Word: paratroop
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Union (mostly North Africans and Foreign Legionnaires), the rest Vietnamese-but he still possesses superiority in heavy weapons, plus an unopposed air force operating almost on top of its bases. Cogny has regrouped one-third of his army into nine mobile groups, three smaller armored task forces, and a paratroop reserve; but most of his Vietnamese are tied down behind fixed defenses...
Navarre was making no apparent effort to relieve Dienbienphu, though he had some 20 battalions elsewhere in Indo-China, including four paratroop battalions in the Red River Delta. "Navarre seems to be drawing completely into himself," said one high-placed observer. "It's almost as though he had a Gotterddmmer-tmg complex." Navarre meant somehow to cling a while to Dienbienphu in the hope that peace could be negotiated at Geneva, but there would be no new blow against the Communists-for that, as one of his aides astonishingly explained, would be "inconsistent with the government's decision...
...Bitter River. Inside Dienbienphu there was little food, little wine. At one point there was just enough ammunition for three days' fighting. The drop zone was so small that much of the French supplies and many paratroop reinforcements drifted into the enemy lines. In one sector the Communists were only about 700 yards from the French center, and the front lines were often less than 40 yards apart. The Red field gunners and mortarmen had perhaps the most concentrated target in all Indo-China: the French perimeter was only 2,000 yards wide. The French artillery was ineffective...
Aside from Mme. de Castries' reassuring radio calls and her air-dropped food and wine packages, it was another difficult week for the colonel. His biggest job: strengthening his cracked fortifications, keeping up the morale of his weary 12,000-man force. His best news: several hundred paratroop reinforcements. His biggest problem: hundreds of wounded men, who cannot be evacuated due to Communist interdiction of the airstrip; some of them have died for lack of special medical care. All week, too, the colonel could hear Red loudspeakers mock him: "You'll never get your general's stars...
TIME Correspondent John Mecklin flew with a French air-force unit one night last week as it dropped paratroop reinforcements into besieged Dienbienphu. His report...