together with much courage in their infantry attacks. Yet to the end, the defenders inflicted far more casualties than they suffered. In 2018 Hanoi has still not credibly enumerated its Dienbienphu losses, surely a reflection of their immensity. Prisoners who fell into French hands testified to the dejection prevailing in many Vietminh battalions, among which malaria was endemic. The communist commander’s difficulties were sufficiently serious to cause him to abandon human-wave attacks in favour of more measured tactics, and to stage a succession of propaganda and self-criticism meetings. Political officers sought to inspire their overwhelmingly peasant soldiers and porters by promising that land reform – confiscation of landlords’ holdings – would be imposed in the ‘liberated zone’ within weeks of this battle being won. The most powerful stimulus for these simple men, however, was surely the knowledge that their sacrifices, unlike those of the garrison, were not in vain. They were winning.
On the night of 22–23 April, Giap’s men overran Huguette 1 after bursting forth from tunnels dug into its perimeter. Its senior officer was last seen fighting to the death in the midst of a throng of Vietminh. De Castries demanded a counter-attack, because without Huguette 1 there was little space left for supply drops. Paras were due to start such an operation at 1400 on 23 April, but an hour beforehand it became plain they would not be ready. Chaos ensued: it was impossible to cancel a scheduled air strike by four Marauders and a dozen fighters, which went in at 1345, when most of the available artillery ammunition was also fired off. The Vietminh on Huguette suffered severely, but then enjoyed a forty-five-minute lull during which reinforcements were rushed forward.
By the time two French companies leapt from their positions they met intense fire, exhausted momentum on open ground halfway to their objective, and by 1530 were pinned down and suffering heavy casualties. An hour later survivors withdrew, having lost seventy-six men killed or badly wounded. One of the latter, a Lt. Garin whose legs were mangled, blew out his own brains to forestall an attempt to rescue him. The communists now held half the airfield, and de Castries’ dressing station wrestled with 401 serious cases, 676 less severe ones. An officer told casualties for whom no shelter was available: ‘Those who can’t stand or sit had better lie in their trenches.’
As the Geneva conference drew near, once more Dulles flew to Europe, this time accompanied by Adm. Radford, to renew their pleas to the government of Winston Churchill, and to consult with the French. It was becoming clear to the world that without US action Dienbienphu’s fate was sealed, and the Spectator reflected some conservatives’ enthusiasm for such a course ‘if Ho Chi Minh and the Chinese have to be persuaded by military means that peace is desirable’. On 22 April Dulles and foreign minister Bidault met again in Paris to seek a common policy front for Geneva; Ely and Navarre meanwhile pressed for more US aircraft. When the British joined the talks, Bidault became emotional, perhaps influenced by a copious intake of alcohol: he later claimed that Dulles asked him privately whether he thought nuclear weapons would be effective at Dienbienphu; it seems at least possible this issue was informally raised.
Both Eisenhower and his secretary of state were weary of the Europeans: of the French, because they wanted aid without strings; of the British, because they refused to acknowledge the merits of joining the Indochina fight before the French packed their bags. Britain was also considered pitifully nervous about the Chinese threat to its Hong Kong colony. The old prime minister and his foreign secretary Anthony Eden nonetheless stuck to their chosen course. They rejected Eisenhower’s ‘domino theory’, and declined to support any new military action in advance of Geneva, which Eden was to co-chair with Soviet foreign minister Molotov. As for Churchill, when Radford unleashed his personal powers of persuasion on Britain’s leader at a 26 April Chequers dinner, the prime minister told the American: ‘the loss of the fortress must be faced’. After Britain had been unable to save India for herself, he added, it was implausible that she could save Indochina for France.
Dulles cabled home on 29 April: ‘UK attitude is one of increasing weakness. Britain seems to feel that we are disposed to accept present risks of a Chinese war and this, coupled also with their fear that we would start using atomic weapons, has badly frightened them.’ The British contribution was their most influential and benign in the course of all Vietnam’s wars. Had Churchill given a different answer, while it remains unlikely that Eisenhower would have unleashed nuclear weapons, the Western allies would probably have committed forces to support a fundamentally hopeless French position. Eisenhower’s cables to Dulles make plain that, while he declined unilaterally to deploy US might, he was not merely willing but keen to do so if he could secure the political cover Britain could provide, backed by a token commitment of RAF bombers.
Since 1940 the British had engaged in many displays of diplomatic gymnastics to avoid a falling-out with the US. They were most uncomfortable about now disagreeing with Washington on a matter to which the administration attached such importance. Yet it is hard to doubt that London’s caution was well-founded. Churchill is often and justly said to have been a shadow of his old self during his 1952–55 premiership. On this issue, however, he displayed admirable clarity and stubbornness. The British feared that the real objective of any US action would be to punish China. The administration’s indignation about Chinese military aid to the Vietminh seemed bizarre when the US was already providing vastly more weapons and equipment to its own French client. In British eyes the Korean conflict had represented an intolerably protracted mud-wrestling match with the communists. A plunge into Indochina could precipitate something worse – conceivably, a big war. Churchill told the Americans that he declined to collude in misleading Congress by backing Western military action that could not save Dienbienphu, but might have untold implications for peace.
Radford was furious, and so was Eisenhower, who wished to see the communists ‘take a good smacking in Indochina’. It is plausible that resentment about what Washington branded as British pusillanimity contributed two years later to the president’s renunciation of Eden in the Suez debacle. Yet no Western action in the spring of 1954 could have saved Dienbienphu, short of unleashing insanely disproportionate conventional or even nuclear firepower. The later American commitment to Vietnam was seen by much of the world as implicitly colonialist: such action in 1954 would have been explicitly so. Almost entirely absent from the Washington debate was an understanding that Indochina’s future would be principally determined by political, social and cultural forces. Discussion focused solely upon what weight of firepower should be deployed. It was taken for granted in 1954, as it would be a decade later, that should the US decide to deploy its might against rubber-sandalled peasants, Giap’s army would suffer defeat, even obliteration.
If the French were then losing in Indochina, the Americans reasoned that this was because they were – well, French. Bernard Fall recoiled in disgust from a US official who dismissed France’s presence in Indochina: ‘The whole damn country is degenerate, admit it. And the French are scared of the Germans, and the whole damn French Army is in Indochina just to make money and they have no fight left in them anyway.’ Since no US military commitment was made in the spring of 1954, events in the remote north-west of Vietnam ran their course. A cartoon in Le Figaro was captioned ‘The Final Redoubt’. It depicted government ministers in Paris using their last bullets to kill themselves. If most French people had become resigned to the fall of Dienbienphu, among the elite this was thought to signify the end of France as a great power.
Navarre and Cogny clung to hopes either that worsening monsoon weather might render Giap’s assaults logistically unsustainable, or that a ceasefire-in-place might be imposed by the Powers meeting in Geneva. The two generals urged Paris that further reinforcements would improve the garrison’s chances: ‘As well as military honour, there is at least hope of a favourable outcome that justifies additional sacrifices.’ This was absurd, of course. Aircrew, few of whom made any pretence of exerting themselves, were pushing supplies out of their planes from ten thousand feet, so that almost half fell into Giap’s hands. Much of the bombing was conducted blind, through cloud. On 28 April one wing, Groupe Franche Comté, reported the claims of its commanding officer, his adjutant and eight pilots to be medically unfit to fly. Their colonel said defiantly: ‘My refusal to send them [over Dienbienphu]
