The War for Cochinchina, 1945-1951 DISSERTATION Presented In

Home , Algiers putsch of 1961, Alphonse Juin, Battle of Dien Bien Phu, Battle of Nam Quan, Battle of Tonkin River, Blockhouse

In the Year of the Tiger: the War for Cochinchina, 1945-1951

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

William McFall Waddell III

Graduate Program in History

The Ohio State University

2014

Dissertation Committee:

Dr. John Guilmartin, Professor of History

Dr. Peter Mansoor, Gen. Raymond E. Mason Chair in Military History

Dr. Alan Beyerchen, Professor of History, Emeritus

William M. Waddell

2014

ABSTRACT

In 1950 the French stake in Indochina experienced two parallel, but very different outcomes. In Tonkin the French military suffered a major catastrophe in the form of the

Route Coloniale 4 disaster that nearly unmade the entire French position in the north of

Indochina. In the south, in Cochinchina, something very different occurred. A series of resource-constrained, but introspective commanders, built a strong, circumscribed hold over the key economic and political portions of the country. By restraining their effort and avoiding costly attempts at the outright defeat of Viet Minh, the southern French command was able to emerge victorious in a series of violent, concerted, but now largely forgotten actions across 1950. It was, it must be remembered, not just French failure that set the stage for the American intervention in Vietnam, but also the ambiguous nature of

French success.

DEDICATION

pour les causes perdues

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to acknowledge the assistance of my thesis advisors, Dr. John Guilmartin, Dr.

Peter Mansoor, and Dr. Alan Beyerchen. They have nurtured my interest in and passion for history, and pushed me to think in ways I certainly would not have on my own. I have also benefited greatly from my discussions with fellow students during my graduate studies. Sarah Douglas, Rob Clemm and Frank Blazich in particular, have helped me far more than they realize, I’m sure. Lastly, I need to thank my family. My wife, Valerie, and my parents have devoted extraordinary amounts of time to helping me. Without their support I never would have been able to complete this project. I also need to mention my three boys (Liam, Elias and Sam) who have accepted with maturity far beyond their ages my frequent need to retreat to my desk and pore over strange books instead of playing at trains.

VITA

June 1997 ...... Kittatinny Regional High School

June 2001 ...... B.S. History, West Point

June 2011 ...... M.A. History, The Ohio State University

September 2008 to present ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Department

of History, The Ohio State University

PUBLICATIONS

“Tai-erh-chuang, 1938: The Japanese Juggernaut Smashed,” City Fights: Selected

Histories of Urban Combat from World War II to Vietnam. Ballantine Books, New York,

2003.

“Backgrounder#11: Reconciliation Movements in and around Baghdad.” Institute for the

Study of War (2007)

Review, Sudhir Hazareesingh, “In the Shadow of the General: Modern France and the

Myth of De Gaulle,” H-Net Reviews (December 2012)

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: History

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract...... ii

Dedication...... iii

Acknowledgments...... iv

Vita...... v

Publications...... v

Fields of Study ...... v

Table of Contents...... vi

List of Figures...... viii

List of Abbreviations ...... x

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 1: “Les armes parleront…” – The War for Tonkin...... 35

Chapter 2: “A Land for Heroes” - Cochinchinese Land and People...... 83

Chapter 3: Trace de sang - The War for Cochinchina, 1945-1947 ...... 106

Chapter 4: l’ossature solide - Latour’s War, 1947-1949 ...... 156

Chapter 5: All For The General Counter-offensive – Viet Minh Strategy and Tactics.. 216

Chapter 6: La Geste de Chanson –the battles of 1950...... 273

Conclusion ...... 327

Appendix A: Commanders of the C.E.F.E.O...... 338

Appendix B: Commanders of the TFIS/FFVS ...... 339

Appendix C: French Military Acronyms ...... 340

Appendix D: Vietnamese Glossary...... 342

Bibliography ...... 344

vii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Map of Tonkin...... 82

Figure 2. Cochinchina...... 84

Figure 3. Sects of Cochinchina ...... 88

Figure 4. Viet Minh dispositions, 1945-1946 ...... 124

Figure 5. T.F.I.S. Zones ...... 146

Figure 6. T.F.I.S. Disposition, May 1947 ...... 148

Figure 7. T.F.I.S. evacuations 1947...... 163

Figure 8. Operation VEGA (Feb 1948) ...... 175

Figure 9. Layout and Fields of Fire of Main Post...... 197

Figure 10. Basic Guard tower in Betelnut Wood...... 197

Figure 11. Go Cong Sector Map...... 198

Figure 12. Viet Minh War Zones...... 240

Figure 13. Viet Minh Chi Doi, 1945-1946 ...... 241

Figure 14. Viet Minh Military Organization...... 252

Figure 15. Viet Minh Trung Doan, 1947...... 254

Figure 16. Trung Doan Locations, 1947...... 256

Figure 17. Tieu doan 309 Basic Organization ...... 258

Figure 18. Chu Luc Trung Doan dispositions, 1950...... 263

viii

Figure 19. Organizational table for Trung Doan Chu Luc Tay Do...... 264

Figure 20. Chanson Receiving Flowers From Vietnamese Delegation, June 1951...... 276

Figure 21. Tra Vinh province...... 286

Figure 22. Viet Minh troops storming temple at Bac-sa-ma ...... 291

Figure 23. Burning of Watchtower at Chông-Nô outside of Cau Ke ...... 291

Figure 24. Viet Minh leading prisoners away after Cau Ke campaign...... 294

Figure 25. Area of Operations during "High Waters" Offensive...... 318

List of Abbreviations

NARA National Archives and Records Administration

RG Record Group

SHAT Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre

VKD Văn Kiện Đảng

INTRODUCTION

The French are by tradition and inclination boar hunters. In the medieval world the French noblesse d’épée (nobles of the sword) proved their worth in great, wide- ranging hunts for this mammoth beast. French heralds in those days chided their rivals, the English, for having no quarry quite like this across the channel.1 Beyond its size, the boar was infamous for its ferocity, its insensitivity to pain and a total lack of cunning. Its name became synonymous with enemy. The animal left the large marks of destruction everywhere in its wake, and so could be tracked with relative ease. French knights did so mounted, flying through the woods accompanied by teams of hounds. The chasse was a test and spectacle of martial prowess. It was a tiresome, dangerous problem, but a relatively simple one. It required teamwork to manage the dogs, but also served as the venue for warriors to outdo one another in acts of reckless bravery. For kings the boar hunt confirmed their fitness to lead during the times of frustrating peace – for knights their right to ride in the vanguard when peace inevitably broke down. For both it confirmed a mastery over self, nature and the adversary.

1 It seems the English did have wild boars of their own, but for some reason the French were convinced that they did not measure up to the giants on their side of the channel. 1

Once cornered – doubtless after killing many dogs, perhaps goring a horse or two

– the boar would make his stand. He would rage, foam at the mouth and gnash his tusks together, sharpening them for the final fight. The lead huntsmen now went to it with spear or knife, at times on foot. This confrontation was unabashedly called a “joust” and chevaliers considered there no better training for war.2 To face the beast after a long chase was a kind of glorious madness. Many knights died in the attempt, including one

French king.3 In many respects, French warfare ever since– l’audace, the offensive à outrance – is little more than a democratized chasse au sanglier overlaid with Cartesian rationale and aesthetic.4

In Indochina, however, the boar was not the pinnacle of the chasseur’s game – that distinction went to the tiger. Equally dangerous, the tiger of the colonies was a very different sort of animal that required hunting in a wholly different manner. Tigers are furtive and silent; their ranges are immense and, to the untrained eye, trackless. At the peak of the man-eating tiger crisis to afflict colonial India, the British government sent entire units of gurkhas into the bush to root out these animals, only to have the tigers retreat further into the jungle and return to killing once the army had gone.5 Tiger hunting is paradoxical in that the more resources and men one commits, the less likely success becomes. It is nearly pointless to stalk tigers; especially those turned man-eater are more than happy to have their pursuer follow them into their vast haunts where the relationship between hunter and prey is easily reversed. Tigers, instead, must be waited

2 John Cummins, The Art of Medieval Hunting: The Hound and the Hawk (Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2003), 96-102. 3 Alistair Horne, La Belle France: A Short History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005), 60. 4 Here we make a brief exception for the “methodical battle” schema of 1940. 5 Jim Corbett, Man-Eaters of Kumaon (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 4. 2 upon. The hunter needs a map to document its habits, where it feeds, where it kills.

Through constant trial and error, he improves his map and learns where it best to lay in wait. Perched in a tree in the heat of the jungle, the hunter can wait for days, weeks and often months.6 Omer Sarraut, a celebrated big game hunter of colonial Indochina, called tiger hunting not nearly as “sporting” as with other prey. On the surface, it seems a passive art. It calls for baiting, careful preparation and, most of all, superhuman patience for that one fleeting shot.7 It was especially fitting for Cochinchina, a place where, a later

French general noted, “time is of no consequence.”8 To hunt the tiger requires a different mindset, a mindset the French had to learn and relearn in her colonies. Not all did.9

By 1950 the years of preparation, in the south at least, were complete, the bait laid and the waiting at an end. It was the Year of the Tiger and he finally arrived. The battalions of the Việt Nam Độc Lập Đồng Minh Hội (Viet Minh) came with ferocity never before experienced in the sultry wilds of Cochinchina. The assault was to set the stage for the great “general counter-offensive” meant to wipe out the French hold over their colony. Nguyễn Bình – the one-eye, sword-toting chief of the southern Viet Minh – brought to the battle several of his new main force (chủ lực) battalions reinforced by

6 It took famed tiger-hunter Jim Corbett over a year to kill the Chowgarh Tigers in 1930. The range of these particular man-eaters was over 500 square miles. Corbett, 101. 7 Tony Burnand et al., Grandes Chasses Coloniales: Indochine (Paris: Éditions de Montbel, 2009), 33. 8 Charles-Marie Chanson described Cochinchina as the place where “le temps ne joue pas.” SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Directive No. 9,” prepared by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 26 December 1950. 9 If there is any doubt about their initial mindset, it is interesting to note that one of the first French operations in retaking Indochina was Operation GAUR, named after a species of large wild cow native to Cochinchina, the hunt for which Sarraut found much more satisfying. In temperament the Gaur is much like the wild boar. 3 large numbers of local units.10 From December 1949 through January 1950 the French position in and around Trà Vinh fell under concerted attack by trained infantry and specially devised sapper teams. The French defensive position – a thick and finely textured array of fortified posts and watchtowers manned by Vietnamese religious sects, regional militia and a handful of regular troops and backed-up by mobile bataillons d’intervention – recoiled under the withering assault.11

Skillful attackers first cut the roads connecting the various positions and sought to isolate posts before launching their coordinated assaults. Mortar barrages and heavy machine gun fire supported the Viet Minh sappers who worked to blow holes in tower defenses. Harassing fires mounted against ancillary targets tested the defenders’ capabilities and kept besieged units uncertain as to the Viet Minh’s intentions.12 A number of posts fell or had to be abandoned, but many more held on. The French riposte was quick and brutal: a company of the Bataillon étranger de parachutistes (Foreign

Legion parachute battalion) dropped in to succor the most heavily threatened quarter while battalions of the much-feared Moroccans supported by riverine squadrons and aircraft pushed in to carry the fight to the Viet Minh. At the end of a nearly forty-day campaign Nguyen Binh’s depleted legions withdrew from the battlefield, leaving

10 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia - Sự Thật, 2010), 414. The official Vietnamese history states that the Viet Minh had amassed thousands of militia for this campaign in addition to their regular forces. 11 Service historique de l’armeé de Terre (hereafter SHAT), carton 10H4369. General Charles-Marie Chanson, “Compte-rendu des operations dans le sous-secteur de TRAVINH,” dated 18 Feb 1950. See Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 414. 12 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Menace rebelle dans la province de Tra Vinh,” prepared by Colonel de l’Estoile, Chef d’État-Major. Dated 31 Dec 1950. 4 hundreds of dead behind.13 The remainder of 1950 would see this drama played out in a rising crescendo as massive Viet Minh offensives broke over the French position in

Cochinchina. All went down to costly defeat.

The French and their confederates won the war for Cochinchina in 1950. By the end of the next year the Southern Committee (Nam Bộ) of the Viet Minh was in dire straits. The blockade of Western Cochinchina (the Transbassac) had reduced their comrades operating east of Saigon to near starvation. Attempts to establish a counter- economy complete with its own new currency had largely failed.14 Revenues to the Nam

Bo’s Central Committee had fallen precipitously, so much so that the Viet Minh’s subordinate commands were told to render themselves “self-sufficient”: no help would come from above. Increasingly, peasants fled the impoverished conditions of the communist portions of the South for the relative abundance of French-controlled Saigon and its environs.15

Most serious, however, for the Viet Minh was the destruction of their main force regiments (chủ lực) over the course of 1950 in battles such as Tra Vinh. Having refused battle – tiger like – for the first few years of the war, in 1950 the Viet Minh ripped aside the insurgent veil and launched into the third phase of Mao’s revolutionary paradigm in a series of wide-ranging offensives against the French position in the center of

Cochinchina. The result, perhaps unexpectedly, was a massive and bloody defeat for the

13 SHAT, carton 10H4369. General Charles-Marie Chanson, “Compte-rendu des operations dans le sous- secteur de TRAVINH,” dated 18 Feb 1950. The Moroccan units involved were the 1/10e B.T.M. and the 2/3e R.T.M. 14 Pierre Brocheux, The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Southeast Asian Studies, 1995), 200. 15 SHAT carton 10H3746. “Bilan de l’année 1952,” dated 5 February 1953. Prepared by the 2eBureau, Forces terrestres du Sud Viet-nam. 5 communists. By early 1951 they were forced to disband their regiments, so painstakingly constructed over the previous few years and return to the slow work of political struggle in the villages.16 General Nguyen Binh would die in Cambodia en route to Tonkin to answer for these failures.17

In short, the Viet Minh lost their war in Cochinchina. The French victory there was arguably so complete that it explains why, when the communist insurgency began afresh in the new South Vietnam, it had to begin in Quảng Ngãi province, an area as yet unoccupied by French forces at the time of the war’s end in 1954 and far removed from the old provinces of Cochinchina.18 This development is all the more important considered in the context of the viability of the partition of Vietnam and in comparison to the much different unfolding of events in Tonkin. The American war for Vietnam and the context in which it would be fought would be determined by the dynamics of French success during the First Indochina War. Had France lost both northern and southern portions of the country, the American war for South Vietnam might not have occurred at all.

16 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” dated 10 January 1952 and prepared by État-Major/2eme Bureau, Forces terrestres du Sud Viet-nam. 17 The death of Nguyen Binh is the subject of some controversy. French journalist/historian, Lucien Bodard, claimed Binh was assassinated on Giap’s orders. Lucien Bodard, The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam, 1st ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), 196. French intelligence suspected this as well (SHAT, carton 10H4005. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 3903,” dated 14 October 1951), but eminent historian of the First Indochina War, Christopher Goscha, disagrees and believes his demise was purely accidental. Christopher E. Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, no. 206 (2002): 57. Also Goscha, “A ‘Popular’ Side of the Vietnamese Army,” in Christopher E. Goscha and Benoît de Tréglodé, Naissance d'un État-Parti: Le Viêt-Nam depuis 1945 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004). 18 Richard Hunt, Pacification: The American Struggle for Vietnam's Hearts and Minds (Oxford: Westview Press, 1995), 5. Also, SHAT, carton 10H157. “Missions et Articulation du Corps Expéditionnaire,” dated 25 October 1954 and prepared by 3eme Bureau. This document makes clear that Quang Ngai province was “yet to be occupied” at the time of the French withdrawal from active operations. 6

The conflicts in Tonkin and in Cochinchina during the First Indochina War in fact represent two very different wars. Furthermore, this variance was not due to a difference in strategy among the northern and southern Viet Minh. The chief divergence was rather the conduct of the war on the French side. In Tonkin the French military found itself stretched thinner and thinner as it endeavored to bring the elusive Viet Minh to decisive battle on favorable terms, while in Cochinchina the French adopted a more restrained approach. French strategy in the south focused on a strong, but circumscribed hold over the politically and economically vital cities and eschewed large-scale, mobile operations except insofar as they furthered the goal of defending the already pacified zone. This restrained approach was not the product of a pre-conceived command decision, but rather evolved from the complexity of the environment and from the reluctant admission by a pair of reflective French commanders that they had neither the means nor the intelligence to summarily deal with the Viet Minh.19 The conduct of war as does not fall into the traditional rigid dichotomy often assumed between the needs of conventional war and the sacrifices necessary to pursue pacification or counterinsurgency.20 The French war in southern Vietnam was something else altogether.

19 The use of the word complexity here is meant in distinction to things that are merely complicated, i.e. problems which can be taken apart and solved piecemeal are merely complicated, not complex. Complexity privileges the whole as greater than the parts and does not admit of thinking about the issues apart from the relationships among the various parts. See Yaneer Bar-Yam, Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World (Cambridge: Knowledge Press, 2004), 24. 20 Those interested in the American war in Vietnam will perhaps draw inferences here to the supposed split between the war of “big battalions” as practiced by William Westmoreland and the shift to counterinsurgency under his successor Creighton Abrams. See Lewis Sorely, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt, 1999). As is increasingly recognized, the case for this divergence is overstated. Philip Davidson, Westmoreland’s chief of intelligence, noted even before Sorely’s work that Abrams introduced no new strategy in 1968. See Phillip B. Davidson, Vietnam at War: The History, 1946-1975 (New York: Oxford University Press, 7

The course of the war in Tonkin illustrates the differences between the French strategy there and its direction of the conflict in Cochinchina. Not long after taking overall command in Indochina in July 1946, General Jean Valluy determined that he did not possess sufficient forces for a full-scale pacification of the country. Despairing of adequate reinforcements, Valluy wagered that his only chance for victory was to “strike at the head” and decisively defeat the main Viet Minh cadres in their redoubt in the Viet

Bac north of Hanoi.21 This decision was momentous for the course of the First

Indochina War. From this point forward French commanders ventured increasing amounts of men and material in desperate gambits to bring the Viet Minh to battle.

In October and December 1947 the French launched operations LEA and

CEINTURE with tens of thousands of troops in action. Paratroop descents coupled with well timed armored thrusts pushed the French far into the interior of Tonkin all the way to the border with China in the vicinity of Cao Bang. Although the operations came within a hair’s breadth of capturing Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, a thousand

French soldiers were killed and the core of the Viet Minh army had not been brought to battle.22

The next two years saw grandiose French operational plans scrapped, but left isolated units holding their outposts along Route Coloniale 4 in the hopes that from there

1991). The argument here that there were, in fact, two different wars going on in Tonkin in Cochinchina has the ring of Sorely’s case, but it is considerably different. 21 Valluy quoted in Yves Gras, Histoire de la Guerre d'Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1979), 183. This decision is all the more ironic, given that Valluy had previously argued that “[s]i … nous réussissons à detacher la Cochinchine de la guerre … nous aurons réglé plus qu’aux trois quarts la questions indochinoise.” Gras, 177. 22 Raoul Albin Louis Salan, Mémoires: Fin d'un empire / Tom. 2, Le Viêt-Minh mon adversaire, Octobre 1946 - Octobre 1954 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1971), 109. 8 they could eventually be used to encircle and eliminate the Viet Minh. But holding these far-flung posts proved very costly and their maintenance would consume the limited offensive capacity of France’s mobile forces in Tonkin.23

The Viet Minh reaped in 1950 the incoherence the French had sown into their troop dispositions. Still believing the communists to be poorly led and incapable of following a concerted plan, the French High Command was caught largely unawares by the catastrophe that unfolded along R.C. 4.24 Even still, the French chief in the north,

Marcel Alessandri, had conceived of an overly bold plan to abandon the frontier and so accrue to himself fifty battalions with which he planned to assail and destroy the Viet

Minh.25

This, of course, was not to be. The abortive French withdrawal from the border forts turned into a rout in which 6,000 men were killed or wounded.26 The Korean War and the attendant torrent of American supplies plus the arrival of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny saved the situation during the terrific battles for the Red River delta in 1951.

But instead of seeking a political solution to the conflict at this point, the temporary success the French enjoyed encouraged them to seek victory in Tonkin.

To forestall Giap’s Black River campaign meant as the prelude to a general move to take all of the Indochinese hinterland, General Raoul Salan launched Operation

LORRAINE, another massive, highly choreographed ballet of paratroopers and riverine

23 Georges Longeret, Jacques Laurent, and Cyril Bondroit, Les Combats de la RC 4: Face au Vietminh et à la Chine, Cao Bang-Lang Son, 1947-1950 (Paris: Indo éditions, 2004), 296. 24 SHAT, carton 10H995, “Note d’Orientation No. 7 relative à propagande et contre-propagande destinées aux troupes autochtones,” 25 Mai 1950. 25 Bodard, 267. 26 Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941- 1960, 1st Free Press pbk. ed. (New York: Collier Macmillan, 1985), 127. 9 forces aimed at the Viet Minh supply base at Yên Bái.27 Intelligence failed again and the

French did not take Yen Bai. The resulting delay in Viet Minh actions did afford Salan time to reinforce his new base aéroterrestre at Nà Sản and presented Giap with a target he was unable to resist.28 The combat that followed destroyed many of Giap’s best units, costing him perhaps 7,000 dead and wounded.29 The victory, however limited, seemed to verify the axiom of French strategy that had been in force since Valluy, that the destruction of the Viet Minh main force units was to be sought somewhere in the wilds of

Tonkin. The final dénouement of the war at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 bears mentioning only insofar as it represented the apogee of a persistent operational/strategic perspective carried out on a larger scale, at greater distance and with graver ramifications.

Naturally throughout the war commanders in Tonkin remained highly skeptical that the mire of political turmoil that typified the Fourth Republic could ever resolve itself sufficiently to provide the war effort with anything approaching the necessary resources to ensure victory.30 This uncertainty created in the French that proclivity common to many military organizations: to combine, as Douglas Porch notes, “[a] ‘worst case’ analysis on the strategic level…with a ‘best case’ on the operational level.” This, according to Porch, often makes for plans “whose major ingredient is wishful thinking.”31

27 Salan, 338. 28 Salan, 348-349. 29 Jacques Favreau and Nicolas Dufour, Nasan: la victoire oubliée, 1952-1953: base Aéroterrestre au Tonkin, Collection Campagnes & Stratégies Les Grandes Batailles (Paris: Economica, 1999), 166. 30 By way of example, the government of René Mayer, which appointed Henri Navarre and approved of his ambitious plan to end the war, lasted scarcely five months. See Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, Cambridge History of Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 464. 31 Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: A History of French Intelligence from the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1995), 457. 10

The war in Cochinchina went rather differently from that in Tonkin, though the peculiarity of the war in the south would not be evident at first. Following the coup of 23

September 1945, when the French replaced the Viet Minh in official control of Saigon, the French Corps expéitionnaire française d’Extrême-Orient (C.E.F.E.O) arrived in

Cochinchina under the command of General Philippe Leclerc.32 In a series of dramatic armored thrusts, Leclerc’s battle-hardened veterans of European fighting quickly drove the Viet Minh from the major cities. Operation MOUSSAC struck at Mỹ Tho while

GAUR drove the Viet Minh east and liberated Biên Hòa and Ban Mê Thuột. Surprised by the violence of the French attack, the Viet Minh nevertheless avoided most open battles, preferring to fade into the wilderness.33 The rapid advance left the French in real control of only the important transport junctures and the economic centers near the lucrative rubber plantations east of Saigon.34 Though on their heels, the Viet Minh remained undefeated. They looked to rebuild their forces in the forests of Cochinchina and in the inaccessible marshland of the Plain of Reeds.

The first two years of fighting in the south are significant for several reasons. In the first place, November 1945 would witness the arrival of Nguyen Binh, sent south to organize the disparate Vietnamese resistance elements into a single block under Viet

Minh control.35 Complementing the formation of guerrilla and then regular units in the field, Binh also unleashed a wave of terrorism in Saigon-Cholon to be carried on for the

32 Peter M. Dunn, The First Vietnam War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985). 33 Gras, 57-62.This course was adopted after a brief and ill-fated attempt to contest Saigon openly. 34 SHAT, carton 15H113. “Notes sur les Effectifs Necessaire,” Lt-Colonel Huard. Dated 9 Dec 1945. 35 Goscha, “La guerre par d’autre moyens: réflexions sur la guerre du Viet Minh dans le Sud Vietnam de 1945 à 1951,” 36. 11 next several years.36 Of even greater import for the course of the war, however, was the shift of the French main effort north to Tonkin in 1946. Hereafter Cochinchina would be run as a separate command and as an economy of force theater of operations. Subsequent commanders of the Forces terrestres du Sud Viet-nam would find themselves consistently denuded of their best units, denied reinforcements and utterly lacking in strategic direction.37

This salutary neglect forced the French in Cochinchina to look for and adopt creative short-term solutions, often against their inclinations. In 1946 this manifested itself in the rallying of the sects to the French cause. With battlefield victory not in the offing, French intelligence went to work disassembling the shaky nationalist/communist coalition Nguyen Binh had put together. By mid-1948 the French, aided by Binh’s heavy-handed dealings with his subordinates, had succeeded in separating the Cao Đài, the Hòa Hảo and Bình Xuyên from their alliance with the Viet Minh. Each group, complete with its own sizable, independent military arm, now became a key player in the anti-communist struggle in Cochinchina. They were to maintain this role throughout the

36 SHAT, carton 10H4984. “Bulletin de renseignements,” dated 9 April 1948. The chief of French military intelligence in Cochinchina, A.M. Savani, noted that by Jan. 1948 Saigon saw 189 terrorist attacks that resulted in 51 French and 18 Vietnamese deaths. Some of this early tactical effectiveness and skill with explosives may have been due to the presence of a large number of Japanese soldiers in the Viet Minh ranks. The French estimated that in Nguyen Binh’s initial band of 800 or so men about 150 were Japanese. SHAT, 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-nam, Février 1946 – Février 1954,” dated 15 March 1954. Prepared by Capitaine Menard of the 3ème Bureau, F.T.S.V. 37 Pierre Boyer de Latour, Le Martyre de l'armée française: de l'Indochine à l'Algérie (Paris: Les Presses du Mail, 1962), 42. General Boyer de Latour, the commander in Cochinchina starting in late 1946 states that he was given “carte-blanche” control over events in the south. Though he attributed this to his superior’s confidence, it seems equally likely that the French High Command did not hope for much out of the south. 12

First Indochina War because the French could not afford to do without them, even though numerous commanders wished to repress the sects should it become practicable.38

In February 1947 the divisional structure for French units in Cochinchina was replaced by a system of three zones (East, Center and West), possibly copying the Viet

Minh structure in place since 1945.39 Into this new system stepped two remarkable figures; taken together they are responsible for much of what was distinctive about the war in Cochinchina. The first was Colonel Charles-Marie Chanson, a colonial artilleryman with “an invalid’s shyness, and fine, sad eyes,” according to French journalist Lucien Bodard.40 As the commander of Zone Centre41 Chanson combined a capacity for aggressiveness – Chanson spent most of Spring 1947 engaged in mobile operations against Viet Minh in the Plain of Reeds - with the knowledge that many of his positions were too far extended to be maintained effectively. Unlike the French in

Tonkin, Chanson abandoned his remote stations.42 He also made up for his lack of local reserves by forming Vietnamese commandos with French cadres. This system meant a

38 Boyer de Latour, 76. Latour remarks in his memoires that under normal circumstances the maintenance of the independent bands of Hoa Hao and Cao Dai soldiers would be “unthinkable.” Latour’s successor, Charles-Marie Chanson, also found them difficult to manage and openly considered stripping the Cao Dai of their arms in 1950. See SHAT, carton 10H984. Letter from Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamieene du Sud to Général de Corps d’Armée, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, dated 11 February 1950. Given this, it is less than surprising that when he had the opportunity in 1955, Ngo Dinh Diem suppressed the sects, though one must wonder with hindsight if this was a good decision on his part. See Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 ( New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52-58. 39 Pierre Guillet, Pour L'honneur: Le Général Chanson en Indochine, 1946-1951 (Paris: Les Editions EDIPRIM, 1992), 43. Guillet served under Chanson as his intelligence and operations chief on several occasions. 40 Bodard, 192. 41 Though it shifted slightly over time, Zone Centre roughly corresponded to the area first and foremost of Saigon-Cholon, but also Hoc Mon and Tay Ninh, Tan An, My Tho and Ben Tre. SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Articulation et commandement des F.F.V.S.,” dated 25 February 1950 and prepared by the État-Major – 3éme Bureau, F.F.V.S. 42 Guillet, 90. 13 network of reserves capable of operating across the broad scale of conflict. Finally, not willing to see the few regular units at his disposal pressed into static guard duty, Chanson actively pushed for the recruiting of local militias in large numbers.43 Despite reservations, Chanson armed them. He then set to work building schools, markets and even medical dispensaries in “well-controlled zones.”44 At the zone level Chanson introduced a productive blend of restrained pacification and a frugal use of his reserves, a practice to be adopted more broadly when he became overall commander in Cochinchina in 1949.

Chanson’s initial work fit well with the intentions of the French commander in

Cochinchina, General Pierre Boyer de Latour, who took over command in 1947. Upon taking control Latour found his command without mobile reserves of any kind; his best units had been sent north to reinforce efforts there. He spent most of 1947 securing his lines of communications and looking to form reserves sufficient to carry the battle to the

Viet Minh in the Plain of Reeds sometime in 1948.45 In this respect, Latour was not so different in operational perspective from what was being practiced in Tonkin.

The pivotal moment came in early 1948. Possessed briefly of mobile reserves following the failure of decisive action in Tonkin, Latour launched Operation VEGA.

The goal was to encircle and destroy the main Viet Minh units in the Plain of Reeds and to decapitate its command structure. To the affair Latour brought a demi-brigade of the

43 Henri de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1999), 108. Chanson would continue this line of thought when he became commander in Cochinchina and would actively push for the creation of greater number of all-Vietnamese units. By 1950 partisan units in Cochinchina would be twice as strong as similar formations in Tonkin. SHAT, carton 15H113, “au sujet des possibilities de formation de l’Armée Vietnamienne,” 13 April 1949. 44 Guillet, 37. 45 Boyer de Latour, 98. 14

Foreign Legion, nearly eleven battalions of infantry (including two paratroop battalions), four riverine dinassaut squadrons, armored support and a squadron of fighter-bombers.

Despite eemingly superb timing and flawless execution, VEGA was a swing and a miss.

