Table Of ContentBERNARD B. FALL
To Dorothy
who lived with the ghosts of Dien Bien Phu for three long years
THERE HAVE been, even in recent history, many sieges which lasted longer than the French Union
garrison's defense of a small town in the northeastern corner of Viet-Nam with the unlikely name of "Seat
of the Border County Prefecture," or, in Vietnamese, Dien Bien Phu.
The French reoccupation of the valley lasted a total of 209 days, and the actual siege 56 days. The
Germans held Stalingrad for 76 days, while the Americans held Bataan for 66 days and Corregidor for
26; British and Commonwealth troops defended Tobruk once for 241 days. The record World War II
siege was no doubt that of the French coastal fortress of Lorient, held by German troops for 270 days
from 1944 until VE-day. Many of the major sieges of recent years involved large numbers of troops on
both sides: there were 330,000 German troops encircled at Stalingrad at the beginning of the siege, and
the Soviet troops which encircled them numbered over one million. In comparison, Dien Bien Phu, with a
garrison which barely exceeded 13,000 men at any one moment, and a Viet-Minh siege force totaling
49,500 combatants and 55,000 support troops, could hardly qualify as a major battle, let alone a decisive
one.
Yet that is exactly what it was, and in a way which makes it one of the truly decisive battles of the
twentieth century-in the same sense that the First Battle of the Marne, Stalingrad, and Midway were
decisive in their times: although hostilities continued after the particular battle-sometimes for years-the
whole "tone" of the conflict, as it were, had changed. One of the sides in the conflict had lost its chance of
attaining whatever it had sought to gain in fighting the war.
This was true for the French after they had lost the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The French Indochina War
had dragged on indecisively since December 19, 1946, and reluctantly-far too reluctantly to derive any
political or psychological benefit from the gesture-the French granted the non-Communist regime of ex-
emperor Bao Dai some of the appurtenances but little of the reality of national independence. In fact, as
the war bit deeper into the vitals of the French,professional army and consumed an ever-rising amount of
France's postwar treasure (it finally cost France about $10 billion, in addition to $954 million of United
States aid actually expended in Indochina prior to July, 1954), it became increasingly clear that France
had entirely lost sight of any clearly definable war aims. General Henri-Eugene Navarre, the unfortunate
French commander-in-chief at the time of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, was to argue later in his book
Agonie de l'Indochine that there were two acceptable but contradictory war aims: France could be
expected to fight the Indochina War alone but with all her might only if the Indochina States would accept
a "special relationship" that would justify the expenditure in blood and money that would entail-and if
they were willing to help in the fight to the utmost of their abilities. If, on the other hand, the Indochina
War had become an integral part of the world-wide struggle, led by the United States, for the containment
of communism, all other nations concerned with stopping communism had an obligation equal to that of
France to participate in the struggle.*
It is because the United States herself now takes precisely that latter position that Secretary of State
Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara went to Paris in December, 1965, to plead for
greater and more direct support by America's NATO allies in the struggle the United States has been
shouldering almost exclusively (with the exception of the South Vietnamese Army and minor contingents
from a few small nations). The results, apparently, were negligible.
In contrast to the United States, France never had the strength for a large-scale unilateral commitment,
and knew that public opinion at home, as well as war weariness among the nationals upon whose territory
the war was being fought (a factor that appears to be too often forgotten now), demanded that a short-
range solution to the conflict be found. Or, barring victory, that a situation be created in which the national
armies of the Associated States of Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam could deal with Communist guerrilla
remnants once the French regulars had destroyed the enemy's main battle forces in a series of major
engagements.
Contrary also to the American Chief Executive who is able to commit American troops in unlimited
numbers in undeclared overseas wars, the French Parliament, by an amendment to the Budget Law of
1950, restricted the use of draftees to French "homeland" territory (i.e., France and Algeria, and the
French-occupied areas of Germany), thus severely limiting the number of troops that could be made
available to the Indochina theater of operations. Caught in a web of conflicting commitments and
priorities-NATO and communism in Europe vs. containment in a peripheral area of Asia-the ever-
changing governments of the French Fourth Republic shortchanged all of them : the French units in
Europe, gutted of the bulk of their regular cadres, were unusable in the event of war, and the regulars sent
to Indochina were scarcely more than skeleton units to be hastily brought up to strength by locally
recruited troops. When General Navarre, upon assuming command in May, 1953, requested 12 infantry
battalions and various supporting units, along with 750 more officers and 2,550 noncommissioned
officers for his already understrength units, he finally received 8 battalions, 320 officers and 200
noncommissioned officers-and was told that the "reinforcements" were in fact an advance on the
replacements he would have received the following year for 1953 combat losses.
