EJEA 009-02-02Goscha Online

Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, DOI: 10.1163/156805810X548748

EJEAS . ()

European Journalof

East Asian Studies

www.brill.nl/ejea

Hell in a Very Small PlaceCold War and Decolonisation in the Assaulton the Vietnamese Body at Dien Bien Phu*

Christopher E. GoschaDepartment of History, University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM)

[email protected]

Abstract

This essay examines how Vietnamese combatants of the communist-led Democratic Repub-lic of Vietnammay have experienced battle during the Indochina Wars most intensive phasebeginning in and culminating in the Vietnamese victory over the French at Dien BienPhu in . It seeks to provide what is almost always missing in military histories of DienBien Phuthe unprecedented assault on the Vietnamese body. It uses the Vietnamese expe-rience to think about what might be some of the similarities and dierences between theWestern experience of war and those occurring in the non-Western world, especially at thisdeadly southern intersection between decolonization and the Cold War. Vietnamese bodieswere particularly vulnerable to the technological destruction of modern war as decoloniza-tion and the Cold War combined in an explosive and uneven mix from .

KeywordsFrance; Viet Minh; Dien Bien Phu; Cold War; Decolonization; soldiers; civilians

The place stank, there was lth and garbage,they were stacked on top of one another,there was blood everywhereit was like hellon earth.

(NguyenThi Ngoc Toan, medic, on the stateof the French camp after the battle of DienBien Phu)

*) I would like thank the following for kindly commenting on this essay: Andrew Barros,

Christopher E. Goscha / EJEAS . ()

Introduction

To this day, communist accounts of the Indochina War () focuson the heroism of the combatants and the glorious victory they achievedon the battleeld at Dien Bien Phu on May . For the Vietnamesecommunist leadership, the victory of Dien Bien Phu is a vital chapter in thePartys inevitable march towards complete victory in and an integral partof its nationalist legitimacy.With almost a million and a half dead by , theParty has conrmed George Mosses analysis by creating an elaborate nationalcult in honour of its fallen soldiers, complete with shrines for martyrs, warcemeteries, monuments and so on.1 Through an array of ocial publications,school textbooks, photographs, and documentaries, the Party not only denesbut also controls the meaning of the war (see Figure ).

To challenge the heroic myth of war in communist Vietnam is thus to invitethe wrath of the leadership. A veteran of the VietnamWar, Bao Ninh, did justthat in ,when he dared towrite of the sorrow of war and the indescribablesuering it inicted upon soldiers and civilians alike. Instead of speaking ofheroism, Bao Ninh spoke of the ugliness of war, the bloody dismemberment,even the vaporisation of comrades hit by American shells. He even questionedwhether the Partys wars were worth it all in the end as communism gave wayto capitalism in the late s.2 Caught o guard by one of its own soldiers,the Party lashed out, aghast that this heroic soldier could speak of such things,but worried that his account could undermine the leaderships control over themeaning of the war. Thirty years earlier, another veteran, Tran Dan, had triedto describe something of the reality of the battle violence he had witnessed as asoldier-artist at Dien Bien Phu. With an eye on the competing Vietnam takingform in the south after the signing of the Geneva Accords in mid-, the

Christian Henriot, Vatthana Pholsena, Peter Zinoman, Alec Holcombe, Nguyen Cam,Agathe Goscha, Philippe Papin, Pascal Bourdeaux, Stein Tonnesson, Merle Pribbenow andJay Veith. A special thanks to Philippe Papin and Pascal Bourdeaux at the Ecole Pratique desHautes Etudes in Paris in France and to Penny Edwards and Peter Zinoman at the Universityof California at Berkeley for allowing me to present my work in their respective seminars.1) See Benot de Trglod, Hros et rvolution au Vietnam (Paris: LHarmattan, ).Heonik Kwon and Shaun Malarney have analysed how the communist Vietnamese statehas failed to reconcile key existential and religious questions relating to civilian and militarydeaths. Heonik Kwon, After the Massacre: Commemoration and Consolation in Ha My andMy Lai (Berkeley: University of California Press, ) and ShaunMalarney, Culture, Ritualand Revolution in Vietnam (London: Routledge, ).2) Bao Ninh, The Sorrow of War (London: Vintage, ; rst published in ).


Party made sure that his account of Dien Bien Phu, published in , stayedon nationalist cue. And when he began to stray, the Party shut him down forthirty years.3

To this day, to write about the real face of war in Vietnam, above all thatof the historic battle of Dien Bien Phu, is to challenge the most powerfulmyth of the regimethat of the sacred resistance (cuoc khang chien thanthanh). Nevertheless, in the following essay, I would like to do just that byfocusing on how Vietnamese combatants, in this case those of the communist-led Democratic Republic of Vietnam,4may have experienced battle during theIndochina Wars most intensive phase beginning in and culminating inthe Vietnamese victory over the French at Dien Bien Phu in . Similarly,while I borrow the rst part of my title from military historian Bernard Fallsclassic Hell in a Very Small Place,5 I would also like to provide what is almostalways missing in military histories of Dien Bien Phuthe unprecedentedassault on the Vietnamese body. In short, I want to factor back into the picturethe human suering, fear and corporal destruction that went into this battle,a part of modern Vietnam and its history.6

On another level, I would like to use the Vietnamese experience to thinkabout what might be some of the similarities and dierences between theWestern experience of war and those occurring in the non-Western world,especially at this deadly southern intersection between decolonisation and theColdWar. Vietnamese bodies were particularly vulnerable to the technological

3) Tran Dan, Ghi, (Reminiscences, ) (Paris: Xuat Ban Editions M-moires, no date), pp. ; Tran Dan, Nguoi nguoi lop lop (chuyen Dien Bien Phu) (MenAfter Men, Wave After Wave (The Story of Dien Bien Phu)) (Ottawa: Nha Xuat Ban HoiNha Van, ; rst published in northern Vietnam in ). See also: Georges Boudarel,Cent eurs coleses dans la nuit du Vietnam (Paris: Jacques Bertoin, ), pp. .4) By focusing on the communist side or the Viet Minh body, I am in no way denying theimpact of modern warfare on the State of Vietnams society or its combatants. One muststart somewhere; I have decided to start here.5) Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (New York: Da Capa,).6) For the Vietnam War, see: Franois Guillemot, Death and suering at rst hand: youthshock brigades during the VietnamWar (), Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. ,No. (Fall ), pp. . I have relied on the internal military medical histories tomap this assault on the soldiers body. Nam Phuc Vu Quan Y Quan Doi Nhan Dan VietNam, (Thirty Years of Services in the Peoples ArmyMedical Branch, )(Hanoi? Cuc Quan Y, Tong Cuc Hau Can, ) and Lich Su Quan Y Quan Doi Nhan DanViet Nam, (History of the Peoples ArmyMedical Branch, ), volume I(Hanoi? Tong Cuc Hau Can Xuat Ban, ).


