Word: nasan
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...matching them gun for gun. In last year's Vinhyen and Dongtrieu battles, the late great Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny had shown briefly what could be done if the Viet Minh Communists could be tricked out into open combat. Now, at the encircled air strip of Nasan, 117 miles west of Hanoi, there was a chance that Communist General Giap would repeat his earlier mistakes...
...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...
...Hedgehog's Spikes. In Hanoi, General Linares faced a new and alarming situation. Though he had extricated his center, his left flank was crumbling. First, farflung French outposts, and then Sonla itself had to be abandoned. The French pulled back into Nasan 117 miles west of Hanoi, the only remaining bastion of the Black River defense line. An airlift (a plane every 15 minutes) was bringing reinforcements into Nasan and flying out thousands of Sonla's refugees. Situated in a wide-open plateau, rare in that country, Nasan, with its fortified air strip and embrasured artillery...
...coming battle may be decisive. If Nasan should be overwhelmed, the French would be bottled up in the Hanoi delta, and there would be little to stop the Communists' sweeping down the entire length of Indo-China...
...combination of Bill Gall, Hank Fethteld and Gene Cleaves scored seven of the Nasan goals...