Book Review: Dien Bien Phu: Hell in a Very Small Place

DIEN BIEN PHU, about 1700, 13 March 1954. The the 141st and 219th Regiments of the 312th Viet Minh Division attack the 3d Battalion, 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade at isolated strong point Beatrice. By 0200 it is over. Only a hundred of the 500 legionaries escape, the Viet Minh lose 600 dead and two to three times that wounded. A sign of events to come.

Hell In A Very Small Place The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
Author:  Barnard B Fall
Original edition publishes by Harper and Row, 1967
This Edition by Da Capo Press.

"Hell In a Very Small Place is the classic telling of the siege of Dien Bien Phu and will probably remain the definitive telling. Bernard Fall follows the siege with a "Date Line: Dien Bien Phu" coverage, but also describes the larger strategic and political questions, ties them together, in smooth narrative that very few authors successfully accomplish.



The Viet Minh held the northern stretch of Viet Nam since 1950. Stalemated for years, the French did not have the strength to drive them back to the Chinese border, and the Viet Minh could only slowly increase their strength to take the Red River valley. (Hanoi and Haiphong).

The French had recently granted independence to Laos.  General Navarre, the French Theater commander ordered a "blocking position" at Dien Bien Phu on Route 41 to keep the Viet Minh from moving into Laos. General Cogney, the commander of the Northern comand decided the way to implement that directive was to use Dien Bien Phu as a "mooring point" to launch attacks  against Viet Minh activities in the area. It was never the plan, as often assumed, to set up a strong point to draw the Viet Minh into a trap. General Giap, the Viet Minh commander saw this as an opportunity to inflict a major defeat on the French. His units were moving even before the French occupied Dien Bien Phu.

The French parachuted and captured Dien Bien Phu on November 20 1953. By January the "blocking position" mission was shown to be unrealistic, a full Viet Minh division easily bypassed it and went into Laos. The "mooring point" mission was shut down by increasing Viet Minh pressure.  It was obvious by mid-January that if the French stayed there they would be defending against a major siege. Since the plan had been for a "mooring point" the base had not been constructed to withstand a siege and by January it was physically impossible to import enough material to properly fortify it. The French could have evacuated at that point but do not appear to have considered the possibility. At some point the operation slipped from a side show to the central action defining success or failure for the French in Indochina.

The siege started on March 13. After a month and half of intense combat it was obvious Dien Bien Phu would soon fall. The government in Paris issued orders that it would not surrender, the Americans surrendered at Corregidor, the British at Singapore and the Germans at Stalingrad but the French would not surrender at Dien Bien Phu.   On May 7 the garrison commander, to save his wounded, announced that a unilateral cease fire would take place at 1730, the French destroyed their weapons, the Viet Minh walked in without opposition. There was no formal surrender or white flags.

The heart of the book is the story of an inadequately staffed garrison, in incomplete fortifications, with constant shortages of food, ammunition, medical supplies, and most everything, fighting desparate odds with bravery and skill. Almost every day these worn out soldiers would fight off a an attack then get up and counter attack.  Of the 15,000 in the garrison only 3000 returned to French authority.  Fall treats the soldiers of the Vietminh with equal respect and sympathy.

Some interesting items.

While the larger war was a guerrilla war in the tradition of Mao Tse Tung, in the Viet Minh dominated areas where the battle took place the only guerilla activity was French sympathizing tribes fighting the Viet Minh. The battle was a conventional war siege resembling the trench warfare of WWI or the formal sieges of the 17th and 18th centuries. The massive influx of Viet Minh regulars destroyed the French guerilla forces in this area.

To defend the airfield, key to the position, the French should have defended an area twice as large, with a correspondingly larger garrison, to large to be supplied by the means available. Parachuting supplies kept the the garrison going at a subsistence level. New units were parachuted in to replace losses. 

How to build defenses to withstand modern artillery was published in everyones manuals since WWI. The French only tried to ship in one tenth of the needed engineering materials, the rest of the available cargo capacity was required  for food, ammunition and other essentials; even if all the flights were dedicated to engineering materials there still should not have been enough to complete proper fortifications.

The French force was a multinational and multicultural; French mainland, Foreign Legion, Moroccans, Algerians, other Africans and Vietnamese. The French mainland units were 25 to 50 % Vietnamese. Vietnamese were the largest single group. The Foreign Legion at that time was mainly, eastern European Spanish German and French. This crated a number of problems, rations had to be parachuted in there were several different menus then distibuted to the correct units.. Any thing that looked like favoritism or not recognizing unit characteristics could have ripped moral to pieces.

