Chapter 3. Dien Bien Phu - Part II… "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).

La Legion Dien Ben Phu.

The Damned Die hard, Dien Bien Phu by Ken Laager

By March 31st the fighting is furious and often hand to hand. Handfuls of Viets are cut down caught on the barbed wire but each time more reinforcements arrive. Meanwhile Viet artillery ceaselessly pounds the French positions.

The Viets came in close and suddenly the French 4th colonial artillery regiment enters the fight… its 105 mm howitzers set to zero elevation… firing directly into the Viet Minh attackers at point blank range… blasting huge holes in their ranks… a blood bath… no soldier however brave could stand up to the fury of white hot steel splinters flashing through the air… men just disappeared… blown to smithereens…

‘That night Diên Biên Phú was about to be over run… all of its strong points over run by thousands of screaming Viets who thinking victory was at hand threw two fresh regiments at the bridge crossing the Nam Yum. The heart of the French defense was there, only a few hundred meters away. And no one stood in their way except a 105 mm battery of the 4th Colonial Artillery Regiment.

But this battery is commanded by Brunbrouck and this is his fight.

In an instant the four tubes are depressed to minimum elevation and fire volley after volley at point blank range into the oncoming Viet columns. All personnel, drivers, telephone operators etc, not strictly needed to serve the artillery pieces fight as infantry. The Africans and Europeans confront their fate.

Brunbrouck is everywhere, reassuring some, reinforcing others, gathering together panic stricken runaways, recovering a machine-gun here, a 60 mm. mortar there, and everyone fires furiously into the attackers who are at first stunned and then realize they have run into a death trap. Adding to the wall of fire laid down by Brunbrouck was his Saint-Cyr classmate, Filaudeau and his riflemen of the 12th company of the Algerian Rifle Regiment clinging to the last tiny remaining position on strong point Dominique. A few hundred meters away, Luciani and his Legionnaires of the 1st Foreign Legion Parachute Battalion are grimly hanging on to the last positions on strong point Eliane.

The Viet companies waver, fall back and come on again. Will the Bô Dôi be victorious? No! The artillerymen, in the face of death, do not bend. Brunbrouck has them fighting like demons.

Twice he is ordered to blow up his artillery pieces. Brunbrouck flatly refuses. "You bastards, send me some more infantry ammunition and tomorrow I'll bring back the guns."

But the Viets want their bridge and they reform their platoons and return to the attack in their screaming masses. Adding to the devastating fire of Brunbrouck's 105's driving them to the ground, are the quad 50's blazing away like an erupting volcano, shredding the Viets.

The waves of Bô Dôi, confused, break and turn back. It's all over. Their will is broken. Brunbrouck and his men have won. The bridge was not reached and tomorrow Brunbrouck will bring back his guns and his gunners.

That is the story of "Battery Brunbrouck"

Brunbrouck's destiny burned bright but for a short time, like the super novas that explode, light up the sky, and then die.

A single explosion, to be sure, but how bright it was. And what a death. On April 13, Holy Tuesday, a direct hit from a 105mm shell collapsed his bunker and mortally wounded him. Realizing he was dying, he received absolution and then gathering his remaining strength he exhorted his men to fight on with all their strength, with all their courage with a vehemence and grimness that struck everyone of his men. Then and only then did he allow himself to be brought to the field hospital just in time for him to know that the hands of a friend, my hands, would close his eyes after a final good-bye in front of the medics riven with emotion.

That is how my friend Paul Brunbrouck fought and died.

Doctor Gindrey
Surgeon at Diên Biên Phú

To die in Indo-china, that was the destiny of dozens and maybe hundreds of young officers. And my job as surgeon allowed me to observe them closely, the living, the wounded and the dead. I saw many brave men and a few heroes. Brunbrouck was already brave but on March 30, 1954 he became a hero.

Brunbrouck stopped an army.

Doctor Gindrey
Surgeon at Diên Biên Phú

This is an edited section from the Dien Bien Phu official website’s records.


Pierre Schoendoerffer was a photojournalist at Dien Bien Phu, he has made an amazing drama doc about the battle which captures the mood of the time and gives a good sense of atmosphere.

