Chapter 2. Dien Bien Phu - Part I… "the unthinkable"

***(Please Note: Dear Valued Reader: to view Chapter 2 + 1 First... which I would suggest; please scroll down to the two postings below this one).

DIEN BIEN PHU

‘The 1954 battle that changed Vietnam's history forever’

Military experts regard it as one of modern histories most important battles… a defining moment in the history of the people of Southeast Asia - un yet the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu rarely receives a mention …has become a mere footnote in history… as if people want to forget it…and the brave men on both sides who fought and died there.

The French under the command of Colonel Christian de Castries built a fortress at Dien Bien Phu. Having endured years of guerilla fighting… which was Ho Chi Mins ‘Vietnamese’ style… they were trying to draw the Vietnamese out into a classic pitched battle…a battle they were convinced they could win…a strategically organized war of movement…

To bait the trap they built an airstrip in the Vietnamese Highlands…a strip with a defensive perimeter covering ten miles… in the bottom of a river valley…the Vietnamese General Giap described it as being like a bowl of rice...The French were dug into the bottom of the bowl… he held the rim …the high ground around and above the position…the plan was that all French troops… supplies and reinforcements were to be brought in by air… by parachute drops using the airstrip as the Drop Zone… and regular landings by air transporter onto the strip itself.

The base was to be covered and supported by a series of firebases and strongpoints dug into the nearby low lying hills...from where the French reckoned they would rain down artillery fire on any Vietnamese attackers…The French were sure any Vietnamese attacks on such heavily fortified positions could be broken up by artillery.

The Beginning…

At the beginning of the Second World War the Japanese invaded Indo China defeating and throwing out the colonialist French who had ruled the area for nearly a hundred years.

French Indochina was formed in October 1887 from Annam, Tonkin, Cochin China (who form modern Vietnam) and the Kingdom of Cambodia; Laos was added after the Franco-Siamese War of 1893. The federation lasted until 1954. Wikipedia.

The British, French and Americans then armed… trained …and backed a single communist guerrilla fighter against the common enemy…the Japanese.

His name was …Ho Chi Minh…it means ‘the enlightened one.’…he gave himself this name...

...Hồ Chí Minh

Naturally at the end of the war the French came back to re - claim their colonies …but Ho and his band of communist guerrillas decided to fight for the country using all the weapons and know-how the allies had given them…

The French war against the Vietminh regime began in 1946 and continued for eight long years.

The communist guerrilla fighters ‘ with inscrutable oriental duplicity’ drew the French into bloody jungle fighting which gradually wore them down.

The turning point for France occurred at Dien Bien Phu. After this catastrophe the French surrendered and withdrew from Indo China for good.

As France withdrew from Indochina, the U.S. moved in taking up France's old Colonial role in supporting the pro-Western Saigon regime… leading to the Vietnam war.

And like Bin Laden to- day… Ho Chi Min was originally armed and backed by the CIA.

Educated in France he became a communist… traveling to Moscow …becoming Moscows expert on Asia and ‘colonial warfare’… serving as an adviser to the Communist armed forces.

Returning to Vietnam to lead a successful guerilla campaign against the Japanese… closely and secretly supported by The United States Office of Strategic Services?

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency. wikipedia.

Naturally… after the war… instead of disbanding his guerilla army… he turned his attention towards the French …who with the help of massive long range American airlifts, had begun reoccupying Vietnam after the Japanese defeat.

It was natural… common sense… that Ho Chi Minh would turn his attention towards the French… Thus began the first war in Indo China …later to become known as ‘Vietnam’. A war that ended in defeat and humiliation for the French… just as it would for the Americans.

The reason it’s worth looking at is the First Indo Chinese war begs a question… Did it make sense for America to get involved in Vietnam particularly with the benefit of historical hindsight? … or ….Were they merely not paying attention?…Americans are not the greatest scholars on earth… engineers and corporate expansionists yes… good at mass production yes…good at technology…good at media…particularly media lying…. but ‘free’…unconventional ‘humanist’ Post modernist.thinkers? …anti corporate ….sorry! …they are too conservative and anyway the corporation is an American idea…

The accolade for ‘thinking’ always goes to the ‘worldly wise’ more ‘learned’ Europeans… America is all about ‘a massive convoy traveling at the rate of the slowest ship’ …That’s how you get a Bush! ...and make no mistake George W & Condi not only torture and kill people…. they also actually do kill babies… every day!!! ...in the name of ‘the people of America.’ …I have friends who are American who would never dream of killing a baby… so how come they allow a government to stay in power who does it every day? ...or do people in our ‘new age’ 21st century democracies have less power to change things?

