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GOING BACK TO PLACES THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN
Being a Field Guide to Hanoi and Dien Bien Phu for Historians, Wargamers and the More Discerning Type of Tourist
by Peter Hunt
Part Two: Dien Bien Phu
My
own exploration of I
would stress again that these articles are intended more for the buff than
for the casual reader and I’m assuming that you know a bit about the
battle and know what was happening to who, when, where and why.
Thus I shall concentrate on relating the ground to the events and,
hopefully, give you some pointers so that you can best organise your own
trip. If you are not going to
make it to the battlefield sometime soon I hope that anyway I can give you a
few insights that will be useful.
Getting
There and Finding Your Way Around
By
all accounts The
flight from Although
you can get guide pamphlets to .
Taking
my lead from the “Lonely Planet” I stayed in the Muong Than Hotel which
they said was the best hotel in town. It’s
a bit far out, closer to Beatrice than to Dominique, but it has very helpful
staff and provides reasonably clean, two star comfort, with hot water,
aircon, telly and sit down toilets. There
is a swimming pool, billiard room, bar of sorts, massage establishment and
restaurant that includes mountain mouse, chow meat, porcupine meat, sanbar
deer and wild boar on its menu so you needn’t starve.
“Lonely Planet’s” second choice is the Dien Bien Phu Hotel
which is more centrally located but doesn’t look as nice as the Muong
Than, although I wasn’t able to check out the rooms. Getting
around you have the same options open to you as in To
find things I used the maps in Bernard Fall’s “Hell in a Very Small
Place”, individual maps of the strong points downloaded from the “Dien
Bien Phu Infos” website
and the 1:250,000 sheet map “Dien Bien Phu” that you can buy for $3 US a
sheet in Hanoi. The battlefield is well marked. There are large
“monument” style markers and permanent maps at many of the major points,
and practically all the sites are marked by smaller “milestone” type
markers. Whilst the larger
markers include a text explanation (in Vietnamese of course,) that often
identify the position using the French codename, most of the markers use the
Viet Minh designation. Also Viet Minh units are usually described by their
title rather than by their regimental number as used in western sources.
This can be a little disconcerting so I will shortly add an annex to this
article giving “translations” of French and Viet Minh designations.
Finally, if you need to orient yourself as I did the easiest way is
to find the Bailey Bridge and take compass bearings on the hills.
The bearings will also given in the Annex.
Milestone Battle Marker
The
flight from Armed
with your maps, compass, stout boots, (for hill climbing and paddy bashing,)
long trousers and long sleeved shirt, (for mossies and moving through the
undergrowth,) insect repellent, camera and water you are now ready for your
exploration of Dien Bien Phu.
East
Of The River
The
The
obvious place to start is the Museum. This
is open from The
museum consists of one large, (very badly lit,) exhibition hall, two outside
display areas, one for French kit, one for Viet Minh; and a separate
exhibition hall dedicated to the T’ai people of the area. The
main hall has lots of interesting pieces.
My favourites were General De Castries’ bath, (a real metal one, I
don’t know if it was flown in or salvaged from the old Governor’s House
on Eliane,) a Japanese 75 mm Meiji 41 Regimental gun with its distinctive
tubular trail used by the Viet Minh, (Raventhorpe do a nice model of
these),
one of the 6 barrelled Katyusha rocket launchers used in the final stages of
the battle and the contents of a “Lazy Dog” Bomb, the precursor of
today’s sub-munition weapons. Also
worthy of note are a manikin of a typical Viet Minh soldier at The
Viet Minh weapons outside are probably not from the battle.
After all the 351st Heavy Division was not in the business
of setting up Museums and when they left they took their 105 mm howitzers
and 37 mm AA guns with them. There
was still a war to fight. But
for all that the weapons in the museum are good examples of the sort of
equipment the Viet Minh used. On
the other hand there can be little doubt about the French weapons outside.
There is an 8” Howitzer (one of four originally in the valley,) in
relatively good condition. A
“Bison” Chaffee tank in quite good state, along with two more tank
wrecks, and the rusting wreckage of six GMCs, six jeeps, a Dodge 1½ tonner
and a Dodge weapons carrier. Pay
particular attention to the serial details engraved on the tube of the 8”
howitzer. This barrel was made
at the WVT Arsenal (tube number 14459) in 1954 ~ i.e. it was brand new at
the battle. Along with the 37 mm
Flak used by the Viet Minh this is a good example of the proxy aid given by
both superpowers to the protagonists in The Main
Directly across the road from the Museum is the main cemetery. Cemeteries are supposed to be sobering places, and because of their symmetry military cemeteries are even more so. This one is no exception to this rule and here lie the Viet Minh heroes of the battle, in serried ranks even in death. The cemetery is not the largest on the battlefield, the two on either side of Gabrielle way to the north are bigger, but because of its location this cemetery is the focus of the Vietnamese commemoration of their dead.
Main Cemetery - outside wall
The
decorative garden between the road and the cemetery is not well maintained.
As
well as a place to reflect upon the cost of war and the sacrifices for
liberation, the cemetery had three special points that struck me.
Firstly, in a special plot on the northern side, is the grave of Phan
Dinh Giot, the first Viet Minh hero of the siege who fell in the assault on
Beatrice. Secondly
there is the focus of the cemetery at the eastern end which consists of an
altar flanked by two larger-than-life sculptures of Viet Minh fighters.
These are carved in a rugged “socialist realism” style and depict
assault troops again wearing the distinctive parachute silk capes of the
battle. The sculptures are
covered in fading gilt paint, that looks a bit shabby close up, but when the
afternoon sun catches the stone and the gilt the effect is quite dramatic.
The
third dramatic thing about the place is simply the view of Eliane 2 just
across the road to the north. Although
the lowest of the “Five Hills” E2 was one of the most hard fought over
and from the cemetery it is easy to see why.
The hill itself dominates the low ground on which the cemetery stands
and its flanks rise like a near vertical wall to the cemetery.
It is a very fitting backdrop to the last resting place of the men
who fell on it. Eliane
2
Eliane
2 is the best preserved of all the hill positions.
It is the main site commemorating the battle from the Vietnamese
point of view and the hill also has deep significance for the French.
This is because of the nature of the battle for the hill itself.
On most of the other positions the battles consisted of ferocious
Viet Minh assaults which either overwhelmed the position after horrendous
losses or were repulsed with horrendous losses.
If a position was taken the French would either retake it with a
counterattack, only to lose it later to another Viet Minh attack; or the
position would be given up completely. Eliane
2 was a different situation. The
initial Viet-Minh assault stalled on the top of the hill and the French,
realising that if the hill fell all of The
entrance to E2 is paved and well signposted off the main road.
The top of the hill is fenced off and you have to pay to get in at
the museum ticket office. However,
the rest of the hill is open to all. Before
you climb the hill however, note two things at the bottom.
The first is a bunker right next to the junction of the hill road and
the main road which the Vietnamese called “Manikin Knoll” because of the
shape of the decapitated tree on it. This
bunker does not feature significantly in French or English language accounts
of the battle but “The capture of Hill A1” in Vietnamese Studies No. 3
points out that it was decisive because the initial attack on the hill on The
other thing to look for here is the large descriptive plaque by the road.
Like the other plaques on the battlefield it includes the details of
the action and the Viet Minh units involved and is decorated by the badges
of the French units involved. Nothing
odd about this but if you look closely at this plaque you will see that it
includes the badge of the main non-communist Vietnamese unit in the battle
the 5th, Vietnamese Parachute Battalion (5 BPVN) which was known
as the “Bavouan,” and which fought as well any French or colonial unit
during the battle. I was
strangely pleased by this little sign that, although during the war the
nationalist Vietnamese units were disparaged as “puppet troops”, when it
came to commemorating the battle the Vietnamese recognised their erstwhile
enemy compatriots as worthy opponents.
Viet Minh Memorial on E2
As
you enter the enclosure on the top of the hill the first thing you see is a
marble monument commemorating the battle, behind which are the remains of
the cellar of the old French Governor’s House.
Although when the French occupied the valley they demolished the
house for building materials, they fortified the cellar.
It was this masonry cellar, held by a few Moroccan tirailleurs, which
stalled the Viet Minh initial attack on the top of E2.
Careful reading of “The Capture of Hill A1” reveals that this was
because of a rare failure in Viet Minh battlefield reconnaissance.
Although the Viet Minh must known that this was the site of the
Governor’s House they did not put two and two together regarding the
underground masonry defences and the assault units did not have effective
enough demolition charges to deal with them. The
trench works around the summit have been cemented to save them from erosion
so they are a lot tidier than they would have been in the siege but,
presumably, the shape and depth of the trenches is a fair representation.
To the south of the summit tank “Bazailles” looks out broodily
over the cemetery. The tank was
immobilised during a French counter attack on the hill and was then used as
a machine gun nest for the rest of the siege.
Tank Bazailles in the rain
From
the eastern fence of the summit enclosure you get a perfect view down the
glacis of the hill, an open slope that the French called the “Champs
Elysee” and up which the Viet Minh assaults had to charge through the
French fire. Beyond you can see
“ Before
you leave the summit look to the north and you can see most of the “Five
Hills” on which the defence of You
leave the summit by the way you came up and follow the fence around the
south side. This brings you back
to the Champs Elysee and the mine crater, which has been cemented to stop
erosion. You can then walk down
the hill where there is a plaque to mark the entrance to the mine tunnel and
a re-creation of the approach sap from the gully (now road) to the mine.
This walk will leave you with a good idea why the battle for E2 went
as it did. It was formed by the
shape of the hill itself, which is rather like a door wedge.
The North, South and West slopes are steep, and the summit is near
the West, French, end. However,
the Eastern approach is relatively gentle.
Thus the Viet Minh assaults were channelled into this killing zone
which was covered by direct French fire from the summit and E4; and by
zeroed in artillery both from the main position and from Isabelle to the
south. That E2 was held so long,
and eventually taken, is a tribute to the determination of the soldiers on
both sides of this battle.
Elianes
1 and 4
E1
and 4 are two hills joined by a low saddle.
E1 fell to the Viet Minh on the first day of their assault on the
“Five Hills” on March 30th. Realising that the hill was vital the French counter-attached and
retook it but, like on D2, they had to withdraw because, due to Cogny’s
lack of action during his “Night at the Opera,” there were no
reinforcements to allow the French to hold onto the ground that they had
retaken at such cost. However,
the French soon came to realise that E4 could not be held without E1 and so,
on April 10th, they launched a counterattack and retook it.
The Viet Minh however were just as aware of E1’s importance and,
under a withering bombardment, they launched their own counterattack and
took half the hill. The French
threw in their last reserves ~ companies from French, Foreign Legion and
Vietnamese paratroop battalions. In
my favourite part of one of my very favourite books, “Hell in a Very Small
Place”, Bernard
Fall describes what happened next: “Then
something very strange happened. Something
which, in the recollection of the thousands of men who heard it that night,
had rarely happened before in The
French and the Legionnaires had marching songs going back to their founding.
But the Vietnamese paratroopers of the Bavouan had: “[no
such]… rousing marching song that could be shouted at the top of one’s
lungs if only to drive out one’s fright.
But there was one song which was then still in the cultural inventory
of every Vietnamese schoolboy, and that was the French National Anthem, the
Marseillaise. As the Vietnamese
paratroopers in turn emerged on the fire-beaten saddle between the hills
there suddenly arose, for the first and last time in the This
account sends little tingles up my spine every time that I read it.
So it was very important to me to find the saddle between E1 and E4.
This turned out to be so easy that I didn’t believe it and had to
go back twice to convince myself I was in the right place! Sadly
the Western face of E1 has already been cut back for building work but E4 is
untouched. Oddly enough this is
a disadvantage because although there appears to be a path to the top of E4
it is completely overgrown and I could only get about half way up.
You might have better luck in the dry season when the ground cover
and bushes will not be as thick. Even
so the bushes are above head height so I don’t think that you will see
much from the top.
The "Saddle" today
The
“saddle” is in fact the road between the two hills.
The reason that I didn’t believe it was because it is hardly a
saddle at all. In my minds eye I
had pictures of the paras climbing a high steep slope.
Although the sides of the hills are quite steep, probably more so now
than in 1954, neither hill is particularly high and the “saddle” is only
a few metres above the level of the plain below.
There is a path to the top of E1 but this has been cut off by the
slope works and the other approaches are overgrown like E4.
As you proceed down the road ~ Dominique
2
Dominique
5, the linking position between D2 and E1/E4 has disappeared under
development, but you can’t miss D2. It
is by far the highest hill in the central position at 550 meters and it is
now crowned by a radio mast. A
paved road leads to the top, a steep but not difficult walk, but then I was
not wading through mud with a combat pack and rifle, and no one was shooting
at me either. The road follows
the South flank of the hill so you get good views of E1, E2 and E4 and then
curves around the eastern and northern sides at the peak.
This gives you views out to Beatrice and, providing its not raining,
you should be able to pick out the monument on the top of that hill which
will bring home to you its relative isolation. But
what about the view to the West? From
the top of D2 you would get a splendid view of the whole of Once
you get over this disappointment the things that strike you are D2’s
height and steepness. The
Western and Southern faces, (i.e. those facing the Viet Minh,) are the
steepest. The present road runs
anti-clock wise around the hill from the “ Thus
the Viet Minh had the hardest approaches and did well to take the hill in
their March 30th attack, even though its defenders wore some of
the least determined units in the garrison.
The French did equally well to retake it, but it is a very big hill
in Dominique
1
D1
was the northern anchor of the Five Hills being located between Route 41 and
the river. It was a poor
position to hold, exposed to Viet Minh fire on two sides with lots of
undergrowth nearby to give the enemy cover.
It is really just the westernmost, and lowest, eminence of a series
of hills running from the river all the way to Beatrice, the most easterly
of all the French positions. Once
Beatrice fell D1 was very vulnerable. Although
its southern face could be protected from D2 the same Viet Minh juggernaut
that overran the larger hill made short work of D1. Much
has changed at D1 today. It is
now sandwiched between Dien Bien Phu’s main market and a road.
It is marked by the usual “milestone” markers but both the faces
of the hill have been cut back for development and the road and the top is
overgrown. Having clambered up
the embankment by the marker I was unable to find a path to the top.
Perhaps you will have better luck at the end of the dry season. The “Non-Hill”
Positions The
remaining positions east of the River, E3, E10; and D3, D5 and D6 have
disappeared under developments. I
could find no markers for these. But,
as you walk towards the Bailey Bridge on your left you will see Dien Bien
Phu’s other, more colourful, market and on your right, in a small bog, you
will see a large monument type marker. This
marks the site of Piroth’s bunker at E12. From
the French perspective
Although
much of the view is blocked by buildings if you look North – East from
this site you are looking over the ground where the Senegalise gunners of Lt
Brunbrouck’s battery of the 4th Colonial Artillery fired over
open sights at the victorious Viet Minh descending from D1 and D2 on that
first night of the Battle of the Five Hills.
Had they reached the river and the bridges all of the later struggles
for the hills would have been irrelevant.
Dien Bien Phu would have fallen five weeks earlier than it did. But
Brunbrouck’s vollies stopped the assault that night.
I hope that it was some consolation to the Shade of Piroth that it
was the artillery that saved Dien Bien Phu. Unlike the Viet Minh you can cross the Bailey Bridge and explore the positions West of the river in the next part of this article.
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