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Title: Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard B. Fall ISBN: 0-306-81157-X Publisher: DaCapo Press Pub. Date: 16 April, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.71 (24 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Minor perspectives on Fall's book
Comment: Many will be surprised that Bernard Fall is considered by the French to be an American. He is perhaps the most well known of "French" authors of the period simply because he was among the very few writing in English. As for his book, it is certainly long, occasionally hard to read, but an important account of this politically significant battle.
Dien Bien Phu was not the first time that the French high command had tried to lure the Viet Minh battle corps into committing itself to a fight. De Lattre had done so at Hoa Binh in late '51 through early '52, and had found himself forced to withdraw French forces back to Hanoi after Giap shut the Black River and Colonial Route 6 main supply routes down. Giap emereged from Hoa Binh the winner, at least in the eyes of the junior officers who fought there. Later that year, the French tried the air-land base concept at Na San, further up the Black River on the road to Dien Bien Phu, but Salan was intelligent enough to declare victory and get out before the rainy season began in earnest.
It was Salan who launched the Dien Bien Phu operation, ostensibly for building a CGMA guerrilla base, who thereafter took his entire staff home and left Navarre and his newbies on the hook. Both sides still bitterly debate who really made the fateful decision to draw the line at Dien Bien Phu. What subsequently took place was the destruction of the French Strategic Reserve, not the French Army in Indochina itself. But, akin to our own Tet-68 battle, this translated into a Viet Minh victory in the political arena. The peace conference then convening in Geneva, gave them ample opportunity to exploit that.
Jules Roy's book, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, is another fine work, and while pertinent, both had very little to offer U.S. tactical fighters of the 1962-72 period. Our problem was that the "down in the trenches view" of that war, which would have been very useful, had yet to be penned by the Trinquiers, Loustaus, Cabiros, and Denois de St. Marcs, all of whom had left Indochina to go on to a further via-crucis in Algeria, followed by the 13 May 1958 revolt, the April 1961 Putsch, and either exile, jail, or early retirement into obscurity.
Theirs were the experiences that we really needed to study.
Rating: 5
Summary: This Epic Battle Ended 50 Years Ago
Comment: 2004 marks the 50th anniversary of the epic battle of Dien Bien Phu, easily one of the most significant military engagements of the 20th Century. It marked the end of French dominance in Indochina and the French Empire itself; propelled the aggressive USSR/Red Chinese backed Viet Minh into power in North Vietnam, then into conflict with the U.S. and its South Vietnamese ally; on to conflict with Cambodia and its former ally, China; and contributed to generally increased Cold War tensions from Korea to Germany; North Africans who fought for the French in Viet Nam were soon fighting against them back in Algeria.
I read the entire book, which is something of a challenge since there is arguably too much information in this 500 page, small type face work. The days of the pre-battle preparation and the 58-day siege itself are told in great detail and with dozens of similar-sounding small unit abbreviations and difficult-for-most-Americans to remember French and other foreign names. It's almost overwhelming and one is tempted to skip a lot of it, but the hundreds of details and vignettes give the reader a cumulative impression of the thousands of actual details and vignettes experienced by the combatants (from the French forces' perspective) that actually comprised the unimaginable, for anyone without infantry experience, hellish experience.
The approximately 20,000 men in the French Forces' represent a startling diversity of nationalities. It was, after all, a colonial French force. The initial garrison had only 13% French Mainland troops, although since a third of the volunteers who jumped in as replacements during the siege were French the total French Mainland representation was about 18%. The largest number of troops were Foreign Legion (26%, mostly German, Eastern European and Spanish) and Vietnamese Regulars (27%), followed by North Africans (18% of the initial garrison, almost none of the volunteer replacements, mostly Algerian and Moroccan) and the remainder were Vietnamese "auxiliaries" (upcountry ethnic groups, 10%) and less than 2% sub-Saharan Africans. The North Africans sustained the highest casualty rate, 68% of their numbers were killed, missing or wounded and the Foreign Legion casualty rate was nearly 60%. French Mainlanders who were only 18% of the battle force comprised 25% of those killed. There were about 12,000 total casualties before the 360 mile death march to POW camps and many more deaths.
