Embers of War (65 page)

The word must have gone over well, or well enough, for two weeks later, on December 19, the Politburo discussed and approved a resolution concerning DRV policy toward “negotiations and talks.” “A new front had been opened,” a party account said of the thinking at this meeting. “Our Party believed that a diplomatic front that was initiated at the correct time and that was closely coordinated with our military operations on the battlefield would be an intelligent strategy to use to gradually, step by step, attain the fundamental goals of our nation.” Not quite acknowledged in the account but plainly a subtext in the Politburo deliberations that day was that eight years of war and sacrifice had taken their toll, requiring a new approach.
³⁵
That same day Ho delivered a radio address to the Vietnamese people, commemorating the seventh anniversary of the “Nationwide Resistance War.” The veteran revolutionary vowed to continue the struggle to final victory but said again that his government stood ready to negotiate a cease-fire and a resolution of the war. But was France willing to bargain in good faith?
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More than willing, many in Paris would have replied. Ho Chi Minh’s
Expressen
interview, reprinted in
Le Monde
on December 1, caused a sensation. Was this the opening to meaningful dialogue leading to an end to the disaster, an end to seven years of bloody and stalemated warfare? Yes, much of left-wing opinion answered. Earlier in November, the Socialists had forced a major debate in the Assembly, on the proposition that since France could no longer claim to be fighting to preserve the French Union (in light of the Bao Dai Congress in October) or to defeat the Asian Communist crusade (in light of the Korean armistice), the only thing to do was to end the war through direct bilateral talks with Ho Chi Minh. Ho might not be a genuine nationalist, Socialist deputy Alain Savary allowed, and his Viet Minh might not be all that popular, but neither was it correct to call Ho “Peking’s puppet.” He was no more China’s puppet than Mao Zedong was the Soviet Union’s puppet. Nor, Savary added, were French soldiers “American mercenaries.” Édouard Daladier, meanwhile, complained of France’s “deplorable complacency,” if not “servility,” toward the United States, while Jean Pronteau warned, with notable foresight, that Vietnam could be a thirty-year war.
³⁷

The Assembly ultimately rejected (by a vote of 330 to 250) a Socialist motion for immediate negotiations with the Viet Minh. Opponents prevailed by arguing that an affirmative vote would undermine morale among French troops and Bao Dai’s ministers, and embolden the enemy. Laniel and Bidault breathed a sigh of relief, only to be rocked by Ho’s offer in
Expressen
. Hitherto the two men had been able to maintain, as Laniel did on November 12, that their expressed support for negotiations—“
une solution honorable … une solution diplomatique du conflit
”—had elicited no response from the other side. That argument no longer worked, though Laniel could still insist that Ho’s proposal was a nonstarter in that it failed to take the Associated States into account.
³⁸

Laniel and Bidault did their best to beat down expectations. On November 30, the premier assured the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Paris that Ho Chi Minh’s statement would not change French policy, and that bilateral Franco–Viet Minh talks were impossible. The same day Bidault told
Le Monde
that the statement was a mere “propaganda gesture.”
³⁹
When Defense Minister René Pleven, excited upon reading the
Expressen
transcript, floated the idea of having Alain Savary (whose liberal positions on colonial questions had gained respect among nationalists in North Africa and Asia) make contact with Viet Minh leaders in the Tonkin jungle, Bidault vetoed it.
⁴⁰
All too aware of the worrying trends on the ground in Vietnam, and resigned to the need for a political solution, Laniel and Bidault still hoped to enter talks on a multilateral basis, and to do so from a stronger bargaining position, which meant giving Navarre more time to turn the tide. As before, they felt pressure from Washington to remain steadfast in opposition to early talks, and they also kept one eye on the non-Communist nationalists in Saigon. The VNA commander, General Nguyen Van Hinh, rejected Ho’s overture as a “political maneuver,” while Ngo Dinh Nhu, brother of Diem, blasted Laniel for even contemplating negotiations with Ho Chi Minh. Prime Minister Nguyen Van Tam, Hinh’s father, was more circumspect, allowing that Ho’s opening, while hardly satisfactory, warranted a response, including some kind of counteroffer. Tam told a reporter: “Neither Vietnamese opinion nor, I am sure of it, French opinion would understand if we did not do everything possible to stop this bloody war.”
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IV

