Where the Domino Fell - America And Vietnam 1945-1995 (8 page)

Navarre placed Colonel Christian de Castries in command of Dien- bienphu. The aristocrat, horseman, and athlete Castries had won several European high jump and long jump championships in the mid- 1930s. During World War II he made the transition from cavalry to armor and was wounded several times. The Germans captured him in 1941, but he escaped in 1944 and rejoined French fighting forces. Known to show off at parties by chewing glass, Castries declared that life was sweet if a man “had a horse to ride, an enemy to kill, and a woman in his bed”

Beginning in November 1953, Castries supervised the construction of the base at Dienbienphu. He was immediately identifiable by his red cap, flaming red scarf, and riding crop in his hand. He put the main base at the center of the valley and then set up three major artillery bases: one three miles to the south, which he designated Isabelle; another, Béatrice, about a mile to the northeast; and a third nearly two miles to the north, which he called Gabrielle. Castries was supporting three mistresses by these names, and he wanted to immortalize them. Castries named other firebases and French posts after earlier conquests: Anne Marie, Francoise, Dominique, Eliane, Claudine, and Huguette. Castries manned the base with 13,200 paratroopers. In a radio broadcast on January 1, 1954, General Navarre announced that he expected “total victory after six more months of hard fighting”

Navarre’s commander of the Tonkin theater was not so sanguine. René Cogny came from humble stock, but with scholarships he had graduated from Saint-Cyr in artillery and then earned degrees in political science and law. The Germans captured him in 1940, but he escaped in 1941, only to be captured again in 1943. He spent the rest of the war at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where torture left him with a permanent limp. In the eight years after his release, Cogny enjoyed a spectacular rise through the ranks of the officer corps, from captain to major general. He feared the Navarre Plan. He wanted to avoid battles in the highlands, except for minor skirmishes; maintain a permanent offensive against the Vietminh in the Red River Delta; and frequently raid enemy supply lines and infiltration routes. When he first heard about the plan from Navarre, Cogny remarked to his chief of staff: “Dienbienphu will become, whether we like it or not, a drain on manpower . . . as soon as it is pinned down by a single regiment . . . . The consequences of such a decision may be very serious”

From his post in the mountains above Dienbienphu, Vo Nguyen Giap was dumbfounded. The Navarre Plan represented a significant shift in French strategy, and he was in a quandary at first about how to deal with the change. His philosophy about such confrontations with the French had always been consistent: “Strike to win, strike only when success is certain. If it is not, then do not strike” Giap’s biggest mistake, trying to overrun the French base at Vinh Yen in 1951, had made him more prudent and deliberate, more willing to wait until victory was certain. But he could not understand why the French had picked Dien- bienphu. The roads were narrow and exposed; the Vietminh would never let supply trucks reach the valley; and Vietminh artillery would prevent supply aircraft from landing at the hastily constructed airfield. The valley was a wet bottomland of the Nam Yum River. After heavy rains the valley turned into mud and drained very slowly. French tanks would be immobilized. Any competent engineer or hydrologist could have taken a look at Dienbienphu and concluded that tank warfare would be difficult at best. Even in dry weather the ground was covered with heavy, vined brush that would clog tank tracks. The French had also assumed that the Vietminh did not have any decent artillery pieces and that even if they did they would not be able to place them in the mountains above Dienbienphu. There were no roads up there for trucks to make deliveries. That was a gross misjudgment on the part of the French.

When Vo Nguyen Giap calculated the deficiencies of the French position, he concluded that Vietminh victory was certain. The terrain would destroy armor mobility; tanks would become stationary artillery pieces. By assaulting Gabrielle, Isabelle, and Béatrice in sequence, Giap could eliminate French artillery. He was also counting on his own artillery. In Korea the Chinese had captured hundreds of 105-mm howitzers and 120-mm potbellied mortars built by the Americans, and they were on their way. Giap intended to destroy the airfield and put Dienbienphu under siege. Nor was he worried about the vast open spaces between the mountain slopes and the French perimeter. He would dig hundreds of miles of tunnels and trenches from the mountain slopes toward the base, eliminating the French tactical advantage.

