Word: nasan
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...French airfield at Nasan, between the Red River delta and Laos, lay all but deserted within its ring of trenches and stout barbed wire. It had been by passed by the Communist Viet Minh forces on their way into Laos. Under the broiling sun the colonel in command, walking disconsolately along the airstrip, looked up as he heard the sound of air craft engines. Within seconds a C-47 airplane, its wings and tail riddled by Red ack-ack fire, rolled onto the runway. The pilot braked it to a stop and his passenger, a prim, neat little man wearing...
...months had passed since Communist General Vo Nguyen Giap conquered the Thai country lying between Red China and Laos (see map). Instead of throwing all his forces against several hundred thousand French Union and Vietnamese troops bottled up in the Red River delta and in the airstrip at Nasan, Giap began probing the defenses of Laos with his Viet Minh commandos. In his exquisite white palace overlooking the palm-fringed Mekong River, aging (67), crew-cropped King Sisavang Vong told the French: "This is my country; this is my palace; I am too old to tremble before danger." Not until...
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...
...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...
...French: their forces were spread out thinly over a vast area of jungle and mountain country. In the north, the Communist supply lines were at that moment being attacked by Thai guerrillas, most pro-French of the tribesmen. On the other hand, the French were now concentrated in Nasan and the Hanoi delta. But where would this lead in the coming seventh year...