Extrait de "Dien Bien Phu" de Pierre Schoendoerffer (La 317e Section) 1992

"Concerto de l'adieu" par Georges Delerue (Platoon)

Near the airstrip the French turned their anti aircraft machine guns onto another massed communist attack… at close range the heavy cannon shells literally tore men to pieces… the same tracer cannon shells passing through man after man…

The Viet Minh began to pull back all along the line… a section of the French line almost collapsed but one brave young sergeant took command jumping up and running at the massed Vietminh…

leading his men in a ferocious counterattack… everyone following him forward… It was turning into a bloody battle of attrition… the French launched two fierce counter attacks using virtually ‘ everybody left in the garrison who could be trusted to fight’

The tough counter attack retook some ground but almost immediately the Viets launched another attack… like two punch drunk boxers… almost out on their feet… slugging it out they’d say… ‘Dien Bien Phu… hell is in a small place..!’

The French were totally exhausted… without reserves… holding an ever reducing perimeter…and all the men knew they probably wouldn’t get out alive...

There is not much of a photographic archive on the trench system at Dien Bien Phu but I’ve put together some reference

images from other trench wars that I hope helps illustrate the reality of the trench fighting that this battle now developed into…

Cheshire Regiment Trench near La Boisselle during the Battle of the Somme,July 1916. wikipedia.

Trench fighting is a fearsome form of combat… Hand to hand… at close quarters...

Constant supplies of bullets and hand grenades were crucial to this kind of fighting so men were constantly struggling back and forth across the smashed ground with supplies of bombs and ammunition whilst under heavy shell and machine gunfire.

The weight of fire overhead from both field guns and machine guns kept attackers and defenders alike in the trenches… the trenches never the less gave them access to each other being part of a communications or grid system of fire trenches running left to right across a given front line with communications trenches running back out of them.

In the attack the two sides would rarely see one and other clearly because fire and communications trenches were built ‘traversed...’ i.e. built in angular kinks so as to deny any intruding attacker the chance of firing down the whole length of the fire trench… this system also served to localize the destructive blast of any shell that happened to fall into any given section of the fire trench...

"Bombing and shell fire were most feared because of the multiple effects explosions produce in the human body… at it’s worst it disintegrates a human body so nothing is recognizable… less spectacular but just as deadly… blasts could create ‘over pressure’ or vacuums in the bodies organs rupturing the lungs and causing hemorrhaging in the brain and spinal cord…

The most common effects of the constant shellfire was it produced an often invisible maelstrom above ground criss crossed by shell splinters or shrapnel balls… which travel comparatively slowly and loose velocity rapidly but often travel in clusters thus inflicting several large or many smaller wounds on the same person. Splinters tend to be irregular in shape and produce very rough wounds with a great deal of tissue damage... large shell fragments amputate limbs, decapitate, bisect or other wise grossly mutilate the human body."

John Keegan. The Face Of Battle.

Prints from the First World War illustrate the potential effects of trench fighting on soldiers and how it causes them to fight… often at night. (Prints: DirectArt / Cranston Fine Art).

Particularly under cover of darkness both friend and foe could approach each other very closely without being able to see each other, though aware of each others presence… an impasse would result… only to be resolved by an individual or group on one side or the other deciding ‘to go over the top...’ e.g. jumping up the side of the trench… charging across open ground and dropping into attack the enemy massing in the next section of fire trench.

The normal method of resolving this kind of impasse however was by bombing, the throwing of hand grenades over the top of the traverse, and running around to arrive just as it exploded.

If played seriously this was an extremely dangerous game, for one could run into the explosion of ones own hand grenade, or into the fire of an unwounded enemy soldier, or into the grenade of someone also bombing from the next traverse up.

