Word: giap
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...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...
Jammed up on the roads leading southward toward Hanoi last week were scores of similar dumps testifying to the weight and seriousness of Communist General Giap's attack. It was a three-front fight: 1) in the mountainous jungles of the Black River country, where 10,000 Thais, Moroccans and Legionnaires held a 130-mile line against three Viet Minh divisions; 2) in the. Red River valley, where a wedge of French armor, backed by 15,000 Vietnamese troops, linked up with French paratroops dropped in the enemy rear; 3) in the Hanoi delta, where Giap had touched...
...General Giap is a frail little man whose dark, bulging eyes burn with fanaticism. He was born in Annam 40 years ago. His entire family is believed to have lost their lives in the struggle for national independence. When 18, Giap was jailed by the French for a few months and then allowed to study at the top French academy in Hanoi, where he took a doctorate in political economy. A teacher remembers him as: "passionate and sentimental." Somewhere along the line he got a Marxist education too. When the Popular Front brought left-wing parties together...
Death Means Nothing. World War II brought a Japanese occupation to Indo-China, but left the (Vichy) French with a few threads of authority. Under the name of Comrade Van, Giap became Ho Chi Minh's right-hand man and organized a Communist underground army of liberation (i.e., liberation from both Japanese and French). In Hanoi, the French threw his wife into jail, with a sentence of 15 years, and there she died. When Giap led his "liberation" troops into the valley of Dinh Ca in 1944, his merciless liquidation of government officials and wealthy farmers gave cruel force...