Valley of the Shadow: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Kevin Boylan and Luc Olivier. What makes this book so valuable is their access to Vietnamese research never before published. This illustrates n new view of the siege. My Dien Bien Phu retrospective will now place Boylan and Olivier’s work as the most detailed order of battle.
Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu remains the most essential work. Valley of the Shadow compliments and introduces those new Vietnamese insights. This provides the West with deeper sights as we approach a 70 year remembrance of the siege.
Boylan and Olivier also shed insight to Navarre’s initial plan. Amazingly, he wanted to cancel the entire operation at the last possible minute. Yet firm dates for the Geneva Conference already in place. France hoped for a repeat of their victory at Na San and a strong negotiation advantage.
Interestingly, Valley of the Shadow reflects upon the pompous views of French officers. Their suggestions following Na San, that the Viet Minh would simply fall victim a second time proved so foolish.
Boylan and Olivier offer a few new details to attack plan “Fast Strike, Fast Victory” proposed by Giap. Planned for January, Giap modified to “Steady Fight, Steady Advance.” As victory was within reach, Strike Fast would be delivering a final blow to the French command HQ.
Dedicating a full chapter to the opening 72 hours of the siege provides richer insights. Most importantly, new datasets help confirm early Viet Minh’s attack victories.
At the same time, Boylan and Olivier address Russian and Chinese supplies now funneling into the valley. Two dozen 105mm howitzers deployed around the valley created a perfect storm the French could not have imagined possible.
48 hours of devastation
The opening hours of the battle witnessed the shocking fall of outposts Béatrice and Gabrielle. This was a severe blow to French moral. The abandonment of Anne Marie by loyal Tai troops within another 24 hours further shocked de Castries.
Pages 69
Colonel Piroth was convinced indeed, Piroth made this into a mantra that he recited to high-ranking visitors: “Firstly, the Viet-Minh won’t succeed in getting their artillery through to here. Secondly, if they do get here, we’ll smash them. Thirdly, even if they manage to keep on shooting, they will be unable to supply their pieces with enough ammunition to do us any real harm.”
This overconfidence was rooted in the assumption that the VPA could never prevail in a conventional battle where all of the accoutrements of modern warfare would be brought into play. It is hard not to suspect that racism played a role in leading the French to make this fatal miscalculation.
By late February, however, Piroth was becoming worried. Gia?p had gotten his artillery into position and built up a sizeable stockpile of shells for it. And this had been done without the French locating any but a handful of the guns or destroying the few casemates that had been detected.
GONO’s own artillery, on the other hand, was deployed in open gun pits and its every move was visible to VPA observers on the surrounding ridges. Though he still radiated confidence in public, Piroth privately expressed doubts to Hourcabie: “How can our batteries maintain their fire when the men have no cover? Only our artillery can save Dien Bien Phu, but we’re in the open, firing blind, while the Viets have observers in forward positions. The situation may be irreversible. Not even God can help our cannoneers.”
But instead of sounding an alarm that might have made his superiors change course, Piroth insisted that Hourcabie keep quiet, saying, “Swear you won’t breathe a word of this. It would be terrible for morale.” He was still clinging to the hope that Gia?p’s guns would be destroyed once they revealed their positions by firing long bombardments instead of the brief flurries of shells they had been content with thus far.
Giap’s guns destroyed command bunkers of outposts Béatrice and Gabrielle killing all French officers. Outpost Ann Marie, manned by loyal Tia units fled into the jungles. Three of eight outposts lost within the opening three days of battle. Colonel Piroth would also commit suicide after witnessing his cannons destroyed by Giap.
The quick collapse of three points stunned the world. Most importantly, Commanding Officer Colonel Christian de Castries and another officer had a nervous breakdown. Fall was suggesting a putsch. However, Valley of the Shadow illustrates new details:
Pages 126
The real aim of the “putsch” was not to seize command, but to keep it. A group of new senior officers had been flown in to replace those who had died or cracked psychologically: Lieutenant Colonel Gaston Ducruix was to become GONO’s new chief of staff and Colonel Vaillant its new artillery commander, while Lieutenant Colonel Lemeunier was to take command of GM 9
Pierre Langlais took command as noted, while de Castries never left his bunker. Paris began to understand the coming impact of this disaster. The world was witnessing a Western army falling to an Asian army in sustained battle for the first time. On the other hand, the siege reveals how French could have countered and won a decisive victory.
Eisenhower’s nuclear option
Subsequently, French officials began pleading with Eisenhower to deliver an American air raid to save the garrison:
Page 208
The possibility of American aerial intervention was first raised at a meeting between French General Paul Ely and Admiral Arthur Radford, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in late March. However, General Jean Valluy had already warned the Americans that the Navarre Plan was not (as promised) going to deliver victory in 1955, and that France could continue the war into 1956 only with direct US participation. Thus, airstrikes would merely be the first step in a far larger military intervention. This was an unattractive prospect for President Dwight Eisenhower, who had just ended the conflict in Korea and was reluctant to fight another war in Asia.
Page 209
The But mindful of the political fallout of “losing Indochina” and pressured by his hawkish Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Eisenhower was willing to consider intervention if it was authorized by Congress and included active participation by allied nations – most notably Great Britain. But British Prime Minister Winston Churchill rebuffed Dulles’ calls for “united action” because he doubted victory was possible and was determined to cut the best deal possible at Geneva.
Congressional leaders, including Senator Lyndon Johnson, balked when they learned that no allies had signed on to provide troops and responded unfavorably when Vice President Richard Nixon publicly floated a trial balloon about unilateral action on April 16. All possibility of “united action” vanished on April 24, when British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden ignored Radford’s plea for a declaration of support at a NATO Council meeting in Paris.
While the politicians and diplomats were debating, American military commanders had been planning how to execute Vulture if it was authorized. General Joseph Caldera, head of FEAF’s Bomber Command, produced a plan for a massive raid by 98 B-29s. Displaying the hubris typical of an airpower zealot, he claimed that the operation “could have effectively destroyed the entire enemy force.” This is patently absurd, since by late April the combatants at Dien Bien Phu were entrenched so close together that it would have been impossible to target VPA positions without hitting French troops as well.
Page 210
An FEAF study concluded that B-29s using conventional bombs could not have achieved decisive results, and this is no doubt why Eisenhower considered employing atomic weapons.
These are just a few of the compelling chapters of Valley of the Shadow. Documenting Dien Bien Phu’s order of battle and introducing new data tables is proving invaluable research.
Dulles is alleged to have toyed with the notion of “loaning” several A-bombs to the French, but thankfully nothing came of it.
One issue that remains missing in almost every book is the actual role of French nationals at the battle. The garrison held over 10,000 men yet only 1,400 were French. Officers yes, but boots on the ground? Their colonial army of Africans, Tia, and Vietnamese were in the trenches, not boys off the streets of Paris.
In conclusion, Valley of the Shadow further illustrates Russian supplies and the Chinese manning anti-aircraft weapons. Have we reached a new point of reflection upon the entire siege? Certainly China’s introduction on the world’s stage as a superpower at Geneva motivated their efforts at Dien Bien Phu.