1918 Loos Private Chillingworth D.C.M. Coldstream Gaurds bombing enemy from a trench. directart.

Bomb, rifle and bayonet at close quarters… you either got skewered or blown to bits… lucky if you just got shot… "as executioner over short or long distances the bullet was champion man killer… a high velocity conical bullet spinning quickly about it’s long axis could produce a variety of unpleasant results… at best forcing open a neat channel with the ‘exit’ wound the same size as the ‘entry’ wound… however should the bullet tumble inside the body… usually caused by hitting bone… then it’s path from the point it starts to tumble became much enlarged thus creating a large ‘explosive’ looking hole of an exit wound…

The effect of a tumbling bullet produced by its striking bone was usually much enhanced by the bone’s splintering under the impact, its own fragments then becoming secondary projectiles which produced massive damage to the tissue round about. Some bullets also set up hydraulic effects, their passage driving body fluids away from the wound track at pressures which surrounding tissue cannot withstand."

John Keegan. The Face Of Battle.

The "tastefully" missing detail here is the large number of shattered body parts thrown around the trench by the constant bombing… and also at Dien Bien Phu individual European soldiers used a large number of automatic weapons against Viet riflemen with fixed bayonets in close quarters fighting.

Private Ryder. Middlesex Regiment V.C.
Dashes enemy trench clearing it with a Lewis gun. directart.

Days of vicious hand to hand fighting takes great courage on the part of the combatants… Notice how close these soldiers are to each other… this is a very personal form of fighting…

Private Hutchinson V.C. Lancashire Fusileirs shooting German sentries leading an attack on enemy trenches. directart.

Men look into each others eyes as they kill each other.

Trench raiding was an often brutal feature of trench warfare that came into being in World War I. It was the practice of making small scale surprise attacks on enemy positions.

Typically, trench raids were carried out at night by small teams of men who would navigate across no-man's land and infiltrate enemy trench systems.

Despite the fact that World War I was the first conflict to be fought by mechanized means, trench raiding was very similar to medieval warfare insofar as it was fought face-to-face and with crude weapons. Trench raiders were lightly equipped for quiet, speedy, unimpeded movement and armed themselves not only with modern weapons such as pistols, submachine guns and grenades, but also notably with bayonets, knives (including purpose-made trench knives), brass knuckles, and deadly homemade maces and clubs for swift and silent killing. wikipedia.

U.S. M1917 "Knuckle Duster" trench knife and leather sheath of World War I. wikipedia

Trench knives are either purpose-made weapons, or are made from cut-down (shortened) bayonets or swords, and intended for close-quarter fighting, the design originating in the trench warfare of the First World War. They were particularly useful for trench raiding operations, along with other mêlée weapons. wikipedia.

Always attacks take place over smashed rough open ground… so soldiers feel their own vulnerability particularly to shell fire… look at these men below... you can see all of them move in an instinctive crouch…

Sedan, France, May 1917. wikipedia.

This makes it a tougher job for the officers and N.CO.S leading the men… keeping everyone moving forward at all times… particularly when charging across open ground… culminating inevitably in a short sharp and often very bloody and confused trench fight…

British Indian Army Soldiers.

This picture above captures the feel of a final close quarters assault… showing a group of British Indian Army soldiers ‘ going over the top’ to capture a German trench with guns and grenades. Circa 1945. wikipedia.

This kind of fighting is what most of the Europeans at Dien Bien Phu (with the exeption of their Commander Colonel Castries… who had been trained in the military tradition of the cavalryman) had been trained for… it was part of French military culture and history… part of the European tradition of arms… Napoleons French Grenadiers for example had been bomb throwing foot soldiers, riflemen who were experts at close quarters bomb and bayonet fighting.

French observer in trench, Hirtzbach Woods, France, 1917. wikipedia.

Meanwhile the communists had never experienced warfare like this before… they had only just recently evolved from jungle guerrilla fighters into a modern mechanized army… but what they lacked in skill and experience they made up for in sheer courage, guts and tenacity.
After Dien Bien Phu they grew a reputation for being some of the best infantry in the world… they were very brave men…

Shortly after dark on the 31st, Langlais told Major Marcel Bigeard, who was holding a defensive position by the river to fall back Bigeard refused, saying "As long as I have one man alive I won't let go of my position Otherwise, Dien Bien Phu is done for."

The night of the 31st, the 316th division attacked but just as it appeared and the French were about to be overrun, a few French tanks arrived, and helped push the Viet Minh back.

Smaller attacks were also pushed back. The Viet Minh briefly captured some ground only to be pushed back by a French counterattack at dawn on the 1st.