BUFFETED BY THESE COUNTERVAILING CLAIMS AND CHARGES, LANIEL
and Bidault escaped the poisonous atmosphere in Paris for a three-power summit meeting in Bermuda with the leaders of Great Britain and the United States. Originally scheduled for June 1953, the conference was postponed when Winston Churchill that month suffered a serious stroke. This was perhaps an omen, for barely had the planes touched down in Bermuda, starting with Churchill’s on December 2, when several conferees began suffering from the tropical flu. Churchill, frail-looking and hard of hearing (he tried all manner of hearing aid contraptions during the sessions), was in a sour mood from the start, and it seemed contagious. The French were incensed that “The Marseillaise” was not played on their arrival, while both “God Save the Queen” and “The Star-Spangled Banner” were played. The excuse given—that Laniel was not really a head of state—did not mollify them. Nor were they pleased by the way the British and American delegations focused most of their attention on each other, figuratively and literally turning their backs on the French. According to one American observer, British officials were “constantly conferring in quite audible stage whispers and only half smothered giggling and laughter while [the] French were speaking.”
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Churchill’s choice of reading en route to the conference, it may be said, was not the most auspicious preparation: C. S. Forester’s
Death to the French
.

Laniel was spared the humiliation, having taken to his room with a 104-degree fever soon after arrival. Bidault had to carry the load, and the strain showed. Always inclined to drink when under pressure, he consumed a great deal of wine during the meals and fell asleep during one evening social event. He complained about his predicament, reportedly telling John Foster Dulles at a recess of one meeting: “I am in a very difficult position. Not only is my Prime Minister sick, but he is also a damn fool.” Evelyn Shuckburgh, private secretary to British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, summarized in his magnificently readable diary what he saw: “Everybody very angry, appeals, sentiment, Bidault looks like a dying man, Laniel is actually dying upstairs.… Outburst by Eisenhower and Winston, former left the conference table in a rage, came back, having changed for dinner, sat another four hours.”
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Strangely enough, in view of what was to come, the smoothest relationship at this fractious summit was that between Eden and Dulles. The two lounged together on the beach, the extremely fair-skinned Dulles donning a pair of gaudy shorts, and Eden—still recovering from a difficult operation six months earlier—soaking up the sun. They worked hard to construct a joint communiqué on the fifth and final day, even invading the hotel room of poor, bedridden Laniel to get the task done.
⁴⁴

Much of the discussion at the conference concerned nuclear weapons, with the Europeans expressing unified horror at the Americans’ threat to use the bomb against Chinese targets if the Communists violated the Korean truce.
⁴⁵
On European security, the Americans and British pressed the beleaguered Bidault to ensure swift French approval of the EDC. Should France fail to do so, Dulles warned, the United States would be forced to undertake an “agonizing reappraisal” of American policy toward European defense. Regarding superpower relations, Eisenhower generated nervous smiles from the Europeans with his graphic description of the new, post-Stalin Soviet Union. Russia, he declared, was “a woman of the streets, and whether her dress was new, or just the old one patched, it was certainly the same whore underneath.” America intended to drive her off her present “beat” into the back streets.
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LEADERS OF THE “BIG THREE” MEET IN BERMUDA IN DECEMBER 1953. FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: GEORGES BIDAULT, WINSTON CHURCHILL, JOHN FOSTER DULLES, ANTHONY EDEN, DWIGHT EISENHOWER, AND JOSEPH LANIEL, WHO WOULD SHORTLY TAKE TO HIS ROOM WITH A HIGH FEVER.
(photo credit 16.2)

