The Cold War (44 page)

Nevertheless, after the disaster, Alessandri insisted that his seven battalions, backed by airpower, should have sufficed for the breakout, even though the Viet Minh outnumbered them by more than eight to one. For this reason, no one bothered to organize an intervention force of paratroopers as insurance against misfortune, nor did they seem in a hurry. Le Page dithered with his force at That Khe from September 19 to 30 before he was ordered to push his battalions up the R.C. 4 to seize Dong Khe.

French general Yves Gras has written that this movement might have succeeded had the departure of Le Page coincided with that of a Lieutenant Colonel Charton from Cao Bang: The French forces would have converged upon Dong Khe from two directions simultaneously.

However, the French plan called for Task Force Bayard to seize Dong Khe
on October 2, the date when Charton would blow his magazines and strike out down the R.C. 4 to join them. This assumed, first, that Bayard would be powerful enough to seize Dong Khe single-handedly; and, second, that Charton could move his garrison down the R.C. 4 before prodigious numbers of Viet Minh troops hovering about fifteen miles off the road could move into a blocking position. A third assumption implicit in the plan was that each officer realized the urgency and importance of his part and moved to execute it efficiently. Alas, because of Carpentier's insistence upon secrecy, Giap was better informed about French intentions than were the men who were to carry them out.

On the evening of September 30, Le Page left That Khe to march the thirteen miles to Dong Khe. Everyone—including Le Page, who protested in vain that he had been given no intelligence reports on Dong Khe—realized that surprise was their best ally. However, when advance elements of the Premier BEP hit opposition as they neared Dong Khe, Le Page, cautious to the point of timidity, rejected the furious pleas of the legion paratroopers that they be allowed to punch through what they reckoned were lightly held Viet Minh positions. Instead, he postponed the attack until the following morning, by which time, as the legionnaires had predicted, the Viet Minh had called in reinforcements.

As a consequence, Le Page's two-pronged advance upon Dong Khe sputtered on the limestone ridges that surrounded the town. This hardly improved the disposition of the paratroopers, who had become openly contemptuous of his leadership—and of the fighting abilities of the Moroccan troops. Their attitude, while perhaps justified, helped to undermine cohesion in a heterogeneous force whose morale was already fragile.

This need not have been immediately fatal, as Charton had not yet left Cao Bang. Le Page could have retreated before his forces were cut off from That Khe. However, Colonel Constans, directing the battle from a comfortable distance at Lang Son, failed to realize that the pressing need was to save the forces under his command from catastrophe. Instead, he persisted with the original purpose. A letter was dropped by plane to Le Page on the afternoon of October 2 explaining—for the first time—the purpose of his operation.

The letter directed Le Page to bypass Dong Khe to the west and return to the R.C. 4 at Nam Nang, about eleven miles north of Dong Khe, where he was to meet the garrison from Cao Bang. From the perspective of Lang Son, the maneuver appeared perfectly feasible, even brilliant. But it was based on the fallacy that Le Page was threatened by only three Viet Minh battalions.

At five-thirty on the evening of October 2, the advance elements of Viet Minh caught a company of Moroccans by surprise and inflicted sixty casualties, while elsewhere mortar attacks and assaults announced that the Viet Minh were arriving in force. Nevertheless, the following morning Le Page assigned the Eleventh
tabor
and the Premier BEP the mission of holding Na Keo, an abrupt limestone ridge four hundred meters high; it paralleled the R.C. 4 for about a mile and therefore was supposed to offer a blocking position against the Viet Minh forces approaching from the east while he plunged west into the jungle with his remaining two
tabors
.

Giap realized that he had been handed a golden opportunity to destroy Task Force Bayard. While some of his forces tied down the paras and the Moroccans on Na Keo, others swept to the south and struck at Le Page's column as it struggled through the jungle. It was painfully clear that Constans had underestimated both the number and the abilities of the Viet Minh.

It was also obvious that perhaps for the first time in the war, the legionnaires were outgunned: Their heavy machine guns, Rebvel 31s, had been designed for the Maginot Line and were absolutely unsuited to mobile warfare; the grenades had no fuses and were therefore useless; and they had been issued a ridiculously small amount of ammunition for rifles, mortars, and light machine guns. The only thing that kept them alive as they clung to the top of Na Keo was the fact that the ridgeline was so narrow that the Viet Minh shells usually passed over their heads and fell harmlessly into the valley below. Nevertheless, constant attacks and machine-gunning by Viet Minh occupying peaks overlooking Na Keo caused considerable casualties.