destruction of modern war as decolonisation and theColdWar combined in anexplosive and, I will argue, unevenmix from . One of the most importantpaths along which modern war made its way into the post-WWII Southwent straight through northern Vietnam to Dien Bien Phu before movingsouthwards along the Ho Chi Minh Trail when the Americans unleashed aneven deadlier level of violence, the subject of Bao Ninhs all too real work ofction.

Cold War, Decolonisation and the Take-o of Battleeld Violence in theSouth

The Chinese and American decision in early to throw their material sup-port behind their respective allies transformed a low-intensity guerrilla war ofdecolonisation into a full-blown conagration between two armies determinedto defeat each other on the battleeld through the use of modern weapons andthe deployment of their ghting men in set-piece battles. Together with theKorean War, underway to the northeast, the Indochina War became the mostviolent military confrontation of the early ColdWar. Between and ,Chinese and Soviet military aid allowed the Vietnamese to take the battle tothe French at Cao Bang, Vinh Yen, Na San andmost notably at Dien Bien Phu.TheChinese helped arm, equip and train six combat divisions by the end of theconict. With the Korean War over in mid-, the Chinese sent their Viet-namese counterparts more artillery, machine-guns, grenades, shells and anti-aircraft batteries that would be used eectively during the battle of Dien BienPhu.They even sent rice.The Soviets supplied Stalin Organs (Katyusha truck-mountedmultiple rocket launchers) that rained down high explosive warheadson French Union soldiers during the last days of the siege, essential to win-ning the battle before diplomats opened discussions on Vietnam at Genevaon May . The Chinese and the Soviets also provided surgical equip-ment, medicines and antibiotics. Meanwhile, the Americans increased theirmilitary aid to the French, allowing the latter to increase stocks of artillery guns,ammunition, machine-guns, grenades, mines, tanks and bombers. Thanks tothe Americans, the French air force began dropping napalm on the Vietnamesefor the rst time from .7

7) See the contributions in Regards sur laviation militaire franaise en Indochine, (Paris: Service historique de larme de lair, ).


Figure : General Vo Nguyen Giap, th Anniversary of Dien Bien PhuAssociated Press Copyright


If WWI marked the beginning of modern industrial war, introducing thelethal use of the machine-gun, artillery, gas, aerial bombing and the like, theIndochina and Korean Wars were the rst to extend modern war into thecolonial south in full force, with its increased capacity to maim and kill.8 Bothwars also blurred the line between civilians and soldiers. The French air forcehad no qualms about bombing civilian targets, including enemy hospitals,dikes, livestock and porters, in order to force the enemy into submission. Andfrom , the DRV not only implemented military service, but it also triedto mobilise the entire population, at least in the north, in order to support thetransition to modern war. This meant recruiting tens of thousands of civilianporters to supply the front in food and weapons from the battle of Cao Bang toDien Bien Phu. During the eight intensive battles occurring between and, ,, transport porters (dan cong) ensured logistics for the army,clocking in a total of ,, working days in all.9 Without getting intothe question of total war here, it is clear that these wars of decolonisation,especially those internationalised by the Cold War, would mobilise civiliansand combatants alike and blur the lines between the front lines and the homefront in arguably more total ways than in the West during WWI.10

What is also clear is that despite the remarkable transformation of whathad been a collection of armed guerrillas into a veritable army of six divisions,the DRV could never match the destructive repower of the Franco-Americanside. One of the reasons why the Party mobilised the population and deployed, bicycles and over , small boats at Dien Bien Phu was because itcould not provide enough trucks to meet the armys massive logistical needsleading all the way to the front lines.11 Nor did the Vietnamese have thehelicopters to evacuate their wounded rapidly from the battleeld or eventreat them correctly medically. Nor could the Vietnamese deploy tanks, drop

8) That said, Western powers had most certainly deployed modern weapons earlier in thecolonial south, though on a limited level, with the French bombing of the Nghe Tinh revoltsof and the combined Franco-Spanish bombing of the Rif revolt in Moroccobeing particularly important examples. In this volume also see Christian Henriots accountof the Japanese raid on Shanghai in the early s.9) Cited in Kinh te Viet Nam, (The Economy of Viet Nam, ) (Hanoi:Nha Xuat Ban Khoa Hoc, ), p. .10) I explore this question in Etat de guerre: Le Vietnam n de la dcolonisation violente () (Paris: ArmandColin, forthcoming), Ch. . On the concepts of total andmodern war,see: Hew Strachan, Essay and reection: on total war and modern war, The InternationalHistory Review, Vol. , No. (June ), especially pp. .11) Kinh te Viet Nam, pp. , .


napalm on French Union forces, bomb their positions, troops and supplylines, much less attack the French civilian population in France as the Frencharmed forces did with impunity in Indochina. The DRV had no airpower,whereas the total Franco-American bombing tonnages increased from forall of to , for the nal seven months of the conict.12 Airpowerallowed the French to drop bombs and napalm across Indochina, on attackingtroops, porters and civilians. In other words, the internationalisation of thiswar between the Western coloniser and the non-Western colonised in upperIndochina gave rise to a set-piece and violent confrontation, based mainly onthe Viet Minhs acquisition of artillery guns, grenades and mortars; but it wasalso one in which the levels of deployable modern violence remained uneven aswell as the Vietnamese capacity to tend to the grievous wounds generated bymodern industrial weapons.