The Viet Minh were taking a considerable risk. They committed over half of their regular force. They barely had the capacity to supply these five divisions. Their rations were no more generous than the garrisons. Casualties were heavy, but they had virtually no medical infrastructure beyond unit the level. Veteran units at the beginning of the battle filled with barely trained conscripts for the last phases. Morale was often poor. At the end of March Giap realized that the casualties from direct assults were so heavy they would destroy his army. He called a halt to direct assaults and adopted the 18th century tactic of sapping and mining (dig trenches successively closer to the fort.) If things went wrong their war effort would be put back years if not lost. Fortunately for the Viet Minh the French never fully realized the opportunity and did not have ability to take advantage of it.


This books reputation as a classic in it's genre is well deserved.   A superb presentation of a story that will be told for centuries, long after the issues of the war are forgotten.   Fall is both fair and critical at the same time of people and decisions and makes a balanced analysis's of plans and events. There are excellent maps, and appendixes. It is clearly written, and leaves the reader with a good understanding of what happened and why. Readers without much interest or background in the subject might find the very detailed approach challenging. Other than that it is an excellent book and is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

Related:
Maothought or Who is Winning
TET 1968: A personal Narrative

This is the 20th 21st Century

My congratulations to the proud parents and best wishes for a long and happy life to the new babies but this item from Gerald Warner of the London Telegraph seems a little irrelevant as political news.

French royalists celebrate the birth of twin sons to Louis XX, rightful King of France.

Le Soldat Américain dans Afganistan

From a French soldier serving as a liaison with the US Army in Afghanistan:


“We have shared our daily life with two US units for quite a while - they are the first and fourth companies of a prestigious infantry battalion whose name I will withhold for the sake of military secrecy. To the common man it is a unit just like any other. But we live with them and got to know them, and we henceforth know that we have the honor to live with one of the most renowned units of the US Army - one that the movies brought to the public as series showing “ordinary soldiers thrust into extraordinary events”. Who are they, those soldiers from abroad, how is their daily life, and what support do they bring to the men of our OMLT every day ? Few of them belong to the Easy Company, the one the TV series focuses on. This one nowadays is named Echo Company, and it has become the support company.
They have a terribly strong American accent - from our point of view the language they speak is not even English. How many times did I have to write down what I wanted to say rather than waste precious minutes trying various pronunciations of a seemingly common word? Whatever state they are from, no two accents are alike and they even admit that in some crisis situations they have difficulties understanding each other.
Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins and creatine - they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo. Our frames are amusingly skinny to them - we are wimps, even the strongest of us - and because of that they often mistake us for Afghans.
Here we discover America as it is often depicted : their values are taken to their paroxysm, often amplified by promiscuity and the loneliness of this outpost in the middle of that Afghan valley. Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that : the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location : books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions : the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.
And they are impressive warriors ! We have not come across bad ones, as strange at it may seem to you when you know how critical French people can be. Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how. Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seem to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest. On the one square meter wooden tower above the perimeter wall they stand the five consecutive hours in full battle rattle and night vision goggles on top, their sight unmoving in the directions of likely danger. No distractions, no pauses, they are like statues nights and days. At night, all movements are performed in the dark - only a handful of subdued red lights indicate the occasional presence of a soldier on the move. Same with the vehicles whose lights are covered - everything happens in pitch dark even filling the fuel tanks with the Japy pump.
And combat ? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks : they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the ennemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting : they just charge ! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.
We seldom hear any harsh word, and from 5 AM onwards the camp chores are performed in beautiful order and always with excellent spirit. A passing American helicopter stops near a stranded vehicle just to check that everything is alright; an American combat team will rush to support ours before even knowing how dangerous the mission is - from what we have been given to witness, the American soldier is a beautiful and worthy heir to those who liberated France and Europe.
To those who bestow us with the honor of sharing their combat outposts and who everyday give proof of their military excellence, to those who pay the daily tribute of America’s army’s deployment on Afghan soil, to those we owned this article, ourselves hoping that we will always remain worthy of them and to always continue hearing them say that we are all the same band of brothers”.







Original: A NOS FRERES D’ARMES AMERICAINS
Translation: Serendipitous Altruism

HT: The Anchoress

Paris is Burning.

Well the northern suburbs anyway.

Gateway Pundit has a good round up. The Assoicated press reports the riots are gaining momentum. They report that there has been a week of riots, which is about how long they have been reported with any prominence in the US. There are also riots in Dijon and in Demark. Nouvelobs reported on the October 19th, a week before the riots started,

Nicolas Sarkozy a annoncé mercredi 19 octobre le prochain déploiement dans les quartiers sensibles de 17 compagnies républicaines de sécurité (CRS) et de sept escadrons de gendarmes mobiles dans le cadre d'une "guerre sans merci" contre les violences urbaines.