I am so pleased to see the new Brit government looks like it’s beginning to pull back… it’s about time… that’s the trouble with religious fundamentalists like Blair… they start ‘religious’ wars! if there is such a thing! sounds like an oxymoron to me….
Sorry guys! I digress… I’m a Sagittarian… it’s a problem keeping the lid on things sometimes!

So now the whole world witnesses the unmitigated disaster and defeat of the French army…the defeat of some of the best soldiers in the world.
The French Foreign Legion and Paratroopers… the toughest of the tough…

The Americans watch it happen… and then go straight in and do the same thing… Incredible?

‘There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different’’- Einstein.

And that’s exactly what the Americans did in Vietnam.


In 1963, as Washington was deepening its commitment in Vietnam, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a telling remark to a U.S. official.

"If you want to, go ahead and fight in the jungles of Vietnam," Khrushchev said. "The French fought there for seven years and still had to quit in the end. Perhaps the Americans will be able to stick it out for a little longer, but eventually they will have to quit, too." By Bruce Kennedy. CNN Interactive.

Uniforms of the Foreign Legion paratroopers during the First Indochina War. wikipedia.

The French Foreign Legion is a world famous elite regiment begun by the French army in 1831…the intention to create an extremist force of expendable ‘ foreign volunteers.’

Legionnaires formed the bulk of the ‘volunteer’ relief force… delivered by parachute to the doomed base at Dien Bien Phu… some of the men who jumped in had not had any parachute training… this was typical Legion bravery.

This military elite is trained not only in highly developed military skills but the Legion training also focuses on instilling ‘esprit de corps’ into it’s soldiers. The Legion and it’s close knit ‘family’ unity becomes a mans life…everything he does is for the Legion…The Legion is his country…he gives up his passport to join and is given a new name… and he is prepared to die for the legion...it’s part of the code of honour…this is how the Legion manages men from different cultures turning them into focused unified ‘teams’ of comrades in arms.

A KIWI in the FFL (Part 1 of 2)

Training in the Legion is often described as not only physically hard, but also extremely psychologically stressful. Brutal training methods are frequently used and violence toward junior legionnaires is common. Wikipedia.

An idiot legionnaire gets hit in the head by his nco.

These men have always been known for being very tough… the next film clip shows how tough …the men at Dien Bien Phu were the same as these men… doppelgangers …young Legionnaires always look the same …look at the faces…The film is in French without subtitles but just watch the pictures…listen to the sergeant’s voice etc… it gives a real sense of the kind of soldiers the men at Dien Bien Phu were…how they held themselves.

Legion Six weeks in Green hell.

Foreign Legion: six weeks in Green Hell (Part 2/5)

The French went into in Indochina absolutely convinced that they could…would win the war…to them it was a forgone conclusion…then the unexpected happened… ‘ the unthinkable!’

No one expected the new young Vietnamese army to thrash the sophisticated French army… a bunch of peasants against experienced elite troops? ...it was too implausible! …but the unthinkable happened… the French made mistakes…

...while Giap spent months quietly building up huge supplies of munitions around the base…carefully placing his heavy artillery and anti-aircraft guns before making his move.

Positioning them on the mountains ringing the base…the same mountains the French believed were too high to have any military relevance… the same mountains the French believed would act as a shield against Vietnamese artillery …they believed no one could put guns up onto these jungle covered heights.

Prior to the battle, the French forces established a military base in the bowl of a valley and left the heights surrounding the base unguarded since they were considered inaccessible for any military advantage; however, the Vietnamese under Vo Nguyen Giap used those heights to position heavy artillery and anti-aircraft weapons to bombard the base from an unassailable position and ward off air support respectively. Wikipedia.

(If you want an accurate blow by blow ‘linear’ description of the battle I’d recommend wikipedia under… Dien Bien Phu… or... The First Indo China War).

Personally I want to develop the idea of the unthinkable becoming thinkable… because that is what history constantly shows us.

Dien Bien Phu was the first time a Non European ‘third world’ band of guerrilla fighters had forged themselves into a properly equipped conventional modern army able to take on and beat a First world power in a fair fight…dramatically ending colonial occupation.
This changed the global political dynamic forever…giving people ideas that are alive and well today in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The French Colonialists were too overconfident… otherwise they would never have built an airstrip deep in the mountains… A base supplied from the air!

France-marked USAF C-119 flown by CIA pilots over Dien Bien Phu in 1954. wikipedia.

A strip that was the direct line of communication to the force that held it… It certainly was ‘the bait’ in a trap to draw Giap out into a conventional battle…in more ways than one…Giap realized early on…if he cut this line of communication… the French would be finished.