Until , however, the intensity of battleeld violence for the Viet Minhwas relatively low. True, in General Nguyen Binh engaged histroops in southern Vietnam against the French in unprecedented set-piecebattles. However, French artillery barrages and machine-gun bunkers moweddown his men attacking in waves, leaving corpses dangling from barbed wireperimeters. The Party ordered its southern general to retreat and to resumeguerrilla tactics before recalling him to the north. (Such audacious frontalattacks would not truly recur on such a scale in the south until the mid-s.)13 In a position of military weakness, guerrillas attacked and with-drew, avoiding head-on combat, preferring to sabotage and sap enemy moralerather than engage the better-armed French colonial army and risk annihila-tion. What counted most for the Viet Minh or the Algerian FLN was keepingthe resistance going and the enemy army bogged down. Until , the guer-rilla face of battle was certainly dangerous, often gruesome, torture was notuncommon, and massacres certainly occurred.

However, the deployable level of violence in the guerrilla phase was nothingcompared to what the internationalisation and modernisation of violence didto this colonial conict. The transition from guerrilla tactics to set-piecebattlemeant that tens of thousands of central and northernVietnamese soldierswere suddenly sent directly into the line of re for the rst time.14Mobilisation

12) Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, ), p. .13) See my A popular side of the Vietnamese army: General Nguyen Binh and the earlywar in the South (), in C. Goscha and B. de Trglod (eds), Naissance dunEtat-Parti, le Viet Nam depuis (Paris: Les Indes Savantes, ), pp. .14) Admittedly, this occurred to some extent during the outbreak of the Indochina War,


also entered a new phase. The drafting of young, mainly peasant boys, wasfully underway by . Nationalism was certainly a driving force; but theParty had to do more in order to mobilise: land reform and the rent reductionsprovided this increasingly peasant army with an incentive to ght and to lugrice and weapons across long distances under enemy re. As one ocer of theth division explained it to his captors at Dien Bien Phu, Each soldier wasthinking: now my mother and my father will no longer go hungry 15 TheParty also increased its military rectication (chinh quan), assigning politicalcommissars to divisions, regiments and battalions as it sought to take hold ofthe army, transform its ocers and soldiers in the communist mould and, mostimportantly, increase mobilisation.16

The Assault on the Vietnamese Body

The Body Under Siege: Disease

However, before young Vietnamese could be sent into battle, they had to bet enough to ght. This was no mean feat. Just as the French army had learnedduring the conquest of Vietnam in the nineteenth century and British forcesmore recently ghting the Japanese in the Southeast Asian crescent, diseaseand sickness were deadly adversaries for any army deployed in the tropics.Cholera, malaria, dysentery and typhoid could be as lethal as ying bulletsand artillery re. And if disease did not kill instantly, it often incapacitatedscores of able-bodied men for weeks, indeed months, sometimes spreadingfrom one unit to another before moving on indiscriminately. The Vietnamesesoldiers body was no more immune to tropical diseases than the colonial one.The problem was that the Viet Minh medical services lacked quality medicinesin sucient quantities. Early on in the conict, in a special meeting of themilitary medical service held in May , Vo Nguyen Giap had emphasisedthe importance of ghting cholera in all of its forms.17 In , Ho Chi Minhhad to remind military medical sta that despite their goodwill, a chronic lack

especially in the south in . Indeed, casualties were high during these two years ofthe war both for the DRV and French Union troops. However, the intensity of battle overa sustained period of time, in set-piece battles, was highest between and , whencasualties peaked on both sides.15) Cited by Pierre Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, ), p. .16) See my Etat de guerre, Ch. .17) Nam Phuc Vu, p. , citing Vo Nguyen Giap in Vui Song, No. (June ).


of medicine and a failure to carefully preserve medicines in their possessionmeant that too many soldiers remained sick. This is a point too often missedin studies focused exclusively on the strictly tactical aspects of battle. Indeed,for the period between and , disease and sickness probably exacted aheavier toll on the Viet Minhs body than the French Union armed forces did.Many combat units, even some regiments, often operated at per cent ofmanpower because of debilitating and sometimes lethal diseases.18 In August, as the Vietnamese prepared their attack on Cao Bang, Chinese druggistsin southern China reported that the DRV had been buying up their stocksof quinine to ght cholera, which had recently killed men because ofa lack of medicine.19 The French colonial army never had to confront thisproblem on this scale during the Indochina conict; the Vietnamese war statedid.

Although local innovations helped combat sickness, modern communistbloc aid was essential to reducing the high levels of sickness in combat units.From , the Chinese and the Soviets provided the Vietnamese with impor-tant quantities of medicines. Between and , Sino-Soviet medical aidamounted to tons and trunks of medicines, consisting mainly of vac-cines, antibiotics and anti-malaria pills as well as medical instruments.20Thanksto thesemedicines, theDRV supplied and required its main force troops to takeanti-cholera pills for eight months in northern Vietnam and three months inless infected areas in central Vietnam. Also contributing to this decline werethe army medical corps stepped-up propaganda drives among the soldiers,stressing the importance of good hygiene, clean drinking water and regularbathing. The order to clean eating utensils carefully and to refrain from shar-ing rice bowls and chopsticks was designed to keep disease from spreadingamong men. The army relied on newspapers, pamphlets and plays to spreadthe message. Special preventive disease clinics appeared within the army ranks,while political cadres ensured that the rules were followed. During the battleof Vinh Yen in , for example, preventive disease cadres fanned out

18) Lich Su Quan Y, pp. ; Nam Phuc Vu, p. , citing Ho Chi Minh at the Quanys fth plenum in March .19) Central Intelligence Agency, Viet Minh purchases of medical supplies, SouthwesternKwangsi, November , CREST, National Archives and Research Administration,United States.20) So Luoc Lich Su Y Te Viet Nam (Outline History of the Vietnamese Medical Service)(Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Y Hoc, ), volume I, p. .


among the regiments in order to mobilise and propagandise the importance ofgood hygiene. Even more were present at Dien Bien Phu.21

The results were apparently good. Between and , the overallnumber of the sick among the troops fell from an astounding high of . percent in to . per cent in , with cholera being enemy number one.The level of cholera aictions in the army dropped from per cent in to . per cent in . By the time of Dien Bien Phu, DRV divisions werejudged to be on average per cent healthy. When viewed from the vantagepoint of the combatants body, there was more to winning on the battleeldthan providing troops with big guns. Despite serious weaknesses, by the earlys the Vietnamese war state had elded an increasingly healthy army incentral and northern Vietnam, capable of ghting set-piece battles against thebetter inoculated colonial one.22