In the meantime, the enemy was getting stronger by the day, particularly in well-trained, regular combat
divisions that could take on anything the French could oppose them with. Twelve years later, the North
Vietnamese were still unafraid to take on the best forces the United States can muster. With the Korean
war terminated in a stalemate in July, 1953, Chinese instructors and Chinese-provided Russian and
American equipment began to arrive in North Viet-Nam en masse. The enemy now had seven mobile
divisions and one full-fledged artillery division. and more were likely to come rapidly from the Chinese
divisional training camps near Ching-Hsi and Nanning. It therefore became imperative for the French to
destroy at least a large part of the enemy's main battle force as rapidly as possible. This was feasible only
if the French could induce the enemy to face up to them in a set-piece battle, by offering the Viet-Minh a
target sufficiently tempting to pounce at, but sufficiently strong to resist the onslaught once it came. It was
an incredible gamble, for upon its success hinged not only the fate of the French forces in Indochina and
France's political role in Southeast Asia, but the survival of Viet-Nam as a non-Communist state and, to a
certain extent, that of Laos and Cambodia as well-and perhaps (depending on the extent to which one
accepts the "falling dominoes" theory) the survival of some sort of residual Western presence in the vast
mainland area between Calcutta, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
This book is the history of that gamble. When the general editor for the Great Battles Series, the
eminent military historian and writer Hanson W. Baldwin, approached me in 1962 with the assignment, I
undertook it with great trepidation. I realized, from previous research on far less sensitive aspects of the
Indochina War, that it would be extremely difficult to piece together a reasonably accurate picture of what
actually happened at Dien Bien Phu without access to the existing military archives. A perusal of the
available literature, with its obvious contradictions and errors, only increased my concern. In presenting
the French authorities with my request for access to the documentation, I emphasized that any
scientifically accurate account of what actually occurred at Dien Bien Phu would hardly constitute a
complimentary picture of French political or military leadership in the Far East at that time. But, I argued,
the myths and misinformation that had hardened into "fact" over the years would not only distort history
irremediably but also prevent others who have a more immediate concern with Viet-Nam from
understanding present-day events which in many ways are shaped by events at Dien Bien Phu in the spring
of 1954.
Pending authorization for access to the official documentation, I proceeded to make my contacts with
survivors of the battle. There were a relatively large number of French survivors available. Since
Frenchmen held all command positions on the friendly side, they would be of prime importance in the
telling of the story. But as I was to find out later, as is often the case when survivors retell their own
experience to different listeners at different times, there were understandable gaps and biases in their
accounts, some of them based on service rivalries. A paratrooper would feel that his units bore the brunt
of the fighting; an officer from the Foreign Legion would be certain that it was his men who became the
mainstay of the defense. There were officers of units that fared badly, according to most accounts, who
were willing to affirm that such accounts were ill-founded. In addition, no account of Dien Bien Phu
(including the one which follows) can remain totally uninfluenced by the bitter debate (which erupted in a
court trial in Paris) between the then French commander-in-chief in Indochina, General Navarre, and his
direct subordinate in North Viet-Nam, Major General Rene Cogny. Almost every survivor has taken sides
in that dispute and, to a certain extent, the surviving archival documentation may have been affected by it.
I soon found to my surprise that no one apparently had sought to secure the views of the almost seventy
per cent of the garrison who were not French: Legionnaires, North Africans, and Vietnamese. Here, also,
I met with almost incredible kindness and understanding under most difficult circumstances. Less than one
year after having won its independence from France in a bloody war that had lasted even longer than the
Indochina War, the Algerian Republic permitted me to interview members of the Algerian armed forces
who had served at Dien Bien Phu and who, in many cases, had fought against France in Algeria. In 1962,
in Communist North Viet-Nam, I had no difficulty in meeting men who would proudly speak of their
victory over France. They were easily recognizable because they still wore, even on their civilian
clothes, a special insignia awarded them by President Ho Chi Minh on the occasion of the victory. As it
turned out, my own driver had been a machine-gunner there. In South Viet-Nam, and in France, a number
of non-Communist Vietnamese survivors responded to newspaper advertisements I had placed. One
customs official at Tahiti Airport had been at Dien Bien Phu; a German Foreign Legionnaire was found
near Napoleon's Tomb; another was mentioned in a New York Times article dealing with travel in the
Sahara.
