battle of dien

Stephen Decatur, American naval hero during actions against the Barbay pirates and the War of 1812. Today, 10 years after Dien Bien Phu, Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam again challenge the West’s ability to withstand a potent combination of political and military pressure in a totally alien environment. While their commander, Brig. Some of the American civilian pilots who flew the run said that Viet Minh flak was as dense as anything encountered during World War II over the Ruhr River. This article was originally published in the April 2004 issue of Vietnam Magazine. In the latter epic, Fall describes in extraordinary detail not only the failures but also the heroism that took place in what he calls one of the most decisive battles of the 20th century. Still, as the French themselves demonstrated in Algeria, where they never again let themselves be maneuvered into such desperate military straits, revolutionary wars are fought for political objectives, and big showdown battles are necessary neither for victory nor for defeat in that case. In 1953, in order to engage in field research for his doctoral dissertation, he traveled to war-torn Indochina. There were other considerations also. 4. You’re not going to shoot anymore? Fall is an account of one of the most significant battles to take place in Vietnam. They can be lost just as conclusively through a series of very small engagements, such as those now fought in South Vietnam, if the local government and its population lose confidence in the eventual outcome of the contest — and that was the case both for the French and for their Vietnamese allies after Dien Bien Phu. They became known as the ‘Rats of Nam Yum.’. Both his parents were killed by the Nazis in World War II. Originally, the fortress had been designed to protect its main airstrip against marauding Viet Minh units, not to withstand the onslaught of four Communist divisions. I feel the end is approaching, but we will fight to the finish. The Viet Minh victory in this battle effectively ended the eight-year-old war. What you have done is too magnificent to do such a thing. For all practical purposes the Indochina War was lost then and there. Rabindra Hazari. ‘Unstoppable waves’ of 25,000 machine gun-toting Việt Minh infantry engaged the last 3,000 able-bodied French garrison soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat in and around the trenches and ruined fortification and by the afternoon of May 7th, it was over. At the same time Việt Minh commander Võ Nguyên Giáp, widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s finest military strategists, blocked all roads in and out of the town so it became only accessible by air. On May 7, 1954, the end of the battle for the jungle fortress of Dien Bien Phu marked the end of French military influence in Asia, just as the sieges of Port Arthur, Corregidor and Singapore had, to a certain extent, broken the spell of Russian, American and British hegemony in Asia. ©2020 AETN UK. And to destroy those divisions and prevent their invasions into Laos, one had to, in American military parlance, find ’em and fix ’em. The airdrops were a harrowing experience in that narrow valley, which permitted only straight approaches. They were so successful that, at the ensuing Geneva cease-fire conference, Cambodia did not have to surrender a province as a regroupment area for Communist forces. The defence of Dien Bien Phu was a gamble, whose odds were not understood by the French. His Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu and Street Without Joy are still on the short list of the most essential books about the French phase of the war, and are indispensable to understanding the American phase. Victory in Battle of Dien Bien Phu. All right, mon général, I only wanted to preserve the wounded. This article by the late Bernard B. Don’t spoil it by hoisting the white flag. The U.S.A were about to take on the struggle to control Vietnam. Fall was born in 1926 and grew up in France. At 9:40 p.m., a French surveillance aircraft reported to Hanoi that it saw the strongpoint’s depots blowing up and that heavy artillery fire was visible close by. Battalion commander Nguyen Dung Chi recalled the events of the final hours of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu: ‘The assault ended in hand-to-hand fighting ... We couldn't see anything any longer, we didn't try to take aim, we just moved forward, jumping from trench to trench, stepping on bodies.’, ‘Silence had fallen on Dien Bien Phu. Essentially, the battle of Dien Bien Phu degenerated into a brutal artillery duel, which the enemy would have won sooner or later. You will fight to the end. Viet Minh soldiers assault French positions at Muong Thanh airport during the battle of Dien Bien Phu in April 1954. The net effect of Dien Bien Phu on France’s military posture in Indochina could not be measured in losses alone. In that case, I’ll fortify the command post, the signal center, and the X-ray room in the hospital; and let’s hope that the Viet has no artillery. But ultimately, it would not end the fighting immediately or in the long term, with decades of war in Vietnam yet to come In an effort to bring the war to an end, both sides threw everything into one final and ultimately decisive fight – the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Cogny: Well understood. Written by frankfob2@yahoo.com Plot Summary | Add Synopsis Soon after French forces arrived at Dien Bien Phu on November 20, 1953, two of General Vo Nguyen Giap’s regular 10,000-man divisions blocked the Dien Bien Phu garrison, while a third bypassed Dien Bien Phu and smashed deep into Laos. Well, good-bye, mon vieux, said Cogny. The French army would establish a fortified airhead by air-lifting soldiers adjacent to a key Vie… The battle of Dien Bien Phu began in 1953, when General Navarre fortified the valley of Dien Bien Phu, which lay in an isolated corner of northwestern Vietnam. Trip Historic is a community-based historic destinations site run by history enthusiasts who are passionate about the web. After eight years of fighting and with the French strategists propped up by American money, they tried tactic after unsuccessful tactic but eventually ran out of ideas. As a former French soldier he was allowed to accompany French forces on combat operations in all sectors of the country. The French had nothing – and virtually no-one – left. When, on March 13, 1954, at 5:10 p.m., Communist artillery smothered strongpoint Beatrice without noticeable damage from French counterbattery fire, Piroth knew the fortress was doomed. Battle of Dien Bien Phu. When Viet Minh forces overran Dien Bien Phu on May 7, 1954, it was, according to Fall, the end of French military influence in Asia. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. And all around them, as on some gruesome Judgment Day, soldiers, French and enemy alike, began to crawl out of their trenches and stand erect for the first time in 54 days, as firing ceased everywhere. Describing the scene to journalist Wilfred Burchett, Hồ Chí Minh took off his helmet, turned it upside down and said ‘Down here is the valley of Dien Bien Phu. It was becoming increasingly obvious that this war was unwinnable. Battle music: Vietnamese soldiers pull a heavy cannon over a slope to the battle of Dien Bien Phu. To compound matters, almost 6,000 soldiers fighting for France (made up of French, Foreign Legion and Africans of French descent) deserted to caves along the banks of the Nam Yum River, occasionally popping their heads up to steal supplies dropped for the men who stood and fought. Few would survive. In November 1953 General Henri Navarre, commander of French forces in Indochina, ordered the French Expeditionary Force’s parachute battalions to garrison and fortify an old Japanese airstrip – known as Operation Castor – and within weeks it was transformed into a major military base with nine separate camps. To achieve this, the French commander in chief, General Henri Navarre, had to win a victory over the hard core of Communist regular divisions, whose continued existence posed a constant threat of invasion to the Laotian kingdom and to the vital Red River Delta with its capital city of Hanoi and the thriving port of Haiphong. Then the rains came, and don’t think April showers on a spring day. That was the rationale for the creation of a garrison at Dien Bien Phu and for the battle that took place there. Dien Bien Phu was to be the lock on the back door leading into Laos. By the time the battle started in earnest on March 13, 1954, the garrison already had suffered 1,037 casualties without any tangible result. In 1965 Fall again spent the summer with American and Vietnamese forces in South Vietnam. Not long after, a white flag was hoisted high from a rifle over Colonel Christian de Castries’ bunker, not 20 metres from a flat-helmeted Việt Minh soldier. What had happened at Dien Bien Phu was simply that a momentous gamble had been attempted by the French high command and had backfired badly. In fact, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu is one of the most significant, not just of the 1950s where supposedly nothing much happened, but of the entire 20th century. Not long after, the Americans rocked up but that’s for another time. Umberto Eco, Italian novelist (The Name of the Rose). World. But Navarre, an armor officer formed on the European battlefields, apparently (this was the judgment of the French government committee that later investigated the disaster) had failed to realize that there are no blocking positions in [a] country lacking European-type roads. ‘Unstoppable waves’ of 25,000 machine gun-toting Việt Minh infantry engaged the last 3,000 able-bodied French garrison soldiers in brutal hand-to-hand combat. A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called ‘Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu. Within weeks, the French position in northern Vietnam had shrunk to a fortified perimeter around the Red River Delta, a continuous belt of Communist-held territory from the Chinese border to within 100 miles of Saigon. On May 7, 1954, however, the struggle for Indochina was almost over for France. Exact figures are understandably hard to come by and may never be known but officially, just 3,290 men were repatriated some four months later. You are going to be submerged [by the enemy], but no surrender, no white flag. In amongst all theperma-famous culture references was the line ‘Dien Bien Phu falls, Rock Around the Clock’ and it’s probably fair to say that this one may have got some people stumped. The interlocking fire of their artillery and mortars, supplemented by a squadron of 10 tanks (flown in piecemeal and reassembled on the spot), was to prevent them from being picked off one by one. But with the existence of a Red Chinese