The Vietnamese Body Under Siege: Combat

The irony, of course, was that those same increasingly healthy young bod-ies were now going to be thrown against some of the most modern killingmachines of the twentieth centuryones utilising machine-guns, tanks, aerialbombing, artillery shells and napalm canisters. From , the full-blownassault on the bo dois body was underway. Doctors now had to perform com-plicated surgery to save young men from grievous combat wounds. Developingmodern combat medicine, highly trained personnel and a solid medical infras-tructure became an urgent priority. As a result, from the DRV beganconsolidating its military medical services in preparation for set-piece battles aspart of the General Counter Oensive. The Partys increasingly rm top-downhold on medicine undoubtedly helped. From Inter-zone V in lower centralVietnam to the Chinese border, the medical service created military medicineoces for each inter-zone, opened similar though smaller branches in easternLaos and Cambodia, established a system of mobile combat medical teams,and assigned medical units, doctors and medics to the divisions now cominginto being. In short, the DRV embarked upon the modernisation, profession-

21) Ngo Van Chieu, Journal dun combattant (Paris: Editions du Seuil, ; translated byJacques Despeuch), pp. ; Lich Su Quan Y, p. ; Nam Phuc Vu, pp. , ,, , .22) Lich Su Quan Y, p. ; Nam Phuc Vu, pp. , , , , . Formore on disease in a time of decolonisation see my Etats de guerre, Ch. .


alisation and above all militarisation of the medical branch. The Vietnamisa-tion of medical texts, especially the ones focused on surgery, paid dividends.Vietnamese language manuals and journals circulated throughout the army inupper Vietnam and special classes on combat surgerymultiplied in preparationfor the coming corps corps.23

Similar things happened in regiments and divisions. The DRVs militarymedical branch organised mobile military medic teams and medics to tend tothe soldiers in the battleeld. Party cadres proliferated while young Vietnamesemedics were assigned to platoons and battalions. The military and civilianmedical schools provided the training. To respond to the increased numberof casualties, the Vietnamese created medical combat units and eld hospitalsfor each major battle between and . Lightly injured soldiers weretreated at the front whereas seriously injured men were moved behind the linesfor intensive treatment and surgery in newly created mobile surgery stations.Horses, oxen, donkeys and thousands of civilian porters were requisitioned totransport the wounded, foodstu and arms.24

The battle of Cao Bang was the rst salvo in the assault on the Vietnamesecombatant, and the real test of how well this non-Western war-state could tendto the casualties inicted by a modernWestern army. Some , Vietnamesetroops and porters were involved in this violent confrontation in the rugged,forested hills lining the Sino-Vietnamese border intersected by Colonial Route. The DRVs medical services estimated that casualties would reach ,, in all. The military medicine branch set up eld hospitals and dispen-saries near the projected battleeld and across the border on Chinese terri-tory. The army insisted on the coordination of medical rst-aid operations andevacuations. Vietnamese porters would transport the wounded to safety. Viet-namese and Chinese doctors, and even a Japanese (communist) medical team,provided care and medicines, and performed surgery on wounded Vietnamesein an attempt to provide modern combatmedicine. Unfortunately, the numberof injured in the border battle greatly exceeded the initial estimations, provid-ing the DRVs medical branch with a rst bitter taste of modern war. Viet-namese troops suered a per cent (fatal) casualty rate during the battle (tyle tu vong hoa)! Because of the rough terrain and distances, porters could onlyevacuate . per cent of the Cao Bang wounded to hospitals in under six hours;

23) Lich Su Quan Y, p. ; Nam Phuc Vu, pp. , . For more on the DRVscivilian and combat medicine during the Indochina War, see Etats de guerre, Ch. .24) Nam Phuc Vu, pp. .


per cent of them arrived in regimental eld hospitals between six and twelvehours later. Worse, it took on average about twelve hours to transport percent of those needing surgery to operating tables

Cao Bang might have been a glorious victory for the Communist Partyand its army, opening the border to a stream of Chinese aid. However, thebattle was clearly a terrifying experience for Vietnamese grunts and the DRVscombat surgery and medical teams desperately trying to sew young men backtogether. That all was not well was clear when General Vo Nguyen Giap, in apost-battle analysis, underscored twomajor shortcomings in combat medicine:the organisation of medical care and the transport of the wounded. In fact,Cao Bang may well have been a medical catastrophe. Delays in transport anddisorganisation increased deaths and suering among the wounded. Pushed farbeyond its limits, the less than modern DRV medical corps was ill-prepared totend to thousands of wounded European, African and North African troopsand almost entirely incapable of protecting them against the cholera andmalaria-infested jungles that had been wreaking havoc on Vietnamese soldiersfor years. Death rates among the captured prisoners due to badly treatedinjuries and disease were terribly high.25

Modern death also fell in the form of the incendiary jelly known as napalm.While it was apparently not used at Cao Bang, the French air force begandropping it on the adversary shortly thereafter. Ngo Van Chieu commanded aVietMinh platoon in northern Vietnam and left us one of the rare, uncensoredVietnamese accounts of the discovery of napalm in . As he recorded theexperience in his diary:

Be on watch for planes. They will drop bombs and machine gun. Cover yourselves,hide yourselves under bamboo. The planes dived. Then hell opened up before my eyes.It was hell in the form of a big clumsy egg, falling from the rst plane An immenseball of re, spreading over hundreds of meters, it seemed to me, sowed terror in theranks of the soldiers. Napalm: Fire that falls from the sky The men ed, and I couldnot stop them. There is no way you can remain under this rain of re that spreads outand burns everything in its path. From everywhere the ames leap up. Joining themwas the burst of French machine gun re, mortars and artillery, transforming into aburning tomb what was only ten minutes earlier a small forest His eyes were lockedwide open by the horror of the scene he had just witnessed. What was that (the soldierasked)? The atomic bomb? No, napalm.26

25) Lich Su Quan Y, pp. , ; Nam Phuc Vu, pp. , , , .26) Ngo Van Chieu, Journal dun combattant, pp. .


