Word: haiphong
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...Paris, General de Lattre de Tassigny read the news with pursed lips: the expected offensive had come; 30,000 Viet Minh Communists were attacking the eastern end of the highway between Hanoi and the port of Haiphong. Already, the French had lost four small outposts along Route Coloniale...
...Lattre wasted no time. With his government's promise of 15,000 picked reinforcements soon to come, he boarded his Constellation for Indo-China. As he flew over India, the news from IndoChina was bad: the Reds had come close enough to cut the Haiphong water supply. De Lattre ordered his pilot to fly direct to Haiphong, but the same crachin mist which was giving cover to the Communists prevented the big Constellation from landing. De Lattre landed at Saigon, rode a light plane back to Haiphong, took charge of the battle...
...urgent growl of American bulldozers and cement-mixers. De Lattre, in furious haste, was replacing the Beau Geste forts on his northern front with modern concrete bunkers. His main concern: protection of the vital 60-mile road and rail link between Hanoi and the supply port of Haiphong...
...North of Haiphong, where French engineers and 5,000 Vietnamese laborers are pouring concrete day & night, seventy 400-ton bunkers have been built since De Lattre gave the order on Dec. 19. Twenty more bunkers are due for completion by March 1, another 100 by March...
...Lattre's men drove into the hills north of Haiphong. A TIME correspondent accompanying the French reported: "The task force followed a narrow Viet Minh track where the jungle crowds in from all sides. The men crossed numberless ravines on thin bamboo strands. On a better road a mile to the south, a column with mules transporting French 755 provided artillery support, while the French light cruiser Duguay-Tronin also zeroed in on Viet Minh positions. On the second day, Viet Minh opened machine-gun fire, but when Moroccan troops began closing in, they fled leaving behind no dead...