Word: hedgehog
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...enemy in Dienbienphu had been threatening the isolated French base at Laichau, a hedgehog supplied by air, which the French have been using to build up anti-Communist guerrilla forces among the friendly Thai tribesmen. Dienbienphu was also important to the enemy supply, especially for rice raids...
Said Salan: "My decisions are made within a certain framework established in France before I took command. The framework is secret and personal." Salan described how he had stopped the Communists short of the Mekong River in Laos by creating hedgehog positions in the Plaine des Jarres and at Luang Prabang, reinforcing them by air: "The enemy had 40 divisions: I had twelve. I had to wage a cautious war of maneuver...
...pass through" the Plaine des Jarres on their way to conquer Laos. There last week, in a two-mile perimeter around an airstrip, the French were hastily improvising a defense system of barbed wire and entrenchments. Soon Legionnaires and loyal Laotian troops were as securely trussed-up in their "hedgehog" as the ancient Laotians in their old stone jars...
...Hedgehogs. To head off Giap's drive, the French had set up a hedgehog defense point at Samneua, in a narrow pass leading to Laos, 50 miles south of the Nasan hedgehog. They spent $100,000 of U.S. Mutual Security funds* to repair the Samneua airstrip. Fortnight ago, after throwing one of his divisions around Nasan, Giap's forces jumped Samneua. The French abandoned Samneua and its air strip as "indefensible," and the garrison fled south across uncharted mountains, carrying their wounded on their backs and harried all the way by the Viet Minh. Supplied by air with...
...waited so patiently at the border, while the French-listening to the peace noises out of Moscow-had mistakenly ascribed his hesitation to possible peace overtures from the Kremlin. Now Salan was moving everything he could spare before the rains came, hoping to hold a hedgehog position in the Plaine des Jarres like that at Nasan...