The level of violence and terror the two sides could generate was again clearlyuneven. The internationalisation of the war might have allowed the DRV toproduce an army and deploy artillery,mortars and machine-gun re, but it alsoput their men at the mercy of some of the deadliest weapons produced duringthe rst half of the twentieth century, unleashed during that evening, as NgoVan Chieu wrote, when darkness never set in. The Viet Minh would only beable to inict something of this technical destruction on the adversary duringthe battle of Dien Bien Phu, especially when Soviet-supplied multiple rocketlaunchers nally arrived on the scene.27

Cao Bang was only the beginning. Until June , battles raged from thenorthern border to the highlands in lower central Vietnam. Men clashed vio-lently in the Red River Delta at Vinh Yen and were mown down in the hills atNa San when they attacked the entrenched French camp in waves. Evacuatingand transporting soldiers from the battleelds remained a chronic problem.Unlike the French and the Americans, and this during almost three decades ofwar, the DRV was never able to evacuate its wounded with helicopters. True,the Vietnamese used Soviet-supplied trucks to transport wounded during thebattle of Nghia Lo and again at Dien Bien Phu, and it did matter. But formost battles, the DRV had to mobilise human porters and animals to get thewounded out of the line of re and to medical stations behind the lines. Dis-tances were long and the terrain was harsh, hilly, often linedwith clis, marshesand thick jungles. Carrying hundreds of wounded across treacherous locationsfor distances of or more kilometres was gruelling, physically exhausting,time-consuming and no doubt psychologically disturbing work. It took twofull days before porters could evacuate per cent of the wounded to divi-sional eld hospitals during the battle of the Day River. After having been hitby a shell fragment piercing his lung, Ngo Van Chieu recalled being carried toa eld hospital by porters as he wondered deliriously whether he would makeit in time. Im suocating, he tried to communicate to his caretakers. Dontscream like that, comrade. Does it hurt that much? Well be there in twohours. Can you hold out? You are among the worst hit; youll be the rst to betreated.They then slipped him an opium pill.28 We have no idea how many of

27) Ngoc An, Tieu doan hoa tien (Rocket Battalion ), Tap chi lich su quan su, No. (JulyAugust ), p. . The Soviets delivered rocket launchers to the Vietnamese,meaning that the DRV could have technically launched rockets at one time. Eachlauncher could project six rockets. The Chinese had used them in Korea and had adaptedthem to the rough terrain of that country, similar to that of northern Vietnam.28) Ngo Van Chieu, Journal dun combattant, p. .


the wounded died en route or later for lack of proper medical care.The numbersmust have been signicantly higher than the French Union forces.

Internal communist studies conrm that the death rate for soldiers experi-encing battle between and was high. It reached per cent at VinhYen, per cent for the battle of Hoang Hoa Tham, per cent for QuangTrung, per cent at LyThuong Kiet and per cent at Nghia Lo. During thebrutal delta battle of Vinh Yen in early , of the , wounded soldiers onrecord, the main causes of their wounds were artillery re ( per cent), mor-tar shells (. per cent), grenades (. per cent), machine-gun re (. percent), aerial bombing (. per cent) and concussion (. per cent). Artilleryguns accounted for per cent of the wounds inicted during the battle ofVinh Yen, with the number reaching per cent at Dong Trieu, per centat Nghia Lo, and an atrocious (ac liet) per cent at Tu Vu during the bat-tle of Hoa Binh.29 These high rates of death by artillery re and mortars onlyconrm that industrial warfare had now worked its way into the conicts ofdecolonisation in the south. And from , one of its deadliest routes intothe south passed through northern Vietnam (and Korea).

Behind these cold, impersonal statistics hide gruesome, traumatic combatexperiences: thousands of young Vietnamese bodies were quite literally beingpulverised as they tried to storm entrenched enemy positions in wave attacks.Statistically, hand-to-hand combat accounted for very few battleeld deaths.Artillery shells did. They rained down on attackers before the survivors cameunder heavy machine-gun re. Men were often blown to bits by direct hits,vaporised as Bao Ninh would later put it. The DRVs edgling and problem-ridden medical services were overwhelmed with major trauma wounds. Thiswas the same medical corps that faced a chronic dearth of surgeons, low stocksof penicillin and blood transfusions, and often had no morphine for amputa-tions. Precious few doctors were qualied to deal with serious head injuries.Although the Vietnamese soldier was as human as his colonial opponent, thechances of him dying because of his wounds, even from less than severe ones,were signicantly higher than for his colonial counterpart, who could be evacu-ated by helicopter to eld hospitals manned by competent surgeons with accessto sucient stocks of antibiotics, morphine and blood transfusions.Themajor-ity of Western-trained colonial doctors refused to cross over to the Viet Minh,and when they were nally forced to do so it was for the Associated State ofVietnam.30 In spite of the DRVs clearly committed medical services, victory

29) Nam Phuc Vu, pp. , , , ; Lich Su Quan Y, pp. , , .30) Goscha, Etats de guerre, Ch. . For a parallel to the Viet Minhs medical services


on the battleeld, when it occurred, was often achieved from at the costof very high casualties. Nowhere was this better seen than during the battle ofDien Bien Phu, a battle that French military historian, Bernard Fall, describedas hell in a very small place.31

Hell in a Very Small Place: The Assault on the Vietnamese Body in

The DRV depended on its medical corps to tend to the thousands of youngVietnamese who would be sent against the machine guns, artillery re andbombs the enemy would try to drop on him in this epic battle pitting thecoloniser against the colonised. A special militarymedical section was set up forthe battle. Medical personnel joined Party cadres in intensive study sessions,examining past experiences and tailoring them to the upcoming showdown.Doctors, nurses,medics and pharmacists mobilised in the thousands. Divisionsran their own eld hospitals; regiments possessed medical teams while medicswent into battle with battalions and platoons. The defence minister calledupon his best surgeons, including the civilian surgeons Vu Dinh Tung and TonThat Tung, to lead teams of doctors, medical students, nurses and assistants,all of whom would work day and night trying to save thousands of severelywounded boys. Some assistant doctors and pharmacists were called up, andeven more political cadres arrived on the scene to make sure that orders werefollowed to the letter and that morale prevailed. The Vietnamese had to win atall costs; success at the negotiating table at Geneva depended on it. In all, eld hospitals operated throughout the battle. Three special hospitals tendedto the severely wounded, two of which were located in safe zones in Tuan Giaoand Son La. Dr Ton That Tung headed Field Hospital No. , located near thebattleeld, in charge of treating the most seriously wounded on his operatingtable (including those terrible head wounds).32