Fighting continued in this manner over the next several nights. The Viet Minh repeatedly attacked only to be beaten back again and again… It was developing into the worst kind of trench warfare…

On April 5, after a long night of battle, French fighter-bombers and artillery inflicted particularly devastating losses on one Viet Minh regiment which was caught out on open ground.

A Bearcat of the Aéronavale drops napalm on Viet Minh Division 320th's artillery during Operation Mouette. (11.1953) wikipedia.

At that point, Giap decided to change tactics. Although Giap still had the same objective he decided to employ more entrenchment and sapping to try to achieve it.


April 10 saw a dawn attack as the French attempted to retake major strong points that had now become a threat.

The dawn attack, was preceded by a short, massive artillery barrage, followed by small unit infiltration attacks, followed by mopping-up operations. Without realizing it, Bigeard the commander had re-invented the Infiltration tactics used with great success by Oskar von Hutier in World War I.

Control of this position changed hands several times that day, but by the next morning the French had control of the strongpoint again. The Viet Minh attempted to retake it on the evening of April 12, but were pushed back.

"At this point, the morale of the Viet Minh soldiers broke. The French intercepted radio messages which told of units refusing orders, and Communist prisoners said that they were told to advance or be shot by the officers and noncommissioned officers behind them."

The extreme casualties they had suffered (6,000 killed, 8,000 to 10,000 wounded, and 2,500 captured) had taken a toll; worse, the Viet Minh had a total lack of medical facilities. "Nothing strikes at combat morale like the knowledge that if wounded, the soldier will go uncared for." To avert the crisis, Giap called in fresh reinforcements from Laos. wikipedia.

Meanwhile repeated attempts to reinforce the French garrison by parachute drops were mad by lone planes at irregular intervals so as to avoid excessive casualties from Viet Minh anti-aircraft fire.

Some brave reinforcements did fight their way through… but not nearly enough to replace French casualties.

Juin 1955. Encore en Indochine. le 2nd B.E.P.

French attempts to relieve their doomed garrison now slowed to just a trickle feed as the only way to get through the wall of anti aircraft fire was single aircraft… one at a time… dodging the flak…

Gradually the Viet Minh were closing in… they now controlled 90% of the airfield… accurate parachute drops became impossible… supplies were no longer getting through…

Final defeat

The Viet Minh launched a massed assault against the exhausted defenders on the night of May 1, overrunning positions…On that day in May 1954 it had become apparent that Dien Bien Phu's position was hopeless. French artillery and mortars had been progressively silenced by murderously accurate Communist Viet Minh artillery fire, and the monsoon rains had slowed down supply drops to a trickle and transformed the French trenches and dugouts into bottomless quagmires. The surviving officers and men, many of whom had lived for 54 days on a steady diet of instant coffee and cigarettes, were in a catatonic state of exhaustion. wikipedia.

Communist forces, in human-wave attacks, were swarming over the last remaining defenses. The old cavalryman de Castries knew it was the beginning of the end. He ordered his last reserves into three more desperate counter attacks but Giap held his ground and counter attacked himself. De Castries only had two artillery pieces still firing and was virtually out of ammunition.

One outpost commander phoned De Castries: "We can keep on fighting for only ten more minutes. Should we surrender?" De Castries snapped back: "Keep on fighting for ten more minutes."

‘On May 6, Giap orders the final assault. On all the positions the fighting is furious and often hand to hand. Handfuls of Viets are cut down on the barbed wire but each time more arrive. The Viet artillery ceaselessly pounds the French.

Chinese operated soviet-built Katyushas were used against the French at Dien Bien Phu on May 6, 1954. wikipedia.

Finally on May 7, all the strong points are taken by the ‘bo dois’ except the French strong point Isabelle which continues to resist.

Colonel Lalande, commander of the 3rd eme, continues the fight. Both sides fighting with relentless fury. The legionnaires, having run out of ammunition, fight with knives and bayonets.’ Official Dien Bien Phu website.

This is where words are truly inadequate… men with knives against men with guns… hand to hand… usually in the dark… this form of warfare is probably the most personally brutalizing for any soldier… below is an example of the kind of weapons used.