Clearly, the besieged troops fought gallantly and fearsomely - Viet Minh casualties were perhaps four times higher - but the initial French strategy, if you can call it that, of drawing the Viet Minh to a remote battlefield with little strategic importance seems idiotic and the logistical execution was, at best, mediocre. French fortifications were pathetically inadequate and only after the battle began did officers request instruction manuals for building fortified trenches! The initial Viet Minh artillery barrage was so unexpectedly overwhelming, despite surprisingly accurate pre-battle intelligence about Viet Minh capabilities, that the French artillery colonel who bragged Viet Minh guns would never touch French Forces committed suicide shortly after the battle started.
A few French idiosyncrasies will astound American veterans. Within the fortress throughout the battle were two official French Army Mobile Brothels, one with Vietnamese women and the other with Algerians. Although they couldn't bring in enough engineering materials to properly fortify their positions the French made room on pre-battle supply flights for 45,000 gallons of wine, and then airdropped additional French Army-developed wine concentrate during the battle itself, causing troops to mount aggressive missions into Viet Minh lines to liberate wine concentrate that fell outside the fort!
Both sides fought with American equipment. Most of the French artillery, radios, vehicles, aircraft and even one aircraft carrier that supported the garrison came from the U.S. The Viet Minh got lots of American artillery and other supplies the Chinese had captured in Korea, where a cease fire occurred less than nine months before the battle started. During the battle about 10% of the Viet Minh ammunition came from air drops that fell into Viet Minh lines, often from C-119s piloted by American civilians.
As the situation deteriorated the French begged the United States to unleash B-29s to carpet bomb the Viet Minh. More than 60 bombers plus jet escorts staged on Okinawa and in the Philippines (some reportedly repainted in French colors), USAF officers made planning flights over the battlefield, and two U.S. carriers deployed to what 10 years later would be called Yankee Station in the Tonkin Gulf. In the end Eisenhower, as well as the British, declined to intervene in support of the French, a fact that contributed to France all but dropping out of NATO.
In a section about the French forces' experience in Communist POW camps Fall describes how during the battle Viet Minh political commissars gathered prisoners every morning to tell them details about how badly the battle had gone the prior day for French Forces. POWs who agreed to sit in a special section and cheer each time a piece of bad news or casualty count regarding the French forces was read got extra food and medicine and did not have to work so hard. The Communist captors awarded such prisoners who cheered their own side's losses with the title of "progressives." It reminds me a little too mcuh of some self-styled "progressives" in the U.S. in 2004.
The grainy black and white photo reproductions are interesting, especially seeing the pictures of some of the warriors - man, some of those French generals had big noses! Sketch maps throughout the book supposedly illustrate the battlefield and how the lines evolved over time but I found them incomprehensible.
Highly recommended for military history and Cold War buffs or military veterans. Anyone who thinks things aren't going so well in Afghanistan or Iraq needs to read this for a sense of perspective.
Rating: 5
Summary: Interesting Battle
Comment: Great book by all accounts. Gripping alright, and I couldn't put it down even through the "build-up" stage which some readers (I gather from the reviews here I've read) find boring. Once the battle starts you just won't go to sleep. It also (and this is very important) stays true to the facts and I find Fall an honest historian, which is rare and refreshing. I recomend some further reading on some of the main protagonists in the battle like Dr.Grauwin (wrote a book himself), Godard, Giap, but aspecially Bigeard who went on to greater things in Algeria and elsewhere and ended up a full general. The man is still alive.
I found the book interesting for other reasons too. I'm not French, American or Vietnamese. I spend six months each year in the United States and observed the last year's anti-French campaign there. I found it destasteful. I hope Americans who read this book will reject the portrayal of the French as cowards, for what the French paratroopers did at Dien Bien Phu and how they fought was nothing short of heroic. I also hope that these readers will go on to read other books on history of France and study them carefully. They will find that the French are not just good soldiers (in fact, just as good as anybody), but a truly interesting and great nation too, perhaps closer to you, Americans, than it would appear. After all, they fought for your independence too.
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Title: Street Without Joy by Bernard B. Fall ISBN: 0811717003 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Battle of Dienbienphu by Jules Roy, Ralph Wetterhahn, Neil Sheehan ISBN: 0786709588 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Last Reflections on a War: Bernard B. Fall's Last Comments on Vietnam by Bernard B. Fall, Don Oberdorfer ISBN: 0811709043 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 (Penguin History) by Alistair Horne ISBN: 0140170413 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow ISBN: 0140265473 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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