sanctuary for the Viet Minh forces, that became militarily impossible. On June 05, 1974, Ambassador Martin retransmitted to the Secretary of State a cablegram dated June 04, 1974 that he received from Richard Peters, the American Consul General of Bien Hoa, who sent to him a report on the situation of the fighting at An Dien hamlet on June 04, after he had talked on the phone with Major General Hieu, III Corps Deputy Commander. Trip Historic was designed to give users a smooth and simple experience that will allow them to find the historic places they’re looking for, from the most well-known sites in the world to incredible historical locations that can’t be found in the guide books. While the main defenses of Dien Bien Phu were being mopped up, strong Viet Minh forces already had tightened their grip around the 1,000 Legionnaires, Algerians and Frenchmen preparing their breakout. A few minutes later, de Castries’ radio operator methodically smashed his set with the butt of his Colt .45 pistol. One cannot understand the full significance of the battle of Dien Bien Phu without situating it in its Franco-Vietnamese, international, and military dimensions. The combat is confused and goes on all about. The mighty monsoons transformed the camps from dry dustbowls into memories of the Somme or Passchendaele – a flooded valley floor and trenches filled with water, mud, disease and increasing despair. A conflict between Communist Viet Minh forces and a French-established garrison, it occurred in a town called Seat of the Border County Prefecture or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu. By 3 p.m., however, it had become obvious that the fortress would not last until nightfall. Fall will be remembered by history as one of the foremost authorities on the Vietnam War. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu (French: Bataille de Diên Biên Phu pronounced [bataj də djɛn bjɛn fy]; Vietnamese: Chiến dịch Điện Biên Phủ, IPA: [ɗîəˀn ɓīən fû]) was a climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War that took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954. Their century of colonial rule in Indochina – now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia – was over. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is seen as the decisive battle of the First Indochina War between French troops and the Viet Minh (League for the Independence of Vietnam), a nationalist, pro-Soviet Union movement of Ho Chi Minh. With the Allied invasion of Europe, Fall joined the French army, serving in the infantry and pack artillery of the 4th Moroccan Mountain Division. By October 1950, 23 regular Viet Minh battalions, equipped with excellent American artillery coming from Chinese Nationalist stocks left on the mainland, smashed the French defense lines along the Chinese border and inflicted on France its biggest colonial defeat since Montcalm died before Quebec in 1759. Simultaneously, Navarre had been searching for a way to stop the Viet Minh threat to Laos. He gained firsthand guerrilla warfare experience while fighting in the French Underground from 1942 to 1944. Au revoir. Even the fact, which the unfortunate Navarre invoked later, that the attack on Dien Bien Phu cost the enemy close to 25,000 casualties and delayed its attack on the vital Red River Delta by four months, held little water in the face of the wave of defeatism that swept not only French public opinion at home but also that of her allies. The great battle in the valley of Dien Bien Phu was over. Immediately after the battle ended, the Việt Minh counted 11,721 prisoners which included 4,436 wounded. A few figures tell how murderous the air war around Dien Bien Phu was: Of the 420 aircraft available in all of Indochina then, 62 were lost in connection with Dien Bien Phu and 167 sustained hits. The Indochina War, which had broken out in December 1946 after Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces felt that France would not agree to Vietnam’s eventual independence, had bogged down into a hopeless seesaw. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which took place in northern Vietnam in 1954, marked a major turning point in both the First Indochina War between France and the Viet Minh independence movement and the general position of European colonial powers in South-East Asia. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! The town of Dien Bien Phu sits in Vietnam’s north-western corner on the border with Laos. Belligerents: France & The State of Vietnam vs Viet Minh, ‘You were a kid in the fifties and everybody knows that nothing happened in the fifties.’. When the battle ended, the 82,926 parachutes expended in supplying the fortress covered the battlefield like freshly fallen snow — or like a burial shroud. Major André Sudrat, the chief engineer at Dien Bien Phu, was faced with a problem that he knew to be mathematically unsolvable. The siege occurred while the 1954 Geneva Conference was ironing out agreements between the major powers, including the future of Indochina. The day after the battle ended, the Geneva Conference convened with the intention, amongst other geopolitical issues, to settle the outstanding issues brought about by the Korean and First Indochina Wars. Historically, Dien Bien Phu was, as one French senior officer masterfully understated, never more than an unfortunate accident.

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