But at that the time ‘the para’ was to warfare what the helicopter would soon become… a ‘new fighting technique’ that looked to change warfare forever...commanders were obsessed with this new air mobility…and the paras could do anything!

It’s difficult to express the awe and respect people had in those days for parachute regiments…they were the original ‘elite’ forces.

French Foreign Legion recruiting poster "You are a man. Go to Indochina to defend freedom, you'll become a LEADER!" (ca.1950) wikipedia.

A French Foreign Legion unit patrols in a communist controlled area. The tank was supplied by the United States. wikipedia.

The Paras wanted to be attacked…that’s why they had gone in ...believing they could force Giap’s army to fight like conventional soldiers … not as guerrilla fighters… then they would have the upper hand… implicit to this belief …the premise that they, the French, were better soldiers.

Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh. Wikipedia.

But these two little men defeated them.

At the time it was inconceivable that the Legion could loose to a bunch of tiny Asian peasants… An opinion probably based on a sense of racial superiority... usually a major factor in underestimating the enemy …in most wars!

French foreign airborne 1st BEP firing during an ambush. wikipedia.

But these tiny oriental peasants were made of sterner stuff than the Westerners realised.

As the pictures below illustrate the airstrip was surounded all around by high mountains.

Les troupes d'élites françaises sont photographiées lors d'un parachutage désespéré pour sauver la garnison de Dien Bien Phu. Histoire - Militaire Retour Indochine et Vietnam

Hills so high the French saw no threat in them… even though they overlooked their positions they believed the hills were tactically irrelevant.

Meanwhile French Intelligence also let them down …they didn’t know Giap had heavy artillery and anti aircraft batteries… In these photographs you can see why Giap described Dien Bien Phu as being like a huge "rice bowl" …his troops occupying the top edges... the French the bottom.

No one would ever have believed a commander could break down his guns… nut by nut… bolt by bolt… and then organize a peasant army to carry them…during monsoon… piece by piece… up the mountains… reassembling the guns on top… overlooking the French positions.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap (in black) plans the encirclement of Dien Bien Phu. Using the cover of the jungle, Giap moved men and artillery ever closer to the French outpost, holding fire to avoid alerting the defenders. (AFP/Getty Images)

Which is exactly what Giap did… moving large amounts of artillery through the jungle… in the dark…at night… seven nights per gun…using ropes and pulleys to literally drag the guns up into the mountains. A 105mm howitzer weighs two tons… and the jungle covered slopes were wet and slippery… This was dangerous work.

To Vinh Dien… a soldier in the Viet Minh… took part in the effort to move the artillery pieces into firing positions… together with 30'000 other porters.

To Vinh Dien was proclaimed a national hero by the Viet Minh …an artillery piece began slipping down a muddy slope… he threw himself under the wheels… using his body to serve as a wedge… saving the gun from toppling down the mountain.

The Vietnamese people pulled all the guns onto the mountain tops… by hand… in the pouring rain… digging the artillery into camouflaged emplacements covering the hillsides… looking down onto the French fortress.

Thus Giap was able to rain accurate artillery fire down at will on all of the French positions…

Giaps massed anti aircraft guns high on the hills around the French positions gave him a clear field of fire at any aircraft that came in to re supply the French…these airdrops were key to the French plan…but now the planes would run a gauntlet of anti aircraft fire as they dropped into the valley to reach the trapped army encamped on the airstrip at the bottom.

The Battle...

In early December… 2,100 men left Lai Chau …trying to get through to Dien Bien Phu… only 185 made it… the rest were killed or captured…Viet Minh troops were swarming everywhere… All converging on Dien Bien Phu.

The French had committed 10,800 troops, with more reinforcements totaling nearly 16,000 men, to the defense of a monsoon-affected valley surrounded by heavily wooded hills that had not been secured.

The Viet Minh had moved 50,000 regular troops into the hills surrounding the valley, totaling five divisions including the 351st Heavy Division which was made up entirely of heavy artillery… Artillery and AA guns… outnumbering the French artillery by four to one…already in camouflaged positions overlooking the valley.

The French came under sporadic Viet Minh artillery fire for the first time on January 31, 1954… patrols encountered the Viet Minh in all directions… the battle had been joined… and the French were now surrounded. Wikipedia.

Fighting began in earnest at 5.00pm on March 13. when the Viet Minh launched a massive surprise artillery barrage followed by a moonlit massed infantry attack… they outnumbered the French by four-to-one… thousands of screaming Vietminh… running out of the darkness throwing themselves at the French in waves… following the eerie high pitched echo’s of Chinese bugles.

