13 MARCH – 7 MAY 1954

took charge, have circulated. It is known that an effort to replace de Castries with Major General

René Cogny was unsuccessful when Cogny’s plane from Hanoi was unable to land at Dien Bien Phu, driven off by intense communist anti-aircraft fire.

The fight for Dien Bien Phu had become a battle of attrition, and its outcome was inevitable as the surrounded defenders were systematically pounded into submission. Five undermanned battalions defended strongpoints Dominique and Eliane east of the Nam Yum River, and a pitched battle erupted at Dominique in late March. Although two positions fell rapidly to the Viet Minh, the third held on tenaciously as the gunners of the 4th Colonial Artillery Regiment levelled their weapons and fired point-blank into the faces of the attackers.

The Viet Minh were pushed back from Dominique, but other assaults gained ground as the 316th Regiment forced Moroccan troops from portions of Eliane, which were recaptured in a French counterattack. Portions of Huguette also changed hands more than once. Although the French had fewer than a dozen tanks at Dien Bien Phu, their appearance near Eliane on the night of 31 March helped maintain a tenuous hold on the strongpoint.

As the fighting stretched into mid-april, the Viet Minh sustained heavy casualties. Giap, however, was undeterred. He ordered reinforcements to the area from across the Laotian frontier. A French counterattack on 10 April managed to retake portions of Eliane, but Huguette was overrun by the 22nd and the communists claimed nearly all of the precious airstrip, rendering resupply for the beleaguered French in their shrinking perimeter nearly impossible.

Following the costly April attacks, Giap relied more on advancing trenches and infiltration to erode the French will to resist. Then, on 1 May, he ordered heavy attacks that overran portions of Eliane, Dominique and Huguette. Five days later, the Viet Minh detonated a large mine beneath Eliane, which devastated remaining defensive areas. Hours later, the strongpoint fell. On 7 May, the communists, outnumbering the French more than eight to one, renewed their attacks.

DESPERATION AND DEFEAT

The Viet Minh had lost 8,000 dead and approximately 15,000 wounded. However, they had captured 12,000 prisoners – including 5,000 wounded men – and 1,150 French soldiers had died.

Giap had won a tremendous victory. De

Castries was held prisoner for four months while negotiations to end the fighting led to the Geneva Accords, dividing Indochina at the 17th parallel.

The communist-dominated north was backed by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The US supported the south, which was not a party to the Geneva agreement. Although the last French soldiers departed Vietnam in 1956 as their colonial empire crumbled, years of conflict remained before Vietnam was unified under communist rule and peace was finally realised.