Word: viet
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...seemed that there was nobody to take his place. Who among French generals cut a figure half so dashing as the Lanvin-tailored De Lattre? Without De Lattre's dynamic leadership, what was going to happen to Indo-China? France's fears deepened when, in February, the Viet Minh Communists forced the French out of Hoa Binh, which Marshal de Lattre had so boldly taken. Since that low point, the military situation has steadied under the firm hand of De Lattre's sad-eyed friend and deputy, General Raoul Salan. Last week the French cabinet confirmed Salan...
There had been another side to De Lattre: he had speeded Viet Nam independence; he had given the Vietnamese confidence by showing them that the West (in the concrete form of U.S. weapons) was backing them against the Communists. The best France could do to make up for the loss of De Lattre's political talents was to increase the powers and scope of the cabinet minister responsible for Indo-China, and to shift that minister from Paris to Saigon...
Defeat for the West Three months ago, in a daring parachute swoop, General de Lattre de Tassigny hurled the Communist Viet Minh out of the strategic, battle-scarred city of Hoa Binh, rice-and salt-rich capital of the pro-French Mung tribesmen. It was a major French victory, and the French proudly announced: "We shall never give up Hoa Binh." Hoa Binh was important because it straddles Route Coloniale No. 12, along which Chinese coolies had sneaked loads of ammunition from Red China to Communist guerrillas in southern Indo-China...
Then De Lattre died (TIME, Jan. 21), and with him some of the audacity which had heartened the French Union forces in their mean and costly five-year-old war. To the west of Hoa Binh, Viet Minh hacked out new roads in the jungle. A human chain of 50,000 Chinese moved 4,000 tons of war material south to the Communist forces. Included, according to French reports: 10 million Chinese-made cartridges, 100,000 mortar shells, 100,000 hand grenades. Russian-built trucks hauled in heavy cannon; Chinese "military advisers" stiffened Viet Minh's 45,000 regulars...
...General Raoul Salan, De Lattre's successor in Indo-China, increased the French garrison to 23,000 men, sent his shoestring air force to strafe Red convoys. But the Reds were too strong: using Russian antiaircraft guns, they shot down ten French planes in seven days' fighting. Viet Minh raiders slipped through the French defenses, infiltrated the delta...