The Last Valley

Rating:
Summary: The Best Account of this Battle so Far
Review: "The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam" by Martin Windrow is destined to be the definite account of this tragic battle. I knew as soon as I saw this title in the bookshop that I had to have it and it was one of the best purchases I have made so far this year!

This is an excellent and detailed account of the fighting in the Valley of Dien Bien Phu between the professional French forces, including Legionnaire and elite Parachute Units, and the Vietnamese Bo Doi (Viet Minh) led by General Giap.

The author takes the time to explain the military and political settings of the war in Indo China, offers detailed accounts of the opposing forces and commanders and provides a well researched narrative of the events leading up to this battle. The story of the battle itself for Dien Bien Phu is a classic military narrative that really pulls the reader into the story and gives us a rare insight into the hardships of the French soldier and his enemy.

One quote in the book that was used for a chapter heading by Colonel de Castries says a lot about this battle and the terrible fighting involved; "It's a bit like Verdun, but Verdun without the depth of defence - and, above all, without the Sacred Way...". This is an excellent account of a shocking battle and I am sure that anyone who enjoys reading or studying military history will find this book an excellent addition to his or her library.

In over 657 pages of text, along with 22 maps of varying size and detail the author offers the reader a well researched and well presented account of this famous battle. At no time did I find the story boring or bogged down in detail. The narrative is fast paced, exciting and filled with human tragedy and numerous stories of soldier's courage in the face of horrendous conditions.

In closing this is what Max Hastings had to say about this book: "This is an outstanding work of military history. It tells the story of the ghastly French experience in Indo-China in a way that has never been done before in English. The account of Dien Bien Phu is a masterpiece of meticulous historical narrative."

Rating:
Summary: The Best Account of this Battle so Far
Review: "The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam" by Martin Windrow is destined to be the definite account of this tragic battle. I knew as soon as I saw this title in the bookshop that I had to have it and it was one of the best purchases I have made so far this year!

This is an excellent and detailed account of the fighting in the Valley of Dien Bien Phu between the professional French forces, including Legionnaire and elite Parachute Units, and the Vietnamese Bo Doi (Viet Minh) led by General Giap.

The author takes the time to explain the military and political settings of the war in Indo China, offers detailed accounts of the opposing forces and commanders and provides a well researched narrative of the events leading up to this battle. The story of the battle itself for Dien Bien Phu is a classic military narrative that really pulls the reader into the story and gives us a rare insight into the hardships of the French soldier and his enemy.

One quote in the book that was used for a chapter heading by Colonel de Castries says a lot about this battle and the terrible fighting involved; "It's a bit like Verdun, but Verdun without the depth of defence, and, above all, without the Sacred Way". This is an excellent account of a shocking battle and I am sure that anyone who enjoys reading or studying military history will find this book an excellent addition to his or her library.

In over 657 pages of text, along with 22 maps of varying size and detail the author offers the reader a well researched and well presented account of this famous battle. At no time did I find the story boring or bogged down in detail. The narrative is fast paced, exciting and filled with human tragedy and numerous stories of soldier?s courage in the face of horrendous conditions.

In closing this is what Max Hastings had to say about this book: "This is an outstanding work of military history. It tells the story of the ghastly French experience in Indo-China in a way that has never been done before in English. The account of Dien Bien Phu is a masterpiece of meticulous historical narrative."

Rating:
Summary: Soldiers' views of Dien Bien Phu
Review: ?The last valley? by Martin Windrow

What an excellent book! For readers interested in the precursor to our own involvement in Vietnam, Martin Windrow?s book provides a great read in the tradition of Bernard Fall.

Writing history is not easy and the author has managed to flesh the events and characters in a way that engages the readers. I was impressed with Windrow?s description of the battles and the horrors that continue to haunt the survivors of such meat-grinding battles. Old-soldiers will relate to the smell of decaying flesh, the description of mangled bodies- the smell of death, which arose from the carefully crafted text. Moreover, they will relate to incredible tiredness of troops who stay in battle for extended periods.

I served in SVN in 1967-1968, and my early reading had me believing that Dien Bien Phu was a French military disaster. In a strategic sense, it was, but it was close run. Australian troops are often called diggers but the Vietminh sappers would certainly challenge us for that title. I could not put down the book without mentally honouring the brave soldiers (on both sides) who fought without respite in trench warfare reminiscent of WWI.

For those who are interested in the development of tactics used in the Vietnam War (1963-1975) it was interesting to note the rudimentary use of helicopters and close air support by the French, and the development of the bases aero-terrestre, (air-land bases) which later became the ubiquitous fire-support bases (FSB). It was also interesting to see that the American interests became more partisan after Korea and in the final days of Dien Bien Phu, more support was extended to the French, and then eventually led to our involvement. Hal Moore?s book- ?We were soldiers once? shows the development of air-mobility that changed the face of ground warfare in Vietnam.