The Viet Minh sensed its coming. Latour had to content himself with destroying some arms dumps and stockpiles of food, not enough to compensate for the massive outlay of men and equipment.46

The failure of VEGA set Latour against any more opérations d’envergure. The

Viet Minh were clearly able to sniff out conventional attempts on their base areas and

Latour did not possess the wherewithal to try again.47 By late 1948 as the threat of Red

China arriving on the frontier seemed imminent, once again mobile units from

Cochinchina were being removed for service in Tonkin. Despite his belief that pacification first required the destruction of Viet Minh units, Latour reconciled himself to occupying in force only Zone Centre in Cochinchina.48 Large sectors of the west would be abandoned, while pacification within the heart of Cochinchina took on a thick, robust form.49 Latour ordered the construction of a dense network of fortified posts in and along the major lines of communication in Zone Centre.50 His staff furthermore produced a

46 Gras, 224. 47 By late 1948 Latour’s mobile reserve had fallen to six battalions. Boyer de Latour, 106. 48 For perspective, towards the end of 1948 Latour had about 68,000 men in total, of which only 38,000 were regular troops. Boyer de Latour, 108. In the critical period of 1950, in fact, total forces in Indochina numbered less than 150,000. SHAT, carton 15H113 “Forces terrestres d’Extrêm-Orient en 1950.” Michele Bodin has calculated that by December of 1950, however, the usable, regular troop number was only about 95,000. Michel Bodin, La France et ses Soldats, Indochine, 1945-1954, Collection Recherches Asiatiques (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996), 19. Compare this figure to more than 400,000 American troops just in South Vietnam prior to the Tet Offensive of 1968. Ronald H. Spector, After Tet: The Bloodiest Year in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 1993), 9. 49 Boyer de Latour, 109, 123-124. 50 Boyer de Latour, 109. 15 large volume of manuals designed to promote the goals of pacification and the ways in which the new, reduced French enclave could be secured more thoroughly.51

To offset the ceding of the Transbassac to the Viet Minh, the French established an economic blockade along the Bassac River, limiting their commitment to little more than holding the principal embarkation points for rice headed east. By 1950 this blockade was choking off the Viet Minh rice supply.52 The communist slogan of desperation became: “[a] grain of rice is worth a drop of blood.”53

In October of 1949 Chanson succeeded Latour as the commander of Franco-

Vietnamese forces in Cochinchina.54 He almost immediately complained to his superiors about the removal of more units for service in Tonkin. Typically Chanson complained that his lack of troops and funds would force him to forgo any extension of pacification and that this imposed standing still was tantamount to falling back. All told Chanson would have to rely even more on newly-created Vietnamese battalions and place increased reliance on local militia.55

51 SHAT, carton 10H985. There exists within the French Military Archives copies of Latour’s pacification literature that covered everything from the proper construction of fortified positions to the correct way to deal with the locals. 52 Boyer de Latour, 106. The three main “points d’appui” were Long Xuyen, Can Tho and Soc Trang. The blockade was so effective and the food situation so severe that by late 1950 the Viet Minh commander for Tay Ninh, northeast of Saigon, was asking for special troops to help protect their harvest and laid plans to launch diversionary attacks to keep French occupied. SHAT, carton 10H3746. Direction generale de la documentation, Ex. No 9 “Notes sur les activities économiques et financieres Viet Minh,” dated 24 November 1950. 53 Bodard, 136. 54 Guillet, 72. He also became Commissariat de la Republique du Viet Nam Sud. 55 SHAT, carton 10H4369. Letter from Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamienne du Sud à Général Corps d’Armée, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême- Orient, dated 11 Feb 1950. Chanson was especially concerned about the loss of a Foreign Legion parachute battalion and a unit of Moroccans. 16

Once again this diminution of the strength of French arms in Cochinchina paradoxically became a boon. Chanson’s inability to extend his zone of pacification meant a redoubling of the French effort in and around Zone Centre. In fact a look at the

French dispositions in early 1950 shows nearly all Chanson’s regular units operating in

Zone Centre.56 Even at this stage Chanson continued to believe that the destruction of enemy forces was his first priority.57 The forced reduction to his command, however, prevented him from actively seeking anything like a decisive engagement with the Viet

Minh regular units. Chanson employed reserves only on a limited basis and generally in response to a threatened sector, accommodating the system he had employed when he commanded Zone Centre to the entire theatre.58 When the massive Viet Minh offensive broke open in 1950 it fell on a powerful defensive position manned by reasonably fresh troops with reserves and artillery support close at hand.

As mentioned above, Nguyen Binh’s attempt at launching the “general counter- offensive” in 1950 was a disastrous failure. Whether he did so because his men in the

Plain of Reeds and in parts east were starving or because the Viet Minh’s Central

Committee ordered him to do so is difficult, if not impossible to tell. It is likely that both rationales were at work, furthermore guided by the persistent communist belief that the

“general counter-offensive” was their ultimate path to success. Nevertheless, the

56 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Articulation et commandement des F.F.V.S.” dated 25 February 1950. In 1950 Chanson held his best and the majority of his troops in Zone Centre, including his legionnaires and the mass of his artillery. 57 SHAT, carton 10H3746. Général de Brigade Chanson “Directive No. 9,” dated 26 December 1950. 58 SHAT, carton 10H4369. Letter from Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamienne du Sud à Général Corps d’Armée, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême- Orient, dated 11 Feb 1950. A good example of this was the use of a company of the B.E.P. as well as aviation and riverine forces in December 1950 to fend off Viet Minh attacks near Tra Vinh. 17 outcome was that partisans and Vietnamese government troops held against the concerted assault. In the succeeding battles, French bataillions d’intervention inflicted staggering losses on Nguyen Binh’s carefully constructed main force regiments.59 The Viet Minh would not pose a serious threat to French control of Cochinchina for the remainder of the war.

In his instructions to his subordinates for 1951 Chanson described the grim work of pacification in Cochinchina as a “perpetual evolution.”60 And indeed the events of

1950 show that the French and their Vietnamese confederates had managed to strike a workable balance between the static needs of security in pacification and the cobbling together of mobile reserves capable of dealing with local emergencies. This success, however, was not the result of a concerted plan, or strategy, conceived of in a commander’s mind and imposed on recalcitrant events by dint of military skill. Instead, the two key profitable aspects of the French endeavor were its adaptation to the complexity of the environment -- to include the presence of the sects, the enemy and the resource constraints -- as well the recognition chiefly by Latour and Chanson that their limited knowledge of enemy capabilities and intentions would not permit them to deal any kind of death blow to the Viet Minh organization. Given their situation, the French in Cochinchina had to be frugal and constrain their area of operations to a manageable minimum. It also meant that the war’s endgame remained nebulous and confined the

French to a largely reactive posture. And yet this minimum effort secured the heart of

59 SHAT, carton 10H3746. 2éme Bureau report, “Evolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” dated 10 Jan 1952. 60 SHAT, carton 10H3746. Général de Brigade Chanson “Directive No. 9,” dated 26 December 1950. Chanson did not live to see out his plans for 1951. He was assassinated in Sa Dec in July. 18

Cochinchina, an area the Viet Minh would have to take at some point. The saturation of the French presence in that region meant that the communists would not be able to do this through mere subversion.

More importantly, the southern Viet Minh were deeply committed to the necessity and utility of the three-phase Maoist strategy for guerrilla war.61 This Chinese paradigm and its Vietnamese offshoot state that revolutionary war, such as that fought against the

French, would proceed in linear fashion through three distinct stages.62 Guerrilla tactics and an intense effort to foster political allegiance to the revolutionary movement would typify an initial “defensive” mode. As the “people’s army” gained offensive potential, the war would enter into the “equilibrium” phase (in which guerrilla operations coexisted with conventional war) which would give way in turn to the final “general counter- offensive.” During this last stage, inaugurated by the correct identification of the

“fortuitous moment,” the revolutionary army would annihilate the colonial opponent in sweeping maneuver to coincide with a general uprising among the oppressed population.63 Although Vietnamese scholarship since the war has waged a protracted debate about when the final move to phase three was indeed made, what is clear from contemporary source material at the time is that the Viet Minh of Cochinchina believed that 1950 was their moment; whether or not the overall Viet Minh leadership in Hanoi

61 See Chapter 5. 62 T.X. Hammes calls this the “Vietnamese modification.” See Thomas X. Hammes, The Sling and the Stone: On War in the 21st Century (Minneapolis: Zenith Press, 2006). 63 Douglas Eugene Pike, PAVN: People's Army of Vietnam (New York, NY: Da Capo 1991). 19 agreed is another matter.64 This is important because it forces us to reassess the myth of the omni-competent Vietnamese communist who could move seamlessly up and down the ladder of revolutionary war to the consternation of his blinkered Western adversaries.65

Much ink has been spilled assessing the power of the communist politico-military program, so much so that the preponderance of scholarship today takes the communist victory as having been all but inevitable.66 In reality, as much as they represented a supposedly clear way forward, the phases of revolutionary warfare were also an option- closing strategic straitjacket. As Lien-Hang Nguyen has shown, the subtle political victory which the Democratic Republic of Vietnam achieved over the United States after the military failure of the Têt offensive was, from their perspective, sheer serendipity.

While it is true that many, including Giap, did not favor the bold offensives of 1972 and the decisive stroke in 1975, the controlling faction in Vietnam under Lê Duẩn always believed that to be victorious the communist revolution would have to end with a massive offensive against the puppet regime. That they were able to undercut political support for

64 For an excellent synopsis of this literature see Lien-Hang Nguyen, “Vietnamese Historians and the First Indochina War,” in The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis, ed. Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 42. 65 This view of the Vietnamese communist soldier is manifested in Harry Summers work, originally published in 1982. (Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context (Washington, D.C.: Strategic Studies Institute, 1983). It was also, however, powerfully advanced by Douglas Pike in his work on the People’s Army of Vietnam. In this work Pike says explicitly that Western powers were totally unprepared to deal with the sophisticated communist strategy. 66 See William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996); William Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam (Boulder: McGraw-Hill, 1995). Christopher Goscha, Vietnam: Un État né de la Guerre, 1945-1954 (Paris: Armand Colin, 2011). For the inevitably of communist victory see John Prados, Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975 (Lawrence: Kansas University Press, 2009). 20 the war in the U.S. and thus strip the South Vietnamese of equipment and fuel prior to this was a happy accident in terms of their strategy.67

This strategy stands in stark, bloody relief in Cochinchina in 1950. It was not merely that the French had succeeded in reducing much of the Viet Minh infrastructure to starvation. The notion that the “general counter-offensive” could and would resolve their problems was indelibly written into the communist view of history. And though we must remain hesitant to make any strident claims in this regard due to a lack of archival material on the matter, it seems plausible that the myth of the “general counter-offensive” and the “general uprising” were key motivational factors for Viet Minh soldiers. The evolution of Viet Minh forces in the south from guerrilla bands to professional soldiers in conventionally organized regiments demonstrates this view. The ideological component becomes even more important when we remember that in Cochinchina this transformation was done absent the Chinese material support prevalent in Tonkin. They believed the war would end and hopefully end soon in a great bataille rangée, so to speak. It is a mix of propaganda on the part of the Vietnamese and forced credulity for

Western servicemen that the Vietnamese communists would have fought on virtually forever and at whatever cost. The grand, and yet failed, offensives of 1950 help to restore some sense of contingency to the overwritten narrative of the Indochina Wars.

It is not surprising that this story has escaped much notice, given the outcome of the war in general and the proclivities of historians working then and now. After all, the

French lost in Indochina. Moreover, the chief battles leading up to that loss in the main

67 See Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi's War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 21 occurred in Tonkin. The Viet Minh were also undoubtedly stronger in Tonkin, especially after 1950 when they benefited from Chinese material support and training.68 The earliest journalistic accounts of the war and most subsequent Anglophone histories – insofar as they mention the French at all – have naturally elected to alight ever so briefly on the various steps leading up to the epic finale at Dien Bien Phu.69

French histories of the First Indochina War are, of course, a good deal more balanced, but still explain the course of the war in terms of the end. They perforce treat the war for Tonkin as the main effort, which it indeed was. French language history of the military dimensions of the conflict must also contend with the vexed legacy of decolonization. To avoid the larger issues at play much of what is published by military historians in France is of a highly specialized, highly detailed variety. This work, while limited in scope, is a rich font of information about the various and sundry arms of service, troops and battles that comprised the French military experience in Indochina.70

68 Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975, The New Cold War History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000). 69 For some examples of those journalistic accounts see Bernard B. Fall, Street without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina, Stackpole Military History Series. (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 2005); Lucien Bodard, L'enlisement (Montrouge: Editions Gallimard, 1963). To be fair Bodard does discuss the war in Cochinchina quite a bit, but is ultimately more interested in the politics involved and, as he must, is compelled to focus more heavily on Tonkin. Stanley Karnow’s early “complete” history of the war mentions briefly the French reoccupation of Cochinchina in 1945 but very quickly moves the narrative north. See Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking Press, 1983). One of the few military histories in English that purports to treat the entire war only discusses the French war in Tonkin, nothing in Cochinchina. See Davidson. French histories obviously do better, though there are surprising few. The standout, which discusses Cochinchina, but still in a rather cursory fashion, is by General Yves Gras: Histoire de la Guerre d’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1979). Gras’ work remains the most complete account of the war from a military perspective. Also worthy of mention is Philippe Franchini’s two volume account of the Indochina Wars. Though he does not dwell on the military issues at work in Cochinchina he does a good job of incorporating Cochinchina into the larger narrative of the war. See Franchini, Les guerres d’Indochine: de la conquête française à 1949 (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2011) and Les guerres d’Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2011). 70 This category is voluminous. For some examples of special worth to this study: Bodin. Henri de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: artilleurs des rizières, 1946-1951 (Paris: Presses de la cité, 1999); 22

Largely due to the vexed shadow of colonialism, whether or not France could have won in Indochina is not a major point of contention for scholars of Indochina. The chief dispute, at least within France, is rather about how to depict the war. On one side are those who understand the war primarily as a colonial struggle, a prefigurement perhaps of the neo-colonial war waged by the United States over the same territory. The other side is populated to a significant degree by those attached to the French military and who argue, after the fashion of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, that France was fighting a great anti-communist struggle on behalf of the civilized, if benighted Western world.71

Historical investigation of the peculiarity of the war for Cochinchina has been further hindered by the effort to examine the war in its totality as an expression of a distinctive Vietnamese spirit of resistance paying no attention to regional variation. This practice implicitly accepts the Democratic Republic of Vietnam’s contention that the story of Vietnam and the story of Tonkin are one and the same, i.e. the nationalism of those from Tonkin is, ispo facto, analogous to Vietnamese nationalism. This line of thought was adopted by much of the American public during the Second Indochina War

Bernard Estival, La Marine française dans la Guerre d'Indochine (Nantes: Marines édition, 2007). and Maurice Rives and Eric Deroo, Les Linh Tập: Histoire des Militaires Indochinois au Service de la France, 1859-1960 (Paris: Lavauzelle, 1999). For detailed battle studies, see: Favreau and Dufour. Longeret et al; Erwan Bergot, La Bataille de Dong Khê (Paris: Presses de la cité, 2010); Philippe Fouquet-Lapar, Hoa Binh: de Lattre attaque en Indochine, 1951-1952 (Paris: Economica, 2006). 71 This fight between French Left and Right is best encapsulated by the so-called affaire Boudarel which wrangled French academic circles in the mid-1990s after a group of French Indochina veterans confronted Georges Boudarel, a scholar of the Indochina War, over his involvement as a political commissar in Democratic Republic of Vietnam prisoner of war camps. See Christopher Goscha, “Boudarel Affair,” in Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War, 1945-1954 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 69. See also Thomas Capitaine, Captifs du Viet-Minh (Paris: Union Nationale Inter-Universitaire, 1991); Marc Charuel, L’affaire Boudrael (Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1991). 23 and produced the notion that the maintenance of a South Vietnam as distinct from North

Vietnam was an historical aberration and therefore a fool’s errand.72

The elision of regional distinctions within the historiography of Indochina has been partially reversed of late. Both scholars working outside of Vietnam and official histories produced by the current Vietnamese government have looked to redress this shortcoming and gain back some sense of regional distinctiveness.73 Still these works remain the product of the official communist presses and must be scrutinized closely for their persistent bias. Indeed, in the last few decades the Hanoi government has published a welter of material germane to the earlier periods of the war. The relatively new Văn

Kiện Đảng series is a putative listing of communist Central Party directives throughout both the First and Second Indochina Wars. Though not direct archive records, and doubtless subject to later redactions, these publications are very helpful in breaking open the thinking of the Central Party in the north during the war. At the other end of the spectrum, there are also a number of Viet Minh unit histories that have come to light in

72 For example, see again Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: The Viking Press, 1983);David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire (New York: Random House, 1965). 73 A good French example of this trend is Pierre Brocheux’s work from the mid-1990s: The Mekong Delta: Ecology, Economy, and Revolution, 1860-1960 (Madison: Center for Southeast Asian Studies, 1995). For the purposes of this work, however, the standout scholar has been Christopher Goscha, who has produced an amazing body of research into the French and Vietnamese sides of the war paying particular attention to the south. See for example, “La guerre par d’autres moyens: réflexions sur la guerre du Viet Minh dans le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951,” in Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 206 (Avril-Juin 2002). Within the national publishing industry of Vietnam several useful works have appeared: Lịch sử Nam Bộ kháng chiến, 1945-1954 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2010); Lịch sử biên niên Xứ ủy Nam bộ và Trung ương cục mìn Nam, 1954-1975 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2008). There are also the two mammoth studies of Cochinchina (Miền Nam): Lịch sử Tây (Đông) Nam Bộ kháng chiến (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2008). 24 recent years and furnish some more of the communist on the ground perspective in the south during the early years.74

On the other hand – and more typical of English material – has been the move among diplomatic historians particularly to broaden the context and internationalize our understanding of the war.75 The other trend has been in the same vein, but focuses its energies on those crucial years between the wars to dissect and explain how a French colonial war became a hot test of Cold War geo-political power.76 While this move has been no doubt beneficial for our larger understanding of the wars, it evinces little interest in the operational/tactical details of the French war in Cochinchina. What these works have not accounted for are the important military details that prevented the communist insurgency from taking the entire length and breadth of Vietnam prior to the United

States’ involvement in the conflict. This study then, drawing on little-used French military records for Cochinchina, can help rectify this shortcoming. It was, it must be remembered, not just French failure that set the stage for the American intervention in

Vietnam, but also the ambiguous nature of French success.

A final area in which this study can be of some benefit is the ongoing discussion in academic and military circles concerning the theory and practice of counterinsurgency warfare. The story of French success in Cochinchina and its absence from the discourse

74 See for example Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, Tập 11 - 1950 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2001); Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam Quân Khu 9 (Hanoi: Phòng Tổng Kết Lịch Sử và Khoa Học Công Nghệ Quân Sự, 1994). 75 For a recent works in this regard see Lien-Hang Nguyen, Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012). 76 Some great examples of this are Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012) and Jessica Chapman, Ngo Dinh Diem, The United States and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013). This book is remarkable in that it restores a great deal of agency to actors in South Vietnam, particularly the religio- political groupings, but also manages to understand them in a broader, international perspective. 25 on counterinsurgency is perplexing, especially when we consider that it was a French counterinsurgency theorist, David Galula, who provided much of the intellectual larder for the current U.S. military’s doctrinal manual on the subject, FM 3-24: Tactics in

Counterinsurgency.77 In reality (and this does not diminish the theoretical strengths of

Galula) American counterinsurgency doctrine has its fons et origo in an ultimately failed practitioner of the art of pacification, while perhaps France’s most notable success has escaped notice.

To be fair, the French did not notice either. During the Indochina War the faddish notion of pacification prevalent among some French officers was to fetishize the idea of the resistance to Nazi rule in occupied France. This effort was famously carried out by

Roger Trinquier and the Groupement de commandos mixtes aéroportés (G.C.M.A.) in their attempts to build partisan bands behind Viet Minh lines in the far reaches of Tonkin.

These were areas populated by an amalgam of non-Vietnamese peoples. The hope was that the French could form them into nests of agitation against the Viet Minh, threatening supply lines and forcing the communist to divert major forces toward their suppression.

This idea probably played into the decision to occupy Dien Bien Phu as a base from which irregular fighters in French employ could harass communist formations.78

After Indochina French military attitudes to what they termed guerre révolutionnaire became hardened around a determination to emulate the strict

77 David Galula, Pacification in Algeria, 1956-1958 (Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2006). For an interesting reevaluation of whether Galula’s practice lived up to his theory see Grégor Mathias, Galula in Algeria: Counterinsurgency Practice Versus Theory (Santa Barbara: Praeger Security International, 2011). 78 Roger Trinquier, Les Maquis d'Indochine: 1952-1954, Les Missions Speciales du Service Action (Paris: Albatros, 1976). That Dien Bien Phu was inspired by this unrealistic view of the efficacy of the Resistance is a point made by Douglas Porch (Porch, 318-339.) 26 political/military congruity achieved by their communist foes.79 The war in Algeria was to be the proving ground for these plans, as many of the military professionals who had fought and lost in Indochina were determined not to repeat their failure in North Africa.

Foreshadowing similar arguments in the United States, the advocates of true guerre révolutionnaire in Algeria came to the conclusion that the real problem lay in the bickering, indecisive and inconstant politics of the Fourth Republic; that is to say, the source of the failure of French policy and strategy to achieve total unanimity. The outcome of French counterinsurgency theory was the coup against the Fourth Republic in

1958 and the transformation of former counterinsurgents into insurgents themselves in the Organisation de l’armée secrète (OAS) during its campaign of terrorism against de

Gaulle’s Fifth Republic.80

Pacification in Cochinchina does not fit into this line of historical development, nor does it square neatly with the “population-centric” concepts of counterinsurgency espoused by Galula and more recently by the U.S. military. Relating this discussion to the American war in Vietnam, we are immediately drawn into the continuing struggle between those who believed the Vietnam War was at base a conventional problem, citing at the end the massive combined arms offensive by the NVA in 1975, and those who

79 See Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1964); also Marie-Catherine Villatoux, Guerre et Action Psychologiques en Algérie (Vincennes: Service historiqe de la Défense, 2008). 80 Alistair Horne, The French Army and Politics, 1870-1970 (London: Macmillan, 1984); George Armstrong Kelly, Lost Soldiers: The French Army and Empire in Crisis, 1947-1962 (Cambridge, Mass.,: M.I.T. Press, 1965). 27 believe it was a problem of failing to adopt counterinsurgency tactics early enough, or with sufficient gusto.81

In part this Hegelian thesis/anti-thesis dynamic between conventional war and counterinsurgency as polar opposites has been surmounted by the synthesis of the two defined as “hybrid war.”82 Indeed the war in Cochinchina is an illustrative example of a force not only confronting a hybrid opponent, but also doing so in a multi-faceted, hybrid fashion. The issue remaining is one of prescription versus description. Both conventional war and counterinsurgency are, in fact, tactical/operational paradigms and are more prescriptive than anything else, corresponding as situations dictate to the three basic strategies of annihilation, attrition or exhaustion. Using these categories as historical descriptive tools, however, leads to stilted analysis. Using counterinsurgency or conventional war as a mode of analysis of something like the Indochina Wars is more polemical than historical and cannot help but simplify what are always more complex problems. Hybrid war, by contrast, is an excellent way to schematize historical analysis.

It does not bankrupt the descriptive task of history to make a narrower point. And yet as a policy tool, hybrid war is difficult to conceptualize, and even harder to operationalize.83

81 The best example of the later opinion is Andrew Krepeinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). To a lesser extent there is Lewis Sorely, A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam (New York: Harcourt, 1999). For the former perspective we again return to Harry Summers, but also add in the new work by Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America's Deadly Embrace of Counter-Insurgency (New York: The New Press, 2013). 82 Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 83 The closest anyone has come to operationalizing something like “hybrid warfare” is probably Maxwell Taylor’s notion of “flexible response.” Still, this had less to do with the complexity of war within a particular scenario but with giving U.S. policy a range of options besides nuclear war with which to deal with geo-political crises. See Maxwell D. Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet, [1st ed. (New York: Harper, 1960). 28

This prescription/description conundrum is very common in the world of military theory. Carl von Clausewitz’s most famous dictum that war is an extension of “Politik” is a classic example.84 That this German term could mean both “policy” and “politics” has only added to the confusion. Though usually taken as a description of war as phenomenon, it is perhaps that Clausewitz meant it as a prescription, i.e., that war and its makers should subordinate themselves to a clear political objective, or to the political leadership of the state.85 Unfortunately, as we have seen time and again, this prescription is ignored or overcome by events. War has a way of subverting its tacit political objective, or reshaping it, hence the ever feared “mission creep” of modern military parlance. In the case of the First Indochina War in Cochinchina the political objective was a matter of great uncertainty until at least 1949 when the French opted formally for the unification of Vietnam under the Emperor Bảo Đại and consequently laid to rest any notions of political independence for Cochinchina. By that point, however, the war in the south had been raging for nearly four years.

84 Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 2005); Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans., Michael Eliot Howard and Peter Paret, Rev. ed. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). The Howard and Paret translation renders this as “political intercourse” to try and cement this reading, but it is not entirely sure that this is the case. Even if this were clearly the sense Clausewitz intended, he has not uniformly been understood that way. Mao, for instance, understood Clausewitz’s statement as meaning the subordination of the military to civilian political leadership and the sublimation of warfare under the broader category of policy. See Beatrice Heuser, Reading Clausewitz (London: Random House, 2002), 141. 85 Andreas Herberg-Rothe makes the compelling case that Clausewitz only came to the idea of “politics” as being the fundament of war much later in life. This and the Prussian’s penchant for mixing prescription and description makes the issue much more thorny, if not entirely intractable. See Andreas Herberg-Rothe, Das Rätsel Clausewitz : Politische Theorie des Krieges Im Widerstreit (München: Fink, 2001). 29

Strategy86 – that process which negotiates between political ends and tactical means – is by and large a bequest of Enlightenment thought.87 Unlike previous generations, Enlightenment philosophers came to assume the unfettered power of the human mind.88 Man’s principal shortfall is merely informational, i.e. given sufficient information and the correct formula the autonomous human mind can reckon anything, command all.89 This idea rises closest to the surface in things like classical economics or political science, but strategy is not far afield.90 In economics we can see this trend in the belief that markets and firms will look for and achieve optimal solutions. Optimatization becomes, therefore, the basic test of rationality and it is entirely appropriate to conceive of strategy as another sub-species of the same.

Interestingly then, the Tonkin-based desire for a resolution to the conflict by battle fits in rather neatly to this economic and psychological notion of rationality qua optimization.91 The problem, as history bears out, is that this way of understanding

86 There is any number of definitions for “strategy.” Perhaps one of the most useful is André Beaufre’s in which strategy is “l’art de la dialectique des volontés employant la force pour résoudre leur conflit,” though even this falls short of dealing overtly with its heuristic elements. André Beaufre, Introduction à la Stratégie (Paris: Hachette Littératures, 1998), 34. 87 It is not a coincidence that most, if not all, of our modern concepts of strategy were given shape at the time of the Enlightenment. Many notions, including strategy, were devised to systematize war, bring it in line with the rationalism of the age. See Azar Gat, A History of Military Thought : From the Enlightenment to the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). and Martin Van Creveld, The Art of War: War and Military Thought, Cassell History of Warfare (London: Cassell, 2002). 88 Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996). 89 See William Owens, Lifting the Fog of War (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000). 90 The comic apogee of this for strategy was probably the work of Prussian writer Adam Heinrich Dietrich von Buelow, whose work on strategy Martin Van Creveld unfavorably compared to a “textbook in Euclidean geometry. Van Creveld, 101. 91 Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten, “Rethinking Rationality” in Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten, Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), 4. Coincidently, the conflation of rationality and optimization in the sciences occurred most egregiously in the early 1950s. 30 strategy is often unworkable.92 Aiming for an optimal solution is often beyond the ken of those involved and its continued pursuit counterproductive. The striving for optimal solutions – in this case the outright defeat of the enemy – is an option-minimizing scheme. With each new attempt at resolution the range of possibilities open to the French

High Command narrowed as military capability and public resolve were expended fruitlessly.

By contrast, perhaps the war in Cochinchina can help us explore the process of strategy as a heuristic of sorts, and one best understood in a rational system that is

“bounded,” to use polymath H.A. Simon’s notion. This is not to say that such a system is irrational – far from it. Instead, “bounded” rationality simply takes a dimmer view of the human mind’s ability to lay bare the dynamics of its world. It looks to explore human behavior as a function of its limitations, not as some parabolic approximation of optimal performance. Although historians have long been comfortable in working around intractable phenomenon, it is only relatively recently that complexity science has made this position more acceptable to the wider world.93

These complex problems of which the world is filled eventually became termed

“wicked” for their frustrating resistance to straightforward analysis or definition.94

Before passing into the lexicon of strategic thinkers, the notion of “wicked problems” found a ready audience among computer programmers. Conventionally speaking, for a

92 This assessment obviously then runs somewhat counter to what has come to be known as the Powell- Weinberger Doctrine. 93 A great early example of this was Edward Lorenz’ work into weather prediction. In the 1960s Lorenz was able to show that even given truly massive amounts of data long-range weather prediction was basically impossible. See James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Penguin, 2008). 94 Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning," Policy Sciences 4, (1973). 31 computer to tackle a problem the programmer must first define it well enough for the computer to break it down into manageable bits. Most human problems, however, are poorly defined. The definition of the issue shifts constantly, and more often than not the components are so bound up with one another that to examine any one in isolation is impossible. For these types of issues the task of problem definition and solution must proceed side by side. One cannot define the problem and then try to solve it. In this case, as software engineer Peter DeGrace puts it, “some of the solution space lies within the problem space.”95 These problems must be tackled iteratively. They have no optimal solutions, only “degrees of sufficiency.”96

This is bad news for strategy, traditionally conceived of as the plan to “win the war.” If a problem is truly wicked, as almost all wars are, the implication is that one cannot know the way out (i.e. the solution) until one starts fighting. Planning must be much more limited, recursive and open-ended. It has to be the search for progressively better, but decidedly sub-optimal solutions. Strategy becomes less a way to “win” the war, then how to manage conflict at some satisfactory level of effort and loss.

In Cochinchina the French were disabused of optimal solutions early on.

Limitations of every kind forced the French into a defensive, even reactive posture.

Political and strategic uncertainty therefore obliged the French command to forsake optimal solutions and instead look for option-maximizing pathways. A clear push for pacification across the breadth of Cochinchina would have hobbled any offensive, mobile

95 Peter DeGrace and Leslie Hulet Stahl, Wicked Problems, Righteous Solutions: A Catalogue of Modern Software Engineering Paradigms, Yourdon Press Computing Series (Englewood Cliffs: Yourdon Press, 1990), 82. 96 DeGrace and Stahl, 85. 32 capability and left the French prostrate before concerted Viet Minh thrusts. Likewise any attempt to completely abandon the slow work of counterinsurgency in favor of knock-out blows against the Viet Minh would have likely missed their target and left the French in a completely unworkable security dilemma across the country. As a result, strategy in

Cochinchina became less interested in selecting the right option, than in the generating of options that would assure the survivability of the limited French position. In this sense strategy was a kind of heuristic, a pattern of searching for rather than the implementation of good design.97 By dint of circumstance and self-awareness, this search was conditioned in large part by a need to keep options open. A corollary of this procedure was in fact the closing of options for the Viet Minh. Deprived of the politico-economic heartland of Cochinchina the Viet Minh eventually gambled everything on the kind of risky venture that doomed French efforts in Tonkin.

Ironically, success in Cochinchina was a function of limitations. The French commanders in Cochinchina, Latour and Chanson, were not military geniuses.

Moreover, they knew this and it kept them from the kind of gambits that look to make something from nothing and more often than not scuttle themselves on the shoals of reality. With uncertain political objectives and meager resources, they nevertheless navigated their thorny situation and brought their enemy to the point that he engaged in risky, all-or-nothing offensives. The Viet Minh’s cloistered strategic perspective, determined by the orthodoxy of the Maoist three-stage paradigm was, in fact, the exact

97 Simon has noted that “search processes…can be viewed more generally as processes for gathering information about problem structure that will ultimately be valuable in discovering a problem solution.” Simon, 127. 33 opposite of the open-ended heuristic approach reluctantly adopted by the French. The results are historically illuminating and intriguing in terms of the ongoing evolution of strategic thought and perhaps its migration away from Enlightenment-era tropes.98 H.A.

Simon has noted that in the final analysis people are “relatively simple” and that “most of the complexity of their behavior may be drawn from their environment, from their search for good designs.”99 This observation is born out in the French war for Cochinchina.

As a final note, this is an explicitly military history of the war for Cochinchina, organized around narratives of commanders, plans, operations, troops and engagements with the enemy. It is a story of soldiers. This is not to deny the importance of political factors in shaping the way the war unraveled over the course of the conflict; clearly and as the French recognized pacification is just as much a political act as a military campaign. That being said, most of the key political issues at stake in Cochinchina were outside of the purview of the commanders on the ground to decisively effect despite their frequent status as military commander and Commissioner for the Republic in

Cochinchina. The political story of Cochinchina, while incredibly important in its own right, is not the focus here. Lastly, for the spelling of Vietnamese names, places and terms, I have chosen to include tonal and diacritical marks the first time a word is used.

