Word: minh
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Trumpet Charge. For six hours the French held off the Viet Minh while B-26s from Hanoi strafed the roadside. By that time the northern half of the French column was in position to counterattack. In the jump-off position was the 1st Bataillon de Marche, reckoned the finest Vietnamese unit in the French Union forces, whose tradition it is to charge to the call of a trumpet. Now, as the shrill trumpet echoed over the green jungle, the Vietnamese stormed the small hill where the Viet Minh had dug in. The fourth wave got in among the Reds with...
...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...
...nearby hilltop, the 308th was watching the approach of the French column. Now, over a 2,000-yard strip of the road, they let the French have it. Lobbed hand grenades turned trucks into burning wrecks, while rifle and machine-gun fire blasted down the Legionnaires. Then the Viet Minh leaped into the road with daggers and machetes. The French column, cut in half, pulled back north and south of the ambush point. Dazed survivors gasped incoherent stories: one had seen women charging with the Viet Minh, others had seen a European leading the charge, shouting "Coupez...
Sandy-haired Breton Lieut. Colonel Louis Kergaravat rallied the southern half of his forces on a hill overlooking the road. Spotting the Viet Minh in the old Chinese fort, he called in the artillery. Said Kergaravat later: "They did not take cover. They acted as if they were drunk. We could see their bodies tossed into the air by the explosions of our shells." An hour later, driven off the old fort, the Viet Minh stormed Kergaravat's position. "I couldn't believe my eyes, there were so many of them," said Kergaravat. "It looked like a football...
...Black River, the Reds were using their old shock tactics: waves of expendables in sleeveless, padded green jackets shouting "Hochiminh Muon Nam" (Ho Chi Minh lives 1,000 years), throwing themselves on the French wire with bamboo Bangalore torpedoes and blasting a path for later waves. On the Red River front, Communist resistance, which had faded before the armor, was now reappearing in the rear and extended flanks of the French column, but the French drive itself threatened Thai Nguyen, the reputed Red capital, 44 miles north of Hanoi. In the flat, flooded delta, the brunt of guerrilla attack, directed...