Word: dien
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...economic and political influence in Viet Nam. But by the mid-1940s they found themselves battling the nationalist ambitions of the Communist Viet Minh and their French-educated leader Ho Chi Minh. By 1954, with Viet Minh control spreading across the countryside, the French chose the valley of Dien Bien Phu to make a decisive stand aimed at checking the Communists. Instead, the one set-piece battle of the seven-year Indochina war led to the slaughter of 1,500 Frenchmen and, at home, to the loss of political will to continue the campaign. To General Vo Nguyen Giap...
After two days on the road, with an overnight stop in the town of Son La, the bus rolls onto the hot, flat plain at Dien Bien Phu, 18 miles from the Laotian border. It is difficult to imagine the battlefield as it appeared 30 years ago. The French chose Dien Bien Phu because its strategic location seemed to make it the ideal place to cut Viet Minh supply lines and thus to harass Giap's troops into submission. Protected by mountains on all sides, it seemed impregnable. Against heavy odds, Ho's Viet Minh army laid siege...
...town of Dien Bien Phu, with a population of about 4,000, is bustling as workers put finishing touches on exhibits in the new war museum, a converted rice warehouse filled with battle memorabilia, including bullet-riddled French helmets. In the nearby hamlet of Thanh An, 120 women dressed in long black skirts and brightly colored blouses drill barefoot in preparation for the anniversary parade...
...visit by foreign journalists, Hanoi brings out several military heroes of the Dien Bien Phu siege. Lieut. Colonel Van Luyen, 52, who commanded an artillery unit, shows the newsmen the refurbished French command bunker where the Viet Minh proclaimed their victory by waving a red Vietnamese flag from its corrugated and sandbagged rooftop. Farther out lie two of the eight major French perimeter command posts, code-named Beatrice and Eliane by the garrison commander, General Christian de Castries. After three decades, U.S.-made artillery, including 155-mm and 105-mm howitzers, which were supplied to the French by Washington...
...press conference in Hanoi, the legendary General Giap, a smiling but still tough, grand fatherly figure who engineered the victory, attributes the Vietnamese military triumph to "a succession of surprises" that forced General Henri Navarre, the French commander in chief in Indochina, to make a stand at Dien Bien Phu. "Why were we successful?" he asks. "President Ho Chi Minh found a path: the combination of the struggle for national independence and the struggle for socialism." In a nearby sugar-cane field, close to where hundreds of French soldiers are said to be buried, the Vietnamese are erecting a modest...