Word: nasan
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...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...
...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...
...Nasan there were 12,000 French Union soldiers, Algerians, Moroccans, Goums, Senegalese, Foreign Legionnaires, Vietnamese and Thais. They were surrounded by three divisions of Viet Minh regulars (approximately 25,000 men) armed with bazookas, recoilless rifles, grenades and wire-busting Bangalore torpedoes. The terrain was high and wide open. The French had dug in, they had laid barbed wire and minefields, they had prepared their artillery to meet concerted infantry attack. Every ten minutes a plane came in from Hanoi with more ammunition, more barbed wire, land mines, 105-mm. guns, bread, brandy and wine. A few minutes later...
...sumptuously at Le Manoir or the Hotel Metropole or danced with taxi-girls at the Ritz and Paramount. At night, beneath their mosquito nets, they listened to the comfortable sound of their own artillery. Said an official spokesman: "There appears to be no reason why the besieged defenders of Nasan cannot hold out as long as planes can supply them...