Word: giap
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...hours next day, Red General Giap laid down heavy 105-mm. and 75-mm. gunfire against the main perimeter. His gunners could not miss: the perimeter was less than 1,000 yards wide. For the first time in the battle, Giap brought up Russian rocket launchers ("Stalin Organs") and struck at Dienbienphu's sodden battlements-eight rockets per burst. De Castries checked the damage, then told GHQ: "This may finish...
This was the crisis, and old Cavalryman de Castries knew it. At 0700, he gathered his last reserves and hurled in three desperate counterattacks. But Giap mostly held his gains, then sent in his Red reserves to clinch the battle. De Castries had only one remaining 105-mm. howitzer, one 155-mm. field gun. His tanks were wrecked or embedded in the mud. His ammunition was all but gone. One outpost commander phoned De Castries: "We can keep on fighting for only ten more minutes. Should we surrender?" De Castries snapped back: "Keep on fighting for ten more minutes...
...Isabelle came bright news. As the Reds swarmed across one outpost, some Foreign Legionnaires went underground. From their dugouts they fought up towards the flarelight; it was hand-to-hand work with knives, grenades, the bayonet. At 0400, two Legion battalions counterattacked. It took them twelve hours to drive Giap's men out of Isabelle...
Letdown in Command. At 1600 that afternoon, Dienbienphu fell strangely quiet. What was Giap up to? Was he regrouping? Was he digging his assault trenches closer to the battered French center? Was he heeding Mao Tse-tung's doctrine: "Fight only when victory is certain"? Or, more likely, was he synchronizing his next assault with Molotov's next offensive at Geneva...
...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 of a siege, or surrender with the honors of war? There were lurking uncertainties...