After that I revert to an unmarked Anglicized spelling.

98 Strategy certainly evolves and is not a matter of set Platonic forms, so to speak. See Beatrice Heuser, The Evolution of Strategy: Thinking War from Antiquity to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 99 Simon, 138. 34

CHAPTER 1: “LES ARMES PARLERONT…” – THE WAR FOR TONKIN100

Though it had simmered in Cochinchina for more than a year, the war for Tonkin began in earnest on 19 December 1946 in the early hours of the evening. Explosions from mortars and grenades rocked Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital.101 Moments later the city went black; the Viet Minh had blown the power plant. Giap’s troops, backed by local forces (tự vệ), departed their barricades to batter the isolated French military positions and storm the European civilian quarter. Similar and simultaneous combats broke out elsewhere across Tonkin.102

Back in Hanoi the reluctant General Louis Morlière, commander in and around

Hanoi/Haiphong, sent his meager, but hard-hitting troops to strike back. Companies of

100 “Weapons will speak.” Philippe François Leclerc de Hauteclocque quoted in Philippe Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de la Conquête française à 1949, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2011), 343. Leclerc reportedly made this remark – “les armes parleront, s’il le faut” - on Ceylon after learning that President Truman had endorsed France’s return to the whole of Indochina and that de Gaulle had made him commander-in-chief of the armed forces for the expedition. Ironic then is Leclerc’s later remark in July of 1946 that “it could not be a question of reconquering the north by arms, we do not have means, and we will never have the means.” Leclerc quoted in Franchini, 481. 101 Jacques de Folin, Indochine, 1940-1955: la Fin d'un Rêve (Paris: Perrin, 1993), 185. 102 These attacks were not entirely unexpected. French intelligence knew that Giap was preparing for some kind of attack. See “Renseignements du 2e bureau de source très sûre,” dated 28 November to 1 December, 1946, reprinted in Gilbert Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents (Vincennes: Service Historique de l'armée de terre, 1987), 333. Also, the Party’s Central Committee had declared an end to all contact with the French, economic or otherwise on 12 Dec 1946. Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1945-1947 vol. 8 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chính Trị Quốc Gia, 2000), 152. The Văn Kiện Đảng are compilations of party directives purportedly culled from government archives and placed in chronological order. Of course, it is impossible to verify if these documents have been reprinted faithfully and one must assume that they have been redacted to fit with the established communist narrative of the war. 35 the 6th and 21st R.I.C’s. (Régiment d’infanterie coloniale) seconded by tanks of the 2nd

D.B. (Division Blindée) pushed into the downtown area to relieve the Viet Minh siege.

By morning the counterattack had cleared out the European quarter and the center of the city, but the Viet Minh still clung to the outlying areas.103 With dawn’s light it was clear that Giap’s coup de force had failed. His opportunity for a quick victory to demoralize the shaky Fourth Republic was lost. It was now up to the French to seek a decision in

Tonkin.

The war that developed in the north was rife with paradox. It was an established fact among the French command that they did not have the forces available to occupy more than the “vital points” in Tonkin.104 General Alphonse Juin, chief of the État-Major de la Defense Nationale, who had served as commander of French forces in the Italian theater in World War II as well as a long service veteran of France’s colonial army, had noted that there really was no choice between Tonkin or Cochinchina; the latter was the

“centerpiece” of France’s position in Indochina. Moreover, to engage in a war in Tonkin

“exceed[ed] the possibilities of the French army.”105 And yet, by dint of circumstance and a slowly unrolling volition, France would seek to retain Tonkin despite in that instant knowing better. It was an old conundrum. In his memoirs of the former century’s war for that country, Louis de Grandmaison asked reflectively how France had come to

103 Gras, 153-154. 104 “Note du Général Leclerc au sujet de la situation actuelle en Indochine,” dated 5 December 1946 reprinted in Bodinier, 339. 105 Alphonse Juin quoted in de Folin, 183. 36 possess this place that it had “never coveted.” His own answer was that “most of the time the will of men is violated by events…”106

Circumstances certainly seem to have overtaken most of the principal actors in the later portion of 1946, well before the commencement of open hostilities in December.

The accords of 6 March 1946, agreed to by a coalition of Vietnamese nationalists under heavy pressure from the occupying Chinese and the French, had provided for an uneasy reintroduction of limited French forces to Tonkin in order to share in the burden of security and to assist with the management of customs duties collection, particularly in

Haiphong. It became apparent early on, however, that the communists had no intention of maintaining the broad-based nationalist coalition foisted upon them. Almost immediately the Viet Minh began the process of eliminating their political opponents.

Arrests and assassinations assured the Viet Minh-ICP (Indochinese Communist Party) control over government administration, the police and the militias. In view of these actions, continued claims that the Vietnamese government represented nationalists of all stripes looked ever more farcical.107

Meanwhile, at the Chateau Fontainebleau in France negotiations between the

Vietnamese delegation led by Hồ Chí Minh and the French broke down. In order to at least have a temporary cease-fire in the south, both parties agreed to a barely workable

106 Louis de Grandmaison, L'expansion française au Tonkin : en territoire militaire (Paris: E. Plon, Nourrit, 1898), 5. Grandmaison’s exact quote is “Nous serons forceés de reconnaître que la volonté des homes a été le plus souvent violentée par les événements et que ce ne sont pas des considerations commerciales qui nous ont conduits en Extrême-Orient.” 107 François Guillemot, “Au cœr de la fracture vietnamienne: l’élimination de l’opposition nationaliste et anticoloniste dans le Nord du Vietnam (1945-1946),” in Christopher Goscha and Benoît De Tréglodé, Naissance d'un État-Parti: Le Viêt-Nam depuis 1945 (Paris: Les Indes savantes, 2004), 181-204. 37 modus vivendi in September of 1946, with talks to resume by early 1947.108 Tensions, nevertheless, heightened in Tonkin. French troops moved in to occupy key areas among

Tonkin’s ethnic minorities, effectively surrounding the Vietnamese.109

Clashes between French and Vietnamese forces flared up throughout the fall, each diffused with a corresponding decline in goodwill. Then an apparently minor incident on

20 November in which French forces seized a Chinese ship carrying “contraband” in

Haiphong harbor resulted in a shooting match between the two groups. It gave French leadership in Indochina the pretext it desired to take sterner action. Several days prior to the incident the French High-Commissioner for Indochina, Admiral Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, had informed his commander of ground-forces in Tonkin, General Jean

Etienne Valluy, that he should prepare his men to undertake a “forceful action looking to politically and morally neutralize the Hanoi government.”110

Valluy was quick to act. After one further incident, Valluy cabled the commander of French forces in Haiphong, Colonel Jean Debès, bypassing Debès hesitant superior,

General Morlière. “The moment has come to give a hard lesson,” Valluy wrote. “With all the means at your disposal you should make yourself the complete master of

Haiphong and bring the Vietnamese government and army to understand their mistake.”111 With relatively small forces Debès assaulted Haiphong, prepping his attack with a powerful artillery barrage as well as naval gunfire from French vessels in the

108 See “modus vivendi, Franco-Vietnamese,” in Christopher E. Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2012), 296. 109 Gras, 142. 110 Gras, 140. Valluy took over command from Leclerc in July of 1946. 111 The text of Valluy’s cable is in Gen. Morlière’s report reprinted in Georges Chaffard, Les Deux Guerres du Vietnam: de Valluy à Westmoreland (Paris: La table ronde de combat, 1969), 44. 38 harbor. Several days of intense combat followed, but by 28 November the French were indeed the masters of Haiphong at the cost of 26 dead and 86 wounded. Vietnamese casualties, both military and civilian, were considerably higher.112

The Haiphong incident highlighted two features of the war for Tonkin that would become perennial issues for the French. In the first place, decision-making of a clearly political nature had devolved to the men on the ground in Indochina. Not for the last time a leadership vacuum had developed in Paris. The Fourth Republic remained a tottering amalgam of parties incapable of robust governance or long-term vision.113 For much of the Fourth Republic decision-making in all fields, including strategy, would be a function of whatever option all involved disliked least. In late 1946, for instance, Léon Blum would not form a new government until 16 December, too late to affect the outbreak of war. His cabinet would last exactly one month.114

Of course the policy of retaking Indochina was de Gaulle’s; but, disgusted with the reemergence of party politics, the leader of Free France had retired from official life in January 1946.115 With the general gone, French policy toward Indochina drifted, subject to its last impulse like a deistic world absent any further guidance from its creator.

Unfortunately for France, the various regimes of the Fourth Republic could not bring

112 Debès attacked with two battalions of infantry (1st and the 2nd of the 23rd R.I.C.) and two squadrons of light tanks, with the artillery of the R.A.C.M. (Régiment d’artillerie coloniale du Maroc) in support. Estimates of Vietnamese dead range from 300 to 6,000. See Gras, 148. and Bodinier, 58. 113 Under the Constitution of the Fourth Republic adopted in October of 1946 an all-powerful assembly exercised a stultifying influence on constantly vulnerable and thus ever-changing governments. Jean-Pierre Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, The Cambridge History of Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 108. 114 Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, 110. 115 Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 1940-1955 (Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press, 1966), 190. De Gaulle was convinced that for France to have any claim to great power status she must retain her overseas empire. Furthermore, de Gaulle had resolved to retake France’s possessions in the East at least as early as July of 1943. See Bodin, 13. 39 themselves to seriously reevaluate their priorities in Vietnam. Neither could subsequent governments resolve themselves to prosecute the war with anything approaching the necessary resources.

The war would not be, as in Algeria, one fought by the large metropolitan conscript occupation army. Instead, in Indochina France deployed a professional, colonial force, even mercenary in character, as exemplified by the Foreign Legion. This far-away war, fought by stoic professionals and their indigenous allies did not register with the French public, a fact that suited the many regimes of the Fourth Republic.116 It also meant a relatively small army pursuing rather grandiose ends, at least for a while.

Military commanders from Valluy forward would look to square this circle by recourse to battle. Only battle offered the prospect for success. Barring a few attempts at deviation or modification this idea perforce marked the way forward.

Toward the end of December 1946, the French in Hanoi found dislodging the remaining tu ve from the Chinese quarter of the city more difficult than expected. Valluy instructed Morlière to blow them out with artillery and airstrikes. Morlière demurred. He preferred to cordon off the area and thus prevent greater civilian casualties. With this respite, however, much of the Viet Minh in the area were able to filter out of the city and take to the Việt Bắc, the rural and rugged hinterland north of Hanoi from which they would direct their war for the next several years. Not until the end of February could

Valluy consider Hanoi captured.117

116 See Alain Ruscio, "L'opinion française et la Guerre d'Indochine (1945-1954): Sondages et Témoignages," Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire 29, (1991). 117 Gras, 163-165. For his perceived timidity during this time period, Morlière was relieved and replaced by Dèbes. 40

In Paris the outbreak of violence presented the fractious government with a fait accompli. Socialist representatives, previously desirous of a negotiated settlement, saw no alternative but to support the course already adopted in Southeast Asia. The French

Assembly took up debate on Indochina in March 1947. Communist delegates walked out of the assembly at least three times, and once their altercations with the other representatives came to actual fisticuffs. Apart from the far Left – still a sizable portion of the Assembly – many delegates began to sense the force of international Communism lurking behind events in Indochina. The French conception of their opponent changed as, for the first time, members of the Assembly argued that the Third International was to blame for the revolt in Indochina. Maurice Viollette, a Radical Socialist, identified the enemy, arguing that “[n]ationalism in Indochina [was] a means” with the goal being

“Soviet imperialism.”118 Simply acknowledging what was already the case, the French

Assembly authorized military action against the Viet Minh on 18 March 1947.119

This was all done without a clear strategic appraisal of the situation. The relatively new French government, not particularly keen on an expansion of the conflict, felt it had no choice. A timid policy, or so they reasoned, would result in the fall of the government.120 But neither did they adopt a hard stance or adequately evaluate the overall situation of the French Union. In March the French had approximately 94,000 soldiers in Indochina. Eleven thousand more were en route, but a new revolt resulted in

118 Hammer, 197. 119 Hammer, 200. 120 Hammer, 202. 41 these men being diverted to Madagascar.121 In short, the French government had decided on war and then almost immediately stripped their commander in Indochina of the means to carry it out.

In the meantime Valluy, now commander-in-chief after Leclerc’s departure, believed he should resume pacification in Cochinchina before tackling his problems in the north. To this end, a “zone de pacification” was established in the west of

Cochinchina.122 Civilian and military leadership differed on the method, however, and after two months of operations, the results were meager.123 Pacification in the western portion of Cochinchina was supposed to proceed by the classic “tache d’huile” (oil slick) method, but Valluy was unwilling to give it serious time, and was certainly concerned about the demands put on his troop strength.124 More than that, however, the high command maintained a persistent belief that the war in Cochinchina could be most effectively won by defeating the main communist cadres in the north. In early February

1947 d’Argenlieu argued for the essential unity of the two fights, noting “every blow to the opponent in the north weakens him in the south.”125 Valluy concurred. The Viet

Minh were in his estimation a more rigid organization than the colonial rebels of the

121 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 85; Hammer, 207. 122 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Circulaire: Pacification de la Cochinchine,”prepared by Tran Van Ty, Vice- President of the Provisional Government of Cochinchina. Dated 23 Feb 1947. 123 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Proces verbal de la reunion du Comité de pacification,” dated 23 June 1947. Gen. Nyo, commander in Cochinchina, claimed he had killed 2,000. President of the Provisional Government, Le Van Hoach was doubtful and maintained that the Viet Minh retained the initiative. 124 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Note,” dated 9 Feb 1947 in reference to d’Argenlieu’s “Directives personnelles et secretes du 29 Jan 1947.” This messages informs Gen. Nyo that the commander of the “zone de pacification” is to have operational control over all battalions in Cochinchina save one kept in reserve in Saigon. 125 SHAT, carton 10H165. Thierry d’Argenlieu, “Memorandum: Pacification de la Cochinchine,” dated 7 Feb 1947. 42 previous century. They held power covetously at the top. To defeat such an enemy one needed to “strike at the head,” i.e. defeat the main Viet Minh organization in its redoubt in Tonkin.126

Throughout the spring and summer of 1947, while quasi-pacification operations occurred in the south, the French corps in Tonkin engaged in shaping operations meant to set the stage for the decisive stroke in the fall. Operation GEORGES re-secured the route between Hanoi and Haiphong; Operation PAPILLON temporarily established French contact with the principal seat of the Mường Federation in Hoa Binh.127 Other localized actions aimed at opening major roadways, forcing Viet Minh regular units to fall back and largely abandon the urban centers. Provincial forces were left to resume guerrilla warfare.128

By October, Valluy was prepared to unleash his coup de main. From

Cochinchina he had pulled four battalions of infantry, two armored squadrons, a mountain artillery group, and engineers as well as significant aerial and riverine assets.

Together with the forces already in Tonkin, Valluy formed three tactical groupements: S,

C, and B. The foremost mission was to “destroy the hostile pyramid” of the enemy’s military and political organization, rendering it senseless both in Tonkin and beyond.

Secondly, Valluy intended to sever any possible lines of communication between the Viet

126 Valluy quoted in Gras, 183. Gras quotes Valluy as saying that the French must “frapper la tête” of the rebellion in the next campaign. There is further irony here. A similar logic had induced then Governor- General of Algeria, Thomas Bugeaud to strike out after Abdelkader in 1844 beyond the borders of his commission because, “the storm clouds will form [there] and rain upon us. They must be destroyed at their source.” Bugeaud quoted in Benjamin Claude Brower, A Desert Named Peace : The Violence of France's Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902, History and Society of the Modern Middle East (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 38. 127 Gras, 181. 128 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 85-86. 43

Minh and China, particularly across route coloniale 4 (R.C. 4) that wound its way precariously through the rugged mountains along the border. French intelligence had accurately determined that the main body of the Viet Minh resistance, including its organs of government, had retired to a rough quadrilateral north of Hanoi. This area was then linked to China by two main arteries: one running through Lao Cai, the other passing by Cao Bang along the border and connecting the temporary Viet Minh command post at

Bắc Kạn with China.

Operation LEA began on 7 October 1947. In total it was a testament to French military skill perfected in the heat of World War II. Ad hoc groupings with little or no time to train together conducted a variegated tactical maneuver with airborne, motorized and riverine assets all moving in concert. As with many other operations to come, it began with the paras (French paratroopers). The demi-brigade de marche parachutiste

(D.B.M.P.), twelve-hundred strong and designated Groupement S, dropped on Bac Kan on the 7th and 8th. An additional battalion jumped into Cao Bang a day later.129 It was a very near-run thing. At Bac Kan the paras came within a hair’s breadth of capturing both

Ho Chi Minh and Giap; they found fresh correspondence still lying on Ho’s field desk.130

To reinforce the paratroopers, two great pincers (Groupements B and C) moved out to encircle the hopefully disoriented communists near Bac Kan. Groupement B under

Colonel André Beaufre – later the architect of the 1956 Suez campaign and France’s most notable strategic theoretician – moved along R.C. 4 from Lang Son in trucks, but soon

129 “La campagne d’automne au Tonkin,” prepared by TFIN dated 29 Jan 1948. Reprinted in Gilbert Bodinier, Indochine 1947: Règlement politique ou Solution militaire (Vincennes: Service historique de l'armée de terre, 1989), 328-344. 130 Davidson, 48. 44 had to dismount much of its Moroccan infantry due to tough going. Upon reaching Cao

Bang, its first objective, Beaufre dispatched elements south to link up with the D.B.M.P.

Unfortunately for Valluy, after the initial shock the tenacious Viet Minh had regrouped and now fought the paras tooth and nail around Bac Kan.131

The southern arm of the pincer movement (Groupement C) proceeded north by way of the Clear River. Difficulties in navigating the sandy water forced it to disembark after only 30 kilometers. Placing commandos in front, the remainder of the operation was conducted on foot “en pleine forêt.” With great physical exertion Groupement C broke into the Viet Minh redoubt on 17 October. The enemy was already gone.132

Over the next few weeks the Troupes françaises de l’Indochine du Nord

(T.F.I.N.) launched a number of small operations meant to destroy Viet Minh depots and to secure the various lines of communication, particularly R.C.s 3 and 4 and the waterways. Taken together, these measures were intended to shore up the various

“mooring points” that were now in French hands, of which Cao Bang and Bac Kan were the most significant. By late October the French had established convoy traffic along

R.C. 4 and pushed forces up the Clear River to the vicinity of Phủ Doãn.

Having failed to bring the main Viet Minh units to battle, Valluy initiated

Operation CEINTURE on 19 November. He tripled the number of tactical groupements and planned a massive concentric operation to surround and destroy the Viet Minh position centered in the vicinity of Thaï Nguyen. Two groupements proceeded by boat,

131 Groupement B comprised three battalions of infantry, a portion of an armored regiment (R.I.C.M.), approximately one artillery group and a battalion of engineers. 132 Groupement C comprised three infantry battalions and two artillery batteries transported by 3 dinassauts (riverine squadrons). 45 while seven more stepped off from various locations on the periphery of the communist enclave. As before a paratroop drop on the principal objective inaugurated the maneuver.

Proceeding by stages, with night marches, raids and additional airborne operations, the

French cleared out the region in a month’s time.

In material terms the Viet Minh losses were significant. The French destroyed numerous arms fabrication sites and captured more than a thousand rifles and assorted machine guns, in addition to a thousand tons of munitions and a variety of artillery pieces. For an army not yet receiving serious external aid, these losses represented a costly blow to developing Viet Minh combat power. Furthermore, at a cost of 242 killed, the French claimed to have dispatched 7,200 Viet Minh.133 This figure, however, is highly suspect.134 In all likelihood, while some Viet Minh units were probably badly damaged, Valluy’s autumn offensive failed to destroy the core of Giap’s regulars, nor did it succeed in bringing them to decisive battle. LEA and CEINTURE not only demonstrated the tactical proclivities of the French military, they also made manifest the inherent difficulties in importing European-style warfare to the poor roads and vast forests of Vietnam. Indeed, as Leclerc had foreseen, arms had spoken, but their utterances proved mumblings, incoherent and indecisive. The only clear bequest of

Valluy’s autumn offensive was the maintenance of the tenuous line of strong points along the stony path masquerading under the auspicious name, R.C. 4.

133 See “Bilan des opértions d’automne 1947 du 7 Octobre au 22 Decembre 1947,” reprinted in Bodinier, Indochine 1947: Règlement politique ou Solution militaire, 341-342. 134 Davidson, 50. At casualty figures this high, Philip Davidson estimates the French would have had to inflict casualties on the order of 25,000 to 30,000 on the Viet Minh. As he has argued, it does not seem that fighting during LEA and CEINTURE was intense enough to justify these kinds of estimates. 46

The failures of 1947 turned France’s shambling grand strategy toward what many hoped would prove a diplomatic coup. The new High Commissioner, Émile Bollaert, who replaced d’Argenlieu in March 1947 had in late July advocated for a peace with

“neither victors or vanquished” and appeared on the cusp of offering the Viet Minh a cease-fire. Valluy immediately left for France to alert certain members of the government, who then called Bollaert to Paris for “consultation.”135 Upon his return and following LEA’s failure, Bollaert looked to explore the possibility of forming a new

Vietnamese national government under the auspices of the Emperor Bảo Đại.

Given France’s unwillingness to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh and the increasingly pervasive communist shadow government operating throughout the countryside of

Vietnam, Bollaert hoped Bao Dai could at once unite Vietnam – thus deflating the Viet

Minh’s nationalist appeal, but also undercutting the position of the Cochinchina separatist movement – and accept an independence within the confines of the French Union.

Though a scion of the royal family that had united Vietnam in the early 19th century, Bao

Dai himself was an ambivalent figure for most Vietnamese, certainly not a strong standard around which Vietnamese nationalism could rally. While a step forward in the cause of Vietnamese independence, a unified Bao Dai-led Vietnam would still need to submit to metropolitan France in matters of defense and diplomacy.136

The Bao Dai gambit was marginally worth the effort in the short run. This new government received the tepid endorsement of the two Catholic bishoprics in Tonkin,

135 Hammer, 212. 136 See “Bao Dai Solution” in Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 53-54. 47

Phát Diem and Bùi Chu, as well as the recognition of the nationalist Đại Việt party.137

Independence under Bao Dai – largely a legal fiction – did see some desert the increasingly hard life in the Vietnamese-controlled hinterland for the relative prosperity of the cities; most did not turn to active support for the government. The prevailing attitude was “wait and see.”138 However, in the long run the acceptance of a unified

Vietnam under a national government operating within the French Union also meant that the overtaxed expeditionary corps would be politically committed to a defense of all of

Vietnam. Weighing Cochinchina’s relative worth and perhaps adjusting French strategy accordingly would no longer even be a possibility.

Frustrations mounted, and after an attempt on his life, Bollaert resigned in March

1948. Valluy left shortly thereafter, convinced that French civilian leadership in both

Indochina and in the métropole did not have the stomach for war.139 His replacement was

General Roger Blaizot, a colonial officer who would come to favor large operations as the necessary precursor to successful pacification.140 To replace Bollaert France eventually sent Léon Pignon, a veteran of Indochina matters and a partisan of the d’Argenlieu camp. Pignon insisted that France remain the pacesetter for Vietnamese independence. Liberalization of French policy would occur only after the Viet Minh had been marginalized. At this point then the French fell into the fatal circular logic of war that John Kennedy would identify much later: in Indochina the French took to promising

137 Hammer, 284. The Dai Viet was a more right-wing nationalist party that appeared in Tonkin during the Second World War and took on an increasingly anti-Communist viewpoint. See “Dai Viet” in Jacques Dalloz, Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954 Texte Imprimâe (Paris: A. Colin, 2006), 69. 138 Hammer, 284. 139 Gras, 208. 140 See “Blaizot, Roger” in Dalloz, 36. 48 real independence in the future once the communists had been defeated, but of course the communists could only be defeated by the granting of real independence. 141

The next two years were crucial for the French. It was unfortunately at this time that a form of strategic schizophrenia descended upon the course of the war. The autumn offensives had left the F.T.N.V. (Forces terrestres du Nord Viet-nam) strung out in a great half-loop stretching from Hanoi to Lang Son and then precipitously along R.C. 4 out to Cao Bang.142 This disposition – one of static units isolated in extremis – had been intended to separate the Viet Min from their bases in China, but also served as launching points for future attacks against communist units in the Viet Bac. However, the end of

1947 had seen a reduction in forces in Indochina; furthermore, having failed in Tonkin,

Valluy sent four battalions to Cochinchina to try and break the enemy there. The weakened troops in Tonkin were left to hold a much-expanded footprint with far too few effectives.143

Holding R.C. 4 meant that pacification in the Red River delta suffered as well, even as time was running short. The declining fortunes of the Nationalist Chinese made it all the more imperative to either build a manageable government or destroy the Viet

Minh once and for all. If Chiang Kai-shek were defeated, the dynamic in Indochina would surely change. On all fronts, in fact, international Communism appeared to be on

141 Arthur J. Dommen, The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans: Nationalism and Communism in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001), 225. 142 In 1949 to recognize the status of a theoretically and legally united Vietnam the titles for troops operating in the various theatres were adjusted. TFIN became FTNV. In Cochinchina the TFIS became the FTSV. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note de service No. 118/3-S FTEO,” dated 13 Feb 1949. 143 Gras, 213-215. 49 the march. In 1948 representatives from the various Southeast Asian communist organizations, including delegates from Vietnam, met in Calcutta to coordinate their activities. Communist risings in Burma, Malaya and Indonesia followed soon after.144 In

France communist leaders made known their intention to launch debilitating strikes, focusing especially on sailors and dockyard workers, both necessary to keeping the troops in Indochina supplied.145

Into this precarious situation stepped an invidious and temporizing French government. Perhaps thinking Bao Dai workable (or not caring), the Socialists first reduced the military budget and then in a fit of pique in July 1948 resigned their seats in the government, thus bringing down the administration of Robert Schuman. His successor, André Marie, did not want to immediately jeopardize his fragile coalition and so would take no firm stand on Indochina.146 Even so, Marie’s government lasted a mere five days. The ministerial crisis continued throughout the summer, punctuated by massive labor strikes across France.147

Meanwhile in Indochina Blaizot, suffering from a lack of men and money, was unwilling to strike a hard line strategically in the face of governmental confusion. To hold the entire country and engage in a thoroughgoing campaign of pacification seemed impossible based on events in the south. To Blaizot’s eyes the fighting in Cochinchina, especially in Saigon, had devolved into an inglorious battle for the streets with all capacity for large offensives crushed under the weight of the guerre des postes. He

144 Hammer, 247. 145 Gras, 269. 146 Gras, 242. 147 Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, 459. 50 deplored the sacrificing of mobile units for fixed security duty and wished, as far as possible, to avoid a similar fate in Tonkin.148

Moreover, France was simply not sufficiently interested. In a poll conducted in

November 1948, the French public placed Indochina last among their concerns. For most of the war between 20 and 30 percent of the population had no opinion whatsoever on the fighting. For the government the war was not even a war, but rather an “opération de police.”149 Indeed, throughout the war the French government failed to place the

F.T.E.O. funding on a war footing. In fact, finances for the F.T.E.O. were handled as if its units were in normal garrison status. Budgets had to be presented six months in advance through two different government agencies back in Paris.150

On the other hand, the French government did offer a modest stream of reinforcements. With these and the hope of more, Blaizot conceived of a four-phased plan centered on Tonkin. Like his predecessor, Blaizot considered the Viet Minh regular units in the north to be the strategic center of gravity. In the first phase the F.T.N.V. were to re-open the road and riverine lines of communication with the Tai country. Next,

French forces would take the line of the Red River from Việt Trì to Lào Cai, in theory separating the Viet Minh northeast of Hanoi from their sources of supply further south, particularly in the province of Thanh Hoá. Lastly, French maneuver units, along with a promised eight battalions from France, would descend on Giap’s redoubt in the Viet Bac and wipe out the regular communist establishment. Once complete, Blaizot would attack

148 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Mesures d’urgence à prendre pour parer a toute tentative de dissidence en Cochinchine,” signed by Blaizot. Dated 4 Dec 1948. 149 Jacques Dalloz, La Guerre d'Indochine (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), 141. 150 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine,” prepared by the État-Major de l’armée de Terre. Dated 1953. 51 and seize Thanh Hoa, the seedbed of Ho’s rebellion and the ancestral homeland of the imperial family.151

The scheme was hopelessly impractical. Just to complete the occupation of the

Red River valley and to continue to hold the line of R.C. 4 would have required more aerial resupply than the French air force could possibly hope to muster.152 Secondly, the plan assumed a measure of government stability and resolve in sending reinforcements that even a casual observer of the war would have found problematic. In any case,

Blaizot’s desire to withdraw from the frontier was defeated on political grounds.

Blaizot’s operational commander in Tonkin, Marcel Alessandri, a much more than casual observer of Indochina events, disagreed with his chief’s vision. Instead of this wide- ranging attack, Alessandri proposed that Ho and Giap be left alone in their mountainous hideout. Would it not be better to work assiduously to control the delta and gradually deprive the Viet Minh of both men and rice?153

In the end both men were denied. In October 1948 the Minister of Defense, Paul

Ramadier, basing his decision on manpower considerations, informed Blaizot that he should carry out at most the first two phases of his plan. In hindsight this was madness.

Blaizot’s master œuvre was an all or nothing venture. Yet, rather than fall back on

151 Gras, 245. Blaizot’s plan was actually very much cribbed from Valluy who had conceived of a very similar series of ventures prior to his departure from Indochina. See SHAT, carton 10H168. “Action politique et militaire au Tonkin au cours du 1er trimestre 1948,” signed by Valluy. 152 In August of 1948 Charles-Marie Chanson, briefly serving as commander in Tonkin, wrote to Blaizot informing him of his concern for the French position along R.C. 4. Chanson noted that the French air force could only provide 50% of the supply needs for the frontier posts and expressed his concern that the air staff had not adequately studied the problem. SHAT, carton 10H168. “Fiche pour le Général Blaizot.” 153 Gras, 245. One should note, however, that although Alessandri favored the pacification of the delta, he also insisted upon the retention of the border forts along R.C. 4 while Blaizot preferred to liquidate RC 4 and gain for himself more maneuver units. Bergot, 10. 52

Alessandri’s plan for a consolidated hold on the delta, Blaizot engaged in a painful war of half-measures.154

Gathering his meager reserves and in spite of a growing guerrilla war in Hanoi and Haiphong, Blaizot inaugurated a series of actions that aped somewhat his original scheme. He opened in October with a feint in Thanh Hoa, Operation SIRENE, in which naval elements with aviation support hoped to convince Giap that the French would strike their rice farms. The bombardment of the coast was too short and too shallow to cause

Giap to change much. Operation ONDINE in November witnessed paratroopers and riverine assault troops (dinassaut) attack Viet Tri with great skill and no effect.

