Tara’s Reviews > Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu > Status Update

Dien Bien Phu, like almost all other besieged fortresses, eventually died from its supply deficiencies. This book clearly shows several instances in which successful counterattacks were interrupted because there was no ammunition available to sustain them. In the end, the Elianes, which had weathered every enemy infantry assault, weeks of intensive artillery bombardment, and even underground mining, [...]

It is possible to estimate that about 3,000 men out of a total of 16,544 eventually returned from Dien Bien Phu. Over 3,000 died in the battlefield area and a few hundred others disappeared in Eastern Europe. But the rest, close to 10,000 men, died on the trek or in the prison camps in less than 3 months’ time.

Total exhaustion indeed had become a daily phenomenon, and Dr. Grauwin now began to report cases of men who suddenly died at their post without showing signs of combat-induced wounds. The had died of 55 days of not sleeping, not eating, and not resting.

Certain units simply refused to believe that it was all over, and there was a justified fear among the higher commanders that the battle would end in a general massacre of the garrison. There may have been another, more prosaic, reason for the high morale of the remaining defenders. In view of the progressive lack of replacements for the casualties, many of the men remained on duty for days on end and were [...]

The monsoon rains had transformed the airfield drainage ditch into a veritable canal filled in many places with waist-deep water. Yet, with the Dominique hills on its right and Huguette 1 on its left under enemy control, it was sheer madness to attempt even to raise one’s head above the rim of the ditch. Any man who was wounded had to be propped against the crumbling walls of the drainage ditch and [...]

The faithfulness of the PIM’s at Dien Bien Phu to their captors remains a mystery to this day. Only 30 actually made a deliberate and successful attempt to escape while between the lines collecting dropped supplies. Patrico distinctly recalls the following conversation between a PIM and a Moroccan guard who had panicked under the artillery fire and was running away from his guard detail. [...]

Had the Communist force been made up entirely of infantry, the French garrison, though one third the enemy’s strength, could probably have withstood the assault, thanks to its massive firepower and air support. What really broke the back of the French resistance at Dien Bien Phu was Gen. Vu Hien’s 351st “Heavy Division.” The concept of the Heavy Division was one which the Viet-Minh had inherited from [...]

Dien Bien Phu’s hospital began as a comfortably small affair with 44 beds for seriously wounded, and well-appointed dugouts for the operations, X-ray, and recovery rooms. This was before it became clear that not one wounded man would leave the hell of Dien Bien Phu by air. The hospital with its 44 beds soon cared for perhaps 3,000 wounded and, from a model field installation, it became an apocalyptic charnel house[…]

Dien Bien Phu became a momentous gamble for the Viet-Minh as well. General Giáp’s decision was not easy. […]

Navarre’s character came through perhaps more clearly, in a friendly press interview that he gave almost ten years after the battle of Dien Bien Phu, in response to the reporter’s passing allusion to the alleged fact that after the battle a group of French officers in Indochina had sent him a beautifully lacquered box with a loaded pistol inside—a clever reference to the tradition that a senior commander […]