INDO-CHINA: Crucial Battle

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INDOCHINA

To the shrilling of bugles, troops of the Communist Viet Minh poured onto a saucerlike plateau in the mountains of Indo-China one day last week and launched a crucial battle of the seven-year Indo-China war. Their objective: Dienbienphu, a huge French fortress 175 miles west of Hanoi.

The stronghold, isolated between the Red River delta and Laos, was even more a psychological than a military pivot of the war. The French seized the saucer last November, built it into a bastion with a tireless airlift and talked of sucking the forces of wily Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap into an attack that they felt might hurt him sorely. For Giap, on the other hand, Dienbienphu became a challenge; to reduce the fortress could well deal a deadly blow to France's resolve to fight on in Indo-China.

For weeks Giap slowly edged three crack divisions, perhaps 36,000 men, around the periphery of Dienbienphu. Last week he was ready. Artillery fire poured in. Early one morning the radiotelephone crackled in Hanoi H.Q. of General Rene Cogny, the three-star commander of French Union forces in north Viet Nam. The voice of the garrison commander at Dienbienphu told Cogny the news: Giap was attacking at last.

The Communists poured screaming flesh & blood against the French concrete, wire and land mines. Most of the attackers fired rifles, pistols and Tommy guns, but some hurled razor-sharp spears. Wave after wave, they came on through the night. In the morning, although parts of the perimeter had been caved in, the French still held the heart of Dienbienphu. The dead and wounded—many defenders and at least 1,000 Communists, said the French—were piled so thick that a three-hour cease fire was arranged, so the field could be cleared of casualties.

As this week began, the battle raged on, bloodily and in doubt. It was a grim prelude to the Asian peace conference. The Communists were squandering life at Dienbienphu to win points at the conference table in Geneva.