Likewise, in December Blaizot engaged his entire mobile reserve in Operation PÉGASE north and west of Hanoi. The four battalions involved managed to destroy a number of primitive Viet Minh arms factories, but failed to engage any large units.155

The campaigning of 1948 and 1949 had consumed more than a little war matérial and cost more than a few lives. Furthermore, rather than contract its holdings, Blaizot’s offensives had in fact expanded his perimeter. Of more immediate concern was the imminent victory of the Chinese communists in 1949 and their arrival on the border with

Vietnam.156 Giap, sensing events turning his way, greatly expanded his guerilla activities in 1949, attacking and harassing French positions. Then, on 27 March 1949 at the far eastern edge of Tonkin a detachment of Chinese communists seized Móng Cái bloodlessly from Nung partisans. The occupation lasted for less than twenty-four hours,

154 Pignon countermanded Blaizot’s desire to fall back from RC 4 citing the importance of maintaining the loyalty of the Tho and Nung ethnic minorities of that region. Longeret et al., 208. 155 Gras, 246-247. 156 Zhai, 13. The People’s Republic of China was officially formed on 1 Oct 1949. Ho Chi Minh dispatched representatives to China soon thereafter. 53 but news of the event shook the government of Henri Queuille in Paris who dispatched not only sizable reinforcements, but also sent French Army Chief of Staff, General

Georges Revers on an inspection tour of Indochina in May and June. Revers’ report argued that the T.F.E.O. should make the pacification of the Red River delta its first priority. It also argued for the evacuation of the line of forts along R.C. 4 and the unification of military and civilian powers in one chef strong enough in personality and reputation to impose a coherent vision on the course of the war. 157 Blaizot favored the option, but it did not sit well with Queuille, harkening to mind the precipitous withdrawal from Lang Son in 1885 that brought down the government of Jules Ferry amid considerable embarrassment.158 Blaizot was relieved of his command in September 1949 and replaced with a complete newcomer to Indochina, General Marcel Carpentier.159

Knowing that a desire to withdraw from the border had scuttled his predecessor,

Carpentier contended for the retention of the French position on the border. To withdraw, he claimed, would mean forfeiting the ability to hinder Viet Minh communications with China. Not only that, but to abandon R.C. 4 would inevitably lead to the loss of R.C. 3 and a corresponding loss in control over population and a serious decline in intelligence. Lastly, holding R.C. 4 gave a “practical sense” to the otherwise

157 Franchini, 631-632. 158 A. Thomazi, La Conquête de l'Indochine (Paris: Payot, 1934), 277-279. In 1884-85 the French in Tonkin engaged in a very similar discussion to one that took place in 1949. The then Minister of War, General Campenon, had argued that to attempt to conquer and hold all of Tonkin, especially the far- removed points of the High Regions would require “enormous sums,” would waste French lives and “seriously compromise the health” of the troops. To operate such a system, Campenon insisted, would be a “monstrous mistake.” 159 Bergot, 11. 54 artificial Vietnamese border and did not involve any “loss of face” with respect to the

Chinese.160

Meanwhile, in the delta pacification progressed, but could offer no ready solution to the problem of the increasing potential of the Viet Minh army. Even the blockade of rice going to the Viet Minh regions was insufficient to stymie the growth of their combat power. Time was slipping away. General Marcel Alessandri, while retaining his post as commander of French ground forces in Tonkin, was also made the chief of the Zone opérationnelle du Tonkin (ZOT), an inter-service echelon meant to facilitate the planning and coordinating of all military activity. In this capacity Alessandri developed an audacious scheme to deal summarily with the Viet Minh before the weight of Chinese aid could become overwhelming. Alessandri intended to abandon posts everywhere and so muster nearly fifty battalions with which to maneuver. In six simultaneous concentric operations Alessandri would surround and destroy Giap’s rapidly forming, Chinese- trained army before it could take to the offensive.161 It was a bold, probably unworkable scheme. Most of the units Alessandri proposed to use were manifestly unfit for mobile, field operations. And, should it fail, his plan would have dramatically upended the

French position in Tonkin. In any event, Carpentier at this juncture would not abandon

R.C. 4 and, as before, French posturing was undone by events.

160 Longeret et al., 209. 161 Bodard, The Quicksand War: Prelude to Vietnam, 267. 55

But the French were not the only ones interested in battle. Over 1950 Giap’s units had grown considerably stronger, though the French were slow to realize it.162 His fortunes waxing, Giap thought it time to unleash his new formations flush with weapons and fresh from training across the border in communist China.163

The bombardment of Đông Khê opened in the early hours of 25 May 1950.

Soldiers of two companies of the bataillon de marche of the 8th Régiment de tirailleurs marocains (BM/8e R.T.M.), as well as the men of the men of the 146th compagnie légère de suppletifs militaries, rushed to their posts. The opening salvo inflicted few casualties, but did render Dong Khe’s artillery section of 3.7 inch mountain guns, of necessity employed in open pits, inoperable. Sergent-chef Marty, cadre to the Moroccans, gasped with wonder as he counted the Viet Minh artillery now firing on his position from the crests and mountainsides overlooking Dong Khe. Six tubes of 75mm mountain guns plowed the citadel and surrounding points of the garrison. Before noon the Viet Minh of the 308th Brigade had produced three more. Perhaps for the first time in the war the

French fought both outnumbered and outgunned. By the 27th Dong Khe fell to fire and assault. Giap had moved up the ladder of revolutionary warfare and, following Mao’s dictums, offered battle on his own terms and with overwhelming force.164 The red berets of the 3rd B.C.C.P. (Bataillon colonial de commandos parachutistes) took it back almost

162 In mid-1950 French intelligence still thought it possible to portray Viet Minh units as poorly led and incapable of concerted action. SHAT, carton 10H995, “Note d’orientation No. 7 relative à propagande et contre-propagande destinées aux troupes autochtones.” Dated 25 May 1950. 163 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 125. In additional to a substantial quantity of artillery, French intelligence estimated that in a single month’s time the Chinese delivered in excess of 50,000 rifles to Giap’s battalions. 164See “On Protracted War,” in Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1963), 255. 56 immediately with an incredibly daring jump right onto Dong Khe itself. 165 Viet Minh soldiers still looting the husk of the fort were caught totally unawares and found themselves driven from Dong Khe in less than fifteen minutes.166

Despite the dramatic retaking of the citadel by the ever-intrepid paras, the precipitous fall of Dong Khe – even the Viet Minh did not expect to capture it so quickly

– had exposed the tremendous vulnerability of the French disposition along R.C. 4.

Carpentier reversed course in mid-August and opted to withdraw from Cao Bang and

Dong Khe.167

What followed was a complete disaster. Even though 1950 saw stinging reverses from which the Viet Minh in Cochinchina would not recover, the catastrophe of R.C. 4 cast a deathly pallor over the T.F.E.O. It began on 16 September when Giap sent two regiments, the TD 174 and 209, to retake Dong Khe. The post fell again quickly under a massive weight of firepower and human wave assaults. Cao Bang was now alone and cut off, except by aerial resupply. Carpentier rejected any notion of evacuating the post by air.168 Instead the garrison of Cao Bang – the III/3e R.E.I. (Régiment étranger d’infannterie – i.e. Foreign Legion Infantry Regiment) and the 3rd Tabor would withdraw along R.C. 4 to Dong Khe. A second column from That Ke would speed north to take

165 Bergot, 20. The idea to land directly on Dong Khe and not at a drop zone some place distant from which the paras could organize before their assault was actually the idea of doctor attached to the 3rd G.C.C.P. 166 Bergot, 37. 167 Longeret et al., 285. 168 Philippe Gras, L'armée de l'air en Indochine (1945-1954): L'impossible Mission (Paris L'Harmattan, 2001), 260. This operation would have taken too long (perhaps weeks). 57

Dong Khe, thus holding the important passes and facilitate the combined move from there back to That Khê and eventually to Lang Son.169

The legionnaires of Cao Bang stepped off on 3 Oct 1950 to begin Operation

THÉRÈSE. Their relief column, Groupement Bayard, comprising the 1st and 11th Tabors, the 8th R.T.M. and the 1st B.E.P. (Bataillon étranger parachutistes), had already stalled before Dong Khe the day before and was forced to leave the track of R.C. 4 to seek a way around. It was now left to Colonel Charton and his men from Cao Bang to rescue their own relief column. Eventually the two haggard forces, surrounded and under withering attack, were annihilated in the Coc Xa gorge. Panic seized the French command. On 10

October That Khe was evacuated. The 3rd B.C.C.P., left as a rear-guard for the withdrawing column, was destroyed nearly to a man.170 It was not for lack of courage that France lost Indochina.

With forces streaming down R.C. 4, Colonel Constans in Lang Son decided upon its evacuation as well. Despite a strong position, well stocked and laden with heavy artillery, Lang Son was abandoned; its great stores of provisions were only partially destroyed before leaving.171 All told France lost close to nine battalions of infantry in the

R.C. 4 disaster, some 6,000 men killed or wounded.172 The T.F.E.O. came streaming back to the delta, abandoning the northwest as well. A small force of three Tai battalions and

169 Longeret et al., 285. 170 Longeret et al., 357. 171 Philippe Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon (Paris: Éditions Tallandier, 2011), 92. 172 Longeret et al., 377. 58 one North African unit retained a tenuous hold on Tai country running out to the west in the direction of Nghia Lo and Lai Chau.173

General Boyer de Latour took over as commander in Tonkin on 14 October 1950.

He immediately set to work to shore up the T.F.E.O.’s defensive position in and around the delta. On 26 October 1950 the Chinese 40th Army appeared in Korea smashing

Republic of Korea regiments as it came.174 He believed a Chinese attack in Vietnam to be a real possibility and so he set to work constructing a fortified zone encompassing

Haiphong. Around Hanoi Latour looked to establish defensive positions under cover of artillery, and furthermore tried to reconstitute as much as possible the groupement mobiles (G.M.) by stripping troops from static units, now that the overall perimeter was significantly reduced.175 The defensive orientation of Latour’s measures and his decision to prepare for the evacuation of women and children made the maintenance of Tonkin seem a forlorn hope.176

Two things saved the French position in Tonkin: material wherewithal made possible by the onset of the Korean War, and better leadership. Just three days after the start of the Korean conflict, eight American C-47 transport aircraft arrived in Saigon bursting with supplies. By the end of that month there was the equivalent of twelve

173 In total France had at this juncture 36 infantry battalions, 5 parachute battalions, 13 artillery batteries and 9 armored squadrons available for mobile action. SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “l’etat de fait en decembre 1950.” 174 Allan Millett, The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came from the North (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2010), 301. 175 Boyer de Latour, 181. Groupement mobiles or Mobile Groups were semi-established tactical formations somewhat akin to a U.S. Regimental Combat Team. Of course the French since the beginning of the war were used to forming groupements for particular operations. The establishment of GMs as semi-permanent tactical units seems to date from Blaizot’s time as commander in chief. SHAT, carton 10H906. See reference in “mesures d’urgence à prendre pour parer à toute tentative de dissidence en Cochinchine” to EMO 524 dated 16 November 1948. 176 Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon, 94-95. 59 infantry battalions’ worth of equipment underway to the beleaguered French.177 At the same time, the revolving door of French commanders in Indochina swung again. In a necessary inversion of his more famous formulation, Clausewitz, the Prussian philosopher and general contends, “at the highest level the art of war turns into policy.”

He therefore argues that a commander-in-chief should, whenever practicable, be simultaneously a member of the cabinet. That is to say, he should be attuned to the political factors that gave rise to the war and continue to shape its direction. In effect,

Clausewitz is arguing for a concept of the grand strategist fully capable of reconciling ends, ways and means within their political parameters.178 In 1950, Paris was willing to try anything. Carpentier and Pignon were out, sacked for their failures. To replace them came one of France’s ablest soldiers, General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Supremely confident in his own abilities, de Lattre quite nearly kept France in the fight in Tonkin by sheer force of will.

On the Viet Minh side, bolstered by the heady certainty of historical materialism,

Giap prepared his forces for the long awaited tổng phản công (General Counter-

Offensive).179 They would sweep into the delta and push the demoralized French defenders into Haiphong harbor. By December 1950 Giap had three fully formed sư

đoàn (divisions) with two more quite nearly ready. Regional units, previously organized for guerrilla operations, grouped themselves into companies, battalions, and in some rare

177 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 123. 178 Clausewitz, 607-608. See Book VIII, chapter 6 for Clausewitz’s discussion of this arrangement. 179 Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1950, vol. 11 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Chĩnh Trị Quốc Gia, 2001), 567. See Central Committee communication for 21 Dec 1950. 60 cases, regiments.180 In January 1951 Giap’s assault on the delta began and the battle the

French had longed for was brought to their doorstep.

Divisions 308 and 312 of Giap’s army emerged from the Tam Đảo massif north of

Vĩnh Yên on 13 January. In these low hills, de Lattre had constructed a series of strong points around which his G.M.s – including four new ones formed by siphoning off forces from the rest of Indochina – could mount a mobile defense.181 Defending Vinh Yen were two mobile groups including G.M. 3 under Colonel Paul Vanuxem, who gave as good as he got. The situation became critical by 16 January as the 308th attacked en masse.182

De Lattre arrived by plane the same day to survey the situation. Knowing the delta lay open behind Vinh Yen, de Lattre called in all the airpower he could muster. B-26 bombers, newly arrived from America and flying in direct support of the ground troops, plastered the Viet Minh with napalm.183 Communist troops went down screaming by the thousands. Incredibly, they came on. The action was only ended after de Lattre committed his last available reserves, G.M. 2. With 6,000 dead on the field of battle,

Giap at last broke off the fight. Though victorious, de Lattre’s forces were not capable of pursuit. Despite the success of the R.C. 4 campaigns, the Viet Minh divisions were not prepared to confront the French in open battle so close to French supply dumps and airfields.

180 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “l’etat de fait en decembre 1950.” 181 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled, “l’oœuvre de Marechal de Lattre.” 182 Fall, 36-37. 183 Gras, 361-363. 61

Giap was not prepared, however, to forgo the general counter-offensive. Instead he began moving forces east toward the area around Mạo Khê. Close to the sea a concerted thrust here by the Viet Minh would rapidly endanger the French hold over

Haiphong, perhaps causing the rest of the their position to collapse in on itself.

Preparations for the attack to be carried out by the 308th, 312 and 306th divisions took more than two months, demonstrating again the logistical shortcomings of the Viet Minh.

The offensive opened on the night of 23 March 1951 against a motley assembly of partisans, Senegalese and an armored platoon in Mao Khe, about 400 troops in total.

Unfortunately for Giap, he had again not reckoned fully with the firepower of modern warfare or from whence it might come. Moored in the Đá Vách River, French naval vessels bombarded the Viet Minh attackers, stopping the offensive dead in its tracks.184

The timely intervention of the 6th B.C.C.P. and supporting fires from artillery positioned near Đông Triề handed de Latter another victory.185

Giap once again shifted his focus, this time south and west to the course of the

Đáy River in the vicinity of Phát Diem. For this operation, Giap combined conventional strikes with guerrilla activity mounted in the French rear areas. Then, while the 304th and

308th struck against the French position between Phủ Lý and Phat Diem in the early hours of 29 May, hoping to hold French forces in place, the 320th advanced to seize the largely

Catholic bishopric before help could arrive. Yet again Giap was checked by superior

184 Estival, 172. The largest ship present was the cruiser Duguay-Trouin 185 Fall, 42-43. 62

French firepower delivered by air and from dinassaut units operating on the Day River and by the timely arrival of reserves.186

The battle for the Day River closed Giap’s grand offensive of 1951. The Viet

Minh commander then turned his attention to easier pickings and moved the 312th against

Nghĩa Lộ auguring things to come. De Lattre dropped in three paratroop battalions and after a series of sharp actions managed to prevent the Viet Minh from breaking into the highlands. The fight cost Giap an additional 1,500 dead before the rains came and put an end to the campaign season.187

De Lattre seized upon this opportunity to significantly recast the diplomatic nature of the French effort in Indochina. In late summer 1951 he visited the United

States, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and President Truman. There he argued that if Indochina fell, all of Southeast Asia would be imperiled and eventually the entire

Middle East; France and Europe were surely not far behind.188 Speaking forcefully, he convinced many that the French were not fighting a grimy “colonial war,” but were engaged in a life and death struggle “on a Red battlefield for liberty and peace.”189

One of de Lattre’s chief aims in his visit was economic. Supply and finance had always been the weak points of the French endeavor. By 1952, President Vincent Auriol calculated French expenditures in Indochina to be on the order of 1.6 billion francs, or

186 Fall, 45-46. 187 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “bataille de Nghia Lo en Octobre 1951.” 188 It is legitimate to argue that the Cold War was not as important for France as it was in the Anglo-Saxon world (See Georges-Henri Soutou, “France and the Cold War, 1944-63” Diplomacy and Statecraft 12:4 (2001), 35.), but this did not hold true for the military. 189 Quoted in Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941- 1960, 142. 63 twice the aid France had received from the Marshall Plan.190 In 1950, one-time finance minister Pierre Mendès-France claimed that the cost of the war was simply too crippling and that the only remaining solution was “to seek a political accord … with those who fight us.”191 The new commander-in-chief qua High Commissioner was not interested in such sentiments.

Happily for de Lattre, supplies and money began to flow in ever greater earnest following his visit to America. Already scheduled shipments were accelerated and new ones began. In the brief period between de Lattre’s U.S. stop and early 1952 the United

States delivered some 8,000 general-purpose vehicles, 650 combat vehicles, 200 aircraft and 14,000 automatic weapons including 53 million rounds of ammunition.192 In monetary terms, American aid to France during the 1951-1952 fiscal year climbed to

$330 million, of which sum 66 percent was spent on the war in Indochina.193 The aid was clearly critical for the continued French war effort. Even with American assistance, military expenditure in Indochina at times still accounted for a full third of the Fourth

Republic’s budget.194 Despite these apparently massive outlays however, France in fact hardly ever imperiled reconstruction at home for the sake of the conflict, having recourse

190 Hammer, 297. 191 Quoted in Hugues Tertrais, “Le poids financier de la guerre d’Indochine,” in Maurice Vaisse, L'armee Francaise dans la Guerre D'indochine 1946-1954 (Complexe Eds, 2000), 41. 192 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 146. 193 Hugues Tertrais, La Piastre et Le fusil: Le coût de la Guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954 (Paris: Histoire économique et financière de la France, 2002), 270. 194 Rioux, The Fourth Republic, 1944-1958, 214. 64 to the so-called “piastre traffic” and American aid to hold down their own costs. Indeed by 1954 the United States was paying for nearly 80% of the war.195

Throughout the spring and summer of 1952 de Lattre had looked to pacify the delta. Operations like MEDUSE, REPTILE and MANDARINE aimed, among other things, at destroying TD 42, the independent regiment ensconced in nominally French- controlled territory and the one that had given the T.F.E.O. fits during the Day River battle.196 Harried and pursued, TD 42 perennially escaped destruction.197 But pacification for de Lattre was a seasonal affection, a summer romance perhaps to be worked at only while the rains made the “real war” unmanageable.

The general was dissatisfied with purely defensive victories. He also realized that catching the enemy in the open on French terms as had been attempted in 1947 was not possible. The battles of 1951, however, had taught the French command several lessons they thought important for the future. In the first place, for all their organization and new equipment courtesy of the Chinese, Giap’s divisions suffered mightily when attacking prepared positions. French coordination of ground forces, airpower and naval assets far exceeded Giap’s capacity to overcome them. Secondly, the Viet Minh were still hampered by logistical weakness. Supplied largely by human portage with only a smattering of trucks, Giap had required almost two months of provisioning and moving

195 The piastre traffic involved France maintaining an artificially high exchange rate between piastres and francs, allowing France to recoup its expenditures in Indochina after a delay of a few months once the money founds its way back to France for exchange. Hugues Tertrais, “Le poids financier de la guerre d’Indochine,” in Vaisse, 36-38. 196 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “l’oœvre de Marechal de Lattre.” 197 Estival, 181. 65 between each of his attacks on the delta.198 Though each stab drew in the majority of de

Lattre’s reserves, they were separated enough in time that they did not overwhelm the defenders.

De Lattre hoped to put this knowledge to good use and in so doing reprise the strategic offensive. If the Viet Minh could not be tackled outright, de Lattre could at least take something vital and force them to engage in battle with the French on the tactical defensive. His selected target was Hòa Bình, capital of Muong country, faithful French allies. Sitting astride the Viet Minh supply lines coming out of Thanh Hoa, the seizure of

Hoa Binh would significantly hinder the maintenance of Giap’s units north of Hanoi. It would also demonstrate that France was able to undertake offensive action and convince

American lawmakers and the French Assembly that de Lattre was putting their money and matérial to good use.199 If he could compel the Viet Minh to attack this salient, de

Lattre would, above all, draw in Giap’s divisions and bloody them severely.200 One cannot entirely discount another motive – revenge. At the Battle of the Day River de

Lattre’s own son, Bernard, had died with his NCOs at the head of his company of

Vietnamese soldiers.201

There was a third lesson to be drawn from the war in 1951: eventually Giap would come for the delta. Hanoi and Haiphong are and were clearly the heart of Tonkin.

Ho Chi Minh’s claims to revolution would all ring hollow so long as he remained master

198 Davidson, 214. 199 In a personal conversation with de Lattre Claude Clément reports that the general was greatly concerned that various powers in Paris would not abide him using so much money to stay only in the delta: “Ils trouvent que je coûte trop cher pour me confiner dans le Delta.” Quoted in Fouquet-Lapar, 63. 200 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “les opérations de CHO BEN et HOA BINH.” 201 Fall, 45. 66 of only a mountainous solitude. To gain control over northern Vietnam meant ipso facto to control the delta. In hindsight one can argue that Giap’s attacks in 1951 were ill timed; it is much harder to say that they were not inevitable.202

But, de Lattre was unwilling, perhaps unable to wait. To hold the delta as the

French had done out of necessity in the south required not only the ceding of terrain, but the relinquishing of time as a manageable, malleable commodity. French commanders prided themselves on their ability to surmount great distances on razor thin schedules.

They did it time and again, often to no real purpose other than the self-satisfaction of having done it. It was the feel of the boar hunt with bullets and bombers in place of lances and knives. Furthermore, to retreat firmly to the delta meant the abandoning of their allies among the Tai, the Muong, the Tho, and the Lao in favor of the Vietnamese, the source of their many frustrations. Among other things a sense of honor and romantic commitment also compelled the French army to stay the course.203 On the purely military level, some portions of Indochina had to be relinquished for the foreseeable future. De Lattre would not hear of it. “France had spent too much wealth and blood protecting [Indochina],” he insisted.204 Vietnam, de Lattre believed, was the “grand rendez-vous of France. If we lose here, everything will collapse.”205 Rather than making more possible, the victories in 1951 constrained France’s strategic options. Anything else

202 Later communist historiography would take the three-phase Maoist paradigm for revolutionary war and jigger it to a five-phase model. With his loss in 1951 Giap moved into the “strategically defense phase” four of the conflict. See Pike, 40. 203 By way of example, Raoul Salan, the commander to follow de Lattre, admitted openly that he was simply “too attached” to his “cher Laos.” Salan, 367. 204 Quoted in Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941- 1960, 140. 205 Quoted in Paul Vanuxem, Le Général Vainqueur (Paris: Société de production littéraire, 1977), 32. 67 seemed unnecessary. Giap was battered and humbled. American aid replaced the lean years with a season of abundance. The phantasm of decisive victory hovered enticingly, almost within grasp.

After a brief diversionary operation, the T.F.E.O. launched Operation LOTUS on

14 November 1951. True to form, paratroop drops on the main objective prepared the way for a strong thrust by multiple G.M.s along R.C. 6 complete with engineer, aviation and riverine support. Hoa Binh was taken easily; holding it proved another matter. Giap reacted quickly, accepting battle amid the lush vegetation and serpentine curves of the

Black River where his troops could sneak close to French positions before launching their assaults.

De Lattre returned to France on 19 November 1951; he died from cancer less than two months later. His replacement, Raoul Salan, was left holding the bag, as it were.206

In response to de Lattre’s offensive Giap had promptly brought in three divisions – the

304th,308th and 312th – and choked off the salient, slowly grinding away at the string of

French posts necessary to keep R.C. 6 and the Black River open. By February 1952, the effort had exhausted the French and sucked in nearly all of the available forces d’intervention, some twenty plus battalions. At the same time, powerful Viet Minh regular forces – the greater part of two divisions - infiltrated the delta unobstructed.

Operation ARC-EN-CIEL, the arduous phased withdrawal from Hoa Binh was complete by 24 February 1952. The T.F.E.O. suffered more than 1,500 killed or wounded; Viet

206 With de Lattre’s departure the system of combined military/political authority was discontinued. Salan would be the commander-in-chief, while the High-Commissioner’s hat control would go to Jean Letourneau. 68

Minh casualties totaled 25,000.207 Though casualties for the French were relatively light, material wastage was immense. There was also the psychological shock the withdrawal wrought. The campaign for Hoa Binh had been highly publicized. Before the press,

Salan had vowed to stay, calling unhelpful attention to war most were willing to ignore.

So soon after de Lattre’s departure, France once more seemed overcautious and wilting.208

More severe was the compromised situation in the delta. The mobile forces required weeks for refit. Meanwhile, static guard posts unused to facing anything but guerrillas were subjected to violent attacks by Giap’s main body units operating dispersed throughout the region. When his mobile forces finally rebounded, Salan had to devote the greater part of the next few months to cleaning up the mess. In the case of the 316th division, Salan could not compel it to leave the delta until May.209

The retreat from Hoa Binh was replete with lessons: some learned, some unrecognized. Once again Giap had offered battle and had suffered tremendous losses.210

The French strategic dilemma, however, remained in full effect. Large-scale offensive action compromised the security of the delta, technically the T.F.E.O.’s first responsibility. On the other hand, to confine itself to the delta meant ceding the initiative and territory to Giap’s forces elsewhere. Nor could Salan countenance the abandonment

207 Philippe Fouquet-Lapar, a veteran of the Hoa Binh campaign, offers a thorough review of the various actions. See Fouquet-Lapar. 208 Salan, 290. Salan had informed the press somewhat emphatically, “Nous sommes à Hoa Binh et je n’ai pas l’intention de m’en laisser mettre à la porte!” 209 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “opérations d’assainissement.” 210 The divisions involved against Hoa Binh would remain hors de combat for about three months. SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “situation dans le NORD au DEBUT de l’ÉTÉ, 1952.” 69 of Laos, an option that would have dramatically simplified his problem. Salan’s own proclivities made this as unlikely as did the French government’s insistence on the importance of the system of Associated States, the revamped legal rubric for France to maintain her southeast Asian empire under slightly more liberal auspices.211 If France simply abandoned Laos, the viability of the system would be irrevocably damaged. Not that he needed the prodding, but in April 1953 Prime Minister René Mayer went so far as to inform Salan that he should defend the Associated States [meaning Laos] even at the risk of losing an “important part” of the army.212

Battle was the only way to save the situation and Giap was more than happy to oblige. This course, however, carried with it a further paradox. France’s colonial war in

Indochina elicited little interest among common Frenchmen, who had other concerns, mostly economic. And casualties, while often quite heavy, were born by France’s professional army, her military elite and their colonial troops. Bernard Fall once noted that Indochina took the lives of twenty sons of French marshals and general officers - but cost no conscripts.213 With American money and equipment paying for much of the effort, the war could easily go on unnoticed by the public. The grimy, plodding work of pacification produces few headlines. Battle, however, constrained in time and space and

211 See “Associated States of Indochina,” in Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945- 1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 44. This system, inaugurated between March and November of 1949, allowed for the unification of Vietnam as well as a limited national sovereignty for Laos and Cambodia. Military, diplomatic and monetary matters remained Paris’ prerogative. John Dreifort’s term for French Far East foreign policy before the war, “myopic grandeur,” seems equally appropriate to this period. John Dreifort, Myopic Grandeur: The Ambivalence of French Foreign Policy toward the Far East, 1919-1945 (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1991). 212 Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon, 168. Douglas Porch argues that protection of the opium crop in Laos was a key factor in the French decision to defend Laos. This was doubtless a contributory factor. See Porch, 353. 213 Fall, 45. 70 predisposed to dramatic retelling, draws attention; it raises the stakes. Giap could risk such things. Party orthodoxy and Communist doctrine in the main kept the Viet Minh in line. It was otherwise for France.214

A French decrypt of late 1952 revealed to Salan that Giap planned to overrun the entirety of Indochina – Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all the way down to the Mekong – in the coming season.215 Sources revealed that the offensive would unfold in the area of

Nghia Lo, the doorway to Tai country. Salan placed the region on alert. On 16 October

1952, northwest of Nghia Lo at Tú Lệ, Salan dropped in the 6th B.P.C. (Bataillon de parachutistes coloniaux) with orders to refuse major combat and, in the event of major attack, to fall back to stronger positions south, covering the retreat of the many scattered posts in the area. It was a supremely difficult task.

The speed of Giap’s offensive caught Salan by surprise. Nghia Lo fell in mid-

October 1952, much more quickly than Salan thought, but the fight in the hill country was one he wanted, or at least one he would not avoid. Some commentators have seen

Salan’s conduct of this winter-spring campaign as wholly reactive, with troop detachments scattered about between the lines of the Red and Black rivers, a sure sign of strategic irresolution. On the other side, Giap comes across as a master of his craft.

Advancing in three prongs, Giap was not only operationally flexible, but strategically keen in “enticing the French into distant and difficult areas.”216 With the fall of Nghia Lo,

Salan set about the evacuation of the hills southwest of the Red River back to the line of

214 America would learn this lesson later on. As Bernard Brodie states it: “If there is one military lesson that comes out of Vietnam, it is that one does not fight with a conscript army a war that is imperialist in form even if not in purpose.” Bernard Brodie, War and Politics (New York,: Macmillan, 1973), 200. 215 Salan, 329. 216 Davidson, 149. 71 forts beyond the Black. This apparent retreat sent Paris reeling – and politicians dipping into the details of military operations. A telegram from the government criticized Salan for the extended linear disposition of his forces along the Black River. As so many times before, any withdrawal seemed to betoken further retreats. The ministers feared the loss of the entire Tai country and perhaps another ensuing governmental crisis.217

But Salan was not without his skill in the uplands. By 1952 he had spent a great deal of his career in the Far East, much of it in the mountains.218 He had served there as a captain for several years. He was adept at the byzantine politics of the various tribal confederations, using them to good effect. Under his command the Groupement de commandos mixtes aéroportés (G.C.M.A.), the organization that managed the maquis of

Indochina, flourished as never before, especially in the tribal areas of the northwest.219 In

May of 1952, for example, the maquis’ seizure of Lao Cai necessitated the intervention of a Chinese division to calm the upheaval on the border. Hoping thus to replicate for the

Viet Minh the security nightmare their guerrillas created in the delta, the maquis accomplished a great deal, though French belief in their efficacy was born more of

Resistance lore than from an unvarnished strategic appraisal.220 This relationship was

217 Salan, 345. 218 Dalloz, Dictionnaire de la Guerre d'Indochine, 1945-1954 Texte Imprimâe, 222-223. 219 Trinquier, 41. 220 Porch, 331. Porch makes the point that French reliance – and particularly Salan’s - on the G.C.M.A. was wholly out of proportion to their net military effect. Other officers, like Jean Gilles, thought the maquis a waste of valuable men and material better used elsewhere. 72 further cemented with the Méo tribe, a critical group providing recruits for the G.C.M.A., by guaranteeing the transport of their opium crop to its market in Cholon.221

If Giap had “enticed” Salan, Salan had also drawn Giap into a thorny logistical puzzle. The country Giap invaded was roused in opposition. The Viet Minh would find no friendly porters there, a provision they could count on among the lowlanders. The

1952/1953 campaign certainly stretched the French air transport arm, but it also forced

Giap to impress an army of coolies for use in the mountains. The magnificent rearguard action of the 6th B.P.C., for days believed lost, slowed Giap’s units and added to the already considerable legend of the paras and their chief, Marcel Bigeard, a man so adept at tactical operations one would think him the Spartan king, Agesilaus, returned in Gallic form.222

Salan’s disposition was, in fact, far less linear than it appeared. After Giap’s offensive reached the line of the Black River, Salan began a process of pulling his disparate units back to the two centers of Lai Chau and Nà Sản. At this point the Viet

Minh offensive stalled for want of supplies. In the meantime the Commander-in-Chief unveiled the second aspect of his campaign of logistical attrition, Operation LORRAINE beginning on 28 October 1952.