Nicolas Sarkozy announced Wednesday October 19 the next deployment in the sensitive districts of 17 Republican Security Companies (CRS) and seven squadrons of Mobile Gendarmes to conduct a "war without mercy" against urban violence. (I cleaned up the Babel Fish translation)

This sounds a lot more serious than has been reported in the US.

Roger Simon has correspondence from an American in Paris.

Brian Dunn of Dignified Rant looks at some root causes.


Some Observations
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Many years ago I was studying in Paris France. Over all it was a very positive experience.

One aspect that I did not like was the gross racism. A large number of foreign workers were imported from the former colonies, especially Algeria, to do all sorts of menial work. Paris apparently does not have pooper scooper laws, every day the Algerians were out on the street with large sweep brooms cleaning up Fido’s mess. The French treated the Algerians as lower than the merde de chien they were paid to sweep up.

I can see no justification for the riots in Paris. The people who live in these neighborhoods are going to be worse off no matter what happens, and probably their worst possobility is if the French Government backs down. However, I cannot help feeling the French are reaping what they sowed.

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Europe, including France imports a much larger percentage of their oil than the US, and a larger portion of that is from the Middle East. Europe needs to buy cheap oil, which is heavily taxed to fund the welfare state. Also much Arab oil profits are invested in Europe, and he who pays the fiddler calls the tune. The riots put the French in a bind, they need to restore order, but to harsh a policy risks annoying the Arab oil governments, which is close to financial suicide in an economy that is not to healthy to begin with.

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The Progressive Multicultural worldview of the French elites has hurt on the French working classes. There is massive unemployment but where there are jobs they are held for less wages by immigrants. The crime problems that came with the immigrants fell mostly on the working class. The elites policies also lock the immigrants in ghettos with even worse unempolyment lower wages and serious crime. French society has two large groups that at least do not like each other and blame each other for their problems. The French elites have been (positive) following a well-intentioned policy that is irrelevant to the concerns and needs of both groups, or (negative) playing a cynical game of both ends against the middle to maintain power. Take your pick.

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The French Police structure is interesting. Directly related to current events is the riot police, Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS). When I was there they had a reputation as being tough, effective, and disregarding human rights. Most of the worlds riot police were issued riot clubs or bayoneted rifles; the CRS were allegedly issued sub-machine guns because they were expected to use them. But the reputation was enough so that if several buses of CRS parked a few blocks from a demonstration it suddenly became more peaceful and dispersed after a face saving period of time. Whilw part of the Naitonal Police they are organized on a military basis, whin I was there most of the manpower was consripted. The NCO’s did not worry me too much, they knew what they were doing and if you were not the subject of their orders you shouldn’t have a problem. What scared me most was the troops: nervous 19 year old conscripts, who given the short term of service could not have excessive amounts of training, and armed with sub-machine guns, hopefully that has improved. That year there was a general strike in Paris. One evening walking home I saw the CRS with sirens blaring going the same direction I was, I turned around and walked an extra mile to get home.

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Guesses on future events

Riots do not happen in cold weather unless there is a genuine food or heat shortage. These riots will be over by December.

By next summer, unless Chriac can pull off something beyond his demonstrated ability, the pent up anger will be like gasoline waiting for spark. In June and July when the temperatures get into the 90 degree range, a trivial event will cause a blow up. And Jihadists will be much better placed to exploit the situation.

If the CRS looses its reputation for toughness and effectiveness, there will be much more violence in France next summer, and not just by Moslem immigrants. If CRS busses in the city are not enough to discourage a rioters etc. the French government will have to use them in situations that would otherwise have defused themselves. I doubt the troubles will be confined to France or they might start elsewhere and spred to France.

The worst case would be a repeat of the Battle of Grozny in the First Chechen war. But once done this is a known problem, it didn’t work at Fulajah and it won’t work in France unless the French lose their nerve.

The summer of 2006 in Europe will be a hot one in more ways than one.

After temporizing with multicultural lip service and mending fences with oil providers, the French Government will remember that in the ultimate extremity a government that will not shoot dissidents in the street will be replaced by one that does. The crack down will be brutal.

Long term I see two possibilities,

1) Europe will be ripped apart at the seams.
2) Just as the US and Canada are said to have developed a national identity because of the War of 1812, this could forge a genuine European identity that will make the European Union a de facto entity as well as a de jure. A very high price to pay for European unity. If this results in replacing the current political leadership with people who have more realistic world view Europe may achieve the dream of the original founders of the Common Market.


Note: I enjoyed my time in France and I do like the French. Pray for Peace in France and the safety of everyone there.