The Vietminh had studied the French positions carefully and practiced assaulting scale models of them… constructed by volunteers… men who would go out under the French wire under cover of darkness… noting exact French artillery positions and their weakpoints..

Meanwhile the communists had built life size wooden artillery pieces as decoys… which they kept switching with the real guns… so not only could the French not work out exactly where the communist guns were at any given time…neither could they work out how many guns the communists really had.

‘every evening , we came up and took the opportunity to cut barbed wire and remove mines . Our jumping off point was moved up to only two hundred yards from the French strongpoint and to our surprise the French artillery didn’t know where we were. Viet Major of sappers.’ wikipedia.

The French lost two commanding officers within the first few minutes of the battle and French resistance in this section collapsed during the night under the weight of the Viet assault. 500 legionnaires were killed, along with 600 Viet Minh killed and 1,200 wounded. The French launched a counterattack the following morning, but it was quickly beaten back by heavy Viet Minh artillery fire.

Much to the Frenchmen’s disbelief, the Viet Minh employed ‘direct’ artillery fire… each gun crew doing its own artillery spotting …choosing it’s own targets… firing at will… instead of using the commonly accepted system of … ‘organized’… ‘ indirect’ artillery fire … i.e. guns massed out of site… at a distance behind the front line… aiming and firing to radio instructions from forward spotters… a technique considered to be ‘the way it’s done’ …it’s a control procedure that is considered to make it superior to direct firing… but it demands experienced trained gun crews… and good radio communications… neither of which the communists had!

Dien Bien Phu's main garrison was supposed to be protected and defended by a series of fire bases… strong points… dug into low lying hills around the airstrip. The French were sure frontal assaults on their fortifications would be either mowed down out in the open or smashed to smithereens by their artillery.

In fact Dien Bien Phu's outlying firebases were overrun within days of the initial assault. And the main part of the garrison was amazed to find itself coming under heavy artillery fire from the surrounding hills. It had been a major logistical feat for the Viet Minh to drag scores of artillery pieces up steeply forested wet jungle hillsides that the French had written off as impassable… but it paid dividends.

Closed off from the outside world, under constant artillery and machine gun fire… flooded by monsoon rains… conditions inside Dien Bien Phu became an inhuman quagmire. ‘Hell is a little place.’ they said.

Casualties piled up inside the Garrison's hospital...

The French artillery commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, distraught at his inability to bring counter fire down on well-camouflaged… difficult to pin point Viet Minh batteries… went into his dugout and killed himself… and was quickly buried there… in great secrecy to prevent loss of morale among the French troops.

Piroth was a popular and experienced officer… a brave man… who had fought throughout the second world war. On December 17, 1946, Piroth had been critically wounded during an ambush but remained in command of his men until he was eventually evacuated. Stoically accepting the necessary amputation of his left arm in primitive conditions and without an unaesthetic.

But at Dien Bien Phu he couldn’t get his guns to protect the French troops pinned down on the outlying hills… and the two strong points fell… with heavy casualties.

Piroth became clinically depressed… not only because of this failure… but also because he had not managed to suppress and destroy the Viet Minh artillery …as he had promised everyone he would…on March the 15th, 1954 he went around the camp apologizing to his fellow officers... then he went back to his bunker and pulled the pin on a grenade he was holding to his chest.

‘The suicide’… a secret covered up… until a newspaper dropped with fresh supplies was picked up by the soldiers…Somehow the news of the suicide had been leaked to the press… No one ever knew how.

Under heavy and constant Viet Minh attacks the French fought back bravely… these were the best and bravest troops France had.

The Viet Minh artillery kept pounding the French positions… trench warfare begins as the enemy vice tightens its grip, strangling the camp.

‘On March 28, the air strip becomes unusable… any further attempts at re supplying the beleaguered garrison have to be made by parachute.

On March 31, after six days of bitter combat, the Viets manage to take and hold half of the major strongpoint Elianes.

During the night of April 11-12, the 2nd BEP is dropped into the valley and is engaged in fierce combat as it arrives…fighting the enemy as it falls from the skies… Now the conflagration is generalized… fighting on all sides of the central redoubt… Non-jump qualified volunteers parachute in… 4,000 men parachute into the camp…

Parachutage lors de l'opération Lorraine. Histoire Militaire .org Retour page 4 photos Indochine et Vietnam

The last flights are made up of legionnaires of the 3rd and 5th Foreign Legion.


The 1st BEP is in all the toughest fighting…but each attack extracts its price in lives…

by the end of the fighting at Diên Biên Phú, the 1st BEP exists in name only. All the legionnaires are either dead or wounded.

