Word: giap
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...happened that Route Coloniale 41 was Red General Giap's direct line of advance against Hanoi and the Red River Delta, but Huard apparently accepted the Red terms without question. That night the French army radio put out this note of appreciation: "The delegates of the French high command thank the delegates of the Viet people's army for their humanitarian concern." And the Communists seemed just as friendly next day when they helped load the first eleven wounded into a couple of French helicopters: "We hope you will remember what we have done for you. We hope...
...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...
...victory is complete," said Giap's spokesman, via Peking radio. "The French garrison and its commander were captured. We wiped out 17 battalions. We shot down or damaged 57 planes. There were many enemies lying around on the ground." Peking radio later named both De Castries and Lalande as prisoners of war. Said Cogny, weeping: "Dienbienphu is a new name to emblazon on the streamers of France." Said Navarre, in a special Order of the Day to his remaining 230,000 French Union and 240,000 Vietnamese troops: "After 56 days of continuing combat, submerged by numbers, by odds...
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...