Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam (18 page)

In phase two of the Navarre plan, projected to last from late 1954 through early 1956, a considerably larger and more powerful FEF would punch deep into the Vietminh’s main bases in northern Tonkin, and perhaps around the PAVN’s southern stronghold in the Thanh Hoa area, placing France in an advantageous military position before concluding the conflict through negotiations.

As of June 1953, Navarre had perhaps 190,000 French Union troops in the FEF, but 100,000 were tied down in static defense. The training of the Vietnamese National Army was ominously behind schedule. Its operational units suffered from a high desertion rate and an incompetent officer corps. Navarre’s options, though, were constrained by the reluctance of politicians in Paris to provide badly needed equipment and adequate reinforcements, and by a lack of support for the war effort at home. He had asked for 12 additional infantry battalions and 3,000 additional officers and noncoms. Paris promised to meet his request, but because of the pressure from France’s NATO allies of having to supply troops for the defense of Europe, Nararre received only 8 new battalions and 500 officers.

To his credit, Navarre realized that the FEF needed an injection of confidence to snap it out of its torpor during the summer monsoon season before the big campaign season got under way. Nararre came up with the goods in admirable style by launching a dramatic attack on a Communist supply base at Langson in late July. As the French force closed in on Langson, Giap ordered his security force at the depot to disperse into the jungle rather than resist, leaving 500 tons of Vietminh weapons and supplies for the French to capture. He could afford the loss.

A month later, the French mounted a brilliant deception operation, evacuating more than five battalions of troops and most of their heavy weapons from the remote fortress at Na San right under the noses of the PAVN. So much for the preliminary summer attacks.

PAVN PLANS FOR THE NORTHWEST

Meanwhile, the senior leadership of the Vietminh devoted much time in the summer to determining when and where to launch their fall offensive. Initially, it appears they gave much consideration to attacking the French in the Delta, as the Laotian attacks during the past year had drawn considerable numbers of enemy units to the remote northwestern hinterlands. But it was not to be. In October 1953 Ho, Giap, and Truong Chinh, the major strategists of Vietnamese protracted war, met with other senior leaders around a small table in a bamboo house in Thai Nguyen Province to decide where to launch the major offensive. A consensus emerged after considerable debate. The offensive would be in the northwest.

Without question, their decision reflected the advice of the Chinese Central Committee and its military advisers. The Chinese were against attacking the Red River Delta on the grounds that the French, while weakened there, were still too strong. The northwest was far more promising because the French forces there were widely scattered. Nowhere was a full division deployed. Yet credit for the strategic decision to fight in the northwest must be shared by the Chinese and Vietnamese, as it evolved out of a series of conferences.
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It was at the October meeting that Truong Chinh voiced the rationale for the decision:

The enemy’s dispositions [in the northwest] are relatively week and exposed, but they cannot abandon these areas, and this is especially true for the mountain jungle region. If we launch an attack in the Northwest region we will certainly draw in enemy forces and force the enemy’s strategic mobile force to disperse to defend against our attack . . . . The enemy may only be able to bring in supplies and reinforcements by air. If we can overcome the problems with logistics and supplies, our forces will have many advantages fighting up there and we will be capable of attaining and maintaining military superiority throughout the entire campaign, or at least in a certain sector of the campaign area. In that way we may be able to win a great victory.
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Truong Chinh was saying, in essence, that stage three of the people’s war was finally in the offing. Yet the plan was tempered with the recognition that even if a great victory in the northwest were achieved, it was unlikely to lead to a complete victory. Almost certainly, the war would continue even with a victory in the northwest, perhaps for several years.
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As Giap gradually built up strength in the northwest and kept an eye on French movements throughout Vietnam, he identified several potential targets for the northwest drive. It might be directed at Lai Chau, the last island of French military power in the region. It might take the form of another invasion of Laos, followed by the sacking of Luang Prabang, the royal capital, and the installment of a Communist Pathet Lao regime there. Or perhaps the major Vietminh attack would fall directly on French forces, should the High Command mount its own drive deep into the Tai country. Finally, Giap could close in on a strategic valley in the heart of Tai Montagnard country called Dien Bien Phu. The Tais had believed for centuries that whoever controlled the valley held the key to the entire northwest and the gateway to Laos.

Both Giap and the French High Command were well aware of the strategic value of Dien Bien Phu. Giap has described the valley as “the biggest and richest of the four plains in the hilly region close to the Vietnam-Laos frontier . . . In the theater of operations [i.e., the northwest] and upper Laos, Dien Bien Phu is a strategic location of the first importance.”
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Ten miles from the Laotian border, the heart-shaped valley eleven miles long and six miles wide—roughly 180 Manhattan blocks north to south, and from the East River to the Hudson—was surrounded by rolling hills and mountains up to 6,000 feet, covered with thick foliage. The Tai farmed fruits and rice there, and it was a major marketing center for opium, a highly profitable commodity. Most importantly, the village stood at a road nexus for three routes amid trackless terrain: China to the north, Laos to the south, and a Vietminh supply depot at Tran Giao to the northeast.

A small French garrison had been deployed in Dien Bien Phu during the Indochina War until November 1952, when General Salan ordered its withdrawal as the PAVN 316th Division closed in on the valley. But two months later, Salan made clear his intention to take it back, as its reoccupation was “the first step for regaining control of the Tai country, and for the elimination of the Viet-Minh in the area west of the Black River.”
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The FEF’s first major operation of the 1953–1954 campaign commenced on October 14, when six French mobile groups attacked the 320th Division of the PAVN in a pincer movement south of the Red River Delta with a view to surrounding the division and seizing a big supply depot. Giap’s division took heavy casualties but managed to transport the most critical supplies out of the area and then slipped out of the noose. Navarre had hoped Giap would order one or more of his divisions from the northwest to reinforce the 320th, but he resisted the temptation to do so. Instead, in early November he dispatched the 316th Division from Thanh Hoa in the direction of Lai Chau in order to strengthen his position in the northwest. It would take the division about a month to arrive at its destination.