The battle of Dien Bien Phu opened with a barrage of Vietnamese artilleryre on March and lasted until May , when the bo doi overran theFrench position. Some , French Union forces, entrenched in a fortiedposition and supplied by air, went up against some , DRV troops.33

problems, see Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suering: Death and the American CivilWar (New York: Knopf, ), Chs .31) Bernard Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place.32) So Luoc Lich Su Y Te Viet, p. ; Nam Phuc Vu, p. ; Lich Su Quan Y, pp. ,.33) Lich Su Bo Tong Tham Muu Trong Khang Chien Chong Phap, (History of the


During these two months, the DRV launched three massive attacks, knockingout the French aireld and putting into place a series of trenches not seensince World War I, ones which they slowly extended around the French campto strangle it into capitulation or annihilation.

The ghting was ferocious at Dien Bien Phu during the three Vietnamesewave attacks. The French Union army was no pushover.34 Both sides had longbeen spoiling for a ght, and they got it. Those who recalled the valley oorafter the battle spoke of Verdun. Artillery explosions obliterated the small Taiborder town and churned the surrounding green elds into craters, surroundedby mounds of black dirt and rubble. Attacking soldiers going over the topencountered deadly machine-gun re while French planes tried to bomb asclosely as possible to the perimeter protecting their besieged troops, all thewhile combing the surrounding clis for signs of enemymovements, includingthe porters and troops slowly lugging weapons up the jungle hills. Heavy,seemingly incessant rain in April lled the trenches with knee-deep mud,breeding disease and infections as unevacuated corpses on both sides rottedaway, giving rise to an indescribable stench matched only by the sights of thedecomposing cadavers. Swarms of yellow ies (ruoi vang) descended upon thecorpses and the infected wounds, leaving their larvae to turn into maggots,terrifying young soldiers on both sides of the trenches. Desperate to nd a wayto stop the infections and the fear these creatures instilled in their victims, DrTungs team franticallymixed quinacrin with cleanwater to sterilise thewoundsand lift morale. It apparently provided some relief; but basic human fear stillran high. Maintaining a sterile environment (moi truong) and evacuation ofthe corpses from the trenches remained a top priority throughout the battle.The health and the morale of the others depended upon it. At one point duringthe battle, lime was carried in from a surrounding former colonial quarry todisinfect deadly zones. The results were limited: towards the end of the battle,a major dysentery epidemic broke out on the Vietnamese side.35

Oce of the General Sta During the Anti-French War, ) (Hanoi: no publishercited, ), p. .34) Nor was it French: almost per cent of the troops were Legionnaires, Africans, NorthAfricans, Tai and Vietnamese.35) So Luoc Lich Su Y Te Viet, pp. ; Ton That Tung, Reminiscences, pp. ; LichSu Quan Y, p. ; Cong tac Hau Can Chien Dich Dien Bien Phu, Dong Xuan (Logistics Operations During the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Fall Winter ) (Hanoi:Tong Cuc Hau Can, ), pp. .


Internal studies reveal that the medical services treated , wound-ed Vietnamese during the battle of Dien Bien Phu, including minor (eshwounds), medium (bone fractures) and seriously wounded (requiring sur-gery).36Getting them out of the line of re and to the hospitals behind the lineswas an arduous task, given the gruelling conditions. Rains ooded the trenchesand seeped into eld hospitals. Only per cent of the men wounded duringthe rst wave attack could be transported to a medical station of any type inunder six hours, albeit by the third attack per cent were being transportedto safety within that period of time.37 Within days of the rst attack, however,eld hospitals were overwhelmedwith wounded.The situation was particularlycritical for the medical sta caring for the th division. Estimates of wounded led the medical branch to prepare for ; but ferocious ghting onthe eastern side of the perimeter ooded the hospital with , wounded, thecare of whom was compounded by heavy rains.38

Again, one can only imagine the scenes confronting doctors, nurses and thewounded as they waited to be treated.Menwith serious head and brain woundsdied waiting to be treated. A med student in Surgical Unit No. during thebattle, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Toan, recalled decades later that it was very scaryat night. By mid-April, after the second wave, morale dipped dangerously onthe Vietnamese side. Transferred to Station , Toan recalled that this medicalway station was so submerged with wounded that the sta struggled to ndroom for them, and was soon unable to cloth or feed them properly. To makematters worse, zealous political cadres decided, in the heat of the battle, to setan example in order to raise declining morale.They staged a court martial (viecT) against three members of the medical team, including Toan, for failing tomeet the needs of the wounded in the overcrowded surgical unit.They did thisin front of the wounded soldiers. It was a pathetic failure. Speaking in ,Toan said that if we dont talk about it, everyone will think that everythingwent smoothly [at Dien Bien Phu], and that is not the case.39

Theextraordinarymobilisation of upper Vietnam for the battle of Dien BienPhu reached beyond the soldiers and with it the responsibilities of wartimemedicine.The ,men and women civilian porters (and pack horses)

36) Lich SuQuan Y, p. .Wounded and sick soldiers numbered ,men; ibid., p. .37) Lich Su Quan Y, p. .38) Lich Su Quan Y, p. .39) Oral history interview of Dr NguyenThi Ngoc Toan (Merle Pribbenow), June ,Hanoi; Lich Su Quan Y, p. ; Cong tac Hau Can chien dich Dien Bien Phu, Dong Xuan, p. .


were as much a part of this battle as the soldiers.40 Besides the weapons theylugged, they also hauled tons of rice and medicines to feed and heal thesoldiers. This also made them some of the prime targets for French bombersas the line between civilian porters and combatants blurred. In early ,the government established the Health Service for Porters throughout centraland northern Vietnam, reaching down to the provincial level in some areas.Keeping porters healthy and on the move was obviously a vital task. Many fellvictim to cholera and malaria while crossing the insalubrious jungles; otherswere injured during French air attacks. This special medical branch dispatcheddelegates and medicines along all the roads being used by the porters comingfrom across northern and central Vietnam.41The violence of the battle of DienBien Phu thus extended beyond the valley oor, running across all of upperVietnam and even into northern Laos.

