Word: giap
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Communist General Giap was not wasting time licking his Nasan wounds. Part of his forces had pulled out for a three-week rest north of the Hanoi delta, while others 1) captured Dien Bien airport and garrison, 65 miles west of Nasan; 2) ambushed a detachment of Moroccans retreating from Laichau and then encircled the old Thai capital; 3) forced the French to abandon Phong Tho, 35 miles north of Laichau; 4) moved south to the borders of Laos. Giap's most serious effort was a two-division attack (20,000 men) on the flooded area around Phat Diem...
...Dongtrieu battles, the late great Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny had shown briefly what could be done if the Viet Minh Communists could be tricked out into open combat. Now, at the encircled air strip of Nasan, 117 miles west of Hanoi, there was a chance that Communist General Giap would repeat his earlier mistakes...
...Linarés, they had only an approximate idea of events that morning last week. Stretching out from the apex of the triangular French-held Hanoi delta to the China border is a string of hedgehog defenses: the Black River line. Three weeks ago, when Communist General Giap (TIME, Nov. 17) attacked Laichau at the westernmost end of this line, General Linares had thrown in Operation Lorraine. It was a counterpunch, aimed to throw Giap's armies off balance and to cut one of his main supply lines from Communist China...
...Giap's Viet Minh forces, ignoring Operation Lorraine, suddenly swept south, swarmed across the Black River and swallowed the fortified French outposts Mocchau and Yenchau. Now they were advancing on the town of Sonla and the nearby airstrip of Nasan, where 12,000 French troops were cut off. There was another point of worry for General Linarés: What had become of Communist Giap's crack 308th Viet Minh division, which had suddenly vanished from the Black River front...
...readily, some critics think. With more men than Giap, with an abundance of U.S. equipment, with an overwhelming superiority in guns and planes, the French, instead of ranging all over the map as Giap is doing, seem to be handicapped by the bunker-or Maginot-mentality. In the high command there is a conflict of personalities: two four-star generals, Linares and Salan, competing for military advantage. What France badly needs is another De Lattre, one who knows'how to use the material at hand...