As in so many earlier French operations, LORRAINE was no doubt a spectacle to behold. Paratroop drops were timed with armored thrusts supported by sorties of the

221 Salan, 385. Taking a cue from countless other French colonial officers, Salan informed the government in France of his plan to engage in this traffic, but of course enacted his plan before the government could render its decision. 222 See Alain Gandy, Bataillon Bigeard à Tu Lê: la légende des paras (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1996), 26. Gaindy, also a veteran of Indochina and Algeria, describes Bigeard as comfortable in the field as a “poacher in his woods.” 73 famed dinassauts. According to Salan the maneuver, which leapt north along the course of the Red River, was meant as a diversion aimed at the important Viet Minh supply base at Yen Bai.223 Some have argued that LORRAINE was meant to cripple the Viet Minh logistical system, to force Giap to call off his Black River campaign. The scale of

LORRAINE (nearly 30,000 troops involved) would lend credibility to that claim.224

Nevertheless, Salan had not staked all on its success. As it was, LORRAINE was not a complete failure. Giap did not call off his Black River campaign, but in truth his logistical system was already in shambles. LORRAINE exacerbated this problem.

Though they did not take Yen Bai, Salan’s thrust did succeed in capturing several new

Molotova trucks, and more significantly forty tons of mortar shells and thirty-five thousand grenades.225 These items would be sorely missed when Giap’s 308th “Iron”

Division attempted to storm the developing fortress at Na San.

The phased withdrawal of units along with selected attacks in Operation

LORRAINE had set the Viet Minh back. It was not until the end of November that Giap could close his forces around Na San, i.e. nearly five weeks to cover the seventy odd kilometers from Nghia Lo. There Salan elected to give battle on terrain to his liking.226

The delay had afforded Salan the chance to reinforce and build up the defenses of Na San into a base aéroterrestre. This was a concept that had evolved over time from the

“mooring point” notion along R.C. 4. A principal feature of this concept was that the base would be resupplied completely by air, forgoing the costly need to maintain an open

223 Salan, 338. 224 Davidson, 144. 225 Salan, 340. 226 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “le campagne du NORD OUEST.” 74 ground line of communication back to Hanoi that had so bedeviled the Hoa Binh campaign.227 At this juncture Giap could also not afford to go around Na San and still pose a credible threat to Laos. Na San possessed an all-season accessible airstrip (two in fact) and sat astride Route Provinciale 41, the only road that could provide communication along Giap’s distended front. Lastly, the late-season rice around Na San would be necessary for Giap’s legions if they wanted to continue onward.228

Na San, held by 12,000 crack troops, fell under Viet Minh attack on 23

November. Colonel Jean Gilles had assiduously prepared the defense. Company strong points ringed the position within supporting distance of one another; in critical sectors where the enemy could bring the airstrips under fire, Gilles posted entire battalions.

Unlike the later French base at Dien Bien Phu, at Na San the interior of the position, including the airstrips and artillery positions, was not dominated by enemy-controlled high ground. The nature of the terrain also forced Giap’s men to ascend to the attack in snaking columns easily savaged by the fire of the Compagnie de mortiers lourds de la

Légion étrangère (Foreign Legion Heavy Mortar Company) specially created for the battle.229 To attack such a place required determination that would give even the staunchest colonialist pause. Finally, with only a forty-minute flight from Hanoi to Na

San, the armée de l’air was able to keep Na San supplied even during the heaviest days of the battle in late November and early December. The operation, however, closer in range and with fewer men to support than at Dien Bien Phu, had taxed the air arm beyond

227 Paul Ély, Les Enseignements de la Guerre d'Indochine (1945-1954): Rapport du Général Ély, ed. Ivan Cadeau, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Vincennes: Service historique de la Défense, 2011), 113-114. Gen Ély was the last commander in Indochina and in 1954 authored an extensive report on the French conduct of the war. 228 Salan., 348-349. 229 Favreau and Dufour, 114-115. 75 its limit.230 For Giap the battle cost him more than 3,000 dead and wounded. As before, the defensive victory, while satisfying for Salan, offered no chance for exploitation. Giap began withdrawing the majority of his force for use elsewhere by the end of the first week of December.231 Still intent on seizing Laos, he sent strong detachments around Na

San to push the French from Sam Neua before the rains brought the campaign season to a close. The French would evacuate Na San in August of 1953; only three months later they dropped into Dien Bien Phu.

The campaign leading up to Na San gave some cause for guarded optimism, but the basic strategic calculus remained unchanged. The removal of so many Viet Minh regulars had allowed pacification to move forward, if somewhat absentmindedly, in the

Red River delta. Annam remained under threat but secure. In Cochinchina security was such that the core provinces were turned over to the Vietnamese.232 The construction of the Vietnamese National Army, given new impetus by de Lattre, had continued apace, reaching a strength of 131,000 men by June 1952. Most of these troops, however, were employed in static roles. Of the 44 battalions in the VNA only 14 could realistically be used as “troupes d’intervention.” In fact, over the course of 1952 the quantity of French replacements dipped seriously due to other commitments in Europe and Africa. With

230 Gras, 422. Despite large increases in the number of aircraft at their disposal, the demands placed upon the air arm greatly exceeded their theoretical maximums for the duration of the battle of Na San. 231 Favreau and Dufour, 157. 232 Salan, 371-373. 76 cadres lacking, the overall quality of Franco-Vietnamese units declined leaving a narrow band of elite troops to carry an increasingly heavy load.233

Stuck in a seemingly perpetual war but unwilling to appeal to the United Nations for help in an “internal” matter, the French government in spring 1953 wished nevertheless to shake things up. Prime Minister René Mayer had his fill of the clique of

Asia-minded officers like Salan. In April of 1953 he replaced the “mandarin” with Henri

Navarre, an intelligence specialist and a complete newcomer to Indochina.234

Navarre arrived in Indochina in time to witness most of the senior staff departing.235 He was also operating with a dearth of information from the government, despite repeated requests for clarification. A meeting of the Comité de la Défense nationale on 24 July 1953 had decided very little. The question of serious reinforcements remain unanswered, as did the question of whether Navarre was required to hold Laos.

Still, Navarre was enjoined to not abandon any further territory because of the potential for negative political consequences. He was also told that some quick offensives were needed, probably to stave off American criticism of what was perceived to be the dithering French conduct of the war. The ambiguous government direction of the war did not match up well with Navarre’s plan for its prosecution. He hoped to spend the remainder of 1953 and 1954 cementing French control over Annam and Cochinchina, while remaining largely on the defensive in Tonkin. During this time newly forming

Vietnamese units would take over security duties in most places, allowing Navarre to

233 SHAT, carton 10H984. 233 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre d’Indochine.” See section entitled “developpement des armées nationales jusqu’en juin 1952” as well as “les problemes pour 1953.” Only in the paratroop battalions and the Tabors was this not a problem. Bodin, 137. 234 de Folin, 234. 235 Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1984), 3. 77 gather his French regular forces into a powerful corps de bataille in the north. In 1955

Navarre would seek out and destroy the Viet Minh in Tonkin.236

From the start the plan foundered. Navarre’s scheme required that he privilege the center and south over the north, at least initially, but he was not allowed to give up territory. It also required him to forgo unnecessary offensive operations that would burn up men and supplies before the great offensives of 1955. And yet the top American advisor in Indochina, Lt. Gen. John O’Daniel, demanded immediate French action as a sign of good faith for the massive financial aid the U.S. government had pledged to the war.237 Operation HIRONDELLE launched against Lang Son in July destroyed a depot of

Viet Minh war stocks but really served to convince Navarre’s American paymasters of his continued offensive potential.238 What it really accomplished was to wear out equipment and prevent the accumulation of significant reserves. Navarre’s situation was symbolic of the whole course of the Indochina war. His strategic disposition was at odds with the composition and assumed role of his forces. The subsequent confusion cast

Navarre back into familiar patterns.

Giap also had his vote. Disabused of any notion of an easy victory in the delta,

Giap opted to descend on Laos again. Unless he could abandon that country, Navarre’s plan was stillborn. He still had no specific instructions in this regard, though on a visit to

Indochina in early November 1953, secretary of state Marc Jacquet informed Navarre

236 Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon, 196-198. 237 Spector, Advice and Support, the Early Years of the United States Army in Vietnam, 1941-1960, 175. This was a common American complaint. At the National Security Council Meeting on 6 April 1954 Eisenhower himself wondered aloud why, with numerical superiority everywhere, the French did not attack anywhere else while the siege at Dien Bien Phu carried on. NSC – 192nd meeting, 6 April 1954. 238 Edgar O'Ballance, The Indo-China War, 1945-1954: A Study in Guerilla Warfare (London,: Faber and Faber, 1964), 200. 78 that the fall of Luang Prabang would be devastating in France. If Navarre felt compelled to hold Laos, it is not hard to see why.239

In his memoirs Navarre describes the occupation of Dien Bien Phu as the “only possible” solution to his strategic dilemma. This is not an after-the-fact justification for a poor decision; it is a quite correct assessment of his situation at the time. Without sufficient mobile troops (and their supply) to launch decisive operations from the delta and lacking a clear mandate to abandon Laos, Navarre had to offer battle before Giap could overrun Laos. Dien Bien Phu offered the only chance – and a poor one at that – to do so.240

On 20 November 1953 French airborne troops descended on Dien Bien Phu.241

Work on the fortifications began immediately. The establishment of a “camp retranché”

à la Na San once again raised the stakes. A steady stream of high-profile visitors poured in to inspect the defensive works and give their tacit approval.242 With the flower of the

French army digging in for the long haul, the drama increased. French national will to continue the war came to crystallize around Dien Bien Phu and hung on its outcome.243

Of course, by almost imperceptible steps, the goal of French policy had now shifted. The purpose of the battle was no longer to defeat the Viet Minh in toto; it was to convince them that no solution could be reached by force of arms and so allow France an

“honorable exit” from Indochina.

239 Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de 1949 à la chute de Saigon, 204. 240 Henri Navarre, Le Temps des Vérités (Paris: Plon, 1973), 318. 241 Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), 251. 242 Navarre, 335. 243 Ruscio, "L'opinion française et la Guerre d'Indochine (1945-1954): Sondages et Témoignages," 43. 79

It is not necessary to recount again the battle of Dien Bien Phu; the well of that literature bubbles to overflowing.244 Instead we turn to northern Annam, to what is now the province of Quảng Bình to examine in microcosm what might have been had France constrained her effort and constrained ends to fit means. There on 18 Mar 1954, four days after the initial Viet Minh assaults on Dien Bien Phu, the post of Kha Ly found itself completely surrounded by two regular battalions of the 320th division. The 3rd company of the 53rd Battalion of the Vietnamese National Army held Kha Ly with Lieutenant

Nguyen Am in command. Including twenty militia, his force came to around 100 men.

The Viet Minh quickly drew the noose tight. Resupply could only be accomplished by airdrop.

On the night of 2 April, Kha Ly came under attack. A blockhouse detached from the main fort was destroyed after five hours of fighting; ten men lay buried in the rubble.

The Viet Minh sapped their trenches closer to the post. In the deepest portion of the night, the Viet Minh launched their main assault. A wave of attackers carried the wall and came crashing into the post itself. The communists now occupied two-thirds of Kha

Ly. Lieutenant Am called for an artillery barrage on his position. At four in the morning a Dakota swung low and dropped a flare, momentarily giving enough light for Am’s men to pour a murderous, if brief, fire into the Viet Minh ranks. At this point Am guided in two fighter-bombers and directed them to drop napalm on the enemy-held side of the fort.

While the Viet Minh burned, Am ordered a counter-attack. Unnerved, most of the Viet

244 The best account of the battle is still Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2002). The newest English-language battle-narrative is Windrow; Ivan Cadeau, Dien Bien Phu, Mars - Mai 1954 (Paris: Tallandier, 2013). 80

Minh fled; Am’s men killed the rest. When the sun came up, the haggard defenders pulled 100 Viet Minh corpses from their base. Two hundred more had died in the wire.245

If the verdict of history was against Lt. Am and his men, they did not know it.

General Christian de Castries surrendered Dien Bien Phu on 7 May 1954. The reaction by the French press and the government was, as Philippe Devillers and Jean

Lacouture put it, “amplified out of all proportion.”246 The military situation was surely degraded, but the position in Tonkin was far from destroyed. The loss of more than sixteen battalions at Dien Bien Phu – most of which were of the highest quality – was a tremendous blow, and yet represented only 3.3 percent of the French and Associated

States forces.247 Reinforcements were on the way. It did not matter. To opt for decisive battle not only circumscribes violence temporally and spatially, it has a way of reifying psychology. The French will to continue the war broke along with de Castries’ position at Dien Bien Phu.

The fight for Tonkin would end soon after. The war in Cochinchina continued for another twenty odd years. Things had gone rather differently in the south.

245 SHAT, carton 10H2559. “Directives de propagande et documentation,” Annex VI. Prepared by the État-Major de la guerre psychologique. Dated 25 May 1954. 246 Philippe Devillers and Jean Lacouture, End of a War: Indochina, 1954, trans., Alexander Lieven and Adam Roberts (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1969), 171. 247 Windrow, 629. 81

Figure 1: Map of Tonkin

CHAPTER 2: A“LAND FOR HEROES” - COCHINCHINESE LAND AND PEOPLE

Hoàng, the first of the Nguyễn marcher lords to assert his separation from the northern Trịnh faction and to independently rule what would eventually become South

Vietnam, wrote to his son in 1613 at the end of a remarkable life. He described his southern domains with mountains full of riches and oceans teeming with fish. It was a place of opportunity where he and his successors could live independently, resist the

Trinh and establish their legacy. “Truly,” he said, “this is a favorable land for heroes.”248

The south was a remarkable place qua direction, one that changed and moved along with the Vietnamese as they made their way down the coastline until they finally came to inhabit what became known as Nam Kỳ, or as the French knew it, Cochinchina.

This was the frontier of Vietnamese existence. There was more room for self, civil government was weak and tradition rested upon people with a lighter touch. By the time of Nguyen Hoang’s death, the difference between north and south congealed in

Vietnamese collective psychology. The south was the land of plenty and freedom in contrast to hardscrabble northern rigidity.249 Cochinchina was indeed fruitful and in time

248 Nguyen Hoang quoted in Sources of Vietnamese Tradition, Introduction to Asian Civlizations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 155. 249 K.W. Taylor, A History of the Vietnamese (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 252. 83 this fecundity not only attracted Vietnamese settlers, but also the French Empire by the middle-years of the 19th century.250

Figure 2. Cochinchina

The far south of Vietnam was the pride of French colonialism in East Asia, the area most shaped by Western influence. Cochinchina, where an already weak mandarinate dissolved under French pressure, had been an French colony dating back to

250 Taylor, 442-444. 84 the Saigon Treaty of 1862.251 Instead of opting for their standard indirect rule as elsewhere in Indochina, the French imposed a comparatively thorough colonial administration in Cochinchina.252 The ability of the French to reach so deeply into

Cochinchinese life came about because Cochinchina was still very much a frontier area.

The so-called nam tiến (southern advance) of Vietnamese peoples had only recently displaced the native Khmer-speakers of the Mekong Delta. Indeed, until the early 19th century most Vietnamese of the western portions of Cochinchina had to speak Khmer as well as Vietnamese in order to get along. It was a “pioneer” society, suggests Hue-Tam

Ho Tai, composed of those seeking available land and escaping political repression, combined with a fair smattering of outright criminals. 253 Borrowing from Michael

Redclift’s notion of frontiers, Cochinchina was a “constantly refashioned space, ideologically and culturally as much as geographically.”254 As important as the new economic modalities Cochinchina afforded Vietnamese settlement was the “social closure that it avoided.”255 Almost entirely lacking in government oversight before the

French arrival, Cochinchina was rife with heterodox religious/philosophical practices.

The region was a rather late addition to the Vietnamese cultural patrimony. Even this

251 Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery, Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954, [English- language ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 24-26. The western provinces of Cochinchina – Vinh Long, Chau Doc and Ha Tien – were annexed later in 1866/1867. 252 Brocheux and Hémery, 82. Before its fall to France, Cochinchina had been administered by fifty mandarins in total. By 1900 these had been replaced by 290 French civil servants in addition over 1,000 other French administrators. 253 Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Millenarianism and Peasant Politics in Vietnam (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 9. 254 Michael R. Redclift, Frontiers: Histories of Civil Society and Nature (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2006), 206. 255 Redclift, 9. 85 union was less a historical necessity than a product of a “series of political and military accidents” dating to no earlier than the nineteenth century.256

Confucianism, strong in Tonkin and in Annam, held little sway over life in the south. The typically Confucian four-fold division of society into scholars, peasants, artisans and traders was replaced in the popular mind by a simpler division of workers

(farmers, merchants, etc.) and non-workers (bureaucrats, entertainers, etc). Furthermore, the ready availability of land made rigid economic or social relationships unnecessary and easily flouted – if a farmer did not like his situation, he could just move farther west.

Similarly, highly-formalized institutional Buddhism, with an emphasis on monasticism and sponsored by the Imperial court, elicited little interest in the Cochinchinese countryside. In fact for most of its history monastic Buddhism played no significant part in Cochinchinese religious life. Instead, frugal and austere forms of Theravada

Buddhism flourished, creating endless faction and consistently undermining central authority. The Cochichinese peasantry mixed this philosophy freely with Confucian ideas and Taoist principles in nearly as many mélanges of belief as there were people.257

Amid the welter of philosophical notions that interpenetrated the Cochinchinese psyche, three main religio-political movements predominated: the Hòa Hảo, the Cao Đài, and the Bình Xuyên, proceeding from west to east in influence. Historically called the

“sects,” more recent scholarship has opted for the term “organizations” to avoid the

256 Victor Liebermann, Strange Parallels: Southeast Asia in Global Context, C. 800-1830 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 344. 257 Ho Tai, 11-20. 86 stigma of the former label.258 For the sake of simplicity, we will stay with the original appellation. In either case, these groups constituted the main power brokers in

Cochinchina until the forcible suppression of their military power by the Diem government in 1955.259

Dealing with the sects would prove a thorny issue for both the French and the communists, and would come to condition how the war in Cochinchina developed.

Indeed, nationalist and anti-colonialist sentiment in Cochinchina was to a great deal filtered first through the lens of the sects. Of course Western observers in the main found the sects to be entirely anti-modern, an invidious feudal influence and utterly

“anachronistic” in their outlook.260

258 Jessica Chapman, Cauldon of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 4. 259 This is not to say that these groups no longer exist, only that after 1955 they no longer possessed armed militias outside of Saigon-led government control. 260 Bernard B. Fall, "The Political-Religious Sects of Viet-Nam," Pacific Affairs 28, no. 3 (1955): 253. 87

Figure 3. Sects of Cochinchina261

In the western portion of Cochinchina (Miền Tây) the Hoa Hao were dominant.

Founded in 1939 by a sickly youth named Huỳnh Phú Sổ, the Hoa Hao religion adapted many of its tenets from a much older branch of Theravada Buddhism now known as Bửu

Sơn Kỳ Hương (Strange Fragrance from the Precious Mountain), a belief set first propagated by the Buddha Master of Western Peace following a lethal cholera outbreak

261 Adapted from Hugues Tertrais, Atlas des Guerres d'Indochine, 1940 - 1990 (Paris: Autrement, 2007), 27. 88 in 1849.262 Later Hoa Hao followers wore amulets inscribed with these four esoteric words and now sacred words. A millenarian religion, Buu Son Ky Huong adepts believed that the end of the world was nigh and that the Maitreya (a messianic Buddha) would descend soon into the mountains near Chau Doc to purge the world of wickedness.263

Dubbed the “mad monk” by the French, So claimed he was at once a messenger of the Jade Budhha and the reincarnation of the Western Master himself. He was also a formidable faith healer who attracted substantial crowds. In great open-air events he won mass converts with his homespun oratory, sharp wit and a “burning” stare that those who met him did not soon forget.264 So powerful was So’s presence that in 1940 when French officials had him committed for a psychiatric evaluation at Cho Quan hospital in Cho

Lon, he succeeded in converting a number of hospital wardens to his religion as well as the Vietnamese physician who examined him.265

Emotionally forceful rather than intellectually consistent, So preached an uplifting message for the peasantry. He extolled frugality and hard work within a decidedly lay context. So vilified the traditional Buddhist clergy as good-for-nothing spendthrifts whose lavish rituals impoverished the peasant and did nothing to elevate the spirit. He likewise decried urbanization, capitalism and communism as foreign influences, detrimental to simple agrarian living. So’s peasant faith spread rapidly in the rural west, eventually granting to the Hoa Hao near monopolistic control over most of the prime

262 Ho Tai, 3-11. 263 Ho Tai, 27. 264 Ho Tai, 117. 265 Ho Tai, 121. 89 rice-growing regions along the Bassac River. Their capital was the important agricultural hub of Cần Thơ.266

It was in Can Tho that So won several of his most important converts. There was

Nguyễn Giác Ngộ, a police officer and ardent believer, later to become a significant leader of one of the Hoa Hao factions. Next was Lâm Thành Nguyên, who was jailed by the French but was released in the wake of the Japanese coup. He later rose to prominence within the Hoa Hao military. Last, but certainly not least, was Trần Văn

Soái. A former mechanic and owner of a bus line, Soai was known for his violent temper and adopted the name Năm Lửa (five fires) as an appropriate sobriquet. Soai joined the

Hoa Hao after being seriously injured in a brawl; he would eventually rise to command the Hoa Hao military. His principal aid in the beginning was Lê Quang Vinh, better known as Ba Cụt (third finger cut). Reflecting the peasant origins of most of the Hoa

Hao, Ba Cut despised the landlord class and had cut down one of his index fingers in front of his troops as a sign of his ferocity.267 Soai’s wife, Li Thi Ngam, a powerful personality in her own right, took over the management of his bus company after he joined the sect and became the Hoa Hao’s chief fundraiser and financial manager.268 She wore the uniform of a general and raised a corps of all-female soldiers. Dressed in black, they carried all manner of instruments for “cutting into flesh.” Ngam assured visitors that they were fierce killers and absolutely virginal.269

266 Ho Tai, 146-156. 267 Bodard, L'enlisement, 150. 268 Ho Tai, 120-121. 269 Bodard, L'enlisement, 146-147. 90

The Hoa Hao took advantage of the Japanese presence in Vietnam even before the

9 March 1945 coup. In 1943 the sect began forming armed groups; in 1944 they began rudimentary military training, perhaps with Japanese assistance. At the start of the

French war the Hoa Hao military establishment featured seven “brigades” each numbering fewer than 500 men, akin to a Western battalion in strength. Tran Van Soai held four under his personal sway near Can Tho; Lam Thanh Nguyen commanded two more in Chau Doc and in Long Xuyen. The last unit was also in Long Xuyen but not beholden directly to Lam.270

As World War II ground on the Japanese became increasingly interested in maintaining an uninterrupted flow of rice out of western Cochinchina for shipment back to their resource and labor-starved homeland. They therefore sought accommodation with the Hoa Hao as the group best able to assure this, even though Huynh Phu So’s distrust of all alien elements led him to try and prevent rice from reaching the Japanese in acceptable quantities. Advised by Troskysists, So also began organizing the sect politically for the first time during this period, imposing rules for admission, establishing administrative cells at various levels and antagonizing the mainline Viet Minh communists. As with the Japanese, So distrusted the Viet Minh as interlopers, agents of foreign ideologies. He therefore tried to forestall the sale of rice in 1945 to their representatives who desperately needed it to alleviate the famine gripping Tonkin. So’s obfuscation embittered Hoa Hao-communist relations from then on, a state of affairs only briefly papered over by lukewarm declarations of national unity. Whatever their status,

270 Ho Tai, 162. 91 however, the Hoa Hao could not be ignored. Perhaps a million strong in 1944, they were the second most powerful group in the south at the start of the Indochina war.271

The preeminent religio-political group was the Cao Dai or “Third Manifestation of God in the East.” It was, and is, a highly syncretic religion native to Cochinchina.272 It is a curious, sometimes paradoxical blend of Eastern mysticism and Western metaphysics, an admixture of the many influences to which Cochinchina has been subject over the centuries. At its headquarters in Tay Ninh one can see the Cao Dai main temple complete with the floor plan of a European cathedral and the décor of a Buddhist pagoda.

Though rigidly hierarchical after the fashion of the Catholic Church, it was nevertheless prone to intense factionalism. Intended to transcend all religious and ethnic distinctions, it could be intensely parochial and highly contumacious. Its practitioners self-consciously coupled a commitment to spiritual elevation and vegetarianism, for instance, with terrific violence and a penchant for intrigue. In contrast to the Hoa Hao and their explicitly agrarian and backward-looking philosophy, the Cao Dai considered themselves a bridge between tradition and modernity. Urban and urbane, comfortable with capitalism, the

Cao Dai were accepting of Western ideas, but fiercely nationalistic after their particular fashion. Over the course of the wars they would come to vex both allies and enemies on many occasions.

The term Cao Dai itself means high place, a reference to the “elevated throne” from which the chief spirit rules the cosmos. It is also the abbreviated title for the deity

271 Ho Tai, 130-136. 272 SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Notes sur le Caodaisme,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon, A.M. Savani, dated Nov 1954. See section entitled “Definition du Caodaisme.” 92 himself, Cao Đài Tiên Ông Đại Bồ Tát Ma Ha Tát (“High palace, immortal, his honor the oldest Boddhisattva, the venerable saint.”)273 A functionary of the colonial government named Ngô Văn Chiêu, subsequently Ngô Minh Chiêu, founded the religion in 1926.

Chieu had attended French-run schools and passed the civil-service exam in 1917. To seek help for his sickly mother, Chieu began to attend séances in 1902. At one such event in 1920, Chieu reported being confronted by the spirit of Cao Dai. Apparently working through Chieu, Cao Dai began laying down the tenants of a new religion that

Chieu shared with his intimates and a growing circle of converts, most of whom could be found working in various administrative offices in Saigon.274 In proper bureaucratic fashion they applied to the French for recognition of their religion in 1926.275

The faith preached an end to religious controversy. Cao Daism was to be the

“great way,” the final revelation of god to unite humanity, though it has hardly found any reach beyond southern Vietnam. The Cao Dai contend that god had in prior epochs communicated with man in constrained, culturally bounded ways, offering at best a partial picture of religious truth. These “five branches” of human religious experience would be gathered together in Cao Daism to form a single, renovated humanity walking now with the full knowledge of the divine agenda.276

The goal of the Cao Dai follower is to achieve spiritual elevation and thereby escape the otherwise endless cycle of reincarnation. The eclectic pantheon of high spirits

273 Victor Oliver, Caodai Spiritism: A Study of Religion in Vietnamese Society (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 7. 274 Oliver, 33-34. 275 Oliver, 40. 276 See SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Notes sur le Caodaisme,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon, A.M. Savani, dated Nov 1954 and Oliver, 9-10. 93

– e.g. Descartes, Joan of Arc, Louis Pasteur, Shakespeare, Sun Yat Sen, Mencius etc. - is crucial to this, for they have already achieved that manner of karmic transcendence and so can aid in the process for those still mired in physical existence. Communion with these spirits is by divination, famously accomplished with the corbeille à bec, a long writing instrument carved into the shape of a phoenix or dragon.277 The adept must also strenuously avoid the five evils (killing, lying, opulent living, sensuality and stealing) and follow a daily regimen of praying before the family shrine. Vegetarianism is seen as helpful to purification and is compulsory for the Cao Dai hierarchy.278

Unlike the Hoa Hao with their aversion to structure, the Cao Dai were rigorously organized. Cochinchina was divided into two large regions that in turn were subdivided into five large provincial units (each comprising more than one governmentally- recognized province), then districts followed by villages, hamlets and finally familial units. Superintending this network is a highly articulated body of clergy modeled quite clearly after the ecclesiastical structure of the Roman Catholic Church. There are all manner of cardinals, bishops, archbishops, priests and student priests, amounting to nine levels of administration.279 The main administration and religious center of the Cao Dai faith is its holy city of Tay Ninh. The religion occupied Tay Ninh as its headquarters in

1927 probably due to its remoteness from Saigon and its ready accessibility to Cambodia.

Here operate the two main bodies of the Cao Dai organization.280

277 Oliver, 11. 278 A.M. Savani, Visage et Images du Sud-Vietnam (Saigon: Imprimerie Française d'Outre-mer, 1955), 91. 279 Oliver, 18-19, 55. 280 See SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Notes sur le Caodaisme,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon, A.M. Savani, dated Nov 1954. See section entitled “Deuxième période: le pontificat de Le Van Trung, 1926-1934.” 94

The first is the “sacerdotal corps” or the administrative branch to which most of the Cao Dai clergy belonged. At its head is the Giáo Tông, usually translated as “pope.”

After the death of Lê Văn Trung in 1934, however, this post remained unfilled due to disagreements about who should assume the position.281 De facto leadership instead passed to Phạm Công Tắc, the head (Hộ Pháp) of the branch of spiritual legislators or mediums responsible for ensuring the various gradations of priests performed their tasks to standard.282 A member from nearly the beginning, Pham Cong Tac was a shrewd operator and expert organizer. He had established his corps of mediums as a counterweight to the power of Le Van Trung and was quick to seize authority after the latter’s demise. Most of the organizational strength of Cao Daism dates to his

“pontificate.”

Under Pham Cong Tac’s direction the Cao Dai also became a font of nationalist propaganda directed against French rule. They became active supporters of the Japanese during the war and rallied around the idea of bringing one of the Nguyen dynasty’s princes, Cường Để, back to Vietnam to assume the throne from his exile in Japan.283

Tac’s activities were obviously regarded with extreme suspicion by the colonial authorities. In 1940 the French closed the main Cao Dai temple at Tay Ninh and in 1941

Tac and several of his chief supporters were exiled to Madagascar. They would not return until August 1946.

281 The founder of Cao Daism, Ngô Minh Chiêu, had refused this title. 282 Despite his title – Ho Phap – meaning something akin to “defender of spiritual laws” most contemporary observers referred to Pham Cong Tac as the Cao Dai “pope,” which was perhaps true for all intents and purposes, though Cao Dai law prevented one man from officially holding both positions. 283 This hope was finally smashed in 1951 when Cuong De died of liver cancer in Tokyo. See Trần Mỹ- Vân, A Vietnamese Royal Exile in Japan: Prince Cường Để (1882-1951) (New York: Routledge, 2005), 215. 95

This setback did not eliminate the Cao Dai, as the Japanese occupation of

Indochina gave them a new lease on life. In 1943 the former chief of the Cao Dai mission to Cambodia, Trần Quang Vinh, reestablished a group in Saigon with the help and protection of the Kempetai, the Japanese secret police. When the French attempted to arrest Vinh, the Japanese declared him a “civil attaché” exempt from incarceration. At this stage Tran Quang Vinh was able to begin forming armed para-military bands, totaling about 3,000 men by the time of the Japanese coup, an event with which the Cao

Dai assisted. At the time of the Viet Minh seizure of power, several other Cao Dai leaders in Tay Ninh, most notably Nguyễn Văn Thanh, began forming additional militias of a more regular establishment. These units, separated from Tran Quang Vinh’s forces, were obliged to make common cause with the Viet Minh at the start of the war.284

Around Tay Ninh itself the Cao Dai fielded chi đội (sub groups) 7 and 8.285 They would fight the returning French through the beginning of 1946.

