>> Part 1: The grasshopper versus the elephant
>> Part 2: Tunnels and trenches
>> Part 3: The battle of Dien Bien Phu
>> Part 4: Bleeding the elephant
>> Part 5: Those are hills with a strong burning smell
In part two of a series on Dien Bien Phu\'s historical battle, Laura Lam details both sides preparations.
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| French outposts at Dien Bien Phu |
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| Map with Dien Bien Phu |
When French troops started pouring into Dien Bien Phu, Vo Nguyen Giap knew that if he could just make enough artillery available to his troops, the French could be completely cut off there. Because the French depended so heavily on air support, their men would be in a severely disadvantaged position.
By contrast, with the open valley plain on which the French hoped to fight a conventional battle, the surrounding mountains and jungles were ideal for the Viet Minh to conceal their weapons. The greatest challenge for the Viet Minh would be how to move heavy artillery uphill manually across the vast jungle territory, over several mountain ranges, and into camouflaged positions in the hills surrounding French troops. They worked in secret and mostly at night. But the freezing fog would come down the hills into the valleys every evening, presenting another challenge.
Since the tracks were so narrow, if there was a slight deviation of the truck’s wheels, a gun would fall into a deep ravine. They would open a new track, in ankle deep bog. With tremendous effort, they would rebuild the tracks and patiently and quietly, over many weeks, would haul the artillery into position. To climb a slope, hundreds of men and women crept in front of the guns, tugging on long ropes, pulling up little by little. For the whole night they could move a gun from 500 to 1000 meters from where it was started. Every time the French suspected troop movements, they sent aircraft to bomb the area and to destroy the transport line. Many died under the exploding bombs.
Yet, to the eventual astonishment of their enemy and at huge sacrifice, the Vietnamese succeeded in getting all their cannons into the right hilltop positions – to encircle the French and the landing strips on which French troops depended so totally.
Giap communicated with his battalion commanders from a simple headquarters in the nearby forest. He worked and lived inside a tiny hut at the bottom of a hill. The room was furnished with a wooden table, two rattan chairs, and a small bed with a dried hay mattress. He spent most of the time in this hut and would go down into a tunnel every time there was an air raid.
The French position in the valley included a central stronghold, surrounded by eight main outposts named after Colonel Castries’ mistresses (Gabrielle, Beatrice, Anne-Marie, Huguette, Claudine, Eliane, Dominique, and Isabelle) and 49 strongpoints. The centre of Dien Bien Phu contained five jungle-covered hills and below it was the heart-shaped Muong Thanh green field. The difficulty for the Vietnamese was how to attack the centre and the south across an open plain raked by heavy artillery fire and protected by tanks. They would only succeed by way of tunnels and trenches. The digging had already begun during the winter months, mostly in the night. A woman volunteer for the tunnel work expressed her group’s dedication:
Up and down, by the torch’s dimmed light
Crawling and scooping in the dark underground
The hoes are turning over, the earth is cracking and falling
One row of men, one row of women
Who works faster tonight?
Oh! Brothers and Sisters, we must be speedy
Tonight the cold wind is piercing through our skin
The bright moon has already faded behind the hilltop
But we are still here, crawling and kneeling at the tunnel
The great battle was to begin on March 13, 1954. A few days before, Colonel de Castries requested an increase of three battalions. But he didn’t know that the Viet Minh had already completed much tunneling, and their devastating artillery now surrounded the valley and its airstrips. The Vietnamese would begin their serious attacks in the afternoon, late enough to make it impossible for the French to call in air support before dark.
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| Viet Minh \'s food supply to Dien Bien Phu |
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| Transporting food to Dien Bien Phu by bicyle |
Major General Rene Cogny, Navarre’s talkative commander in Ha Noi, leaked some military secrets to the press in Paris that included knowledge of the movements of Viet Minh troops. As soon as Giap learned this, he changed his signal coding and some strategies of his army.
On the morning of March 12, Cogny made his last visit to Dien Bien Phu for the preparation. He saw a large number of trenches ahead of the French position. Standing on one of the hills, Cogny watched the French assault on the Viet Minh’s trenches and the capturing of some weapons. But this battle was not about trenches. It was going to be about tunnels, and heavy artillery, and the isolation of a foreign army in the proprietor’s land.
Following the French military tradition, a French mobile field brothel, which was part of the bordel militaire de campagne (BMC) had arrived in Dien Bien Phu two months earlier. The prostitutes were flown into the camps and placed under the care of the medical officers of the Foreign Legion. Excited French troops volunteered to set up quarters to accommodate the women. But the battle was soon to become relentless and very few men from the combat units would have a chance for leisure or companionship.