This story is a gritty tale that is told from soldiers? points of view. The degree of realism is palpable. Congratulations to Martin Windrow on a truly great book.


Rating:
Summary: The Last Valley
Review: An excellent piece of research and writing. The noise, sights and smells of the battle jump from the pages. Beautifully paced, Windrow is fair and even-handed to all participants. He clearly states where there are conflicting accounts and carfully explains the sources and logic of his own views.

While the losses on the French side (of which many were non French legionnaires and locally recruited native troops) were appalling to the modern reader, the losses of Vietnamese troops were very much worse. Windrow makes clear that crude WW1 "human wave" tactics used by the Vietnamese units under General Giap almost won, or, at least, extended the battle for the French. Even with Chinese support, General Giap was expending soldiers, equipment and ammunition at a rate the Vietnamese recruitment, training and logistics could barely match. General Giap may have won the battle, but it was at a huge and painful cost to the fledgling Vietnamese army.

The implications of the book suggest that if France had planned for and managed better air supply, bombing and ground support operations from the start (possibly with better planned support from the USA), the outcome might have being different. Whether this would have made any difference to Vietnam in the long term is another debate. The Vietnamese were always prepared for a very long war, and by 1954 the French public were already sick of the military losses and the expense of fighting the war. The French Army were convinced that simple lack of political will lost them both the battle and the war. As later in Algeria, the cry went up: "We were betrayed".

Well worth buying.


Rating:
Summary: Very Timely Considering Iraq
Review: As we read the headlines noting the opposition the US troups face in Iraq, it is worth recalling the rising of the Communist Viet Mihn movement. The movement rose against the post-war restoration of the French colonial government in Indochina. Benefiting from particularly favorable circumstances, including a common border with China, the Viet Mihn succeeded in the unique achievement of a wartime transofmation from clandestine guerrilla movement into a powerful conventional army. The final vindication of that army was the destruction at Dien Bien Phu in the spring of 1954 which ultimately led to US involvement in Vietnam. ==The French asked for a stand up battle where their more powerful weapons, better discipline, training and tactics would demolish the enemy. They deliberately put their fortress in an area where the Viet Mihn would have to fight. The Vietnamese not only attacked, they isolated the French force and besieged it in its jungle base. Then they crushed it.

Dien Bien Phu is one of the landmark battles of the last century. Its political consequences for the French and for the Americans were far more important than some of the much larger battles of World War II.

This is an excellent book. Excellently researched, excellently written, and excellently timed.

Rating:
Summary: Raw Courage
Review: I don't suppose that now, fifty years after the battle there can be an account that rivals books by the participants of the battle, or bernard Fall's splendid "Hell In a Very Small Place" in the intensity or the feeling of immediacy. However, Windrow comes pretty close. He's obviously done his research and likes the subject - and wants to show us why. The stunning, desperate battle raging for almost two months, a wonderful array of unforgettable characters like Langlais, Bigeard ("the world's best paratrooper"), Giap, Pouget and many others. Good account of a siege is always fun, and what a siege this was. Windrow correctly states the reasons for the unexpectedly long survival of the garrison: aggressivness, tactical skill, hard-hitting mobility, high morele and bravery of the French paratroopers and foreign Legionaires. The things they did were just amazing and until the end they belived they could pull it off. They almost did. No wonder so few of them survived. But the Viet-Minh fought well too and were no fools either. The suffering, courage and self-sacrifice of both sides is unimaginable to today's mineral water armies. I recommend the above-mentioned Fall's book, his "Stree Without Joy" and for further reading also Alistair Horne's "Savage War of Peace". You'll get to know what happened to those who suvived. Like the indomitable Bigeard, who led the 3rd Para Regiment in Algeria and in one incident, when unarmed taking a walk on a beach, fought off several insurgents sent to shoot him and put them to flight. The man is still around, writing books. This one's well worth your money.

Rating:
Summary: The end of a colonial mystique
Review: The French Expeditionary Corps (FEC) was probably one of the best led, best trained, best armed and supplied armies to see the field of battle. If you wanted to crush an independence movement to fine dust, you couldn't be much better than send the FEC. Yet, the FEC was never adequate to its task as defined by the political leaders of the French Fourth Republic, and not only failed to crush the Vietnamese but ended up training the Viet-Minh armed forces in how to defeat them in the same way that Rommel's DAK trained the British Eigth Army in successfully coping with the German blitzkrieg, in the same way that the German armies trained the Soviets on the Eastern front - And in another place and time, the same way that the British regulars taught the American Revolutionary army what it had to learn and do to defeat them.

