Word: airstrips
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...another difficult week for the colonel. His biggest job: strengthening his cracked fortifications, keeping up the morale of his weary 12,000-man force. His best news: several hundred paratroop reinforcements. His biggest problem: hundreds of wounded men, who cannot be evacuated due to Communist interdiction of the airstrip; some of them have died for lack of special medical care. All week, too, the colonel could hear Red loudspeakers mock him: "You'll never get your general's stars." Despite President Eisenhower's suggestion, the French government decided that it would not promote him until the battle...
...night was cloudless but hazy. The four main French strong points were blacked out except for shielded lights in a special pattern to guide Banjo One, Two & Co. into the drop zone. From Luciole, the zone looked pitifully small-500 meters at the southern end of the main airstrip-and the slightest miscalculation of wind or navigation could make a parachute, whatever its cargo, drift into the barbed wire or the Viet Minh lines. At intervals of a few seconds, sometimes minutes, there were more lights-delicate white fragments in the blackness. Some were Viet shells hammering the French positions...
...among the lucky few of the wounded who got out early. The others had to wait, lying in foxholes the size of their stretchers, until the skies over Dienbienphu cleared and the planes which could strike at the Viet Minh Communist artillery zeroed in on the airstrip. Outside his ward in the military hospital at Hanoi, the corridors are filled with other wounded, in cots crowded head to foot in a row. The legionnaire talks matter-of-factly of the paratroop drop and of the wound he got only half an hour after landing; no heroism, no bravado, no whimpering...
...cold, raw afternoon, but more than 500 well-wishers turned out at Ottawa's Rockcliffe Airport to see Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent take off last week on a round-the-world good-will tour. As the Prime Minister's limousine pulled up at the airstrip, they broke through the rope barriers in a rush of friendly enthusiasm. St. Laurent, politely doffing his black Homburg, plunged into the crowd, shaking hands and alternately bidding goodbye and au revoir as he worked his way toward the plane...
Laichau had been an important base for rallying the friendly Thai tribesmen in the northwestern wilds, but the French commanders had compelling tactical reasons for giving it up. It was supplied and manned only by air, yet it has a small, poor airstrip, with steep mountain cliffs on both sides. If the Reds brought mortars to the high ground above the airstrip, they could take it under devastating fire...