But hell wasmost concentrated on the battleeld and the Vietnamese soldiertook the direct hits. Vietnamese troops at Dien Bien Phu suered a killed-in-action rate of per cent during the rst wave attack, per cent during thesecond, while the third dropped to per cent. In other words, almost threeout of ten Vietnamese boys sent over the top in MarchApril died inmachine-gun and artillery re. Indeed, artillery re accounted for . percent of the wounds inicted on Vietnamese bodies at Dien Bien Phu. PreciseVietnamese statistics are such that one canmap this nalmainly artillery assaultof Vietnamese body as follows: () head, face and neck injuries, . per cent;() upper limb wounds, . per cent; () lower limb wounds, per cent; ()chest and back injuries, per cent; () stomach injuries, . per cent; and ()bone and organ injuries in the pelvic area (vung chau), . per cent. This wasnot guerrilla warfare, nor was it hand-to-hand combat. These largely artillery-inicted wounds suggest that killing was not intimate. Of the soldiers sueringsevere head and back injuries, hundreds would never walk again, disabled (tanphe), paralysed (te liet) or worse.42 And these numbers apparently only applyto those who survived.

What is sure is that the battle of Dien Bien Phu was the single mostintense battle of the entire Indochina War for both the French Union and theViet Minh armies. No other war of decolonisation in the twentieth century

40) Kinh te Viet Nam, p. .41) So Luoc Lich Su Y Te Viet, pp. .42) Lich Su Quan Y, pp. , . Of the per cent surviving head and brain injuriestreated in Field Hospital No. during Dien Bien Phu, per cent of them were disabled(tan phe) and the majority were paralysed. Lich Su Quan Y, p. .


ever reached the level of deployable violence demonstrated in this valley oorbetween March and May . As Nguyen Nhu Thien recalled the hell hewitnessed at Dien Bien Phu:

I was responsible for transport teams evacuating the dead and wounded for our unit A.I was in a shelter some meters from the hill (under attack). I could see the bodiesof our dead strung all over the ground, at the mercy of all kinds of enemy projectiles. Icouldnt hold back my tears before such violence, before the brutality of the battleeld.The evacuation became increasingly dicult because the number of our transporters islimited. I had one company of transporters. We waited for the rare moments of calmwhen we could recover our comrades on the hill. I lived among the dead. Many hadto wait for days until we could bring them to the rear lines, their bodies were often nolonger intact. Many could not be identied for we did not even have the time to takedown the name, age, or origin of these new recruits. There are still others who stayedforever on this hill, for we never succeeded in recovering their bodies.43

By Way of Conclusion: Cracking in Battle

Not everyone could take it. Of the lightly wounded at Dien Bien Phu (around, men), internal sources conrm that many, apparently too many, did notwant to return to combat after surviving the rst and especially the secondassault on the entrenched French camp. Many men could not overcome all thephysical and psychological diculties they had encountered in a few crowdedhours. Others were exhausted from the ghting and the endless digging toextend the trenches forward, often under enemy re. But the general staneeded the lightly wounded back in action as quickly as possible in order toensure that the French garrison fell as diplomats prepared to open negotiationsin Geneva in late April. A special political commissar for the front linesmedicalunits attended to what had clearly become a very serious problem duringthe battle of Dien Bien Phu. As one ocial history put it, of the greatestimportance was political work among the wounded, especially the lightlywounded.44

43) Thanh Huyen Dao et al., Dien Bien Phu vu den face, paroles de bo doi (Paris: NouveauMonde Editions, ), pp. .44) Lich Su Quan Y, pp. , ; Bo Y Te,Nganh Duoc Cach Mang Viet Nam Nam, XayDung Va Truong Thanh, (The Creation and Development of the RevolutionaryPharmaceutical BranchDuring Years, ) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban YHoc, ),p. ; Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? p. , note .


A number of ranking political cadres attached to combat units also falteredat this critical point in the battle, unconvinced that they could defeat theadversary and unable to ask their men to go over the top again. It would appearthat the battle for Eliane on April, costing the VietMinh dead, sappedVietnamese condence along parts of the front line. On April, the Politburopassed a resolution making it clear that the Vietnamese had to win at DienBien Phu no matter what the cost. There could be no inching. Backed by thePolitburo, Vo Nguyen Giap repeated the orders.45

Indeed, newly released internal Vietnamese Party documents reveal thatsomething went very wrong by the time the second attack on the French campended in mid-April. In a series of high-level exchanges between General VoNguyen Giap and the Politburo, it is clear that troops and even ocers andpolitical cadres were refusing to go over the top and attack in waves (danh chac,tien chac). On April , Vo Nguyen Giap sent strict orders to his politicalocers in charge of the battle and its divisions. In this document, he criticisedwidespread manifestations of passive rightist deviationist thinking (tu tuonghuu khuynh tieu cuc) among the troops and the ocer corps. He explained inno uncertain terms that he expected every ocer and political cadre to leadthe way into battle. He also explained that this rightist deviationism was suchthat it threatened to undermine the DRVs ability to win the battle of DienBien Phu. As the General wrote at the time:

All the necessary conditions are there for us to win. However, there is still one greatthreat, one extremely dangerous threat to our ability to carry out that task. That threatis rightist deviationist and passive thinking that has seriously and insidiously infestedthe ranks of our cadres and executive committees within the party [apparatus at DienBien Phu (cap uy)]. If we do not wipe out this rightist and passive deviationist thinkingthen it will be extremely dicult for us to carry out our glorious victory.46

45) Nghi Quyet Cua Bo Chinh Tri Ngay thang nam Doi Voi Mat Tran Dien BienPhu (Politburo Resolution April ), in Van Kien Quan Su Cua Dang, (Documents on Military Aairs), Vol. (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Quan Doi Nhan Dan,), p. .46) Bao cao cua dong chi Van o Hoi nghi cac bi thu dai doan uy va cac dong chi phu trachcac tong cuc mat tran Dien Bien Phu (The Report of Comrade Van [Vo Nguyen Giap]During the Meeting of Divisional Party Secretaries and Comrades Responsible for the DienBien Phu Front), in Dien Bien Phu, Van Kien Dang, Nha Nuoc (Dien Bien Phu, Party andGovernment Documents) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, ), pp. ; Nghi Quyet Cua Bo Chinh Tri and Truong Chinh gui dong chi Vo Nguyen Giap(Truong Chinh to Vo Nguyen Giap), April , both in Nhung tai lieu chi dao cac