Indochina received less focused attention at Bermuda, in part because of French claims on the first day that the military trends were favorable, with the Viet Minh on the defensive. But the discussion of the war was revealing nonetheless. The negotiations question was plainly on French minds. Before his fever felled him, Laniel told Eisenhower that while many in Paris wanted immediate talks, he was determined first to establish a position of strength. Bidault, for his part, said he personally wanted to stay the course but that French popular will was faltering, especially in light of the cease-fire in Korea. Although Ho Chi Minh’s recent proposal was unacceptable, implying as it did bilateral talks, a five-power conference (including China) might represent a solution provided the Associated States were included.

In response, Eisenhower praised French efforts in Indochina but called a five-power conference “a bad word for the United States.” Still framing the conflict in military terms, the president assured Bidault that additional U.S. military aid was on the way, which to the Frenchman was not exactly the point. Churchill, visibly exhausted, thanked France for all she was doing for empire and freedom, including in Indochina, and said he regretted that Britain had given up India. He urged the French to consider longer terms of military service (which would permit troops to “breed their own kind”) and vaguely suggested that the British counterinsurgency experience in Malaya might have lessons for the French in Indochina.
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And then it was over, this first meeting involving the three Western leaders. No one doubted it would also be the last (as indeed it was). For all their differences, however, for all the indecorous behavior and bad chemistry, on Indochina the delegations seemed to agree: The final communiqué saluted “the valiant forces of France and of the three Associated States” and recognized “the vital importance of their contribution to the defense of the free world.”
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But this boilerplate language evaded the central issue: namely, when and under what format to enter negotiations. Bilateral Franco–Viet Minh talks were ruled out, and Bidault’s tentative suggestion of a five-power conference, a “bad word” in the American lexicon, failed to find support where it counted. The war, Eisenhower had made clear, should go on. General Navarre should be given more time.

CHAPTER 17
“WE HAVE THE IMPRESSION THEY ARE GOING TO ATTACK TONIGHT”

H
ENRI NAVARRE NEEDED NO ENCOURAGEMENT FROM THE POLITICIANS
. On his own, he had made the decisions first to occupy and then to seek battle at Dien Bien Phu. He still believed, at the moment the leaders’ airplanes departed the Bermuda idyll half a world away in early December 1953, that the remote Tonkin valley could be the scene for a spectacular victory, like Na San a year earlier but bigger and more devastating. It would be Na San to the power of ten. But already there were ominous signs of trouble, visible if not to the French commander then to some of those around him. Battalion-size sorties outside the valley continued to run into difficulties. Major Jean Souquet’s First Colonial Parachute Battalion, for example, came under fierce attack three miles to the northeast on December 4. Eventually the battalion extricated itself, but at the cost of fourteen dead and twenty-six wounded. Documents found on Viet Minh corpses (who were clad in the quilted jackets Ho Chi Minh had called for) indicated they were not regional troops, as hoped, but regulars from Regiment 176 of the 316th Division.
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Major General René Cogny, aware of the division’s rapid advance, now ordered the full evacuation of Lai Chau. Most regulars were evacuated by air, but some 2,100 soldiers, most of them Tai auxiliaries, were ordered to leave on foot, bound for Dien Bien Phu, fifty-five miles to the south. They left in relays between December 5 and 11. Despite supporting air strikes, the poorly trained and lightly armed Tai soon ran into trouble, suffering one ambush after another. Survivors, forced off the tracks, tried desperately to elude rapacious pursuit or chose to give their lives in heroic last stands. Final losses are impossible to determine, but one source has a mere 185 survivors reaching Dien Bien Phu by December 22. Not all the rest were killed, certainly—sizable numbers were able to melt into the jungle and thereby escape their pursuers—but the losses were staggering. Of the larger groups, only Lieutenant Wieme’s three companies were able to straggle into Dien Bien Phu more or less intact by taking a circuitous route far to the east.
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