Word: nasan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Beneath the wan light of flare shells, the war in Indo-China moved into the seventh year. Said a red-haired Foreign Legionnaire: "We now have the oldest war in the world." To the "Moles of Nasan" the usually frugal French commissary sent Australian beefsteaks, fried potatoes, vegetables, fresh bread, Algerian wine and 3,000 bottles of champagne-one bottle for every four men in the dusty, embattled airstrip. Thai and Vietnamese troops got frozen meat, dried fish and rice; the North Africans had wine, live sheep and goats, brought in by airlift. In a dugout mess 25 feet underground...
Said General Jean Gilles: "We only pray they will attack us." The commander of Nasan waved his hand around the encircled battlefield: the dusty mile-long airstrip and the score of 500-ft. hills around it. Every hill and every valley was a network of barbed wire and dug-in strong points; with its 12,000 French troops, air-supplied by a constant shuttle of planes, Nasan was like a military anthill. French officers likened it to the classic French position at Verdun, the great turning-point battle of World...
...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 saw it, the battle of Nasan was a resounding local victory...
...Communist General Giap was not wasting time licking his Nasan wounds. Part of his forces had pulled out for a three-week rest north of the Hanoi delta, while others 1) captured Dien Bien airport and garrison, 65 miles west of Nasan; 2) ambushed a detachment of Moroccans retreating from Laichau and then encircled the old Thai capital; 3) forced the French to abandon Phong Tho, 35 miles north of Laichau; 4) moved south to the borders of Laos. Giap's most serious effort was a two-division attack (20,000 men) on the flooded area around Phat Diem...
...French Union forces had lost 200 dead, and the Communists more than 500. The French claimed a victory, but it was at most an inconclusive one. Sad-eyed General Raoul Salan was convinced that even if the airstrip became unusable, the French could still supply Nasan's defenders indefinitely by airdrop...