The last major strain of marbling running throughout power politics in

Cochinhina was the Bình Xuyên. Not a religious sect like the others, the Binh Xuyen was a criminal enterprise that came to monopolize all manner of vice around Saigon. It

284 Savani, 92-98. and SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Notes sur le Caodaisme,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon, A.M. Savani, dated Nov 1954. See section entitled, “Troisième période: le pontificat de Pham Cong Tac (1935-1946).” 285 Chi doi were units of variable size. They were larger than companies, generally. It is best to think of them as embryonic regiments or proto-battalions. Though not close in size to a western regiment, their recruitment and independent scope of activity is more regimental in nature, i.e. based on regional affiliations. Chi doi was also a term more common in the south than in the north. It is important to note, however, that during the war translations of Viet Minh formations into Western equivalents were usually problematic. Although Trung Đoàn and tiểu đoàn are generally rendered respectively as “regiment” and “battalion,” their sizes could be highly variable. By 1950 the French military intelligence community recommended that these be rendered as “permanent tactical grouping of medium size” and “permanent tactical grouping of small size.” I have seen no evidence that these cumbersome terms caught on. SHAT carton 10H636. “Note sur les appellations V.M.” prepared by Chef d’Escadron Boussaire, Chef du 2ème Bureau. Dated 14 November 1950. 96 was nevertheless a gang with a firm code of honor, fused in a blood oath, and further strengthened by the quasi-mystical rites of Chinese boxing practiced by its membership.

Though its origins are cloudy, it seems the organization – vaguely related to the Chinese

Heaven and Earth societies – was formed sometime in the early 1920s by criminals who sought refuge in the marshy area south of Cho Lon, a region in close proximity to Saigon, and yet beyond easy reach of the authorities. This area was called the Binh Xuyen originally and lent its appellation to the organization. From there the enterprise spread.

They took up reisdence in the luxuriant and quite nearly impenetrable Rừng Sác mangrove forest that dominates the mouths of a number of the eastern rivers. In this outpost of lawlessness, several hundred men coalesced around a handful of bosses and began extorting money from merchants attempting to transport their wares down the rivers. Over time they extended their franchise, gaining control over most organized illicit activity: the incredibly lucrative opium trade; prostitution at the world-famous Hall of Mirrors; gambling at the Grand Monde casino, and other vices.286

At the time of the French return the Binh Xuyen chief was one Ba Dương.

However, even before his death in February 1946, the leader of the Binh Xuyen and the main actor within Saigon was Lê Văn Viễn, better known as Bảy Viễn. A large, heavily muscled individual, covered in the tattoos typical of a Binh Xuyen boss, Bay Vien had spent a fair share of his youth in the French jails. There he established a reputation for toughness and came into contact with many strains of burgeoning Vietnamese nationalism, both communist and otherwise. Like most Binh Xuyen he was fiercely

286 Pierre Darcourt, Bay Vien: Le Maître de Cholon (Paris: Hachette, 1977), 86-88.; Savani, 128. 97 independent, resenting all attempts at control and harboring an enmity toward the French colonial government as well as the dictatorial tendency within the mainline of communist thought. Bay Vien himself also maintained a healthy suspicion of the Japanese, unlike many other Vietnamese nationalists, and kept his distance from them during their occupation. After Ba Duong’s death by French strafing, Bay Vien was elected overall head of the Binh Xuyen.287

During the brief stint of open Viet Minh power in Saigon, Tran Van Giau was compelled to turn to Bay Vien for armed strength. The Viet Minh’s street power was limited to the Vanguard Youth with its head, Lai Văn Sang. Though numerous, these students lacked leadership and arms. At Tran Van Giau’s suggestion, Bay Vien’s heavily armed and street-savvy Binh Xuyen were set as cadre over the Vanguard Youth, about

2,000 strong at the beginning.288 From this pairing the Binh Xuyen built an initial military establishment of roughly seven battalions (chi doi 2,3,4,7,21,25). Most of these units were withdrawn from Saigon early in the war, either moving north or going south to the Rung Sat. Remaining in the city itself were numerous “action committees” dedicated to fundraising through extortion and practicing terrorism.289 Much of the early action by the British and the French inside Saigon, therefore, was really against these small cells and not the larger organizations of the movement.

There remains a final group within Cochinchina worthy of mention, though their power at the war’s outset was almost nonexistent. As in Tonkin, Cochinhina was home

287 Darcourt, 23, 162-181,261. 288 Alfred W. McCoy, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1973), 114. 289 Savani, 128-130. 98 to a not inconsequential body of Vietnamese Catholics centered mainly on Ben Tre and

My Tho.290 Naturally, they were the object of considerable suspicion by the Viet Minh due to their presumed attachment to the French colonial system, often the most visible sign of which were Catholic missionaries.291 They were therefore subject to sporadic violence as the Viet Minh took over in the countryside. For instance in My Tho province the Viet Minh torched one entire Catholic village early in the war. Acts of violence against Catholics persisted thereafter, though this was never official party policy.292

Nevertheless Catholics would form yet another group that the French could potentially leverage into their camp.293

Certainly Cochinchina was a confused and confusing place, especially for outsiders. There is a quality of incoherence to Cochinchinese society that is reflected in, or perhaps reinforced by, the terrain itself. It is a realm of shifting borders and coastlines.

Much of the countryside is perennially flooded, seemingly caught in indecision between land and sea. The French called it a “quasi-aquatical kingdom” where all manner of life is amphibian. Innumerable waterways cut through this region barely above sea level, meaning the sampan was far more important than the truck for most of the region’s

290 Savani, 123. 291 See J. P. Daughton, An Empire Divided : Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914 (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 59-85. 292 David Elliott, The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930-1975 (New York: East Gate Books, 2007), 49. As the war went forward Catholic priests were often targets of kidnapping. For an example see SHAT, carton 10H2217. “Enlèvement du Père Do de SADEC,” prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Soreau, Commandant le Secteur de LONGXUYEN. Dated 1 Oct 1949. 293 Savani, 123-124. 99 history. Many island villages, perched throughout plains of mud, were only accessible by water.

The predominant feature was and is the Cửu Long, or Nine Dragon River and its delta, more generally known as the Mekong. It is the third longest river in the world. Its delta covers an area of approximately 40,000 square kilometers and annually deposits 13 times more silt than its northern cousin, the Red River. Indeed, such is the quantity of silt laid down that the delta pushes into the ocean some 60 to 80 meters per year, further ramifying the strange dialectic between earth and water.294

The delta occupies the central portion of Cochinchina. It forms the principal rice growing area of the region and splits the country into its three vestigial divisions. Around the delta and reaching as far west as the Bassac River is Miền Trung (central region).

East of Saigon until one reaches the central plateau of Annam is Miền Đông (eastern region). West of the Bassac extending down into the Ca Mau peninsula is then Miền Tây

(western region).295 Both the French and the Viet Minh would follow this schema in organizing their efforts for the war. The French by 1947 would establish three principal zones: Center, East and West roughly corresponding to the traditional geographical distinctions. The Viet Minh did this as well, turning the three regions into Khu (zones)

VII, VIII and IX proceeding from east to west.296

294 Rinn-Sup Shinn, “The Society and Its Environment” in Vietnam: A Couttry Study, Area Handbook Series (Washington: Federal Research Division, 1989), 84. 295 Brocheux, 3. 296 Zones West and Center were created on 15 Feb 1947 with East coming into existence on 25 March. Bodinier, Indochine 1947: Règlement politique ou Solution militaire, 26. 100

The Center region was the most important. A.M. Savani, the long-time French intelligence chief in Saigon, called the riverine area from Vinh Long over to My Tho,

Saigon, Cho Lon and abutting Bien Hoa in the east the “muscled and enlarged heart” of

Cochinchina through which the economic lifeblood of agricultural commerce flowed.297

The area is comprised of two great alluvial plains. The first was laid down centuries ago before the deposition of silt so blocked the course of the Mekong that the river had to turn southeast to find a new outlet. This first “old delta” is now referred to as the Plain of

Reeds, or Đồng Tháp Mười. It is about 7,000 square kilometers in size; about three- quarters of that lies within Vietnam. With no elevation gradient to speak of, the water that settles there cannot adequately drain, and so it backs up into the Tonle Sap in

Cambodia. The remaining water is brackish and replete with sulfides. During evaporation these sulfides oxidize, creating a quantity of sulfuric acid lethal to most plant species. The clear exception comprises the reeds that cover the plain and give it its name.

It is bounded on the east by the Vàm Cỏ Dong river (French: Vaïco oriental) and on the west and south by the Vàm Cỏ Tây (Vaïco occidental). They flow together southeast of the Plain of Reeds and form an area the French called the “Intervaïcos.” It is that part of

Cochinchina that buffers the Cambodia Svay Rieng salient, the Parrot’s Beak as it was commonly called. This area, situated at the far eastern edge of the plain, is the “indigo jungle,” called by the French the place des giongs. It is an extensive, swampy morass interspersed with small, habitable islands of terra firma (Vietnamese: giongs) scantly rising above the interminable muck. Inundated and inhospitable, the Plain of Reeds,

297 Savani, 14. 101 including its eastern extremity, has been a habitual hideout for bandits.298 Especially during the initial phase of the war – before 1948 – the Plain of Reeds would serve as the principal Viet Minh base area, the “métropole rouge,” to once again quote Lucien

Bodard.299 This entire zone was crucial for the Viet Minh’s ability to facilitate communication between their forces east and west of Saigon.

The “new delta” is far richer. The mouths of the Mekong formed the first area of

Vietnamese settlement in the south and the principal rice-growing region. Agriculture further inland was only introduced in the later nineteenth century, the product of massive

French efforts at canal building. These canals greatly improved the country’s transportation network, allowing the unhusked rice (paddy) of disparate regions easy access to the mills and markets of Saigon.300 More importantly, this increased draining opened large swaths of land to rice farming. Land under cultivation more than quadrupled due to French efforts; rice exports rose thirty-fold. Unlike in Tonkin where rice farming was a labor-intensive practice and had to be double-cropped to meet even local demand,

Cochinchinese production was less than half as arduous (70 man-days versus 200 in

Tonkin) and yielded in a single crop enough for a healthy export market.301

Much of this rice production happened along the Bassac River, which also demarcates Miền Trung from the western portion of the country, Miền Tây. The principal town is Can Tho, an important entrepôt for rice headed east for sale. The area

298 Brancion, 82. Henri de Brancion, Commando Bergerol: Indochine, 1946-1953 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1989), 43; Elliott, 72. 299 Bodard, L'enlisement, 155. 300 Brocheux, 66. At the time in question Chinese individuals managed almost all of the trade in rice. By 1914 all mills in Cho Lon were Chinese owned. 301 Victor J. Croizat, The Development of the Plain of Reeds: Some Politico-Military Implications (Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1967), 5-14. 102 immediately west of the towns is a low-lying extension of the Mekong delta scarcely rising two meters above sea level. A pervasive network of canals and small streams of no discernable origin called rachs drain the entire zone and make it suitable for rice farming.

Mien Tay extends west and south of this into the broad, even flatter – large portions are actually sunken – Ca Mau peninsula. At the time of the war it had the reputation of being remote and untamed. Bodard, ever the intrepid traveler, referred to it as the “savage west,” referencing in particular the belief that certain groups native to the region practiced cannibalism.302 On the western shore the silted soil is buffeted by the monsoons and the relentless tides, which alter the coastline extensively year to year.

Only the lush mangrove forests that dominate the maritime provinces hold the spongy land together. The mangrove tree itself is the perfect metaphor for Mien Tay. It exists as a go-between uniting water and land; it is adapted to both fresh and brackish water, and lastly gives repose to all manner of wildlife. The most significant of the mangrove forests is the U Minh. It is dense and foreboding, bounded on its east by a tremendous inundated zone of 80,000 hectares. The forest itself is an important locale for fishing and hunting. During the rainy season (roughly May to October), it is mostly inundated, and therefore inaccessible except to those accustomed to its tortuous pathways.303 The Viet Minh would naturally use the area as another main base area starting early in the war.304 It would become even more important later on.

302 Bodard, L'enlisement, 85-86. 303 Brocheux, 2-7. 304 SHAT, carton 10H86. “Situation militaire en Indochine: période du 13 au 19 Dec 1947,” prepared by Capitaine de Frégate Nicolas-Barrelon, Chef-adjoint de l’État-Major particulier, dated 23 Dec 1947. This report indicates that even as early as Dec of 1947 the principal area of Viet Minh activity was along the route running from Ca Mau to Bac Lieu and up toward Can Tho. 103

At the other end of Cochinchina is Mien Dong. Although also forested, the region east of Saigon is better known for its red basaltic soils amenable to varieties of more specialized agriculture. The French discovered this soon after their arrival and by the beginning of the twentieth century turned much of Mien Dong over to rubber production.

These plantations, few in number but massive in size, were run with the latest and greatest in technical advances by powerful companies; Michelin is the most well-known.

By 1930 these plantations employed a workforce nearing 70,000, mostly contract laborers recruited in Tonkin.305 Rubber growers preferred Tonkinese peasants as workers because they were unable to run away easily if they found the terms of their service unbearable. Of course working conditions on the plantations were notoriously atrocious.306 Most of the Viet Minh recruits serving in Mien Dong were drawn from this pool of dispossessed northern workers.307

Taken together the regions of Cochinchina would present formidable challenges for the returning French and for both sides of the conflict, the war for Cochinchina would be a trial of attitude and perspective. Though as a nation France had considerable history in the area, few of the military commanders who would come to Cochinchina had any first-hand experience in navigating the topographical and societal intricacies that made the country so dynamic. Cochinchina’s physiology, so to speak, defies control; it always has. The best to be hoped for was to effectively cope with it – a far different matter. A controlling mentality tries to dragoon all resources, personalities and conditions along a

305 Brocheux and Hémery, 126-127. 306 See Tran Tu Binh, The Red Earth: A Vietnamese Memoir of Life on a Colonial Rubber Plantation, trans., John Spragens (Athens: Ohio University, 1985). 307 Hùng Nguyên, Nguyển Bình, Huyền Thoại và Sự Thật (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Học, 2000), 414. 104 straight path to a well-defined victory condition. It is highly predictive in nature and intolerant of deviation. Coping, by contrast, is the understanding that human situations usually belie rigidity, and that managing expectations and coaxing things along a generally favorable course may be the only productive way forward. Coping also more easily deals with the unexpected, bending and adapting when faced with new circumstances. Control cannot yield, and so oftentimes breaks. These concepts are obviously sympathetic to and intertwined with the notion of optimization and

“satisficing” mentioned earlier and to which we will return later. For now it will suffice to mention that the early years of the war would set the French and the Viet Minh on divergent courses in this regard.308

308 The distinction between control and coping is something I have learned from discussions with Alan Beyerchen. To my knowledge he has not published a full analysis of his concepts. A partial glimpse may be found in “Clausewitz and the Non-Linear Nature of Warfare: Systems of Organized Complexity,” in Clausewitz in the Twenty-First Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 45-56. Some of these concepts in less explicit fashion can be found in Beyerchen’s seminal article, Alan Beyerchen, "Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War," International Security 17, no. 3 (1992). Others have picked up on the concept as well. See Mark Grimsley, And Keep Moving On: The Virginia Campaign, May-June 1864 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 229-230. 105

CHAPTER 3: TRACE DE SANG- THE WAR FOR COCHINCHINA, 1945-1947309

Chef d’Escadron Gerlotto, commander in the Tân An quarter, gathered his forces in the first days of May 1947. He had a little less than a battalion in his groupement, the bulk of which was two companies of hard-hitting Algerians. Their mission was to mount an operation of nettoyage, or cleaning out, northwest of Tan An along the Vàm Cỏ Tây river which the French called the Vaicos Occidental. They were also meant to ferret out information about their enemy; the Viet Minh hovered near to the heart of the provincial capital of Tan An, and yet remained frustratingly elusive. With a LCT (Landing Craft

Tank) and a pair of Higgins boats in support as well as artillery and aerial reconnaissance,

Gerlotto’s men disembarked on 3 May at the mouth of a canal that bypassed a large bend in the main river. Commandos and Algerians began their sweep northward following the track of another smaller stream; each cleared one side, while the other company of

Algerians landed on the northern tip of a nearby island and began their push south. By

0945 Gerlotto’s commandos fell under fierce attack; the Viet Minh waited until they were within 50 meters before firing. The first fusillade brought down the unit’s lead machine- gunner and two of its French cadre. The Algerians to their east turned to the sound of

309 Blood trail. 106 gunfire, crossed the stream and counter-attacked. In that short time, however, the Viet

Minh had disappeared.

Gerlotto searched in vain for another five days. There were firefights to be sure, none decisive. His men discovered a cache of documents, destroyed an arms fabrication shop and spent a great deal of time getting on and off boats, traversing the river up and down stream. The Viet Minh meanwhile retired to the Plain of Reeds, the impenetrable swamp at the center of Cochinchina. A local told the French that they must have killed eighty Viet Minh and that the villagers had been conscripted to remove the corpses. But there was little evidence of their meager triumph – no arms found, no bodies recovered.

There was only here and there the maddening “trace de sang” leading off into the silent brush.310

By mid-1947 the way to victory in Cochinchina was by no means clear. A half- hearted attempt at pacification in the west of the country in the spring had produced poor results. To reconcile the ongoing problems in the south the French command looked north. Taking much of the striking power from the Troupes françaises de l’Indochine du

Sud (T.F.I.S.), Valluy, the corps’ overall commander, pursued action elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the war in Cochinchina stalled. Only the rallying of the sects to the anti- communist struggle – due more to fear of the Viet Minh than to support for the French – gave some cause for hope. It was a pitiable state for a war that had begun in impressive,

310 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu de l’opération “C”: Groupement GERLOTTO no. 3 du 3 au 8 Mai 1947,” dated 12 May 1947. Prepared by chef d’escadron Gerlotto. The Viet Minh unit with which Gerlotto engaged was quite possibly Binh Xuyen in composition. During the operation the French captured a Binh Xuyen agent on his way to fetch reinforcements for the two companies the French chased in early May. It must be remembered that at this point the Binh Xuyen remained members of the Viet Minh with Bay Vien technically second in command to Nguyen Binh. 107 if slipshod fashion. Through the later portion of 1945 and into 1946 the French had not only returned to Cochinchina and seized a foothold in Saigon, but had also succeeded in breaking the communist blockade of the city and eventually secured most of the other major urban centers as well. By 1947, however, the T.F.I.S. struggled to hold its own against the growing power of the Viet Minh and could proffer no real way to come to grips with the pressing security dilemma. At this point French strategy in Cochinchina turned away from well-rutted techniques toward a restrained approach conditioned by profound limitations. Achieving outright victory receded from view. Much to its consternation the French military in Cochinchina had to learn to cope with a complex, intractable situation by waiting, retreating, husbanding resources and keeping options open for the future.311

This was still in the future though. On 9 March 1945 the Japanese, who had occupied Vietnam in force in 1941 to forestall supplies headed to Nationalist China, upended the lingering vestiges of Vichy French authority in Indochina due to fear of an

Allied invasion. In Tokyo in the early hours of 10 March the U.S. Army Air Corps began the most intense firebombing of the war and burned a massive hole into the center of the

Imperial capital; in the wake of such destruction, Japanese power in Indochina would prove a transitory affair.312 Nevertheless, French military positions were stormed, prisoners freed, soldiers jailed, and the all-pervasive French security apparatus, the

311 This is not to say that the war in Tonkin was simple. The point is that in Cochinchina commanders were forced to adapt themselves to the complexity of the situation, whereas in Tonkin the French hoped that battle could potentially resolve the otherwise intractable nature of their problem. 312 Richard Frank, Downfall: The End of the Imperial Japanese Empire (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 65. 108

Sûreté, rendered powerless.313 The Viet Minh were quick to capitalize; focused entirely on preparing for this potential Allied invasion, the Japanese had no time to administer the country. Though a shaky National Front organization composed of various nationalist factions attempted to form a government, the veteran Stalinist leader Trần Văn Giàu stole a march on his rivals. Not only had he managed to infiltrate his communist cadres into the Vanguard Youth, a paramilitary organization backed by the Japanese and the largest armed force in Saigon apart from the Japanese, but he also convinced the Japanese governor in Cochinchina to free all the communists in the island prison of Poulo Condore and ferry them back to Saigon, where he had already seized the Hôtel de ville. This act offered the appearance, if not the substance, of administrative control of the country.314

The other nationalist factions – e.g. Hoa Hao, Cao Dai, the remaining Trotskyites, the

Association of Intellectuals, etc. – assented to this fait accompli and backed the Viet

Minh as a genuine expression of national sentiment, though its core Communism was fully on display.

With Japanese power crumbling through the summer, this marriage of convenience seemed safe enough in August 1945. Moreover, the communists themselves had few armed men, especially in comparison to the Cao Dai. If they had so desired, the other nationalists could have, they assumed, easily driven Tran Van Giau from power. A leader of the Cao Dai military, Trịnh Minh Thế, even visited Giau shortly after his

313 The Japanese declared a general amnesty for prisoners on 6 July 1945. See Darcourt, 173. 314 David Marr, Vietnam 1945: The Quest for Power (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 217. Also see Darcourt, 191. Finally see Peter Zinoman, The Colonial Bastille: A History of Imprisonment in Vietnam, 1862-1940 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). The forced integration of political prisoners from varying regions of Indochina in the colonial prison system formed a nucleus for later communist/nationalist cooperation once the Japanese threw open the gates. 109 elevation and threatened to shoot him between the eyes if he gave any thought to a double-cross. To counter this threat and while waiting for reinforcements to arrive, Giau bought Binh Xuyen muscle with an advance of 20,000 piastres and smooth talk of national heroism.315

But Vietnam’s fate was not left to the Vietnamese, nor to the French. At the

Potsdam conference the “Big Three” powers – France was not among them – decided that

Britain and China would divide up responsibility for the Japanese surrender in Vietnam and in overseeing the period of transition. The Chinese nationalists would occupy the north of the country, while the British 20th Indian Division under Major General Sir

Douglas Gracey would occupy the south. If the French wanted to return to Indochina, it would be under the auspices of a foreign power.

Indeed, Charles de Gaulle’s Free French had resolved to do exactly that as early as 1943 when they created the Corps léger d’intervention (C.L.I.). This unit, composed largely of nascent commando groups, was intended to conduct guerilla operations within

Indochina and assist the French return.316 By April 1945 the British Chiefs of Staff agreed to transport French forces back to Indochina, though it would be done as transport became available and in rather piecemeal fashion.317 The CLI, now re-flagged as the 5th

Regiment d’infanterie coloniale (5th R.I.C.) to avoid confusion with the Ceylon Light

315 When the new provisional executive committee took power in Saigon on 25 August 1945 seven of its nine members were communists. Also, according to Darcourt’s account, the second time Trinh Minh The attempted to intimidate Giau he found Bay Vien’s Colt .45 firmly pressed to his temple. Darcourt, 191- 195. 316 SHAT, carton 10H84. Memorandum from Captain Doignon, Assistant to Chief of of French Military Mission to Major General Kinmins, Assitant Chief of Staff to Combined Chiefs entitled “Organisation of the 5th Colonial Regiment.” Dated 26 June 1945. 317 SHAT, carton 10H84. Memorandum from Major General Kinmins, Assistant Chief of Staff, to Roger Blaizot. Dated 30 April 1945. 110

Infantry, was transported to Ceylon and placed under operational control of South East

Asia Command (S.E.A.C.) under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten. Lieutenant-Colonel

Paul Huard, a veteran of the Indochinese highlands, commanded the 5th R.I.C. itself. He insisted that his marsouins (porpoises) – the name traditionally applied to colonial infantrymen since they originally were part of the French navy – be in peak physical form, understand combat instinctively and all be excellent marksmen. In Ceylon the 5th

R.I.C. was outfitted with British equipment – Sten Mark IVs, Lee-Enfields and Bren guns for crew-served weapons, as well as light mortars – and waited for transport to come available.318 The leading unit of the 5th R.I.C. was the paratroop battalion, known as the

Special Air Service Bataillon (S.A.S.B.) and commanded by Captaine de corvette Pierre

Ponchardier. It would come to play a significant role in the French re-conquest of the south.319

This arrangement, however, made France a subsidiary of British action in the Far

East. Furthermore, it committed France to making its return in the south, in Cochinchina, since that was where the British would take up their occupation of the country. In reality, it could not have been otherwise. French operations were wholly dependent upon British supply and weapons at this stage. Moreover, the French military position in the north

318 Jean-Pierre Bernier, Le Commando des tigres: les paras du Commando Ponchardier, Indochine 1945- 1946 (Paris: Maulde et Renou et Cie, 1995), 26-28. As an interesting aside, the men of the 5th R.I.C. were volunteers with an inordinate number of those being Corsican. The model for the CLI originally was Orde Wingate’s British commandos in Burma (see page 25). 319 Though this unit would come to be known as the Commando Ponchardier, its initial designation as the Special Air Service bataillon was a purposeful amalgamation of English along with the French spelling of “battalion” in order to show its mixed heritage. Many of Ponchardier’s commandos had been part of Operation JEDBURGH during the Second World War. 111 was completely undone.320 The 9 March Japanese coup had overturned the entire edifice of French control. In Tonkin General Marcel Alessandri and about five thousand men – mostly Indochinese tirailleurs – had evaded capture and fled to the far northwest of the country, actually passing through Dien Bien Phu on their way to seek sanctuary in China.

They were in no position whatsoever to help effect a French landing.321

While the French waited on British largesse, representatives from Hanoi arrived in Saigon on 30 August 1945 to reconnect the northern and southern arms of the communist network. The chief of the delegation was Hoàng Quốc Việt, who went by the alias Hạ Bá Cang. He was a main figure in the Indochinese Communist Party and had spent a considerable amount of time in Poulo Condore before the Popular Front French government released him in 1936. For his role as the senior “executioner” of the Party, he was more commonly known as the “Grey Tiger.”

Ha Ba Cang set to work immediately. It was the Grey Tiger who sent the Viet

Minh prisoners released from Poulo Condore to the western provinces where they were to begin the process of creating Committees of Public Safety and establishing a secret police. He was concerned that should the French return lead to a long war, it would be necessary to have access to the resources of the west. To that end he dispatched his

320 By early April 1945 Lieutenant-Colonel de Crevecoeur, the chief of Service Action in Indochina had determined that any French military action trying to retake Indochina in north from China was unrealistic. SHAT, carton 10H84. “L’Indochine vis-avis du S.E.A.C. et du theatre Chine: position et possibilités des divers allies; position et perspective françaises; précisions à recevoir du S.E.A.C..” Dated 15 April 1945. 321 SHAT, carton 10H84. “Rapport du Lt Colonel brevete P. Huard au general de chef de la mission militaire aupres du SEAC sur l’activite du P.C. avance du general Blaizot du 10 au 17 Mars 1945.” Dated 18 Mar 1945. Also see SHAT, carton 10H84. “Ordre General No. 1,” prepared by General Sabattier, Commandant Supérieur des Troupes de l’Indochine. Dated 1 April 1945. 112 deputy Pham Hung to take up residence in Can Tho and place the Hoa Hao under his thumb.

The Grey Tiger also organized a gigantic rally in Saigon to coincide with Ho Chi

Minh’s independence speech set for 2 September and stoke masses to revolutionary fervor. During the demonstration over which the red Viet Minh flag was ubiquitous, the

French Catholic Mission was fired upon. The Grey Tiger’s “special teams” of assassins had most likely infiltrated the crowd and propelled it towards violence. The climatic event was the assassination of Father Tricoire, the chaplain to the Vietnamese prisons and well known among the revolutionaries. He was shot by nameless gunmen and his lifeless body dragged to the steps of the main cathedral. Like a match in gasoline, the priest’s death set off a blaze of anti-French activity throughout Saigon. Kidnappings began and

French homes were looted.322

The British took over a mess of simmering discontent and revolutionary agitation.

Major-General Sir Douglas Gracey arrived at Tan Son Nhut on 13 September 1945. His initial combat troops amounted to no more than a few companies of Gurkhas of the 20th

Indian Division.323 The chief French representative was Colonel Jean Marie Cédile, who had parachuted into a rice paddy on 24 August and after a brief incarceration by the Viet

Minh, assumed his function as Commissioner of the Republic for Cochinchina.324

In Saigon the situation worsened rapidly. The French population remained subject to sporadic violence and harassment. On 17 September the Viet Minh, whom

322 Darcourt, 207-211. 323 Dunn, 152. 324 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 113

Gracey had been ignoring despite their claim to represent the government of

Cochinchina, called for a general strike. They directed the Vietnamese to close markets and storefronts and any people working for the French were to leave their jobs. Gracey did not have the means to deal effectively with the rising disturbances. His forces were small, purposely kept so by a British government unwilling to involve itself in the perceived miasma of Vietnamese politics. And though Gracey used the Japanese to keep order, he was well aware that large numbers of Japanese, especially the Kempetai, were actively colluding with the Viet Minh.

The strike convinced Gracey that something more needed to be done about insecurity within Saigon. His first action was the progressive disarmament of the Viet

Minh “police,” which at this point was probably composed of Vanguard Youth and their

Binh Xuyen cadres. The British also assumed control over the Saigon central prison on

20 September as well as the two chief banks, the Yokohama Bank and the Bank of

Indochina. The seizure of police stations, post offices and telegraph offices followed.

Gracey then acceded to a request by Cédile to release and rearm members of the 11th

Régiment d'infanterie coloniale (R.I.C.) interned by the Japanese during the coup. Cédile organized them hastily and added to their number some street-smart civilians as well as a smattering of the very early elements of the 5th R.I.C., which like the Commissioner had parachuted into Cochinchina in the preceding weeks. Each wearing the Cross of

Lorraine for identification, the motley assemblage, perhaps 300 strong, stalked the streets of Saigon in the early morning hours of 23 September. The Viet Minh were caught by surprise and unable to offer serious opposition. At the cost of two French killed and a

114 handful of wounded the French regained control of the public buildings in Saigon.

French troops, however, having been humiliated by the Japanese and taunted during the

Viet Minh’s run at governance, took the opportunity to take a measure of revenge. They manhandled civilians: presumed Viet Minh were bound on leashes and led through the streets like dogs. Appalled by this display of indiscipine, Gracey ordered Cédile to punish the malefactors. He also requested the 11th R.I.C. to be disarmed and returned to its barracks. Nevertheless Tran Van Giau’s brief stint in the hôtel de ville was at an end and the French were on their way back. The British Chiefs of Staff reminded Gracey that he should restrict his future activities as much as possible.325

This was the start of the war for the French, more than a year before it would get under way in Tonkin. Its relative bloodlessness would not last. The 23 September coup was followed by an event still poorly understood. In the early morning of 24 September a large body of Vietnamese gathered around the portion of Saigon known as Cité Hérault.

This quarter was home to a large body of French civilians and Eurasians, the métis, i.e the corporeal representations of French colonialism. The attackers stormed the district and massacred those they found, including a large number of women and children. They killed perhaps one hundred people. They kidnapped three hundred more, subjecting them to rape, torture and mutilation. The Viet Minh would blame the Binh Xuyen and execute one of their number supposedly for the crime. The Binh Xuyen, of course, blamed the

325 Dunn, 184-199. 115

Viet Minh. British special operations thought it was the work of Trotskyites. Others faulted the Cao Dai.326 Whatever the case, the war was off to a grisly start.

