INDO-CHINA: The Battle

INDOCHINA

Ambulance convoys rolled from Hanoi's military airfield to the French army's De Lanessan Hospital. From their blood-smeared stretchers and crisp, starch-white beds, the wounded told the hour-by-hour story of the battle for Dienbienphu. This is how it went:

D-Day Minus One: French Commanding Colonel Christian de la Croix de Castries calls his staff to a bunker in the heart of Dienbienphu. Four Viet Minh Communist divisions—about 40,000 men —supplied for 113 days by ant lines of coolies, have completed buildup. They are ready to attack De Castries' isolated, 15,-ooo-man garrison. "Messieurs" says De Castries, "please stand by tomorrow."

DDay: Communist Commanding General Vo Nguyen Giap opens fire against Dienbienphu's two airstrips, supply dumps, parked aircraft and battalion-command posts. At 1700 hours, he concentrates 105-mm. fire—one shell every six seconds—against two French battalions on top of two 1,500-ft. hills to the northeast and the north of Dienbienphu. The French call these hill positions Beatrice and Gabrielle. A direct hit knocks out the For eign Legion command post on Beatrice. De Castries radios Indo-China command in far-off (180 miles) Hanoi: "The attack has begun."

At 1800, bugles sound. Two Red regiments, 2,000 men in dark green, come out of the jungle on the double. They blast holes in the French wire and scale Bea trice at its steepest points. ("We had trouble angling our guns low enough to hit them," said a legionnaire. "We threw grenades down, but they kept on climbing like monkeys.") At 2000, the Communists overrun one legion company. At 2 200, they attack the Algerian battalion on Gabrielle. At midnight, they go for De Castries' southernmost position, but there the French guns cut them to pieces.

D-Plus-One: On Beatrice, two cut-off legion companies make their last stand. Their bunkers are blasted, their trenches filled with their own dead and wounded, yet some legionnaires still bawl songs in half-a-dozen languages as the Communists close in. "Fire on top of us," the legionnaires radio their artillery. But it is two companies against two regiments. By 0200 the Communists have Beatrice.

Between 0200 and 0500 the Communists launch five "human sea" assaults against Gabrielle, but Gabrielle's 600 Algerians damn and dam them. "I am full of confidence in the victorious issue of this battle," De Castries reports to Hanoi, "because of the morale of the troops." At 0900, the Communists ask for a three-hour truce so both sides may pick up their wounded. The doctors work desperately with their amputation knives while chaplains intone prayers for the dead. At 1200, the truce ends. Some 1,000 French reinforcements from Hanoi parachute into Dienbienphu. But the weather is bad, and French battle planes cannot get at the brutally accurate Red artillery.