Word: phu
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...political influence in Viet Nam. But by the mid-1940s they found themselves battling the nationalist ambitions of the Communist Viet Minh and their French-educated leader Ho Chi Minh. By 1954, with Viet Minh control spreading across the countryside, the French chose the valley of Dien Bien Phu to make a decisive stand aimed at checking the Communists. Instead, the one set-piece battle of the seven-year Indochina war led to the slaughter of 1,500 Frenchmen and, at home, to the loss of political will to continue the campaign. To General Vo Nguyen Giap, the commander...
After two days on the road, with an overnight stop in the town of Son La, the bus rolls onto the hot, flat plain at Dien Bien Phu, 18 miles from the Laotian border. It is difficult to imagine the battlefield as it appeared 30 years ago. The French chose Dien Bien Phu because its strategic location seemed to make it the ideal place to cut Viet Minh supply lines and thus to harass Giap's troops into submission. Protected by mountains on all sides, it seemed impregnable. Against heavy odds, Ho's Viet Minh army laid siege...
...town of Dien Bien Phu, with a population of about 4,000, is bustling as workers put finishing touches on exhibits in the new war museum, a converted rice warehouse filled with battle memorabilia, including bullet-riddled French helmets. In the nearby hamlet of Thanh An, 120 women dressed in long black skirts and brightly colored blouses drill barefoot in preparation for the anniversary parade...
...second installment. "The First Vietnam War," the French fight the Vietminh for eight years only to be soundly defeated at Dien Bien Phu, as a French general pointedly recalls a talk with General Vo Nguyen Giap, Vietnamese Defense Minister and instigator of Dien Bien Phu and the Tet Offensive...
Giap himself states the Vietminh military strategy, "...in war we have to win, absolutely have to win." The episode finishes with the precarious Geneva Accords of 1954, and closes after a story about the French Legionaires landing at Dien Bien Phu. After the legionaires patriotically sing their Legion song, a cadre of Vietnamese respond by chanting La Marseillaise having no song of their...