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.
The strong Vietnamese opposition to French and British efforts to re-colonize Indochina after World War II for natural resources. Sound familiar? Patti provides surprising details regarding the CIA’s established relationship with Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh.