An Honorable Exit by Éric Vuillard

Author:Éric Vuillard [Vuillard, Éric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

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At the end of October, Navarre received some strange news. The Vietminh high command seemed to have given up on attacking the delta and instead was deploying the 316th Division toward Laos. This was it, the fantasy was becoming flesh, the tables were turning, the tall grass was growing beneath his feet! Nothing Navarre could do, reality was dragging him along, everything seemed to be listing toward the worst outcomes. France had just committed itself to defend Laos; and Navarre imagined that the government’s silence must be deciphered. Then he thought he heard a voice, a thin trickle of gold from which curious words flowed. And what did that voice say? It intoned: “Go to the heart of the great forest. Stop the Vietminh from occupying the rice fields of Dien Bien Phu. Don’t forget that it’s the only valley in that whole jungle, that it’s the crossroads of East and West!” Navarre couldn’t believe his reptilian brain and was overcome by vertigo. Yes, it was a revelation: they must cover Northern Laos. Fearing another attack in the delta, General Cogny did not want him to redeploy all his troops and at first pleaded for a small operation, a mini–Dien Bien Phu. But Navarre was envisioning some huge carnivorous beast, extinct races, flowers harvested in springtime, harsh summers, sad autumns. He longed to experience an endless train of sorrows and glories. And suddenly, everything tipped overboard, and Navarre passed quickly from Dien Bien Phu 1.0, intended simply to block the Vietminh from getting to Laos, to something much more robust. What they needed was an entrenched camp. Not some piddly little thing where you got bored silly. No, a whole citadel of canvas and barbed wire. Cogny demurred, talked of a sinkhole of battalions. But at this point, Navarre didn’t give a shit about Cogny; it’s even as if the one’s resistance reinforced the other’s will. He feared he might blow a chance at victory. And this is how men stray into catastrophe.

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