DBP was only one of the last milestones of the First Indochina War, a War which illustrates one of the oldest lessons of warfare: you underestimate your opponent at your own peril. And the most dangerous opponent is not necessarily the one who is full of himself, but the one who is acutely conscious of his limitations and is constantly learning and fine-tuning - and willing to make mistakes to learn from. Of all the top successive commanders of the FEC, general Leclerc was the very first in chronological order and stands out as the most competent and effective of them all because he was the one who did not want to fight. Eventually, he was compelled to resign and history took its course.

The colonial mystique of the white man's superiority took a hard if not staggering blow, the carefully nurtured mythology of the French civilizing mission in Vietnam came to an end as the French state decided that it no longer had the means, desire or motivation to maintain it, and the smug French assertion that there is no such thing as a Vietnamese nation vanished like a flake of snow in the sun. The disappearance of these three myths made it possible for a new, genuine and much stronger relationship to emerge between the French and Vietnamese peoples, a relationship based on mutual respect based on a commonality of values that at times borders on mutual admiration - The French are pretty good when they are not on an ego trip, and I'd say that the Vietnamese are pretty decent folks when they are not at war.

Rating:
Summary: The French decisively beaten, deservedly so!
Review: This is a much welcome addition to the limited library of books dealing with the siege, fiasco and abject defeat of the French in Dien Bien Phu.

Is it any wonder that the French were routed when they fought a 20 Century mobile warfare with 19 Century Boer War tactics?

Fighting an elusive enemy with outmoded WW1 tactics, like fortresses, trenches, supply columns, instead of elastic defense in depth (which the Germans pioneered in the Great War and the French never learned, a la Marginot Line) led to inevitable defeats . Especially when the French officers were just a bunch of bumbling Colonel Blimps who never showed their faces in the trenches, least of all fighting to hold or recover them?

And deservedly so when the defeatist, incompetent and cowardly French officers (mostly Paras and Foreign Legion) preferred hiding in the safety of a bunker to fighting in the forward trenches (How many French officers lost their lives fighting? Not a lot. Most were captured UNHARMED, and UNARMED in the HQ bunker!, depsite all the bravado in the jingo press and post war spin, and one example will suffice, Colonel Biegeard of Resistance fame and commander of one of the Para battalions in Dien Bien Phu, and later intriguer in the Algerian War. made it a habit not to carry any arms, a pefect excuse for NOT leading or fighting in the front , and who during the entire battle was NEVER in the forward trenches, always staying near his radio, ie in the safety of an underground bunker and who surrendered without any pretense of a fight when the NVA approached).

The fact that more than 10,000 French soldiers were captured, together with their sorry lot of officers, is a tribute to the North Vietnamese art of war (despite all the French lies about being let down by their Morrocan/Algerian/Vietnamese colonial troops, they were the ones who were fighting, and dying, while their French officers cowered in their bunkers in the rear shivering with fear, a contemptible and pathetic lot indeed), and the beginning of the end of France's shameful efforts to retain and regain her rotten and morally bankrupt colonial empire.

Btw, Windrow's book adds basically nothing new to Bernard fall's classic, Hell in a Very Small Place, and both suffered from viewing the battle from a solely French perspective, whereby the superhuman French paratroopers and Foreign Legionnaires were fighting valiantly against immense odds, while being let down by the top generals of the French Expedionary Corps (CE), the Air Force and the assorted colonial troops (Algerians, Morrocans, Vietnamese, Thais. Khmers) of the French Union.

Incredibly, despite the admitted 2,000 plus "internal deserters" (ie. those who refused to fight but did not go over to the Viet Minh) in Nam Youm, Windrow, with no sources to back up, claimed that there was only a few Europeans amongst them, when the French paras and legionnaires made up 30% of the garrison! While cases of desertion by the Foreign Legion were glossed over, Windrow focussed on the supposedly unreliability of the local Asian recruits/draftees and the African colonial mercenaires, thus pinning the blame on the fall on the latter, instead of poor tactical choices and inept leadership of the French.

One cannot but admire the post war spin by the French on their brave paras and legionnaires, who acted out of a sense of camardeship and devotion, and who fought brilliantly against the brainless automatons of the Viet Minh.

The fact is, while the average company commanders were undeniably brave, the French just did not have a clue in how to fight a modern war, especially when one which demanded battlefield initiative and frontline leadership.

In DBP, what is amazing is that the supposedly fearless battalion and brigade (GM and GAP) commanders of the paras and Foreign Legion, like Bigeard, Lisenfelt, Tourret, Langlais, de Sanguin-Pazzis, Brechignac, Lakande and the COGNO chief, de Castries (a calvaryman), had never once VISITED the trenches, not to mention fighting in or for them. And the only senior commander to lose his life, Gaucher, was killed by a wayward howitzer shell which penetrated his bunker!

With pathetic and cowardly commanders hiding in undeground hideouts and at a safe distance from the frontlines, and who relied on the radio or telephone to know what's going on, and with junior commanders who displayed little initiative, no wonder the French were beaten by, in their eyes, some half savages from the jungles.