Word: dienbienphu
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...dismissed him with St.-Cyr-bred contempt as a sometime schoolmaster who had been awarded his general's stars by Communist bush politicians. But Giap's native army defeated his far-better-equipped foe by entrapping a French force of 12,000 in the mountain fortress of Dienbienphu and liquidating it, thus destroying the will of the politicians back in France to fight on. It made Giap nearly as much of a legend throughout Viet Nam as Uncle Ho, and if Giap was underestimated by the French, he is possibly overstudied today...
...artillery to compete with the French in set-piece conventional battles. After a stinging series of losses in 1951, Giap admitted that he had tried to push into Phase 3 too soon; he retreated into the hills and paddies to reassemble his forces. The chance for annihilation came at Dienbienphu, when the French, thinking Giap still had no heavy artillery, dropped paratroops into a valley, hoping to draw Giap into combat. But Giap had obtained over 100 American 105-mm. howitzers from the Red Chinese, carted them through the jungle and over the mountains, and pounded the French forces...
Afterward, Giap proudly wrote that "guerrilla warfare relies on the heroic spirit to triumph over modern weapons." It is a myth-enhancing statement, but it does not quite fit the facts of his triumph over the French. In the decisive turning point at Dienbienphu, it was not the heroic spirit of Giap's soldiers but their massive artillery in the hills that carried...
Decorations in Private. In some respects, Air America operates like a regular airline, providing scheduled service for the U.S. military between Okinawa. Japan and South Korea. But much of its work is strictly irregular. It was Air America pilots who dropped supplies to the French defenders of Dienbienphu before the stronghold fell in 1954. The company's next big assignment came two years later, when the U.S. moved to support the Laotian royalists in the Communist-inspired civil war. Thirty or so Air America planes dropped the rice and weapons that enabled royalist troops and Meo tribesmen to fight...
...statements of the North Vietnamese indicate that the Communists are highly skeptical about our ability to fight this kind of war for an extended period of time. To them, apparently, our escalation would represent an unsustainable last-ditch effort. General Vo Nguyen Giap, who defeated the French at Dienbienphu, published an article two weeks ago in the magazine of the North Vietnamese Communist Party, Hoc Tap, in which he emphasized that an enlarged commitment to South Vietnam would prevent the United States from meeting the obligations of its other alliances. Should the Communists cause trouble elsewhere, he reasons, we would...