For years the French had waited for the set-piece battle in which their firepower would prevail, assuming, of course, that they would win such a contest. Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, Raoul Salan, and Henri Navarre all prayed for the confrontation. Castries put it best in January 1954: “If he [the Vietminh] comes down, we've got him. It may be a tough fight, but we shall halt him. And we shall at last have what we have always lacked: a concentrated target that we can smash” The French were convinced that if Vo Nguyen Giap attacked Dienbienphu, the Viet-minh would suffer a decisive defeat.

Navarre had completely underestimated Giap’s ability to relocate the Vietminh. Slowly and steadily he did the impossible—he put four Vietminh divisions into the mountains surrounding Dienbienphu. Even though most of them had only cut-up rubber tires for shoes, he got twenty to fifty miles a day out of them, each carrying a rifle, a large bag of rice, clothing, a shovel, and a water bottle. When French aircraft bombed the small roads heading for Dienbienphu, Giap repaired them. Along Routes 13B and 41, he had 10,000 workers who restored roads within an hour of the attack.

By early March 1954 Vo Nguyen Giap had 50,000 combat-hardened Vietminh troops and another 50,000 support troops in place, along with 100,000 Vietnamese porters carrying supplies on their backs. General Navarre was confident that Giap would not be able to bring heavy artillery into battle, that French artillery and tactical air support would put him at a tremendous firepower disadvantage. Suddenly 105-mm shells began to rain on the airstrip at Dienbienphu, pockmarking it with craters and rendering it unsafe for supply landings. The French had expected Giap to move the artillery into place the way they did—on large trucks over visible roads. But he had disassembled each artillery piece, organized thousands of porters to carry the elements to Dien- bienphu, and then reassembled the artillery there.

The shelling on March 12 was just a preview. The main feature started at 5:00 p.m. the next day when Vietminh artillery exploded all over the French artillery bases. By midnight Vietminh troops had seized outpost Béatrice. The bombardment of Gabrielle began at dusk the next day. Nine hours later Gabrielle fell. The Vietminh sustained thousands of casualties, but in less than fifteen hours Castries had lost most of his artillery. Isabelle was so far south of the main base that in order to protect it Castries had to move a large troop contingent there. Instead of attacking, Giap left Isabelle alone, rendering useless the French troops there. The next day the Vietminh bombardment became so heavy that aircraft could no longer land. French soldiers could be supplied only by air, and on March 17, 1954, American and French pilots began flying C-119s and C-47s over Dienbienphu, dropping food, weapons, and ammunition to the besieged soldiers. That same day armed Montagnard tribesmen, allied with the French, realized their plight and fled Dien- bienphu. France needed help.

On March 20, General Paul Ely, chief of staff of the French armed forces, flew to Washington for a meeting with President Dwight Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and Admiral Arthur Radford, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. A member of the West Point class of 1915—called the “Class on Which the Stars Fell” because 59 of its 164 graduates rose to the rank of brigadier general or higher—Ike was perhaps the best of the group. As commander of the European operations in World War II, he had earned a reputation for decisiveness, energy, intelligence, and skill in handling temperamental and egotistical individuals. Said FDR’s press secretary of Ike: “To acquire these characteristics he worked constantly, sleeping only five hours a day . . . and laboring seven days a week and holidays. Chain smoking cigarettes, he had an inexhaustible supply of nervous energy” Once in the presidency, Eisenhower seemed more subdued. White House reporters recall not his energy and precise thinking but rather his mangled syntax and his fondness for golfing and bridge—a very intellectual game: Ike could remember all the cards of each suit as a game was played. But behind the mild facade Ike was still in charge. In foreign affairs, he made all the important decisions. Intellectuals and English teachers could fault his syntax, but as Fred I. Greenstein notes, Eisenhower “had geometric precision in stating the basic conditions shaping a problem, deducing their implications, and weighing the costs and benefits of alternative possible responses” As Ely talked, the geometry of Ike’s mind was calculating.

The French general wanted to make sure that American assistance would continue under Eisenhower. Although he did not know how the communists could “continue to suffer the losses they have been taking . . . I don’t know how they can stay in the battle,” Ely readily admitted that Dienbienphu was finished. He made no specific request for anything more than continued American financial support. When the meeting concluded, Eisenhower asked Radford to see whether the United States could offer some more assistance to the French. Without the knowledge of Eisenhower, Dulles, or even other joint chiefs, Radford with the assistance of American and French officers in Saigon was hatching a rescue plan.

