Foreign News: INDO-CHINA A War of Gallantry & Despair

From French Union military headquarters at Hanoi, TIME'S Foreign News Editor Thomas Griffith last week cabled this report:

THE unshaven soldier lies back on his pillow and exercises his good right arm. Every so often he twitches his left shoulder too, to exercise it, but where his left arm should be there is a white bandaged pouch like a hornets' nest taped to his body. This foreign legionnaire's left arm was amputated on the battlefield at Dienbienphu.

He is among the lucky few of the wounded who got out early. The others had to wait, lying in foxholes the size of their stretchers, until the skies over Dienbienphu cleared and the planes which could strike at the Viet Minh Communist artillery zeroed in on the airstrip. Outside his ward in the military hospital at Hanoi, the corridors are filled with other wounded, in cots crowded head to foot in a row. The legionnaire talks matter-of-factly of the paratroop drop and of the wound he got only half an hour after landing; no heroism, no bravado, no whimpering, just acceptance of his fate and future. You are reminded of his face often when anger rises in you over the situation in Indo-China. You find yourself resisting the impulse to understand everyone and wishing only that you could stay angry and hortatory.

THE CAMPAIGN

Who Can Be Completely Indifferent?

Indo-China is a swamp war: fought literally in the paddy-fields of the Red River delta, but fought actually in minds that no longer are stirred and in hearts where resignation, suspicion, frustration and a dogged sense of duty are in confused conflict.

Some say sardonically that combat pay is good and that one can do quite well out of this war. It is a war fought on one side largely by indoctrinated press gangs and on the other largely by courageous mercenaries: the heavily German Foreign Legion, the Algerians, Moroccans and other Africans. Others say that the politicians are making a good thing out of it and getting their money out of the country. They complain that one can eat well in serene Saigon (and you can, for the cuisine is French) while ignoring the few at the end of the line who are laying their lives on the line. In the dance halls, the local girls sit in a row, dressed in colored tunics slit high and trousers that look like silk pajamas. Their painted faces advertise that they exist for joyless pleasures. In Saigon officers and officials take siestas. All these things are true. But still, Indo-China is not a very pleasant place to be in, even in the soft and untouched places, for who can be completely indifferent?