The Viet Minh Central Committee under Tran Van Giau, but with the Grey Tiger increasingly directing activity, abandoned Saigon, moving first to Cho Dem west of the city before going to the Plain of Reeds. In a small village near My Tho, the Viet Minh leadership met toward the end of September to discuss their plan. It was hoped that if they could make the reoccupation expensive enough, a France tired of war and its own occupation at Nazi hands would opt for a negotiated settlement. They dubbed this plan

đánh nhanh, thắng nhanh (attack fast, win fast). Though lacking forces strong enough to confront the French head-on, the Viet Minh decided on a blockade of Saigon, to deprive it of resources and prevent the French from expanding their hold. Behind the blockade they would raise and train new forces in the event of a prolonged conflict.327 A brief truce allowed the Viet Minh to begin extricating their forces from Saigon and applying pressure to its lines of communications.328 Under threat of violence merchants ceased bringing food into the city. The situation became tense quickly. By the early portion of

October, Cédile estimated that perhaps a four-day supply of food remained. Only

326 See “Hérault, Massacre” in Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 201-202; Dunn, 203; Bodard, L'enlisement, 122. 327 Elliott, 53-54. 328 The truce, negotiated by Cédile, ran from 2 Oct to 10 October when a British engineer reconnaissance unit was attacked returning from Tan Son Nhut. Though probably the work of the Cao Dai operating in the area, it effectively scuttled the truce. Dunn, 257.; SHAT, carton 10H84. Note from Field Marshal Count Terauchi, Commander of Japanese Forces in Southern Regions to Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South-East Asia, dated 10 Sep 1945. In this note, Field Marshall Terauchi claims to have no knowledge of a British report about an “Annamite army” moving north from Saigon, but at this juncture Terauchi’s knowledge of the goings-on of even his own men was leaving much to be desired. 116 continuous British intervention prevented the worst of the Commissioner’s fears from being realized.329

The anti-French forces were, of course, a hodge-podge of entities operating underneath the Viet Minh umbrella. Within the city and its environs, Bay Vien was left in charge. In each quarter the Binh Xuyen chief placed one section to operate clandestinely in the area under allied occupation. In the days following the French coup these forces went to work attacking the arsenal, destroying the waterworks and torching the fuel depot at Nha Be. South of the city and in Cho Lon he kept the remainder of his forces, organized into their seven battalions. North and northwest of the city were communist troops, mostly northerners, answerable to the Grey Tiger. There was another unit, chi doi 12, under the half-Chinese Communist leader Tô Ký near Gia Dinh. Along the road to Tay Ninh and near the airport at Tan Son Nhut were the two Cao Dai chi doi both bursting with Japanese deserters.330 Towards My Tho to the southwest, the Viet

Minh cut the route in multiple locations and blew up the bridge at Tan An.331 Covering

My Tho itself was the grandiosely named Viet Minh First “division,” though it amounted to no more than three companies. These units were raised, armed and probably in part commanded by the Japanese. Directly west of the Saigon, operating generally between

Ben Luc and Duc Hoa at the eastern border of the Plain of Reeds was the Viet Minh

Third Division under Nguyen Hoa Hiep; its strength was approximately 800 men. This unit, originally raised by the Japanese and replete with Japanese personnel, was non-

329 Dunn, 255. 330 The first group was reportedly 500 strong with 150 Japanese included. The second near the airport was less formidable and had perhaps 30 Japanese among them. Darcourt, 227-228. 331 Darcourt, 243-244. 117 communist in outlook and was not overly trusted by the Executive Committee. 332 Most units, however, were not even to this level of organization. Poorly armed and poorly led bands, still in the process of forming and scattered helter-skelter about the countryside, formed the bulk of Viet Minh forces.333

The Viet Minh’s organizational and material shortcomings were exacerbated by the attitude of much of the new leadership that took control with the Grey Tiger.

Throughout Mien Tay the incoming Viet Minh marginalized Hoa Hao leaders and in some cases attempted to disarm Hoa Hao militias. On 8 September the Hoa Hao staged a massive demonstration in Can Tho to protest the Viet Minh take over and to demand the removal of “corrupt” elements. Despite the pressing need to prepare to counter the arrival of the French, the communists were compelled to rush in troops from wherever they could to suppress the movement. They fired on the crowd and arrested a number of the leaders, including Tran Van Soai’s son and Huynh Phu So’s brother. These men and their Trokysist advisor were publicly executed in the Can Tho sports stadium at the beginning of October. Hoa Hao sectaries responded in a paroxysm of rage, killing communist cadres throughout the west. An open rift did not yet occur, but communist relations with the Hoa Hao were deteriorating rapidly and the anti-French war was not yet even truly underway.334

332 Elliott., 55; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 333 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952.” Prepared by the État-Major, 2e Bureau of the Commandement des forces terrestres du Sud Vietnam. Date 10 Jan 1952. 334 Ho Tai, 138-140. 118

It would be some time before the French could exploit such divisions in the resistance. The corps expéditionnaire technically included two divisions (9th division d’infanterie coloniale (D.I.C.) and the 3rd D.I.C., under the command of Leclerc. With these forces the command had hoped initially to debark in Saigon, establish a maritime base from which to facilitate the reoccupation of the rest of Indochina, and then drive rapidly on Cambodia and Laos.335 Events and the exigencies of shipping space made this course unrealizable. While the 9th was at least ready to move and simply had to wait on shipping, the 3rd had further difficulties. It was formed from two other divisions, the 1st and 2nd, both of which contained a large number of African troops. French policy, however, was to retake their overseas colonies with white troops only so as to forestall potential arguments about colonialism being reinstalled with colonial troops. The black formations had to be stripped out. The remaining enfeebled divisions were then fused together to make one, still under-strength division. The 9th D.I.C. would be ready to move by 1 September 1945. The 3rd would need an additional six weeks.336

The limitations of shipping would not even permit the arrival of the full 9th D.I.C. for some time. To ameliorate this problem and maximize the striking power of the first units on scene, the French command decided to form a groupement de marche from the

2nd Division Blindée (Armored Division). It was made up of volunteers and Leclerc put at its head his trusted subordinate, Jacques Massu. The groupement, which became known as Groupement Massu, was entirely motorized. Its core was a mechanized

335 SHAT, carton 10H84. “Fiche sur l’occupation militaire de l’Indochine.” Prepared by Chef de Bataillon Baudoux, Chef du 3e Bureau, dated 12 Sept 1945. 336 Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 25-32. 119 infantry battalion in half-tracks. In support were a reconnaissance squadron, a company of tanks and an engineer company plus a medical detachment and a maintenance platoon.

It was a unit of veterans, seasoned in many engagements against the Germans. Massu himself called it a “magnificent instrument of war.” All in all the groupement was a self- contained strike force capable of independent, mobile operations until such time as the 9th

D.I.C. could arrive in force. Its organization says much about the type of rebel hunting the French thought they would be doing in Indochina.

With Groupement Massu and the aforementioned S.A.S.B. under Ponchardier,

Leclerc would “maintain and affirm [France’s] rights” in Indochina, as was his charge.337

For their part, the British to an extent had cleared Saigon with some French aid and launched operations to gain control of the northern suburbs of Go Vap and Gia Dinh during the early part of October.338 Groupement Massu arrived in Saigon by 15 October and was ready for deployment shortly thereafter. Though there was some breathing space thanks to the British, the city remained besieged. Leclerc, who had arrived on the 5th, had too few troops to think small. Rather, à la World War II, his armored spearhead would rush boldly to the attack and carry the battle into the enemy rear areas. This action, he hoped, would break the Viet Minh “vise” around Saigon, dislocate and confuse the amorphous rebel units and ultimately allow Leclerc to the make the most of his numerically small, but slashing troops.339

337 Jacques Massu, Sept ans avec Leclerc (Paris: Plon, 1974), 234-237. 338 Dunn, 260-261. 339 Massu, 242. 120

The first target was My Tho, the second city of Cochinchina and important market for rice down in the delta, something desperately needed in Saigon at this stage. One of

Massu’s lieutenants procured a Japanese Zero and did a hasty reconnaissance of the route, revealing the numerous places where the road had been cut. With engineers in the organization, Leclerc remained undaunted and decided on a rapid overland thrust toward

My Tho; the engineers would have to patch the road as they went. In support of the main thrust, the S.A.S.B. under Poncharider would be transported by ship to critical road junctures where they would secure the passing of the armored column. The bull-necked

Ponchardier, however, only vaguely understood his role as a subordinate and decided he disliked the scheme.

He had in his possession a copy of Histoire d’Annam by Alfred Schreiner. From his reading of the 1861 campaign to take My Tho, Ponchardier learned of the immense difficulty of reaching My Tho by land, should the route be contested. By contrast, the river approach was much easier. With this in mind, Ponchardier elected to take My Tho himself and not to inform Massu of his change in plans. He loaded his commandos into a

British Landing Craft, Infantry (LCI) and proceeded up the Mekong. The S.A.S.B. then entered the main canal that serviced My Tho. To the staccato of Sten guns, Ponchardier’s men bounded ashore at the My Tho wharf in the dark of the night on 24 October. The

Viet Minh again were taken utterly by surprise. They had not expected a descent by water and they had not expected French troops to emerge from a British ship. Panic seized the defenders. Unfamiliar with the city, Ponchardier also brought with him Jean

Leroy, the half-caste Catholic son of Ben Tre who showed the commandos where to cut

121 the phone and telegraph lines to prevent the Viet Minh from calling in reinforcements.

Those Viet Minh stranded inside were gunned down with efficiency. The town was firmly in Ponchardier’s hands by five in the morning. His men set up at the critical points of the city and awaited Massu’s column. It arrived the next day thoroughly exhausted after an all night plod along the sabotaged route. In typical gallows humor, Ponchardier’s men perched a Viet Minh corpse in a rocking chair to greet the bedraggled road warriors.340

Leclerc’s men took the rest of Cochinchina in similar fashion. They took Go

Cong a few days later. Ponchardier overran Vinh Long at the end of October in another waterborne night raid. Can Tho fell to the French at the beginning of November, as did

Tay Ninh.341 With the 9th D.I.C. arrived and elements of the 3rd close behind, in early

December Leclerc seized Tra Vinh; Long Xuyen, Bien Hoa and Rach Gia in January; and

Ca Mau in the first days of February 1946. Many of these towns were taken against considerable, if disorganized militia opposition and at substantial cost to the Viet Minh.342

For example, in the early heady days of the war some of the resistance to France’s return in and around Bien Hoa had come courtesy of ethnic minorities who came out and fought the French with anything available, in this case bows and poisoned arrows. The Viet

340 Bernier, 62-68.; Massu, 244-245. 341 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; Massu, 249. 342 Bernier, 132-133,168.; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; Nguyên, 95. 122

Minh defeat caused these groups to remove themselves from the alliance and fall back into their forests to await the war’s outcome.343

By March/April of 1946 the corps expéditionnaire had at least nominally occupied all of the principal points of Cochinchina. The Viet Minh plan to vigorously contest the French return had markedly failed. Inexperienced troops wholly lacking in heavy weapons proved no match for the fast-moving, veteran French colonial battalions.344 With few exceptions, Viet Minh attempts to defend static positions ended in bloody retreats. Coordination was also lacking. The communists and their erstwhile nationalist allies worked poorly together. Communications broke down and operational direction failed.345 The ferocity and speed of the French reoccupation of Cochinchina shocked and disoriented the southern Viet Minh. It upended their positions, forced the dissolution of their larger formations and gravely threatened their claim to represent the true government of the Vietnamese people. Intent on surviving and rebuilding, the battered Viet Minh cadres and formations took refuge in the “difficult country” of

Cochinchina: in the U Minh forest, the Plain of Reeds and in the forests east of Saigon and Bien Hoa.346

343 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Rapport sur la base opérationnelle du Sud.” Translation of report from Nguyen Binh to “High Command.” Document probably dates from 1951 during Binh’s trip back to Tonkin; Nguyên, 88. 344 As late as 1950 the Nam Bo Viet Minh lacked heavy artillery of any kind. Heavy mortars and heavy machine guns were eventually available, but in 1945/1946 they generally lacked those as well. SHAT 10H636. “Note sur l’artillerie Viet Minh.” Prepared by Chef d’Escadron Boussaire, Chef du 2ème Bureau. Dated 9 Nov 1950. 345 At one point in the opening phase of the war the Binh Xuyen received no communication from the Nam Bo executive committee for two entire months. Darcourt, 253. 346 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952.” Prepared by the État-Major, 2ème Bureau of the Commandement des forces terrestres du Sud Vietnam, 10 Jan 1952; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 123

Figure 4. Viet Minh dispositions, 1945-1946347

To salvage the deplorable situation and light a fire under the confounded southern resistance, Hanoi sent south an enigmatic figure whose life and death remain shrouded in mysteries. Born Nguyễn Phương Thảo in northern Vietnam in 1910, his nom de guerre was Nguyễn Bình. As a young man he had traveled in Cochinchina and worked as a launderer in Saigon. While there he became acquainted with numerous nationalist

347 Adapted from Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 105. and 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954.

124 radicals, members of the burgeoning VNQDD. In 1929 the Sûreté cracked down on malcontents and Binh was sent to Poulo Condore. There he learned about the many strands of Vietnamese nationalism, including Communism. Though recent scholarship suggests he did not himself join the Indochinese Communist Party until 1947 and remained skeptical of the party line even after, his closest friends in Poulo Condore did make the transition. Later in a prison confrontation between nationalists and communists, Nguyen Binh lost his left eye while defending a communist associate.

Sometime thereafter the VNQDD purged him from their ranks.

He was released from prison in 1934 and from there his story becomes muddled.

Many rumors spread during the war that Binh had perhaps received training at the

Whampoa Military Academy in China. Christopher Goscha, the Western world’s foremost expert on Binh, doubts this claim. Still, given his organizational acumen and the prevalence of the story later on, it seems at least possible. It was also in this period that he changed his name to Nguyen Binh, perhaps after a town name in northern

Vietnam. Also, Bình means roughly “world peace” making the southern leader potentially the bringer of world peace. Though not conclusive proof of Binh’s communist attachment, the idea of “world peace” is far more in line with the universalizing impulse within Marxist-Leninist thought than it is with any species of more parochial Vietnamese nationalism. Nevertheless, certainty on this point is not possible.

What is certain is that by the time of the war, Binh had established his reputation among the I.C.P. leadership as a competent, if somewhat rough-and-tumble leader with a

125 troublesome independent streak. Back in Haiphong in the pivotal summer of 1945 Binh was the chief organizer of the “revolutionary zone,” encompassing Haiphong and its outlying suburbs. He established a good rapport with the working class of the area and turned their strength to dismantling other non-communist nationalist groupings.

As the French overran Cochinchina, Hanoi reacted in horror. Binh, the proven organizer and ardent enough revolutionary for the likes of Giap and Ho Chi Minh, was spirited south to stiffen the backs of the reeling Viet Minh. He cut a romantic, swash- buckling figure. He was tall and muscular. He habitually wore dark sunglasses to hide his mangled eye and in the field sported a Japanese helmet as well as a saber and cloak.348

He arrived in Cochinchina in November of 1945 in time to witness Viet Minh militia fade before combined Franco-British onslaughts north of Saigon. Binh quickly summoned together the Viet Minh leadership he could gather to a series of meetings. He informed them that the Trung ương (Central Committee) had appointed him military leader of southern military establishment and demanded their compliance with his wishes. At this conference Binh also extolled the great Vietnamese tradition of resisting foreign aggression and urged the assembly to persevere in their cause. He recognized, however, that a main problem facing the Nam Bo resistance was the “warlord” (lãnh chúa) mentality of so many of its leaders.349 From the outset Binh was determined to fix this.

He established the Mặt Trận Quốc Gia Liên Hiệp (United National Front) to combine and

348 Christopher Goscha, “A “Popular” Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyễn Bình and War in the South,” in Goscha and De Tréglodé, 325-332.; SHAT, carton 10H636. “Extrait des sommiers judiciaires.” Prepared by Florian Birouste, Chef de Labaoratoire des Laboratoires & Services d’Identité for the Chef de la Sûreté Federale en Cochinchine. Dated 21 Dec 1951. 349 Nguyên, 91-104.; Christopher Goscha, “A “Popular” Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyễn Bình and War in the South,” in Goscha and De Tréglodé, 336. 126 coordinate among the various communist and sect-based armed forces, but this never was more than a cover for Viet Minh control of southern resistance.350

Though he was eventual head of all Viet Minh armed forces in the south, Binh took over personal command of War Zone VII, that area generally east of the Vaico orientale including Saigon. This quickly became the best organized of the three zones in

Nam Bo. He immediately began reorienting the war effort in light of military realities.

In open field warfare the French were too strong. For the time being direct confrontations needed to be avoided so that he could build up Viet Minh military formations. To accomplish this Binh scrapped the larger units, substituting instead various chi doi. These were dispersed around Zone VII so that if one were caught and destroyed the overall damage would be minimized.351 The imposition of a numbered system of chi doi gives a false sense to Binh’s level of control. Though he brought approximately 17 chi doi into existence in Zone VII– mostly by renumbering existing formations - only some of them were truly answerable to him. Fewer still were capable of concerted action. The rest continued to march to the orders of the various nationalist groupings to which they were beholden.352 Tactically Binh’s men took on the mantle of the guerrilla. The main units fell back into remote base areas only to emerge to engage in small operations: ambushes, sabotage and attacks on obviously weak positions. Larger

350 Christopher Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 206, no. April-June 2002 (2002): 37. 351 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952.” Prepared by the État-Major, 2ème Bureau of the Commandement des forces terrestres du Sud Vietnam, 10 Jan 1952; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954 352 Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," 37-38. 127 scale operations would have to wait.353 This was all in accord with the precepts of guerilla war laid down from Hanoi by Trần Huy Liệu, the DRV’s communication minister and long time friend of Binh from their time in Poulo Condore and for whom

Binh had lost his eye.354

The other arm of Binh’s strategy was to sow maximum disorder in Saigon, the political center of Cochinchinese life. At the military level, his hope was that terror in the cities, principally Saigon, would prevent the French from broadening their pacification work, giving his units time to develop their base areas and war-making potential.355

Binh’s agents therefore set to work organizing various elements in Saigon for clandestine action. Their main recruits were manual laborers, “vagabonds,” the young – especially students – and sundry other workers. Grenade attacks, assassinations, and poisonings – all assiduously reconnoitered and carried out by Binh’s teams – set the city on edge. The urban committees sought out for special attention those Vietnamese who worked with the

French administration, i.e. the “traitors.”356 In September 1946 alone Binh’s agents killed

70 prominent citizens in Saigon-Cho Lon.357

These activities had an immediate political purpose as well – to scuttle French diplomatic maneuvers. From the time of their return to Cochinchina, French military

353 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents Vietnamiens:” Nguyen Binh to Vo Nguyen Giap, Hanoi, dated 28 Nov 1946. Translation prepared by 2eme Bureau. 354 Stein Tønnesson, Vietnam, 1946: How the War Began (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 76.; Christopher Goscha, “A “Popular” Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyễn Bình and War in the South,” in Goscha and De Tréglodé, 331. 355 Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," 39. 356 SHAT, carton 10H636. “L’action Viet-Minh dans les villes.” French translation of VM document taken from the body of Nguyen Binh in 1951; Christopher Goscha, “A “Popular” Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyễn Bình and War in the South,” in Goscha and De Tréglodé, 338. 357 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Instructions personnelles pour le colonel commandant le secteur Saigon-Cho Lon,” prepared by General Nyo. Dated 23 October 1946. 128 leadership had believed that the best way to secure their control of the south was to offer it an existence independent of the northern republic proclaimed by Ho Chi Minh. Leclerc had expressed this view in May to the French High-Commissioner, Admiral Thierry d’Argenlieu. He believed that a “Cochinchina for the Cochinchinese” would rally the greatest number of Vietnamese to the French cause and undercut the rebellion.358 The admiral was inclined to agree.

The high point of this policy came in June 1946. Rebuffed in his attempts to have delegations from the other members of the Indochinese federation present at the

Fontainebleau conference between the French and the Hanoi governments, Thierry d’Argenlieu summoned the excluded to a separate negotiation at Dalat in Annam.

Cochinchinese separatists made up the bulk of the southern delegation, which voted to reject any eventual union with Tonkin and form a separate Provisional Government of the

Republic of Cochin China under the its first president, Dr. Nguyễn Văn Thịnh. Thinh and all those who participated in this government quickly became prime targets for

Nguyen Binh’s assassins. This maneuver also effectively nullified any chance for a solution at the Fontainebleau conference that resumed in July. Thierry d’Argenlieu’s scheme deeply embittered the Hanoi government, since it specifically undercut the provision of the 6 March accords that called for a referendum on the unification of the three sections (ky) of Vietnam. The Hanoi delegation was not prepared to negotiate on anything but the essential unity of the Vietnamese people. For their part, the French were

358 See “lettre du général Leclerc à l’amiral d’Argenlieu,” dated 14 May 1946, reprinted in Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 259-260. 129 disgusted at the DRV’s claim to be negotiating in good faith, all the while actively supporting the resistance in the south.359

And yet, while making the chance of a wider war all but inevitable, the proclamation of the Republic of Cochin China did complicate matters greatly for the Viet

Minh. The relative simplicity of arguing for an anti-French alliance would no longer strictly work. A significant minority of the Cochinchinese elite was attracted to the notion of a separate southern identity and put themselves at its service. The consistent use of terror on the part of Viet Minh cells of course yoked much of the population into submission; it also called into question the legitimacy and civility of the communist program. Most Viet Minh attacks in Saigon were not against the French military, but against Vietnamese civilians. For Binh, Saigon was a hotbed of reactionary activity deserving of destruction.360 Most residents probably did not see it that way.

On the military side, the task of suppressing this resistance fell to the recently arrived 3rd D.I.C. The 9th D.I.C., which accomplished most of the initial conquest of

Cochinchina, had been withdrawn by mid-February 1946 in order to garrison sites in

Tonkin in anticipation of the Franco-Vietnamese Accords of 6 March. Those accords provided for the withdrawal of the Chinese from their occupation of northern Vietnam and a limited French return to Haiphong and Hanoi. At the time of the relief in late

February, the 3rd D.I.C. had an effective strength of only slightly over 13,000 men. With this they would need to garrison the entirety of Cochinchina and begin the process of

359 Duiker, Sacred War: Nationalism and Revolution in a Divided Vietnam, 57-58. 360 Christopher Goscha, “A “Popular” Side of the Vietnamese Army: General Nguyễn Bình and War in the South,” in Goscha and De Tréglodé, 338. 130 pacification.361 The 3rd D.I.C., now also known as the Troupes françaises de l’Indochine du Sud, adopted its first attempt at a territorial organization in March 1946. This structure fluctuated significantly over the first year before a zonal organization was implemented in 1947. The division only disposed of two complete infantry regiments, the 22nd and 43rd Régiments d’infanterie coloniale (R.I.C.). These were assigned to the

Bien Hoa and Can Tho sectors, respectively. The northern sector remained amorphous for some time. It was initially held by units from the Brigade d’Extrême-Orient, but was eventually taken over the 13e Demi-brigade de légion étrangère (D.B.L.E.); in reality most of this area would not enter the French orbit until the defection of the Cao Dai in

June 1946.362 Without any more dedicated infantry formations, the central sector, Vaicos was assigned to the divisional artillery composed of the 10th Régiment d’artillerie coloniale (R.A.C.) and the 4th R.A.C (-).363 This arrangement presented a unique challenge to the artillerymen, unused to holding terrain or fighting as infantry.

The commander of the 3rd D.I.C. was General Georges Yves Nyo. Born in a small town in northern Brittany, Nyo graduated from St. Cyr as the First World War broke out. He served in various leadership roles during that conflict. Afterward he joined the colonial army, serving in Morocco, West Africa and in Indochina from 1933-

361 Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 67. 362 Initially the T.F.I.S. was also responsible for the Troupes du Cambodge and Brigade Extrême-Orient, a loose formation mostly made up of Indochinese troops. These areas in 1947 would become independent commands answerable directly to the overall command, the Troupes françaises d’Extrême-Orient. At the beginning of 1946 the northern sector was attached to the Annam command, but this changed by the end of the year. 363 The 3rd battalion of the 4th R.A.C. remained in Saigon-Cho Lon at the behest of the division commander. Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 54-59.; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 131

1935. During this time Nyo was responsible for bringing much of the Kha (in

Vietnamese referred to as Moï) country in the central highlands under French authority.

The following year Nyo’s battalion destroyed the rebellion of Ong Kommandam in Laos.

He was a colonel by 1942 and chief of staff of French troops in West Africa. The Vichy government furloughed Nyo upon his return to France later that year. He briefly organized a network for those looking to escape occupied France and spent two months in a Spanish jail before making his way to the Free French forces in Casablanca in 1943.

Following the end of war in Europe Nyo was charged with organizing French troops bound for the Far East. He was named commander of the 3rd D.I.C. on 16 August

1945.364

Given his background, Nyo’s perspective on the war was perhaps a bit surprising.

He did not see his task as following the “old formula” of “colonial campaigns.” The flying column of Bourgoud’s Algeria, the razzia that offered the speedy subjection of native rebellions, would not be appropriate in Cochinchina. In his instructions to his commanders in mid-March 1946, Nyo instead drew parallels to the French occupation of

Tonkin in the 19th century, a ten-year venture against determined adversaries who ravaged convoys and harassed far-flung posts. He did not foresee a short war. To win, he argued, the T.F.I.S. would need to do two things: 1) provide confidence and security to the “reducibles;” and 2) eliminate the “irreducibles.” By these terms Nyo meant those who could reconcile themselves to France’s return and those who would never accept it.

364 See “Nyo, Georges Yves,” in Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 348.; Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945- 1946: textes et documents, 126-127. 132

He numbered among this latter group the Japanese who aided the Viet Minh, those freed from Poulo Condore, those committed to a life of “piracy” – here he was rather mistaken

– and various inveterate political dissidents. Of no small significance was his correct understanding that there were many elements in Cochinchinese society who could be pried from the Viet Minh coalition.

On the military front Nyo’s chief problem was “gaspillage,” i.e. the wasting of matériel and personnel already in short supply. The first few months of 1946 had witnessed the T.F.I.S. extend its hold into many of the more remote corners of the south, down to Ca Mau and in the east out towards Nha Trang in Annam. 365 The 9th D.I.C.’s drive to open up routes and secure the principal cities, however, had been hollow. Vast tracks of land remained totally unoccupied. With only 13,000 troops in the whole division, each battalion would need to account for approximately 6,000 square kilometers of real estate, an impractical task, to say the least.366 Furthermore, hasty departures from recently captured areas would call into question France’s resolve and potentially hinder the T.F.I.S.’ ability to woo the “reducibles.”

Nyo’s answer was pacification via recruitment. The recruiting of locals into established French regular units began almost immediately. Nyo was well versed in the use of indigenous troops. In his suppression of Kommadan’s rebellion in 1936 his force had been a mix of Vietnamese tirailleurs along with Rhade and Jarai militia.367 In similar fashion by June 1946 the 3rd D.I.C. approved the raising of 5,000 partisans or suppletifs

365 SHAT, carton 10H984. General Georges Nyo, No. 73/3.S :“Instruction sur la conduite de l’action politique et militaire dans la zone Cochinchine – Sud Annam.” Dated 14 March 1946. 366 Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de la Conquête française à 1949, 571. 367 Geoffrey Gunn, Rebellion in Laos: Peasant and Politics in a Colonial Backwater (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), 123-124. The Rhade and the Jarai are two other tribal groups from Central Vietnam. 133 to fill holes in units created by casualties and insufficient reinforcements from the métropole.368 In this sense his strategic modalities were very “colonial,” following the general precept of “divide and conquer” which had served under-strength European powers so well in the headier days of colonial expansion. These new recruits, however, were generally tied to their sector and could not necessarily move with their parent unit, especially if that unit changed theater; for example, when the 9th D.I.C. left Cochinchina it was required to transfer its indigenous troops to incoming 3rd D.I.C. units.

Though fine distinctions among recruits were not present in 1946, local recruits filled one of three roles. The first, as mentioned, was as supplemental troops to established units. The second was as auxiliaries, viz. guides, interpreters, cooks, porters and laborers.369 The third role was as partisans des unites autochtones légères

(indigenous light units) or partisans de village. These troops took over guard duty at fixed posts, and provided troops for commando units specific to the various sectors. By late November 1947 suppletifs in service to the T.F.I.S. would number nearly 13,000 men, in effect almost doubling the strength of the southern command.370 Naturally, hastily raised local troops were not anywhere near as combat effective as regulars, but their local knowledge and language skills were invaluable. They also freed up mobile

368 For example the T.F.E.O. had requested 8,500 men to be sent out prior to 1 Jan 1947. By that date only 2,400 were ready and available. Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 76.; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. On the terminology, locals recruited in 1945 were generally referred to as “partisans.” Beginning in 1946 indigenous troops added to regular French units were referred to as “suppletifs.” See Bodin, 74. 369 Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 70. 370 Bodin, 72-74. 134 units for wider-ranging operations by taking over a great deal of the static guard requirements that habitually plague pacification efforts.

Especially during the rainy season of 1946, the rapid inclusion of locals into

French units and the prevailing disorder among the Viet Minh allowed the T.F.I.S. to make modest gains. Actions in the far west furthered the disorganization of Zone IX, forcing most bands to disperse to the point of near fragmentation.371 In the east Nguyen

Binh’s presence was certainly felt. Convoys running between Bien Hoa and Cap St.

Jacques were the object of frequent harassment or attack, as were the small posts along the frontier of the forested region east of Saigon. Of course, in Saigon Binh accelerated his campaign of assassinations. The addresses of pro-separatist politicians and journalists were distributed and teams set to work. Tran Tan Phat, a member of

Cochinchinese Consultative Council, was killed at the end of March. In Ninh Dinh a small village nearby, fifteen Catholics were murdered; thirty more were kidnapped and their homes burned. Binh also stepped up propaganda against any notion of a separate

Cochinchinese government.372

The signal French success of 1946 was the rallying of the Cao Dai in June. The yoke of Viet Minh leadership had not been light. From the outset the communists worked to eliminate rival nationalists. Non-communists on the Executive Committee found their throats slit. The head of the Trotskyites, Tạ Thu Thâu, ended up dead on his way back to Cochinchina, killed by communist organizers in Annam. In Baria to the east

371 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 372 SHAT, carton 10H602. Bulletin de renseignements No. 210/A: “Opérations de repression dans la Region Saigon-Cho Lon et environs immediats,” prepared by Chef de la Sûreté federale en Cochinchine. Dated 3 April 1946; Gras, 109-111. 135 rumors swirled that the communist political chief, Dương Bạch Mai, was liquidating nationalist cadres wherever he found them. This activity only intensified after Giau and the Grey Tiger were recalled to the north and Nguyen Binh took charge.373

For the Cao Dai opinion had always been mixed as to the advisability of cooperation with the Viet Minh. The Cao Dai were known for their fervent anti-French stance and had gladly accepted Japanese assistance during the occupation; but they were also independent and distrustful of outside control. This suspicion ran particularly strong in Tran Quang Vinh. At the outbreak of the war Vinh had dispatched several of his subordinates to the provinces to rally the Cao Dai youth and prevent them from falling completely under the Viet Minh sway. Vinh himself fled west with his family hoping to seek shelter in Sa Dec. Instead, on the orders of Tran Van Giau, communist agents arrested Vinh and incarcerated him for a time in Ca Mau. If he remained at all in doubt about Viet Minh intentions, his brief captivity gave him clarity. Sometime thereafter

Vinh fooled his captors, escaped and made his way to My Tho where he was arrested again on 8 May 1946, this time by French security forces.374

Nyo, desperate to destabilize the Viet Minh coalition, quickly entered into negotiations with Vinh. He and his Cao Dai were clearly among the “reducibles” that the general wished to fold into the French camp. An informal accord was reached within days. Pham Cong Tac would be returned from exile and the Cao Dai would bring their troops into the conflict against Nguyen Binh. On 9 June 1946 in Tay Ninh at a ceremony

373 Darcourt, 253. 374 SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Notes sur le Caodaisme,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon, A.M. Savani, dated Nov 1954. See section entitled “Le pontificat de Pham-Cong-Tac, 1935-1946.” 136 festooned in all the pomp of Cao Dai religiosity before the chief temple of the faithful, a thousand Cao Dai soldiers rendered honors to a French delegation. The Cao Dai raised the tricolor as well as the standard of Cochinchina over their Holy See. When Pham

Cong Tac arrived back in Cochinchina two months later, he announced the Cao Dai commitment to preserving order under French auspices. The Viet Minh’s campaign for control had suffered second significant setback. With the Cao Dai submission, 2,000 men moved from the Viet Minh camp to support the French; of these, approximately 950 were reasonably well armed.375 Tay Ninh, previously a valuable Viet Minh hideout, was from then on contested ground.376 In response, Binh ordered the Binh Xuyen to attack the

Cao Dai. Bay Vien, who was increasingly chaffing under communist direction, refused.377

Though the initial agreement with the Cao Dai was rather informal, the arrangement was codified more explicitly in January 1947. The French naturally realized that attempting to assert themselves over the Cao Dai would run directly counter to their hope of breaking up the Viet Minh alliance and so offered the Cao Dai a great deal of latitude. To begin with, the Cao Dai were given de facto control over Tay Ninh province so long as they respected the laws of the Republic of Cochinchina. Moreover, the French military pledged to provide the Cao Dai troops with pay, food and supplies. General

Nyo’s representative to the negotiations did insist on the formation of a French control

375 This group operating around Tay Ninh itself had 812 rifles, 42 light machines guns and 78 sub-machine guns of unreported provenance, but we can assume they were of largely Japanese and French make. 376 SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Rapport concernant la soumission des Caodistes de la secte de Tay Ninh,” dated 15 June 1946; Savani, 98.; SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Compte-rendu sur l’activité Caodaiste et le rôle de la mission de liaison,” dated 6 Feb 1947. Prepared by Lt-Colonel Fray, Chef de la Mission de Contrôle. 377 Darcourt, 278. 137 mission (Mission française de Liaison et de Contrôle), but Cao Dai forces were under their own officers and were permitted to fly the Cao Dai flag.378 At the end of January

1947, the Cao Dai repulsed a Viet Minh attack on Tay Ninh and then, in conjunction with the French forces, pushed back the communists to the borders of the province.379

Unfortunately for the French command, the success of rallying the Cao Dai was followed by a stagnating military situation elsewhere and a period of political ambivalence that threatened to seriously undermine the French position. Though the

T.F.I.S. managed to eject the Viet Minh (chi doi 10) from some of the forested region northeast of Bien Hoa, the marshy area west of Hoc Mon remained firmly in revolutionary hands.380 It was probably around this time that Binh moved his headquarters to the intervaïcos.381 This area was critical for the Viet Minh as its retention allowed them to keep open lines of communication and maintain units to pressure the major urban areas, while remaining sheltered by the relative inaccessibility of the terrain.

