be short. (139)
Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense for the United States, opposed American military intervention in Indochina. Interestingly, and to foretell the American disaster in Vietnam, General O’Daniel who led the American military mission in Indochina, told Washington that The French position was very good. (140) The strength of the Vietminh came from the shared belief in their desire to be independent and that their fathers had suffered to get them to the point of victory. (148)
The French soldiers either hated Bao Dai or didn’t know who he was. But they fought for him. (149-150)
The various bases, Beatrice, Isabelle, Gabrielle, and more, were miles apart and so they had a difficult time relying on each other. In addition, this made the Vietminh attack all the more complicated. The mountain bases sighted separately as the Vietminh penetrated the their defenses. Piroth’s much vaunted artillery had been destroyed by the Vietminh. (166)
One of the attacks on March 13, 1954 destroyed some other French aircraft and made taking off from the airfield difficult. (163)
The Vietminh did not stop. They destroyed ammunition dumps, airplanes, and the airplane tower. The French hospitals overflowed and the shelters collapsed under the Vietminh attack. (168)
Only one day into the Dien Bien Phu battle the French found their airstrip “in chaos, pitted with holes and bristling with pieces of broken grids.” (169)
Bigeard kept saying that the Vietminh were capable of anything. Piroth criticized any “praise” of the enemy.” In addition, Piroth did not know his enemy and had failed, despite claims he would, destroy Vietminh positions. Piroth finally recognized this as Beatrice fell. He committed suicide by exploding a grenade. (174-175)
The French Army staff in Hanoi received hourly calls about the “disintegration” of their base at Dien Bien Phu. In addition, they were amazed at the ineffectiveness of their artillery. (177)
French ammunition stocks ran low. (178)
By March 15, 1954, Navarre began blaming everyone but himself for the disaster. He blamed the other officers for inept evaluations of the Vietminh. He referred to General Giap and “Schoolmaster Giap.” (178)
While he credited Chinese aid to the Vietminh for their success he refused to acknowledge that he had received American aid. (179) Two days into the attack Vietminh fire already made “any progress impossible.” (176)
At Anne-Marie soldiers of the 3rd Thai battalion fled or went over to the Vietminh. “The fall of Beatrice, and that of Gabrielle nearby, was too much for them.” (177)
Following the conquest of Anne-Marie the Vietminh ate everything in sight. A French officer asked for a doctor which was denied. The officer asked why and the reply was “on our side we are not in the habit of asking questions.” (177)
As noted throughout this essay Cogny did not get along with Navarre. He sent memos to him even though they were in the same building. (180)
Paul Grauwin was the hero French doctor at Dien Bien Phu described “opened stomachs, slit thighs . . . orderlies smoked so as not to vomit at the nauseating odor of blood. . . . The shattered jaws, the blinded eyes, the blown-off legs, the spit shoulders, the groans . . . This was not a battle any more but a descent into hell.” (182)
On March 16 Castries told a photographer, “If they attack tonight we’re done for.” (184)
At Elaine no one understood that the heights of the surrounding hills could and were used by the Vietminh to place their machine-gun nests. No infantryman who knew his job would ever have agreed to install himself so close to such obstacles without being able to sweep their approaches with his own fire.” (186)
General Cogny and Colonel de Castries believed that the Vietminh were vulnerable to being slaughtered by the French. However, the Vietminh were in such a position that “the French would have to use up all their ammunition in a single day to drive them away. The same blind faith in the universal virtues of artillery had created the great empty spaces between Beatrice, Gabrielle, and the central position, in which the enemy had rushed like a torrent that nobody could stop; contempt for the adversary had led the French Command to prefer theoretical concepts to common sense.” (186)
Weather and Vietminh antiaircraft fire made bombing Vietminh sites impossible. (186-187)
Roy at first writes that the Vietminh did fire on French planes with red crosses on them. The Vietminh claimed they had 105 and 120mm shells aboard. Later this would be confirmed by Roy. (189, 191) The French attacked the Vietminh who had raised a Red Cross flag. (192)
Dr. Grauwin was at wits end as he walked through “broken bodies and blown off heads . . . amputated limbs.” (190-191)
Dien Bien Phu compared to Stalingrad. Langlais admitted that the French command’s lack of organization regarding treating the wounded was more to blame than Vietminh attacks. (192)
A Vietminh soldier they could not evacuate was thrown into a river by the French. (192)
