Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Enemy. Three times the Viet Minh Communists attacked and retreated, leaving 3,000 dead on the wire. The French, whose strategy is based on the principle that the Viet Minh cannot take heavy losses, were jubilant. On Christmas Eve the French broke out a force of 5,000 men to the southeast, linked up with Viet Nam paratroopers dropped near the Black River. Instead of meeting expected opposition, the French found no sign of the enemy. Said a French army spokesman: "Nasan is no longer besieged . . . [We] have recovered the initiative in the Thai country." As the French...
...among them with bayonets and grenades. The fight went on behind the cactus hedges and straw huts, with fanatical young Communists in brown homespun clothing shouting "La dai" (Come and get us). The legionnaires got them. On the river, naval units sank six barges full of Viet Minh soldiers and equipment. Four-star General Raoul Sa-lan, who has been consistently chipper, even on the eve of past setbacks, boasted: "The future of our military actions is now secured...
...three-quarter moon shone down on the milewide, heavily fortified French perimeter at Nasan, south of the Black River. In the lumpy hills around Nasan lurked 20,000 Viet Minh Communist guerrillas. For several nights the French Union troops had expected attack. They crouched in their holes, not smoking, talking in whispers, waiting. The moon glinted on gun barrels, steel helmets, barbed wire...
They died by the dozens, but still they came on. By 3 a.m. they had overrun two hilltop posts on the perimeter's north face, finishing off the Moroccan and Thai defenders with knives, bayonets, machetes, grenades. Within minutes the Viet Minh were putting mortar fire on Nasan's vital airstrip. Next day the attackers had backed off of one hill, and French paratroopers recaptured the other...
...Communists had no aircraft or antiaircraft guns. With impunity, French spotter planes could hover close enough to see a man reading a map, call in a dozen Bearcats for a napalm strike and watch a camouflaged Viet Minh troop concentration scatter in terror. All that was required now was for the fanatical Communists to charge the French positions, throw themselves on the French wire...