When the authorization to consult the archives was finally granted in 1963 by Monsieur Pierre
Messmer, the French Minister of the Armed Forces, I had been stricken by a near-fatal disease. But in
1964-65, thanks to a small research grant from Howard University, I was able to complete my
documentary research. Let it be said from the outset that almost all the documents that were in Dien Bien
Phu (war diaries, written messages from one unit to another, etc.) were destroyed before the fortress fell,
or have since fallen into Communist hands. Also, only the Viet-Nam People's Army-the North Vietnamese
Army which was still being referred to as the "Viet-Minh" in 1954-proceeded with a methodical
interrogation of all the survivors immediately after the battle. Only General Vo Nguyen Giap, in Hanoi, is
truly qualified to write this book, but because of his many other preoccupations, Ile has thus far published
only a few superficial brochures on the subject.
The French archives, which are still being sorted out in part (the excellent staff of the Service
Historique de l'Armee is minute and, in accordance with its own work schedule, is largely limited by the
fiftyyear rule on in extenso publication of recent documents), are fairly complete in terms of military
plans, records of attempts to relieve the fortress, and its logistics for the period up to March 24, 1954,
when the fortress was cut off from the outside world. Most documents after that date are copies of the
radio traffic between Hanoi and Dien Bien Phu. An unknown quantity (said to be small) of documents is
in the hands of the French government commission which investigated the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. Some
documents not found in the archives, though of an official character, obviously are in the possession of
some of the major actors in the drama, since they were published in certain French hooks which took
sides in the Navarre-Cogny dispute. Finally, the separate archives of the French Navy and the French Air
Force yielded much relevant data on the vital air-power aspects of the battle.
With that documentation in hand, the interviewing and, in many cases, later correspondence with most
of the tactical commanders proved extremely rewarding. Unfortunately, except in rare instances, I was
unable to interview two or more than two of the officers simultaneously -for the good reason that the
survivors are now dispersed all over France. The collective-interview method, used particularly by the
eminent military historian Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall, is singularly helpful in reconstituting
confused and swiftly changing actions-and there were many of them at Dien Bien Phu. In one particular
instance, it took the concurring affirmation of several officers to pinpoint a position that had been
erroneously located on the set of official maps prepared by the French Army after the battle. This does not
mean that the present volume closes every information gap about the Battle of Dien Bien Phu; too many
men have taken their secrets to the grave, too many documents are missing, and too many myths have
already taken shape as facts. But my own notes and tape recordings of interviews were not seen, much
less approved or censored, by anyone. All conversations and statements in the text are direct quotes, not
my reconstructions of them. And if the trite phrase "telling the truth without fear or favor" has any
meaning, it can in all fairness be applied here.
To give credit here to my numerous sources of information would be embarrassing to many in their
present positions and would, in fact, ask them to share responsibility for the views I express here and
which I must alone assume in full. But I must give thanks to the unfailing courtesy of the chiefs and
personnel of the Historical Services of the French Army, Navy, and Air Force, for sharing their modest
facilities with an outsider; to Major Jean Pouget, a retired French officer and author of the excellent Nous
etions a Dien Bien Phu, who did not hesitate to place at my disposal some of his personal documentation;
to Colonel Jules Roy, whose trail-blazing La Bataille de Dien Bien Phu proved often useful in cross-
checking facts; to Hanson W. Baldwin for his deft and patient editing; to Mrs. Jewell Tait for struggling
heroically with French abbreviations and Vietnamese place names while typing the manuscript; and to
Dorothy for nursing me back to health and for putting up with a husband who mentally, for over three
years, spent most of his time in a small and very green North Vietnamese valley.
Preface Vii
I I NATASHA I
II BASE AERO-TERRESTRE 22
III SORTIES 53
IV SIEGE 87
V ASSAULT 125
VI STRANGULATION 191
VII ASPHYXIATION 225
VIII ISABELLE ALONE 279
IX VULTURE, CONDOR, AND ALBATROSS 293
X CASTOR DIES 327
XI FINALE 412
XII EPILOGUE 450
Post f ace 464
Notes 467
Appendix A: The Order of Battle 479
Appendix B: French Losses 483
Appendix C: The Role of Airpower 485
Appendix D: Viet-Nam People's Army 486
Appendix E: French Military Abbreviations 488
Bibliography 491
Index 493