At twelve-thirty on the morning of October 4, the Eleventh
tabor
withdrew from Na Keo, but it was badly cut up by the Viet Minh. Just before first light, the Premier BEP withdrew, following Le Page into the jungle. Their march was a calvary. Exhausted after three nights without sleep, the legionnaires hacked a passage through the dense foliage, hoisting the stretchers of the wounded up the precipitous cliffs only to lower them farther on.

For the next two days, without adequate maps and constantly harassed by the Viet Minh, the Le Page column made slow progress toward the valley of Cox Xa, where they expected to meet Charton. They reached the valley on October 5, and at five o'clock that evening Le Page made radio contact with Charton, grasping at the prospect of a meeting as if it were salvation itself.

When Lieutenant Colonel Charton had left Cao Bang at noon on October 3, this energetic legionnaire looked less like the commander of a military operation
than like Moses leading his people into the wilderness. His 1,600 soldiers and 1,000 irregulars advanced warily down the road, watching for ambushes. They were followed by a gaggle of families and townspeople, including the gar-rison's numerous prostitutes.

Had Charton departed earlier and marched faster, he might have arrived in time to help Le Page seize Dong Khe. As it was, Charton's column straggled unmolested along the R.C. 4 toward Dong Khe. However, at ten o'clock on the morning of October 4, as the head of his column completed the eighteen miles between Cao Bang and Nam Nang, a radio message informed him of Le Page's failure before leaving Dong Khe. Charton was ordered to leave the R.C. 4 and head southeast along the Quang Liet trail, where, he was told, Le Page waited for him on the ridges to the east of Cox Xa. Charton set about blowing up his trucks, cannon, and heavy equipment in preparation for plunging into the jungle.

Unfortunately, if the Quang Liet trail existed on the staff maps in Lang Son, no one at Nam Nang could find it. Charton decided to follow a stream that ran south from Nam Nang, but it was heavy going. His irregulars cut a path through the vegetation while his column followed single file. By nightfall they had covered five miles since morning. The next day, October 5, was much the same, except that the Viet Minh mounted a few small ambushes. On October 6 some of Charton's advance elements pushed forward, trying to make contact with Le Page, and ran into serious Viet Minh resistance. However, with his column strung out over almost four miles, and with the civilians in the middle preventing the third battalion of the
Troisieme etranger
in the rear from moving forward, Charton's ability to maneuver was severely limited.

In fact, he began to have an inkling that he and Le Page had filed into an enormous ambush. Fifteen Viet Minh battalions had blocked Le Page's escape toward That Khe and Charton's back toward Cao Bang. Le Page, exhausted, had settled into the valley of the Cox Xa, trusting in the apparent security provided by the ridges that surrounded him like the crumbling walls of Roman amphitheaters. But Giap's troops drew around him like a noose. In the blackness before dawn, the Premier BEP led a sacrificial attack to break out of the Cox Xa valley and join with Charton.

Despite their fatigue, this action was regarded as one of the legion's finest. Attacking across a succession of dips and stone ledges against murderous fire, the paratroopers managed to break out, though at enormous cost. The corridor, easily traceable in the dawn light by the bodies of dead legion paras,
quickly filled with Moroccans at the end of their psychological tether, crying, “Allah Akbar! Allah Akbar!” They fled over the rocks and down the cliff faces. Only 560 men of the Le Page column remained. Of the Premier BEP, only nine officers and 121 legionnaires were still alive, and many of these had been wounded.

The panicked and disheveled aspect of the survivors seriously lowered morale in Charton's group. At four o'clock in the afternoon, the Third
tabor
panicked and broke in the face of a feeble Viet Minh attack. The French force was dissolving into a mob. The only coherent unit that remained was the battalion of the
Troisieme etranger
. Charton moved south with it and with about three hundred Moroccans, avoiding the Viet Minh, until he was wounded and captured.

Le Page gathered the remaining battalion commanders around him, and they decided to break into small groups and flee toward That Khe. Only a handful of officers and a small group of men actually made it. Most went through the same experience as Hungarian legionnaire Janos Kemencei: Following the Song Ky Cung River, which flowed to That Khe, he periodically heard the rattle of automatic fire, followed by shrill Vietnamese voices crying,
“Rendezvous, soldats francais! Rendezvous, vous etes perdus!”
(“Give up, French soldiers! Give up, you're lost!”) He threw himself into the undergrowth when one of these fusillades erupted near him.
“Lai-Dai”
(“Come here”), a small Vietnamese said, the barrel of his gun pressed to Kemencei's forehead. Le Page surrendered to a Viet Minh officer who spoke excellent French, and who threw his arms around him in delight at capturing the commander of the French expedition.