‘Adding to the misery of the combatants are monsoon rains, flooding bunkers… even the field hospitals. On the other hand, the Vietminh are able to bring in fresh troops as reinforcements’ …official Dien Bien Phu website.

The Viet Minh launch a night attack against an elite Algerian battalion… an artillery shell hits battalion headquarters, severely wounding the battalion commander and most of his staff.

De Castries orders a counterattack… but the officer in command of the attack chooses to use the paratroopers who dropped and fought their way into Dien Bien Phu’s doomed perimeter only the day before… tired…exhausted men… who’d fought their way into a doomed perimeter… brave men they attacked …they nearly made it… but the Viet artillery gave them such a pounding they got pinned down… losses were heavy… they withdrew leaving the position for the Viet Minh…

The perimeter was shrinking in a battle of attrition. The French had lost around 1,000 men and the Viet Minh between 1,000 and 2,000.

Some supplies were getting through by air drops… but as the French positions were overrun the drop zone began to shrink… supplies started landing in the laps of the Viet Minh by mistake… and all the time the anti aircraft fire got stronger… more concentrated… successful drops became fewer.

The film clip below has a Vietnamese voice over so it’s difficult to follow but it gives a sense of atmosphere...

The Vietnam War - Dien Bien Phu P8.

…it’s interesting to note that one of the Vietnamese deficiencies was an inability to provide adequate medical supplies for it’s men… so much so it became a problem for them later… in this ‘documentary’ we are shown Vietnamese soldiers being watched over by angelic Florence Nightingales in reasonably comfortable conditions… history is always written by the camera man… it just depends which side he’s on!

The American carrier stuff at the end is showing carrier born air support missions the yanks flew for the French.

March 17 through March 30 saw a lull in the fighting which the Viet Minh used to tighten the noose encircling the French army.

the French camp trouble was brewing in the form of a crisis of command.

"It had become painfully evident to the senior officers within the encircled garrison – and even to Cogny at Hanoi – that de Castries was incompetent to conduct the defense of Dien Bien Phu. Even more critical, after the fall of the northern outposts, he isolated himself in his bunker so that he had, in effect, relinquished his command authority." Wikipedia.

De Castries was an old fashioned cavalryman and would have been more use if the battle had developed into the ‘a war of movement’… action and reaction… everyone expected Dien Bien Phu to develop into.

Instead it had become a war of attrition… hand to hand…bomb and beyonet… trench warfare… requiring someone more experienced at infantry fighting in World War 1 style trench warfare… and that was not De Castries.

On March 17, Cogny attempted to fly into Dien Bien Phu to take over command, but his aircraft could not get through the massive wall of anti aircraft fire thrown up by the communists. Meanwhile De Castries' had withdrawn into his bunker and wouldn’t come out…as Cogny didn’t make it there was no commanding officer… no one was running things.

March the 24th Colonel Langlais and his fellow paratroop commanders, all fully armed, confronted de Castries. They told de Castries that he would retain the appearance of command, but that Langlais would exercise it. De Castries accepted the arrangement without protest, although he did exercise some command functions thereafter. Wikipedia.

Meanwhile around the perimeter the French air drops were getting knocked out of the skies… Less and less making it through to the D.Z… the Viets moving heavy machine guns close in to the edges of the French positions.

De Castries ordered an attack against the Viet Minh machine guns.

The attack is a success… destroying seventeen AA machine guns... killing 350 Viet Minh …the French lost 20 men.

But the Viets just keep coming and coming in massed attacks… hurling themselves fearlessly against French positions defended by equally brave but under strength battalions… until on March 30 the Viet 312 division captured the last strongpoint holding back the communist waves from finally enveloping the French general headquarters …it looked like the end was close.

The end of Dien Ben Phu - Part I.

to read Part II... see Chapter 3 above.

The Outsider ...I am... are You ?

But let me leave you for now with the best most comprehensive documentary I could find on YouTube…i t gives a clear overall picture of things...

Dien Bien Phu Documentary.

***Please note …Research and quotes for this blog gratefully taken from Wikipedia. YouTube. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu official website. The French Foreign Legion Indo chine Website. An Article entitled: Dien Bien Phu 1954 battle changed Vietnam's history. By Bruce Kennedy CNN Interactive. Militaire Histoire.org.site.

There are also 5 images in the text that I cannot find credit data on i.e. where they come from:
1. montage of three images. 2. the airstrip from the air. 3. the trenches and the hills. 4. the monsoon. 5. casualties.

I have used these images to illustrate the atmosphere of historical ‘ time and place’ and as this is a non profit documentary reportage , a tribute to the brave men who took part in the battle, and a historical account of an often passed over piece of important military history, I hope no one finds offence with this.