Word: garrison
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...twilight at Dienbienphu. Narrow-eyed with loss of sleep, the French sentries peered through the monsoon haze towards the Communist trenches less than roo yards away. All was quiet, and the tired 10,000-man garrison hoped for a fair night's rest. At GHQ in Hanoi, an officer reported: "Lull at Dienbienphu...
...garrison at Dienbienphu clung at week's end to six fire-whipped strong points by the Nam Yourn River. The tricolor still flapped jauntily above the French command post. But the 12,000 worn-out Frenchmen. Vietnamese. North Africans and Foreign Legionnaires had been squeezed into one-third of their original perimeter, and they were short of ammunition, supplies and fresh reinforcements. The men were so tired that their performance was losing effect. One night last week the Communists quickly isolated and overran a Foreign Legion outpost in the airstrip sector, and the French could not get it back...
There is also the question of the dead. The French say they have counted 6,925 Communists dead on the battlefield. There are also the French dead, buried reverently in the rubble-when there is time. Nowhere in the shrinking perimeter can the garrison escape this intimacy of death and injury, with its abrasive effect on morale...
...Bitter Mistakes. How did Dienbienphu fall upon such bitter days? Last November the French were confident: they parachuted into Dienbienphu and cut the Red garrison to pieces in the tall elephant grass. Commanding General Navarre then built an entrenched camp 175 miles inside enemy territory. He dared the enemy to come and get him and itched for a set-piece battle instead of Indo-China's usual, fruitless chases through the jungle. Navarre flew in light tanks and 155-mm. artillery; his officers installed their mess silver, their embroidered white tablecloths and their wine cellars, and (though...
...Bitter Outlook. In these conditions, against numerical odds of 4 to 1, the garrison has fought for 40 nights and days. Last week the French government cited every man for the Croix de guerre, and Sir Winston Churchill cabled: "I salute you." Now the gallant garrison was at bay. Was there a chance of relief? Was Red General Giap's army as worn out as the garrison? Or would the outcome be the simple probability-death or Red captivity in one of three bitter ways: a sudden, crushing onset in the dark, or death by the thousand cuts...