Word: strongpoints
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DDay: Overcast and grey. At 1600, Giap orders gunfire against the five remaining French strongpoints in the 12-by-4-mile valley. At 1630, black-garbed Communist infantry come at a run for the southern strongpoint. It is only a feint. Half an hour later 105-mm. fire hits the northeast and southeast strongpoints, and Communist infantry moves into trenches near the French barbed wire...
...bugles sound, and suicide squads blast through the wire. Two Communist divisions, some 10,000 strong, launch a "human sea" attack against both strongpoints. It is the first big attack since bloody "Phase One" of 17 days before. Objective: Bald Head Hill, 200 ft. high in the southeast strongpoint, commanding all other French positions...
...divisions crack the northeast strongpoint, overrun three of its five or six outposts. Then the Communists take Bald Head. At 2200, French Commanding Colonel Christian de Castries calls for air support. Privateers, B-26s, Bearcats, even DC-3 transports sprinkle high explosive and napalm into Red infantry support zones, but the enemy holds its gains. French HQ later admits: "The first news...
...Plus-Three: The day of climax. At 0100, Giap hurls part of his third and only fresh division against Dienbienphu's untouched northwest strongpoint. Its code name: Huguette. The French here are outnumbered six or eight to one. The defenses crumble. By 0400, the Communists locust-swarm over two of Huguette's five or six outposts. One 50-man suicide squad infiltrates the French center, gets within 200 yards of De Castries' command post before it is wiped out. De Castries calls out staff officers, cooks, orderlies, switchboard operators for the infantry fight. Reports sift out that...
...General Navarre lost no time getting into a defense of his 1953-54 campaign. "We have not been surprised," said Navarre. "The situation is just what we expected ..." The Communists had not taken their current major objectives: the rice-rich Red River Delta around Hanoi, and the encircled French strongpoint at Dienbienphu. And their heavily headlined offensive against Luang Prabang, the royal Laotian capital, "may be considered blocked...