A Dien Bien Phu retrospective

The valley of Dien Bien Phu was the site of a historic siege by the Viet Minh on the French garrison from March 13th to May 7th 1953. The siege revealed the first time an Asian force defeated a standing Western army in sustained battle. The French hoped to draw out their Viet Minh enemy and defeat them with superior artillery fire as they did at Na San in November 1952. However, a series of French military blunders would doom the garrison.

To more fully understand the French defeat may I recommend any of the titles below. All serve key lessons to the deeper American involvement in Vietnam. This would lead to our own nightmare that lasted a full generation. Each author addresses key failure points long after the battle. They each  invalidate those immediate reactions. Each author conveys the inhumanity suffered by both sides before, during and after the French surrender.

All provide powerful experiences from both the Vietnamese and French perspectives. This garrison was not an all-French unit. Quite the opposite. A majority of soldiers were African, Algerian, Moroccan, Tunisian and of course Vietnamese serving the French Far East Expeditionary Corps. This unit included European volunteers from Spain, Poland and Germany. The garrison’s officer corps were French. Paris was no longer sending their sons to die in the jungles of Vietnam. French troops moved a brothel into the garrison. Actually two…..yes in 1953.

Each author also details how Generals Christian de Castries, Henri Navarre and René Cogny ignored their own (very accurate) military intelligence reports. French intelligence radio intercepts confirm shift of heavy Chinese artillery from Korea. Yet de Castries, Navarre and Cogny never considered the Viet Minh able to place those heavy artillery around the surrounding hills.

Airplanes used by France were stunningly, old German Junkers Ju 52s from World War II. Shockingly, their airbase in Hanoi was obtaining spare parts from Germany. Below the surface, this reveals how France viewed this campaign to re-colonize IndoChina as one not worthy of their own troops.

American B-26 bombers were capable of carrying 8,000 pounds of bombs. Yet those sorties, based at Cat Bi with a short runway of only 1,420 yards restricted all sorties to only 4,000 pounds to clear takeoff. To add insult to injury, American bombs included advanced ‘variable time’ fuses that could be programmed to detonate several feet above the ground. This produced a more deadly impact upon infantry and open gun positions. Yet French air crews did not read instruction manuals and left default settings at 53 seconds. Their missions released those American bombs at 10,000 feet which impacted the ground in less than 10 seconds.

When you cannot believe the French effort could get any worse, Generals Navarre and Cogny stopped communicating with one another due to a clash of egos. Bernard Fall indicated rather sensationally that de Castries became an isolated leader in his bunker and ceased in his role as senior commander. This was later verified proving the wrong officer was leading their defensive battle.

Viewing the siege similar to their trench warfare experience of Verdun French commanders requested telescopes used in World War I be sent to Dien Bien Phu. Yet they never carried telescopes into Vietnam.

The garrison’s sole runway was damaged early in the siege forcing the French to airlift all supplies and stop medical evacuations. The lack of accuracy in their supply drops was made clear on the night of May 3rd: over 40% of supplies fell into enemy positions. On May 8th over 800 tons of supplies fell directly toward Viet Minh held positions.

A majority of senior French officers were killed within the opening minutes of the siege. By 1953 officers were killed in battle throughout Indochina faster than the French Special Military School of Saint-Cyr could graduate and ship them to Hanoi.

Realizing the garrison would fall the French government requested three atomic bombs from President Eisenhower. The US State Department denied the request only after objections by Britain’s Foreign Minister. Paris fully understood their own men would become victims of the bombing.

Similar to my reading experience of the declassified Pentagon Papers in which the overwhelming loss of life and miscalculations found in war leading to the inhuman slaughter of life forced me to push this book aside for a few days.

The Last Valley provides the reader an excellent experience of France’s imperial view: sacrificing men for noble aims lost long ago during the horrors of the first world war.