The French version of the Mark I is stamped on the blade ricasso with a recumbent lion, and "Au Lion" below that. The grip of the French version is typically stamped with "U.S. 1918.

or Au Lion (usually marked on the blade - French manufacture) wikipedia.

It becomes obvious that the fortress cannot last until nightfall. Communist forces, in human-wave attacks, were swarming over the last remaining defenses.

At 5:00 PM, de Castries radios French headquarters in Hanoi in a high-pitched but curiously impersonal voice, the end obviously had come for the fortress. De Castries ticked off a long list of 800-man battalions, which had been reduced to companies of 80 men:

"The Viets are everywhere. The situation is very grave. The combat is confused and goes on all about. I feel the end is approaching, but we will fight to the finish."

Cogny: "Well understood. You will fight to the end. It is out of the question to run up the white flag after your heroic resistance." wikipedia.

‘At midnight, while all resistance has ended at Diên Biên Phú, at the French strong point Isabelle the Legion still holds its position.

The superhuman resistance at Isabelle finally ends in the early morning. Only a few dazed and completely worn out spectral figures are overrun.

A stunned silence reigns over the battle field’ Official Dien Bien Phu website.

The relevance of the story?... and why some regard it as one of the most important of modern battles..?

It was… "the first time that a non-European colonial independence movement had evolved through all the stages from guerrilla bands to a conventionally organized and equipped army able to defeat a modern Western occupier in pitched battle."

Dien Bien Phu fell on May 7, 1954, and the defeated French left Indochina shortly thereafter. Here, captured French soldiers trudge through the fields after the surrender at Dien Bien Phu. (AP photo/Vietnam News Agency)

The Asians, after centuries of subjugation, had beaten the white man at his own game.

French surrender and “Bo Doi” troops swarm over French defenses in a crushing Vietnamese victory.

And today peasant armies of guerrillas globally challenge the West's ability to withstand a potent combination of political and military pressure in totally alien environments.

And when will Western Super Powers learn from the history books… isn’t knowledge supposed to empower?

So how could America watch all of this and then go and make the same mistake..?

It’s interesting to note that as usual, one defining factor in the list of strategic errors this story and the story of Vietnam itself illustrates is a Western sense of racial superiority… which is constantly proven to be unjustified by history… I’m sure Afghanistan and Iraq will end the same way… love, understanding and giving are more effective and useful to mankind than war… it tells us this in the books… but many young men like myself grew up believing war was glorious… as you grow older you learn that’s actually nonsense…

Aftermath… Prisoners

On May 8, the Viet Minh counted 11,721 prisoners, of whom 4,436 were wounded.

This was the greatest number the Viet Minh had ever captured: one-third of the total captured during the entire war.

The prisoners were divided into groups. Able bodied soldiers were force-marched over 250 miles to prison camps to the north and east.

Hundreds died of disease on the way...

DIEN BIEN PHU VIDEO

The surviving French prisoners of the battle at Dien Bien Phu, were starved, beaten, and heaped with abuse, and many died.

Of 10,863 survivors held as prisoners, only 3,290 were repatriated four months later.

The fate of 3,013 prisoners of Indochinese origin is still unknown.

Meanwhile the French withdrew from its Indo Chinese colonies… Accords partitioned the country in two; fighting later resumed, among rival Vietnamese forces... and in 1959 the Vietnam War (Second Indochina War) began…

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

If Krushchev could see it so clearly then why not the huge American intelligence and military machine of the supposedly most powerful nation on earth… and they are doing it again right now …

‘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.

It does make one wonder about the sanity of Bush's governance of America and its people and Tony Blair's governance of Britain… supposedley educated and sophisticated men should know better...

...don't you think so?

Next posting in War History Repeats Itself - The dangers of having a highly developed sense of racial superiority in war!

*Please note! Research and quotes for this blog gratefully taken from Wikipedia. You tube. The Official Battle of Dien Bien Phu 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. And excerpts from ‘The Face of Battle’ by John Keegan.Prints from DirectArt/ Cranston Fine Art gallery. kenlaager.com & history.enotes.com

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.