Word: giap
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...week's end the colonel himself restarted the fighting. De Castries threw out a battalion, with light tanks in support, against a cluster of Red outposts to the northeast. Three and a half hours later, the Communists withdrew. Red General Giap put in five counterattacks, but the colonel held his gains...
Back at Hanoi, French GHQ optimistically noted that Giap's fourth counterattack showed "definite lack of conviction," and the tired, outnumbered French garrison is still given a 50-50 chance to hold Dienbienphu...
DDay: Overcast and grey. At 1600, Giap orders gunfire against the five remaining French strongpoints in the 12-by-4-mile valley. At 1630, black-garbed Communist infantry come at a run for the southern strongpoint. It is only a feint. Half an hour later 105-mm. fire hits the northeast and southeast strongpoints, and Communist infantry moves into trenches near the French barbed wire...
...Plus-Three: The day of climax. At 0100, Giap hurls part of his third and only fresh division against Dienbienphu's untouched northwest strongpoint. Its code name: Huguette. The French here are outnumbered six or eight to one. The defenses crumble. By 0400, the Communists locust-swarm over two of Huguette's five or six outposts. One 50-man suicide squad infiltrates the French center, gets within 200 yards of De Castries' command post before it is wiped out. De Castries calls out staff officers, cooks, orderlies, switchboard operators for the infantry fight. Reports sift out that...
...five days & nights, the Communists have gained one-half of the northeast and a clawhold in the northwest-at a fearful price of 7,000 dead, some 10,-ooo wounded and 80 prisoners (on top of 9,000 casualties in Phase One). This is more than half Giap's original striking force. The dangling Communist dead are beginning to putrefy on the wire, and French planes drop leaflets in the enemy lines: "Remember Giap, the Butcher of Dienbienphu." The French have lost perhaps 2,000. But Dienbienphu holds...