Six days into the Vietminh attack on Dien Bien Phu they had passed Dominique and Elaine and were prepared to attack Isabelle, Hugette and Claudine. The Vietminh daily dug pits for their weapons. They were on a roll to victory. How and why did they do this against tanks and aircraft from the all powerful West? Land reform. One of the most critical issues of the Vietnam Wars. The other was nationalism. These ideas were drilled into the minds of the Vietminh soldiers. “The army of the Vietminh was an army of peasants determined to conquer their land, and who would hold out for years, if necessary, joined to their earth as to their own flesh, minded with it in life as in death, one with the roots the trees, and the mud and excrement of the rice fields. How could the west have gone on stubbornly supporting a feudal regime and corrupt administration without seeing that its hegemony was doomed?” (192-193)
A French official in 1894 complained that the French asserted that they brought freedom to Indochina and, through war, supported those who oppressed the Vietnamese. The goal of the Vietminh was “that their girls would no longer have to serve as prostitutes and their boys as house servants. Who hit on the idea of the first ricksha? The rich foreigner.” They did not want to answer to foreigners in their own country. The Vietnamese peasants were devoted to Ho Chi Minh because he represented them. Emperor Bao Dai preferred “tiger-hunting with French generals.”(193)
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Radford was an ardent anti-communist who associated the Vietminh with Korean communists he had just fought. Roy describes Redford as having “lucidity” in his decisions. “Radford like to consider himself the defender of the western world.” He also “lifted the ban imposed by the Pentagon on the use of Packets to drop napalm .” (195-194)
The French debated “the direct intervention of the American heavy bombers” but decided that the Chinese would retaliate. However, Roy asks, “why should the French fear Chinese intervention in reply to American intervention?” The Chinese gave nor more aid to the Vietminh than the Americans gave to the French. It was the weapons, American and included, that the Chinese gave to the Vietminh that “had tipped the scales in favor of the Vietminh.” (202-203)
However, Roy points out that the use of atomic bombs by the Americans in Indochina would certainly provoke a Chinese military response. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, anti-communist extraordinaire, told the Overseas Press Club that this was a risk that needed to be taken. (203)
Despite perceptions of failure and slaughter for the French the Vietminh suffered heavy casualties as well. On March 31st bodies of both armies were seen intermingled on the battlefield. (206) At Huguette the French cut to pieces attacking Vietminh soldiers. (207)
“Cogny had made mistakes; he admitted that to himself. He had not scented the dangers posed by an adventure in a region which he did not know so well . . . he had deluded himself about the cavalry maneuvers he had planned; he had misjudged Giap’s logistical capabilities; and above all he had not come out strongly against the Dienbienphu adventure as soon as it had revealed risks out of proportion to its chances of success.” (208)
Questions about the atomic bomb’s effectiveness were raised. (213)
On April 4, 1953 the French Air Force dropped napalm. Reference to “the double breasts of Elaine 1 and Elaine 4, which were now known as the Lollabrigidas.” (219)
French government officials hoped to save Dien Bien Phu but the plans “fell like the blade of a guillotine. (221)
By April 6, 1954 Navarre believed that the “only hope of saving Dienbienphu . . . lay in atomic bombs dropped by the B-29’s of the United States Air Force. . . . How would the world accept this reign of Hiroshima? What hatred would be reaped by the nation which had burnt to death one hundred thousand men and women on the soil of their ancestors in order to rectify the error of judgement of one general?” (225)
Prof. Ton That Tung the Vietminh medical professor who brought along fellow doctors to treat the Vietminh wounded at Dienbienphu. He was ordered there on March 27. By then the Vietminh thought they had a victory and the medical school celebrated. (226)
The Vietminh medical staff suffered as much as the French; they were overwhelmed. Wounds dressed, broken bones set; yellow flies; maggots. “Dr. Tung experimented with all the pharmaceutical products at his disposal.” (226) He operated on head wounds. "He had learned how to remove foreign bodies by suction and then close the skull again.” (226-227)
As other educated Vietminh thought, “Tung remembered the lessons of the French Revolution” which seemed to mean more to them than to the French Army. (227)
No one took Bao Dai seriously. (229)
After the Geneva Conference the French controlled Vietnamese Army disintegrated. “Mobilization notices were not enforced. . . . only those who couldn’t escape or students who, certain of becoming officers, hoped to obtain lucrative posts. . . . For whose sake should the troops of the Vietnamese Army get themselves killed?” (229)
Vietnamese officers in service of the French “drove around in American cars and gave cocktail parties without suspecting that the fate of their country was being decided. Their hatred of Communism was governed by the advantages which capitalism offered them: medals, women, money.” (229-230) They would transfer military funds to their own bank accounts. (230)