In sharp language designed to pull his cadre and ocers together in orderto make one last wave attack, Giap singled out for severe criticism and pun-ishment growing cases of insubordination, cowardice, fear of death and injury,exhaustion and lack of morale, among other weaknesses (dao dong, so kho, sochet, so thuong vong, tieu hao, met moi).Giap singled out for criticism cases ofsoldiers, ocers and cadres failing to enter into combat or to use their weapons:Upon encountering the enemy, they refused to shoot. They had weapons butdid not want to use them to destroy the enemy (Thay dich nhung khong muonban, co vu khi nhung khong muon loi dung de tieu diet dich). The other problemwas located on the other extreme. Some of his men arrogantly underestimatedthe enemy and by rushing into battle romantically got themselves killed point-lessly. Both cases, Giap explained, seriously undermined the armys ability tobring down the French at Dien Bien Phu as part of the Partys diplomaticoensive at Geneva. Of the two most dangerous tendencies insubordinationwas obviously the more worrisome. The Vietnamese high command clearlyhad its Chemin des Dames and it occurred at a particularly crucial time in thebattle of Dien Bien Phu.The Vietnamese communist victory at Dien Bien Phuwas not quite as ineluctable or as glorious as we have been led to think. Andone of the major problems was that many grunts and ocers may have agreedwith the cause of the war they were ghting but they were not willing to diesenselessly in a third wave attack.47

To x these rightist problems, as General Vo Nguyen Giap so disingenu-ously put it, the Politburo dispatched dozens of political cadres to recoverystations where the young men were convalescing. There, the cadres organ-ised study sessions, propaganda drives and mini rectication campaigns toraise morale and return as many men to their combat units as possible. Forthose who refused to carry on, military discipline was de rigueur. Executionsfor insubordination or cowardice occurred. General Vo Nguyen Giap signed

chien dich cua Trung uong Dang, Tong quan uy va Bo tong tu lenh (Research Materials on theBattle Command Coming from the Party Central Committee, the General Party SectionResponsible for the Army and the High Command), Vol. , (Hanoi? Bo Tong Tham MuuXuat Ban, ), pp. .47) Bao cao ket luan cua Dai tuong Vo Nguyen Giap tai hoi nghi tong ket chien dich Dien BienPhu, ngay thang nam (Concluding Report Delivered by VoNguyen Giap Duringthe Summary Meeting on the Battle of Dien Bien Phu), in Dien Bien Phu, Van Kien Dang,Nha Nuoc, pp. . I will take up the question of social relations between soldiers, theirocers and politics in a separate study. For an excellent Foucauldian-inspired social historyof the Chemins des Dames mutiny during WWI, see: Leonard Smith, Between Mutiny andObedience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, ).


orders himself authorising courtsmartial and disciplinary actions pour lexemple(nhammuc dich giao duc). Amilitary court tried a battalion leader of the ndregiment of the th division for cowardice.48 Nguyen Don Tu, who wit-nessed the traumatic combat experience that led to such insubordination inthe nd, provided in a very dierent version of what happened:

During the attack on A [Eliane ], Vu Van Kha, a battalion leader in regiment ,suered shell shock during a mmmortar explosion. He couldnt hear anything, hecouldnt speak. I myself had experienced this before. I had been a victim like him ofsuch violent explosions. I knew that in these circumstances one can still walk but onecannot command. I told Kha to go to the rear lines. He went down the hill. Later Ilearned that he had been charged with abandoning his combat position and he wascourt marshalled. I only knew about this after the victory. Kha was severely judgedfor cowardice and for having deserted his command position. He almost got himselfexecuted. Later, his sentence was reduced to ten years in prison. He lost his militaryrank and position in the Peoples Army of Vietnam and was expelled from the party.49

In the end, we know, General Vo Nguyen Giap then sent his men over thetop for a third time, taking the French camp on May . It was anhistoric victory, but at great human cost. The ocial Vietnamese number ofcasualties for the battle of Dien Bien Phu is ,, of whom , died.French military intelligence estimated that the DRV lost around , menin this two-month battle of the trenches.50Tomy knowledge, some six decadesafter the guns fell silent at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnamese communist authoritieshave yet to publish the number of civilians and combatants killed, missing andwounded during the IndochinaWar.What is certain, however, is that as ofMay the combination of Cold War, decolonisation and modern warfare hadinicted a major assault on the Vietnamese combatants body before movingits way further southwards. And judging from Vo Nguyen Giaps reports tothe Politburo in June and July , the physical exhaustion and declining

48) Bao cao ket luan cua Dai tuong Vo Nguyen Giap tai hoi nghi tong ket chien dich DienBien Phu, ngay thang nam , p. ; Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? p. ,note and Lich Su Nam Toa An Quan Su Viet Nam, (History of Years ofMilitary Courts in Viet Nam) (Hanoi: Nha Xuat BanQuanDoi NhanDan, ), pp. ,.49) Dien Bien Phu vu den face, pp. .50) Lich Su Bo Tong Tham Muu trong Khang Chien chong Phap () (History of theOce of the General Sta During the Anti-French Resistance ()) (Hanoi: nopublisher cited, ), p. ; Le Viet-Minh et la campagne de Dien Bien Phu, p. andAnnex No. ( June ), Box C, Service historique de la defense, France.


morale of his menmay be one of themain reasons explainingwhy the Politburodecided to sign up to the Geneva Accords, even if it meant dividing Vietnaminto two halves.51

51) To my knowledge, the Vietnamese have not yet published Vo Nguyen Giaps internalreport to the Politburo on the military situation, which he delivered sometime between and July . See the reports by Ho Chi Minh and Truong Chinh in Van Kien DangToan tap, vol. (Hanoi: Nha Xuat Ban Chinh Tri Quoc Giao, ).

EJEA 009-02-02Goscha Online

Documents

Transcript of EJEA 009-02-02Goscha Online