Then, on November 20, much to Giap’s surprise, three battalions of crack French paratroopers drifted downward into Dien Bien Phu. Quickly reinforced by several additional infantry battalions, engineers, and a limited number of field guns, the French began construction of a new
base aeroterrestre
. “Operation Castor” had begun in earnest.

Why Navarre decided to retake Dien Bien Phu and why he opted to remain there, despite mounting evidence that he was not so much setting a trap as falling into one, remains highly controversial. In fact, his rationale at any given time for launching the operation and staying put tended to vary and was often out of sync with that of the base’s commander, Colonel Christian de Castries, and his immediate superior, General René Cogny, commander of all forces in Tonkin.

As the situation developed between December and the spring of 1954, Navarre justified the deployment of a division of troops to the valley by turns as a way of drawing off Giap’s divisions far from the Red River Delta, which he envisioned as the main theater of operations; as a hub for offensive operations to take back all of Tai country from the Vietminh; and ultimately as a lure, tempting Giap into a siege operation in which French supporting arms and infantry could destroy PAVN regiments en masse as they assembled for a major assault.

As the French quickly built up the initial force in late November with three additional battalions and heavy weapons, and began construction of a large camp, Giap, though unsure of Navarre’s intention, nonetheless told his commanders that an operation at or around Dien Bien Phu could work in their favor. Navarre’s decision was congenial to Giap’s broad campaign plan, which was a good start. Perhaps he could maneuver Navarre into
some type of critical engagement where his own forces might fight under advantageous conditions, despite his lack of air power and overall inferiority in artillery.

Accordingly, Giap ordered the single regiment in the area to withdraw into the hills to monitor and harass the French in the valley. He waited for a few days to see what his adversary’s next move might be. When French press reports and local intelligence at the end of November suggested strongly that Navarre planned a major campaign to oust the Vietminh from Tai country, or to establish another Na San on a grand scale, Giap responded definitively: he sent the two infantry divisions along with the 351st Heavy Division to march toward Dien Bien Phu.

French communications intelligence intercepted PAVN radio traffic in the first day or two of December, at which point Navarre ordered General Cogny “to accept battle in the northwest” and to center his defense “on the air-land base of Dien Bien Phu, which must be held at all costs.”
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Cogny then ordered the garrison at Dien Bien Phu to be reinforced yet again. By the end of January, the garrison would be further expanded to 10,000 men in twelve battalions—the lion’s share of all the mobile reserves at Cogny’s disposal. He also ordered an immediate withdrawal of the 2,100-man garrison at Lai Chau to Dien Bien Phu, as Giap’s 316th Division was clearly en route to that hedgehog and might reach it within four or five days.

Of course, a major battle was not called for in Navarre’s original plan for spring 1954, but like his Vietnamese counterpart, the French commander sensed that he had a golden opportunity. He felt sure Giap could not sustain two or three divisions in so remote an area, in such difficult terrain, given the limitations of his logistical system. Even if he were able to do so, Navarre reckoned that he could destroy those divisions with air power and artillery.

Ironically, Navarre’s senior commanders in Tonkin argued vehemently against mounting Operation Castor at all. They did not think the FEF had the necessary assets to either build a resilient fortified base or supply a full division at that base exclusively by air. Logistical calculations by the air commander were particularly troubling. Even if he had all air transport assets in Indochina at his disposal, he could not come even close to meeting the daily needs of 10,000 men in a combat situation.

Despite these dire assessments, Navarre held fast, even after the French government contradicted its earlier directive, informing him that his first priority should be the preservation of the expeditionary force, not the
protection of Laos. Navarre defended his decision by comparing Dien Bien Phu with the battle for the airhead at Na San, where the FEF had blunted several attacks by two PAVN regiments in late 1952. A much larger base with far more firepower, he reasoned, could do the same. The artillery commander at Dien Bien Phu reinforced this misconception when he assured Navarre that he could silence any artillery Giap could bring to bear with counter-battery fire within a few hours after their opening barrage. Again, Navarre’s senior commanders dissented from this sunny assessment. Many felt that the differences between Na San and Dien Bien Phu outweighed the similarities. First of all, Dien Bien Phu was roughly ten times larger. Air supply was far more tenuous, and Giap’s force far, far larger and more capable at Dien Bien Phu than it had been at Na San.

Three days after Navarre ordered the base held at all costs, Giap presented a plan for the largest battle of the war. The evidence suggests that he had learned of Navarre’s decision, though the verdict is still out on this question. In any case, by December 6, 1953, Giap had decided to fight the set-piece battle he had studiously avoided since the 1951 defeats. It would require the deployment of four to five infantry divisions and virtually all of the artillery, engineers, and antiaircraft assets in the PAVN inventory. All told, 42,000 troops, 14,000 civilian porters at the front alone, and well over 100,000 from all over northern Vietnam were needed to transport matériel and heavy weapons from as far away as 500 miles in Cao Bang province and southern China. All-weather roads would have to be built and maintained. Three hundred tons of ammunition would be required at the front before commencing the attack, and the campaign could be expected to last forty-five days. He would enclose the base in a ring of steel and then close in.