“What soldier in this army could be expected to fight to enrich the big landlords and the provincial governors, and what sacrifices could be demanded from sergeants who, on account of their birth, had become colonels in eighteen months? . . . When Cogny wrote that serious signs of weakness had been discovered in the thirty Vietnamese battalions in Tonkin . . . he meant that men were mutinying, deserting their posts or refusing to fight when the Expeditionary Corps was sometimes faced by bands of guerrillas aged thirteen to eighteen who fought until they were killed.” (230)
Bao Dai’s army was trained by the French and paid by the Americans. So, who were the Vietnamese to be loyal to? “Who was the incarnation this people oppressed for centuries by its mandarins and kits invaders and consumed by the hunger for justice? H.M. (His Majesty) Bao Dai or Uncle Ho, Vo Nguyen Giap or General Hinh?” (231)
By April 14 both sides were only years apart. (235)
“The glory of Dienbienphu celebrated by the newspapers of the free world was that of fighting on the bloodiest dunghill in Asia, in the name of the West and for the love of the pretty girls who had given their names rot the peaks.” Even the mosquitos disappeared. (236)
Contrary to the French if a Vietminh commander “suffered the slightest reverse [he] was relieved of his command.” (237)
Langlais admitted that Dienbienphu was a “disaster.” (239)
By April 23 the Vietminh mowed down the French at Huguette. (242)
Giap sent his forces as close to the French as they could be in order to pick up parachuted supplies. (242)
The French Foreign Minister M. Georges Bidault told the American Secretary of State John Foster Dulles that if American forces were not used at Dienbienphu the French would be defeated there. (244)
April 24, 1954 Dulles told the French government that “a massive air attack would probably make no difference to the fate of Dienbienphu.” (245)
Emperor Bao Dai was more interested in protecting “his mansion and tiger hunts at Dalat” and “his cut of the takings in the gambling houses and brothels in Cholon.” (254)
“The equivalent of three annual classes of officers had been killed in two years in a war which the French government knew it could not win, which it had refused to stop in time and which was going to swallow up the whole French empire.” (254)
Dr. Tung arrived in a “hamlet which had been given the napalm treatment and of which only a few burnt beans remained. All the inhabitants had disappeared.” “Uncle Ho’s” admonition that “we must win” kept him going as he operated on head wounds.” (255)
On April 28, 1954 the French recognized “the complete independence and full sovereignty of Bao Dai’s Vietnam.” (255)
On April 29 Giap sent a message to his forces that the coming monsoon rains would for the French to “leave their flooded trenches and . . . victory will be ours.” (256)
Once the Vietminh took Anne-Marie they “installed a powerful searchlight which pinpointed the Dakotas with its brilliant ray and enabled the antiaircraft batteries to take better aim.” (258)
French soldiers from all nationalities, including Vietnamese parachuted into Dienbienphu knowing the odds for their survival were slime to none. (259) The officers had been drilled with the virtues of Saint-Cyr and military glory. (259-260)
Giap believed that, “the stupidity of our fathers and our fathers’ fathers had turned him and the men of the Vietminh into rebels to begin with and Communists later, and they had so many injustices, so many prisons and so many dead to avenge that they would not stop - and we would do the same in their place, provided we had the blood of free men flowing through our veins.” (260)
Dr. Tung found that “quinacrine solution drove flies away.” (262)
At Elaine the French dug underground passages which the Vietminh attempted to destroy. (263)
Dr. Tung compared the Battle of Dienbienphu with the Battle of Stalingrad. (264)
Another statement from the war: “You’re a para. You’re there to get yourself killed.” (268)
After the French surrender The Vietminh who took Elaine “began piling up the corpses from both sides and covering them with earth.” French prisoners were relaxed and did not appear frightened by the Vietminh who were lax in their control. (281) They told the French, “the war is over.” (282)
The announcement of their defeat at Dienbienphu shocked the French government in Paris. (286) “About one’ o’clock in the morning of May 8, a small group of French speaking Viets waving a white flag advanced toward the command post of Isabelle. Let us pass, they told the soldiers who stopped them. We want to see your commander, Colonel Lalande. Colonel Lapland agreed to see these envoys, who told him, All further resistance is useless. Don’t be stubborn. Lalande then gave the orders for a cease-fire.” (287)
The word of the victory for the Vietminh spread throughout Vietnam. The Vietminh took French supples of “soap, flashlights, and canned foods. Lights were shining in the basin, where there was no longer any fear of air raids which would kill as any French as Viet.” (287)
The Vietminh victory at Dienbienphu ranks alongside Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. (287)
Roy’s conclusion - the war was fought for economic reasons with the excuse that the French were fighting against communism. (290)
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