Radford, a graduate of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, had commanded aircraft carriers in the Pacific during World War II. In May 1953, when President Eisenhower toured the Pacific and East Asia to assess the Korean situation, Radford was commander of naval forces in the Pacific. He spent some time with Eisenhower during the tour and impressed the president with his grasp of Asian affairs. Eisenhower named Radford chief of naval operations in 1953 and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By that time Radford was a saber-rattling darling of the Republican right. A zealous convert to complicated weapons technology and air power, Radford had endeared himself to a number of conservative politicians during World War II when he said the only approach to the Japanese was “to kill the bastards scientifically” Infantry combat “was messy and wasted personnel” Strategic and tactical bombing was “precise and clean” Radford was convinced that Asia, not Europe, would be central to American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century. Late in 1953, when the president expressed concern about the defense budget, Radford became the author of the “New Look” Radford urged, and Eisenhower and Dulles accepted, the notion that instead of planning for a variety of military contingencies—strategic nuclear war, conventional war, limited nuclear war, and guerrilla war—the United States should plan for a war in which nuclear weapons would be used whenever they were strategically advantageous. Such an approach would be less expensive than a more comprehensive response system. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used Radford’s logic in his famous “massive retaliation” speech of January 12, 1954, when he threatened to use strategic nuclear weapons whenever and wherever the Soviet Union fomented rebellion.

When Radford learned of the desperate situation at Dienbienphu, he was eager to use air power. It was the perfect place, he thought, to try out the Eisenhower administration’s “New Look” defense policy. He proposed Operation Vulture: the use of B-29s, based in the Philippines and accompanied by aircraft from the carriers USS
Essex
and USS
Boxer,
to knock out Vietminh artillery. Without artillery the Vietminh could not destroy the outpost. The airstrip could be repaired, and a full-scale re-supply resumed. “We could have helped the French with air strikes,” Radford’s memoirs declare. “Whether these alone would have been successful in breaking the siege of Dien Bien Phu is debatable. If we had used atomic weapons, we probably would have been successful”

The proposal triggered an intense debate. The other chiefs of staff, especially General Matthew Ridgway of the army, were opposed. Fresh from his command of United Nations forces in Korea, Ridgway felt sure the bombing would fail to lift the siege and that only ground troops— seven to ten full divisions—could rescue Dienbienphu. The Korean War had already proven how difficult Asian land wars could be, and the terrain of Indochina was far worse, the stuff of which bloody, endless guerrilla wars are made. Eisenhower listened carefully to Ridgway; the two infantry commanders understood each other. Vice President Richard Nixon supported Operation Vulture. On March 13, the day the Vietminh overran Gabrielle, Nixon announced, “We have adopted a new principle. Rather than let the communists nibble us to death all over the world in little wars, we will rely in the future on massive, mobile retaliatory forces” In a press conference Nixon declared that there “is no reason why the French forces should not remain in Indo-China and win. They have greater manpower, and a tremendous advantage over their adversaries, particularly air power” Like Radford, Nixon was prepared to use atomic bombs to lift the siege.

Eisenhower listened to Radford. He listened to Ridgway and Nixon. Never threatened by conflicting viewpoints, Ike believed in the value of good advice and well-reasoned arguments. As Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower’s World War II chief of staff and close friend, described him: “One of his most successful methods in dealing with individuals is to assume that he himself is lacking in detailed knowledge and liable to make an error . . . . This was by no means a pose, because he . . . values the recommendations . . . he receives, although his own better . . . judgment might cause them to be disregarded” And so Eisenhower listened to opinions bold and cautious—and then he made his decision. He knew from experience that wars are seldom as neat as they seem in strategic papers, and that the “fog of battle” confounds the best laid plans. And the politics of the issue brought conflicting perils. The Republican right wing was making enormous political capital out of the claim that the Democrats had lost China, and he was not prepared to be blamed for losing Indochina. But at the same time, he perceived public skepticism about American involvement in Vietnam. The Korean armistice was just a few months old. Most Americans did not want another war in Asia. Eisenhower was intrigued with Radford’s plan. He would not, however, go forward without the support of Congress and the British.