Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall

Author:Bernard Fall [Fall, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-08T05:40:00+00:00

Among the other items parachuted, one may note a total of 2,952 tubes of toothpaste and only 16,460 razor blades. Even if one admits that the smooth-skinned Vietnamese among the garrison hardly ever needed a shave, this still meant that over the three months of battle hardly more than two to three razor blades were consumed by each man.

The tightening of the siege ring around the drop zones compelled both Hanoi and the command at Dien Bien Phu to make an agonizing daily choice between the airplane space accorded to reinforcements, munitions, and medical supplies, and that allotted to food. The result, obviously, was that food took the lowest priority and that units were, at critical moments, compelled to live off survival rations ordinarily to be consumed only in dire emergencies. Thus it happened that on April 7, Dien Bien Phu ran out of food rations except for those already distributed to the individual units. While the battle raged for El and the northern part of Huguette was in the process of being sealed off, the combat units were authorized on April 1 l to consume one day's worth (of the three they had theoretically in stock) of survival rations.

The following days brought some relief as the air drops on April 1314 climbed to the never-again-to-he-reached height of 217 and 229 tons. But on the evening of April 14 events were to smash all hope of building up adequate reserves. As the surviving trucks and jeeps collected the food in the headquarters area to insure its proper distribution, a rain of Communist artillery shells set fire to the unprotected mound of easily combustible food. More than 300 kilograms of cheese, 700 kilograms of tea, 700 kilograms of coffee, 450 kilograms of salt, 110 kilograms of chocolate, and 5,080 individual rations were lost. This disaster matched another, a few days earlier, in which the whole camp's tobacco reserve was set afire, an incident which caused Langlais to say that "all of Dien Bien Phu smelled as if it were smoking a gigantic pipe." From April 14 onward, Dien Bien Phu remained on short rations, and on April 29 it actually went on half rations. Not only was the garrison being bled white by the enemy and short of ammunition, it was fighting most of the time on empty stomachs as well.

On April 14 also, the struggle between Langlais and the paratroop bureaucrats reached its highest level on both sides. In a telegram which had obviously been prepared by Langlais for de Castries' signature, the latter told Cogny in no uncertain terms what the exact situation inside the fortress was and began his message with what turned out to be an incredibly accurate prophecy:

1. Reference your telegram 19-31 [dealing with the dropping of non-parachutists]. The fate of GONO will be sealed by May 10 regardless of parachute training regulations. Inform you that effectives 1/13 Half-Brigade, 1 /2 REI, 3/13 Half-Brigade holding west flank are respectively 354, 380, 80. 1/4 RTM with two com- batworthy companies holds southwest.

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