The loss of the combined Le Page/Charton columns was bad enough in itself—of over 5,000 soldiers in the two groups, 12 officers and 475 men managed to escape to That Khe; only three officers and 21 legionnaires of the Premier BEP escaped death or capture. But when news of the debacle reached Hanoi, complete panic set in. Carpentier compounded the error he had made at Cao Bang by ordering the evacuation of That Khe in the face of strong Viet Minh forces moving to invest it. At six P
.
M. on October 10, the demoralized garrison of That Khe set out on the R.C. 4 for Lang Son, harassed by Viet Minh. The rear guard, made up of legion and colonial paratroopers, was cut off and forced into the jungle, where they suffered the fate of the Premier BEP. Only five paras managed to struggle into Lang Son.

But they had no time to linger. Colonel Constans, who, only days before, had held Viet Minh capabilities in utter contempt, now completely revised his
opinion. Claiming that fifteen to eighteen Viet Minh battalions were converging on Lang Son, and that French forces available to defend the garrison were utterly inadequate, he ordered Lang Son evacuated. Actually, Giap had been profoundly surprised by the scope of his victory, but his troops were in no state to take on Lang Son, which had adequate forces to defend it.

When he visited on October 14, even Alessandri found the atmosphere of panic reigning in Lang Son contagious. He hopped on a plane to Saigon and, in a dramatic night conference, convinced Carpentier that a disaster greater than that at Cao Bang stalked Lang Son. Orders from Paris to hold Lang Son caused Carpentier to countermand the withdrawal the following morning, but it was too late: Running scared, Constans and Alessandri began the evacuation anyway, and persuaded Carpentier in Saigon that it was the only viable option. By October 20 the Lang Son garrison had reached the delta without a shot being fired.

What the Viet Minh discovered when they strolled into the town varies according to the account one reads, but the booty was substantial. It included gasoline, uniforms, food, tons of rifle and artillery ammunition, machine guns and rifles by the thousands, and some say thirteen howitzers and an airplane— all told, enough to equip a Viet Minh brigade.

On November 3 the French garrison at Lao Cai on the Red River began a fighting retreat to the delta, leaving the Vietnamese frontier region completely in the hands of the Viet Minh. Between five and six thousand men had been thrown away in a matter of days in what French journalist Bernard Fall called the greatest French colonial defeat since Quebec in 1759.

The French disaster on the R.C. 4 was to have many consequences. In Washington it was decided that America should assume a more active role in the war. In Paris the government of Rene Pleven was tumbled by the news, the twelfth French Cabinet to fall since the beginning of the war and another indication of political confusion over France's goals in Indochina. The accelerated arrival of American arms, together with the appointment of Jean de Lattre de Tassigny as commander in chief and high commissioner in Indochina, gained some important breathing space for the French. Giap obliged his new foe by launching a series of offensives against the Tonkin Delta, offensives brilliantly parried by de Lattre.

However, most tragic for the French was that the R.C. 4 disaster could not be ascribed simply to bad luck or to the bad judgment and poor leadership of just a few local commanders. Although both Le Page and later Colonel Christian
de Castries at Dien Bien Phu proved to be mediocre commanders, the sad fact is that many of the errors and weaknesses revealed at the R.C. 4 were systemic ones that returned to haunt the French at Dien Bien Phu.

Perhaps the most significant French failure was their gross underestimation of the Viet Minh. In many respects, it was this contempt for the Vietnamese as soldiers—a contempt as old as the French Indochinese empire—that gave rise to many of the most spectacular French disasters; it caused them to undertake operations beyond their capacities. And when they did this, the weaknesses of their army were glaringly exposed: disagreements over strategic priorities in Paris, Saigon, and Hanoi; mediocre generalship; the paucity of their air force; often poor staff work and inadequate logistical capabilities; and the low morale of the heterogeneous imperial force, especially among their North African troops. In the final analysis, the only troops the French could count on in all circumstances were their paratroopers and legionnaires. And while these men were courageous, the courage of small numbers was not enough to swing the strategic balance.