LTC Aimé Durand, the commander of the 10th R.A.C. near Cho Lon, recognized the threat and launched operations against Viet Minh units in the area and bloodied them, but could not hope to clean them out.382 In July in the area of Ben Tre down to Mo Cay, large

378 SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Accord du 8 Janvier 1947” between Lt-Colonel Fray, representative of Général Commandant les Troupes Françaises en Indochine du Sud and Pham Cong Tac, Supérieur du Caodaïsme. 379 SHAT, carton 10H2180. “Compte-rendu sur l’activité Caodaiste et le rôle de la mission de liaison,” dated 6 Feb 1947. Prepared by Lt-Colonel Fray, Chef de la Mission de Contrôle. 380 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 381 Brancion, 81. 382 Henri de Brancion, Commando Bergerol: Indochine, 1946-1953 (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1989), 19-24. One of these operations conducted in June managed to kill 70 and capture 150, most of who were working as porters for the Viet Minh. 138

Viet Minh formations wreaked considerable havoc. Nyo was forced to send in elements of his meager reserves to shore up the situation. French casualties mounted.383

The so-called modus vivendi concluded between France and Ho Chi Minh in Paris on 13 September exacerbated military issues in the late summer/early fall of 1946. The

Fontainebleau conference had largely failed to find an adequate way to bridge the differences between France and Ho Chi Minh’s Hanoi government. The declaration of the Republic of Cochinchina had naturally made this effort all the more difficult.

Nevertheless, Ho Chi Minh signed a temporary cease-fire for the south, probably in the hopes that this would keep the promise of negotiations alive and win for Tonkin a longer reprieve from armed confrontation. The Hanoi government had seen how quickly

Cochinchina had been overrun and needed time to set its affairs in order. The agreement, which stopped “all acts of hostility and of violence,” went into force on 30 October 1946.

It was set to expire in January 1947 when all parties had agreed that negotiations would resume. The outbreak of war in the north rendered this last provision moot.384

In the south the modus vivendi seemed to undercut many of the political props of the French occupation. If the French had agreed to reopen negotiation with Hanoi at a future date, it seemed more than feasible that France would abandon the notion of an independent Cochinchinese Republic. Viet Minh propaganda hit upon this fear, pushing the idea that the French departure was close at hand.385 The loss of face for many who advocated for the French-backed republic was unbearable. Dr. Thinh, head of the

383 Gras, 137. 384 Gras, 121-122. 385 Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: artilleurs des rizières, 1946-1951, 57. 139 provisional Cochinchinese government, killed himself in despair.386 French army reports indicated a “crisis of confidence” among the population as collaboration with the T.F.I.S. fell off sharply. For an army still struggling with serious manpower issues, the wave of desertions among the pro-French partisans was most unwelcome.387

As tensions heightened in Tonkin, Binh used the modus vivendi to strengthen the

Viet Minh position in Cochinchina. Temporarily relieved from French harassment, Binh was able to infiltrate his forces in the intervaïcos down to Duc Hoa.388 They also stocked up on arms; French units found their opponents much better equipped afterward. Binh was able to bring in substantial reinforcements from Tonkin. In December a large body of northerners arrived, allowing Binh to form two new chi doi.389 At the local level the

Viet Minh pressed forward their organization, establishing village-level self-defense forces to complement and supplement the main units.390

At the end of November Binh received word from Giap in Hanoi: “As soon as news of the attack on Hanoi by the French is confirmed, all Nam Bo fronts will attack together.”391 The southern Viet Minh were to launch spoiling attacks in order to keep

386 Boyer de Latour, 36-37. 387 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 388 Brancion, Commando Bergerol: Indochine, 1946-1953, 32. 389 Darcourt, 279; Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: artilleurs des rizières, 1946-1951, 61. 390 SHAT, carton 10H602. Translation of captured Viet Minh document. “Circulaire du Commissaire aux Armées du Nambo, addressee aux Commissaires aux Armées provinciaux, objet: organization des troupes d’auto-défense (Tu Ve Chien Dau Quan).” Dated 10 Dec 1946, prepared by Nguyen Binh. 391 At some point at the end of 1946 radio communication was reopened between Hanoi and the Nam Bo committee. David Elliott says this occurred in December 1946 (See Elliott, 59.) but the fact that the French have quite a number of decrypts dating from the end of November suggests it was slightly before that. SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents Vietnamiens:” Vo Nguyen Giap to Nguyen Binh, Hanoi, dated 30 Nov 1946. Translation prepared by 2eme Bureau. The radio sets in use at this point were located somewhere in Baria and another in Tay Ninh. SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents Vietnamiens:” Ngueyn Binh to Vo Nguyen Giap, dated 8 Dec 1946. Translation prepared by 2eme Bureau. 140

French units occupied, impress outsiders with widespread Viet Minh resolve, and hopefully prevent reinforcements from heading north.392 Lê Duẫn, the head of the

Executive Committee of Nam Bo and future Secretary General of the entire Communist

Party in Vietnam, reiterated this message, urging the southern Viet Minh to do everything in its power, regardless of cost, to prevent the French from attacking the north.393

Binh opened his attack in Zone VII on 21 December. As he had been advising

Giap to do in the north (to no effect), Binh made the French lines of communications his primary object. Roads in and around Saigon became scenes of constant ambush. His men cut the rail lines running to Nha Trang and Loc Ninh in multiple locations; they also severed the roads down to Cap St. Jacques and out to Vinh Long. French offensive action ground to a halt, as did most economic activity. Binh maintained the tempo for an entire month. He threatened Tan Son Nhut. The French drove back powerful Viet Minh formations from Bien Hoa only with difficulty. Near Thu Dau Mot, the French could not prevent the Viet Minh from overrunning the town of Lai Thieu at the tail end of the offensive. There they burned the public buildings and kidnapped a number of the chief citizens. Out to the west the French salvaged the situation at great expense: the southern portions of Tra Vinh and Ben Tre provinces had to be abandoned entirely, seriously calling into question French credibility. In terms of causalities the month long battle cost the T.F.I.S. 500 dead and as many wounded. Nyo’s situation was made worse by the loss of units headed north. The Viet Minh failed to prevent the dispatch of reinforcements to

392 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents Vietnamiens:” Comité de Résistance sud-vietnam to Chef de la résistance dans l’Ouest, dated 12 Dec 1946. Translation prepared by 2eme Bureau. 393 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents Vietnamiens:” Le Duan to Nam Bo Executive Committee, dated 8 Dec 1946. Translation prepared by 2eme Bureau. 141

Tonkin: seven infantry battalions, and two artillery groups, totally approximately 3,000 men.394

Valluy had officially replaced Leclerc as the supreme commander of French troops in Indochina (Commandant Supérior des Troupes Françaises d’Extrême-Orient) on 1 October 1946.395 Even before this he noted the intractable problem faced by the relatively small French Expeditionary Corps. “We have placed the hand over all the country,” he contended in September 1946, but “we do not hold it except by the fingertips.” He admitted that an “oil slick” strategy starting in Cochinchina and working its way only slowly north to Annam and then to Tonkin might have been more prudent.

The plight of French citizens suffering under Viet Minh exactions in Hue and Hanoi, he argued, had prevented him from following this route. The problem was what to do now that the French had dispersed their resources in unfocused endeavors. He concluded his thoughts by noting that “the hardest part remains to be done.”396 He was certainly correct.

The situation was especially grave in Cochinchina. Nyo’s understrength command was hard-pressed in the opening months of 1947. On the political front a deep malaise fell over much of the population in the western provinces due to the French retraction at

394 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954; “Extraits d’un rapport mensuel paru sous le timbre du conseiller militaire du Haut-Commissaire et signé Vally,” dated 10 Sep 1946. Reprinted in Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 282. 395 SHAT, carton 10H157. “Decret portant affectation d’un Officier Général de l’Armée de Terre,” copy of document signed by Georges Bidault, président du gouvernement provisoire de la République. Dated 15 Nov 1946. 396 “Extraits d’un rapport mensuel paru sous le timbre du conseiller militaire du Haut-Commissaire et signé Valluy,” dated 10 Sep 1946. Reprinted in Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945-1946: textes et documents, 286. 142 the end of 1946, a problem that threatened to become even more severe if the rice harvest could not be collected over following weeks. The T.F.I.S. could expect a modicum of reinforcements in February 1947, but certainly not enough to occupy all the country sufficiently.397 Added to this was the reconstituted Garde Civile (Civil Guard) which the

French renamed the Garde républicaine de Cochinchine (G.R.C.) in November 1946.

Established in 1909 and intended as an internal security force for Cochinchina, the

Japanese dissolved the guards after they assumed control in March 1945.398 Valluy resurrected the organization to give a measure of protection to civilian provincial officials. By April the G.R.C., divided into four regiments, was deemed ready for deployment. It was placed under the command of the province chiefs, though once the zonal organization came into effect these men would be subject to military direction.

The strongest of the regiments was the 1st (nearly 2,500 men), which was stationed in the increasingly volatile western provinces. The total strength of the G.R.C. at the beginning of the year was slightly over 6,000. It would reach to 7,900 by year’s end.399

What was needed, however, was not just more troops, but a path to victory. The outbreak of war in Tonkin had greatly accelerated matters. With the fight in the north threatening to open entirely new vistas of military/political problems, it was imperative

397 The first wave of reinforcements arriving in early February consisted of the following: 1st Bataillon de marche (BM) of the 1st R.I.C., 1st BM of the 2nd R.I.C.. These were followed in March by 1st BM of the 35th R.I., 1st BM of the 151st R.I. Lastly in April the T.F.I.S. received the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 7th bataillons de Tirailleurs Algériens (BTA) as well as one battalion of the 4th Régiment de Tirailleurs Marocains (RTM) and a single battalion of the 4th Régiment de Tirailleurs Tunisiens (RTT). SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. See section entitled “accroissement des effectifs.” 398 Bodinier, Indochine 1947: Règlement politique ou Solution militaire, 69; Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 108. 399 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Proces-verbal de la Réunion du Comité de Pacification du 14 Fevrier 1947.” 143 that the war in Cochinchina be brought under control as rapidly as possible. The High-

Commissioner, Thierry d’Argenlieu, opted for a program of pacification. Writing at the beginning of February 1947, the admiral argued that the new reinforcements to the south would allow the T.F.I.S. to “vigorously take up the struggle against the troublemakers” and progressively establish order and security across the country. The High-

Commissioner said it would be a “Great Game of Pacification,” uniting military and political action into an effective whole. It was not a venture the admiral would see through, as he was recalled to France a month later.400

His vision was nevertheless set in motion. The T.F.I.S. first reorganized its military dispositions. Nyo replaced the system of independent sectors with three zones de pacification (West, Center and East) that corresponded to the Viet Minh organization of

Khu IX, VIII, and VII.401 Nyo placed each zone under the command of a colonel, along with the provision of a political counselor to coordinate disagreements between the civil and military spheres.402 Overall coordination of the pacification operation fell to the

Comité de Pacification created in mid-February. This group brought together the principal political and military figures in Cochinchina. The five-member council included the president of the Cochinchina, the vice-president, the national defense minister, the French Commissioner of the Republic for Cochinchina and the Commander of the T.F.I.S. Together they were to ensure the smooth functioning of the pacification

400 SHAT, carton 10H165. Memorandum from Haut Commissaire de France pour l’Indochine G. D’Argenlieu. “Objet: Pacification de la Cochinchine,” dated 7 Feb 1947. 401 Zones West and Center were created in February. East came into being in March. 402 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. See section entitled “reorganization du dispotif.” 144 operations and, most importantly, to prevent the dispersion of effort that had plagued

1946.403

Their first decision was to make Zone West the main effort.404 Indeed for spring

1947, the pacification of Cochinchina was the principal goal of the entire corps.405 The commander in the West, Colonel Cluzet, received the entirety of the initial wave of reinforcements, the 1st BM/1st R.I.C. and the 1st BM/2nd R.I.C. The Pacification

Committee also gave him full control over both civilian and military functions within his zone in order to speed up the pacification process.406

403 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Annexe I au memorandum du 7 Fevrier sur la pacification de la Cochinchine.” 404 Zone West incorporated the former sectors of Can Tho and Vinh Long and included the following provinces: Can Tho, Long Xuyen, Chau Doc, Ha Tien, Rach Gia, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Tra Vinh, Vinh Long, Sa Dec and Ben Tre. 405 SHAT, carton 10H165. Jean Valluy, “Note d’Information No. 1316/3/S,” prepared by État-major 3eme Bureau. Dated May 1947. 406 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Comité exécutif de pacification de la Cochinchine: Directive No. 1.” Prepared by Le Van Hoach, Président du Comité Exécutif de Pacification. Dated 10 Feb 1947. 145

Figure 5. T.F.I.S. Zones

The plan was to proceed by phases accordingly to the time-honored “oil slick” technique, whereby government control spreads slowly but irreversibly from some central location.407 The first provinces to be dealt with were Vinh Long, Tra Vinh, Can

407 The tache d’huile or oil slick name given to the manner of colonial conquest practiced Gallieni in Tonkin in the 1890s. According to Herbert Lyautey, at the time Gallieni’s subordinate, the method was to simultaneously pursue “roads, telegraphs, markets and European and native concessions, so that with pacification a great band of civilization advances like a spot oil.” Lyautey quoted in William A. Hoisington, Lyautey and the French Conquest of Morocco (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 7. 146

Tho and Soc Trang.408 These were also the key areas to ensure a successful rice harvest.

Throughout Zone West the French proposed various “collecting centers” where they could station guards and organize convoys for protection. In Saigon, the French and

Cochinchinese government convened a special commission to study the myriad problems involved in protecting the harvest. Building and manning posts was both manpower intensive and costly. Furthermore, much of the Cochinchinese transport network was waterborne. Infantry or armored formations on their own were insufficient to maintain canal security. Lastly, the provision of convoy security was an onerous burden. The

T.F.I.S.’ estimate was that Zone West would need to devote 1,500 men a day just to convoy security. There was, according to Albert Torel, the Commissioner of the

Republic for Cochinchina, also the real danger that increased government activity in the west would only serve to draw Viet Minh attention and make the situation potentially worse.409

The actual enacting of pacification was supposed to follow a strict division of labor. In the reinstallation phase, General Nyo’s troops were to launch sizable operations to destroy or dislocate large Viet Minh units. Once occupied, the army would pass the area over to civilian management under whose care it would be subject to “political purification” with the aid of the G.R.C.410 Civilian administrators would revive the local

Councils of Notables in order to have viable intermediaries with the people. Villages

408 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Circulaire: Pacification de la Cochinchine,” prepared by Tran Van Ty, Vice- President du gouvernment provisoire de la Republique de Cochinchine, Ministre de l’Interieur. Dated 22 Feb 1947. 409 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Proces-verbal de la Réunion d’une Commission chargée d’étudier les questions de collecte et de transport du paddy.” Dated 23 Mar 1947. 410 SHAT, carton 10H984. General Nyo, “Instruction personnelle & secrète pour les commandants de zone & les commandants de secteurs.” Dated 23 Jun 1947. 147 would also be expected to provide self-defense forces to man towers and fulfill other static guard duties.411 The regular army would be thereby left free to continue to seek out

“the disaggregation of the large [Viet Minh] bands” and to provide route security along the critical thoroughfares. Police functions would be left to the G.R.C.412

Figure 6. T.F.I.S. Disposition, May 1947413

411 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Conduite de l’action politique et administrative en vue de la Pacification,” prepared by Tran Van Ty, Vice-Président du Gouvernment provisoire de la Republique de Cochinchine, Ministre de l’Interieur. Dated 13 Mar 1947. 412 SHAT, carton 10H165. Col. Le Pulloch (representative of Gen. Valluy), “Proces-verbal de la Réunion du Comité de Pacification.” Dated 23 Jun 1947. 413 In May T.F.I.S. numbered 37,500 men, of whom 23,500 were Europeans, 11,000 indigenous and 3,000 North Africans. To these were added 7,300 in the G.R.C., 9,000 partisans and the sect militias. T.F.I.S. 148

Things did not go as hoped. To begin with, to free up regular forces sufficient to the task (6 battalions), General Nyo was forced to disband a number of posts. Though this was done primarily done in “eccentric” regions removed as far as possible from the city centers and main lines of communication, the result was, nonetheless, that as the

T.F.I.S. attempted to tighten its grip on one area, it perforce loosened it elsewhere – the vanity of control.414 In the east, for instance, French intelligence estimated that of the

20,000 people residing in Thu Dau Mot, 18,000 were paying taxes to the Viet Minh by

May.415

The forces available were not enough. Already by March, rather than engaging in pacification, per se, all of Cluzet’s men in Zone West were occupied in protecting the rice harvest.416 They could not be everywhere at once. In mid-May 1947, chi doi 18 and 19 launched a devastating ambush against a convoy running west of My Tho along R.C. 16.

Over fifty French and Vietnamese lost their lives. Among the dead were two ministers of the Cochinchinese government, a French lieutenant colonel and his daughter.417

The French did have some successes, mostly by adapting at the tactical level. The first was the organization of commando companies, or commandos de choc.418 A chief

Unit positions based on SHAT, carton 10H984. “Situation des forces terrestres en Cochinchine, Mai 1947.” 414 SHAT, carton 10H984. General Nyo, “Instruction personnelle & secrète pour les commandants de zone & les commandants de secteurs.” Dated 23 Jun 1947. 415 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 416 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Proces-verbal de la Réunion d’une Commission chargée d’étudier les questions de collecte et de transport du paddy.” Dated 23 Mar 1947. 417 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by État-Major, 2eme Bureau. Dated 10 Jan 1952; Franchini, Les Guerres d'Indochine: de la Conquête française à 1949, 575; Brancion, Commando Bergerol: Indochine, 1946-1953, 51. 418 There is a distinction here that would be established later on. Commandos de choc (shock commandos) were organized at the sector or zone level and were intended to infiltrate into enemy-controlled areas and 149 problem for all French commanders throughout the war was reliable intelligence on the one hand, and a dearth of units capable of reacting in a timely fashion should reliable intelligence actually become available. Commando units addressed both of these problems. Pioneered by the artillerymen of Zone Center, the units were commanded by

French officers and NCOs, but were recruited from the locals who had expert knowledge of the terrain, habits of the population and obvious language skills. In many places these companies were the only real unités d’intervention as everything else was tied down in guard duty or route security.419 The commando units conducted much of the combat in late 1946 and early 1947. By March 1947 General Nyo mandated that all sectors form commando units. Colonel Cluzet in Zone West, however, opposed this directive. He did not want to strip out valuable men from his regulars to form these units while he was hard-pressed to keep control over his sprawling territorial charge.420 In hindsight, he might have fared better with pacification had he more energetically adopted a commando solution.421

The second major innovation was the formation of the dinassaut (divisions navales d’assaut et détachements amphibies – naval assault division). The dinassaut were adaptable naval formations meant for “brown water” use along the coastlines and up the rivers and canals of Indochina. These units were officially formed in August 1947, but were the product of the evolution of French seaborne tactics in evidence from the

deliver “rapid and brutal strikes” against the Viet Minh. As time went on there were also commandos de débarquement that operated with the dinassauts but which were commanded by army officers lent to the navy, as well as commandos marine which were exclusively navy organizations. See Ély, 186. 419 See Chapter 4. 420 Bodinier, Indochine 1947: Règlement politique ou Solution militaire, 35. 421 Guillet, 24. 150 beginning of the war, such as the taking of My Tho in October 1945. The dinassauts in

Cochinchina fell under the auspices of the 2nd Amphibious Flotilla and were organized on an ad hoc basis according to mission need. Generally dinassauts were a combination of various amphibious craft left over from World War II. There were armored cutters,

LCTs, British made HDMLs (harbor defense motor launch), and eventually LCVP

(Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel). The favored vessels were the LSI (Land Ship,

Infantry) and especially the LSIL (Landing Ship, Infantry, Light) because they could move in shallow water and had high decks that allowed commanders to maintain visual contact with ground-based elements. The range of amphibious craft also provided excellent fire support platforms. LCMs (Landing Craft, Medium) were often outfitted with 20 mm cannons, heavy mortars and machine-guns. With the dinassaut French forces could interdict Viet Minh waterborne supply, but more importantly descend rapidly on points previously inaccessible with adequate communications and fire support in tow. A typical dinassaut would carry its troupes d’intervention in one or two LCMs in the center of the formation. These men could be put ashore to attack in concert with naval fire support, or be deployed ahead of the river craft as early warning for potential ambushes. These versatile groupings became an essential part of the French war in

Cochinchina.422 By 1953 the French had four dinassauts in Cochinchina, usually three in operation with one in refit and/or training. The first dinassaut was transferred to the

Vietnamese navy in the first part of 1953.423

422 Estival, 192-193. 423 Victor J. Croizat, The Brown Water Navy: The River and Coastal War in Indo-China and Vietnam, 1948-1972 (Dorset: Blandford Press, 1984), 59.; SHAT, carton 10H984. “Enseignements de la guerre 151

Other successes in 1947 were simply laid in France’s lap by Viet Minh heavy- handedness. Albert Torel had been correct about pacification: increased French activity in Zone West did, in fact, draw Viet Minh attention. The threat to their rice supply was simply too great.

Though nominally allied with the Viet Minh, the Hoa Hao maintained deep reservations about communist influence. The “mad monk” himself, Huynh Phu So, was more than ambivalent. In April 1946 he had presided over a meeting of non-communist nationalist leaders during which he accused Nguyen Binh of assassinating rivals and warned against trusting the intentions of the Hanoi-inspired Viet Minh.424

Suspicious of the Viet Minh and suspected by them as well, Huynh Phu So fled

Saigon in December of 1946, trying to make his way west. The Viet Minh, hoping to shore up their tottering relationship with the sect, reasoned that a strong message would cow the unruly Hoa Hao captains and secure the vital western provinces for their cause.

At some point in the spring of 1947 Viet Minh troops caught the Hoa Hao prophet traveling by river in Long Xuyen, arrested him, and then executed him in late April. To thwart the Hoa Hao belief that So would be reincarnated one day, the Viet Minh dismembered his body and buried it in multiple locations. Whatever they had hoped to gain by the murder of Huynh Phu So, the outcome was a disaster. Incensed at the death of their leader Hoa Hao militias turned their arms on the Viet Minh. In March Tran Van

Soai and his men, about 2,000 strong, submitted to the French in exchange for

d’Indochine.” Prepared by État-Major de l’Armée de Terre, 1953; SHAT, carton 10H906. “Situatation des T.F.I.S., mois de septembre,” 3eme Bureau. Dated Sept 1949. 424 Darcourt, 270-271. 152 recognition of their religion, arms and a free hand in their domains. Tran Van Soai was given a general’s stars and his men began to sweep the Viet Minh from the Hoa Hao

“fief” at Can Tho.425

And yet, despite significant tactical innovation and the serendipity of the Hoa Hao defection, pacification in Mien Tay was failing. Pacification is necessarily a time- consuming process. This essential prerequisite for Cluzet’s effort was therefore missing.

Valluy had only given Cluzet until June to accomplish the majority of his work, a paltry five months. The provinces along the Bassac river (Vinh Long, Soc Trang, Tra Vinh) were to be dealt with by the end of March; the lost areas of Ben Tre taken by mid-April and Bac Lieu down in the peninsula by start of May. It was simply not feasible. To make matters worse, Valluy informed Nyo that he would put no additional troops into

Cochinchina. Moreover, by June he would actually take back five battalions for eventual service in Annam and in Tonkin.426 This scheme made failure all but a certainty. In May

Valluy called an end to concerted pacification in Cochinchina. He would take troops instead and expand “operations of conquest” in Annam. As the fall approached these reductions to troop strength in Cochinchina would become even more acute as Valluy prepared for his masterstroke against the Viet Minh during Operation LEA.

What was left to Nyo was to maintain the status quo – keep the Viet Minh at bay, keep the routes open, the trains running – but attempt no further extension of the French

425 Savani, 112-113; Ho Tai, 144. 426 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Instruction personnelle et secrete pour le Général Nyo, Commandant les T.F.I.S..” Prepared by General Valluy. Dated 19 March 1947. Nyo was required to render back to Valluy the Maroccan battalion form Zone East as well as the III/69th R.T.A.; Zone West and Center had to each give up an Algerian battalion. Two more infantry battalions of the 3rd R.E.I. were removed from Saigon/Cho Lon sector. SHAT, carton 10H984. “Instruction personnelle & secrète pour les commandants de zone & les commandants de secteurs.” Prepared by General Nyo. Dated 23 Jun 1947. 153 zone of control.427 Nyo protested this verdict at a meeting of the Pacification Committee in June. Despite setbacks, the initiative was with the T.F.I.S., the general believed. In a conversation to be repeated innumerable times over the coming decades, Nyo contended that his men were killing 2,000 Viet Minh a month. President Le Van Hoach disagreed.

He very much disbelieved that Nyo’s men were even capable of telling the difference between Viet Minh and the regular population. Nyo’s “great operations,” he argued, were accomplishing little and the G.R.C. was stretched too thin. Better to withdraw to the population centers where troops could at least be supplied.

Nyo was concerned about the prospect of falling back. It would look bad, undermine French credibility and offer easy propaganda victories to the Viet Minh. Le

Van Hoach’s solution was to keep the plan a secret; better to make no statements about the retraction than attempt to justify it. Falling back quietly and redoubling the T.F.I.S.’s activity on a shorter front could perhaps offset the public relations problem. There was no other choice, in the president’s mind, but to abandon those regions too distant to be reasonably kept secure. Striking what was surely a somber note, Le Van Hoach concluded: “Leave the extremities to look after themselves, and we will protect the refugees in the centers.”428

The implications were clear. The French position in Cochinchina was weak and fading. Without time, reinforcements or some radically new perspective, there was nothing for Nyo to do but await the outcome of Valluy’s desperate haymaker in Tonkin

427 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Note d’information pour les generaux commandants les T.F.I.S., T.F.C.A.” Prepared by General Valluy, P.A. Chef d’Escadron Terron, Chef du 3eme Bureau. Dated May 1947. The exact day of this order is not legible on the archive copy. 428 SHAT, carton 10H165. “Proces-verbal de la Réunion du Comité de Pacification du 23 Juin 1947.” 154 and hope everything fell into place. Nyo did not see the outcome. He left command in

July 1947.

155

CHAPTER 4: L’OSSATURE SOLIDE - LATOUR’S WAR, 1947-1949429

A French general officer, tall with close-cropped hair and the aspect of a country gentlemen, walked causally about the walled garden of a large villa in the summer heat of the Saigon evening. He was only just arrived from France and had never been to

Indochina before. Suddenly from outside of the enclosure a grenade flew in and clattered among the flora. It exploded far enough from the officer that he was not injured. His two

Moroccan bodyguards leapt up and spied the failed assassin. They cut him down with a burst from their sub-machine guns. Such was General Pierre Boyer de Latour’s welcome to Cochinchina as he assumed command of the T.F.I.S. in July of 1947.430

What the new commander found at his arrival was a country plagued by rising insecurity but without the wherewithal to do much about it. By the fall of 1947 the commander-in-chief, Jean Valluy, was preparing for his massive strike against the Viet

Minh main force units in their redoubt northeast of Hanoi, codenamed Operation LEA.

To that end Valluy requisitioned four infantry battalions, an artillery group and a battalion of combat engineers from Latour’s command, leaving the T.F.I.S. much weakened, reactive and desperate. Valluy’s gambit necessitated a further retraction of the

French position in Cochinchina, and though Latour negotiated with his chief to lessen the

429 Strong bones 430 Boyer de Latour, 24. Lucien Bodard called Latour a “hobereau,” or “country squire.” Bodard, L'enlisement, 121. 156 extent of the retreat for fear it would abandon too many to Viet Minh revenge, the pullback was significant.

LEA’s failure was clear by late October. The hope that the Viet Minh leadership could be captured or killed vanished as the bulk of the communist military establishment escaped decisive combat. Increasingly desperate, the interim high-commander, Raoul

Salan, decided to switch venues in early 1948 and seek victory by force of arms in the south. This operation, known as VEGA, launched on 14 February 1948 had as its object the destruction of Viet Minh formations in the far-eastern edge of the Plain of Reeds, the so-called place des giongs from whence the Viet Minh threatened Saigon and facilitated communications east and west of the center of the country. Despite being the largest operation in Cochinchina to date, VEGA did not succeed in destroying much. It did, however, force the Viet Minh to abandon this base area and refocus their efforts to the fringes of the country.

VEGA’s ambiguous result forced a reevaluation of the war in the south. It was unlikely that the T.F.I.S. would again possess sufficient mobile reserves to even attempt another such enterprise; nor was it at all obvious that such an effort would work even if it became possible logistically. Large operations and surprise rarely go hand in hand.

Instead of chasing the ghost of battlefield victory any longer, Latour opted for a course of action conditioned by his all too apparent weakness. The retraction of the last year had left the T.F.I.S. in control of the urban centers and the principal routes, but little else.

Around this irreducible core he would build “strong bones” onto which the flesh of future pacified zones could be grafted and into which the Viet Minh could only penetrate with

157 utmost difficulty. Almost unconsciously the strategic perspective shifted to one of self- preservation, to nurse the embryo of French-backed government control and leave open to the communists a path to their defeat. To accomplish these aims, large portions of

Cochinchina and its people would be cast explicitly beyond the pale, subject to blockade, harassment, and even starvation.

It was certainly not an optimal solution. French sovereignty in these neglected areas would hardly even be a rhetorical fiction. More dangerously, in these base areas the Viet Minh would be largely left free to build their forces for coming campaigns and in possession of the initiative, whenever they would choose to take it up. For his part

Latour was not entirely comfortable with this course, whatever its colonial antecedents; it was risk averse and information poor. It would require time, money and an accommodation with an uncertain strategic future. Nevertheless, the general suppressed his own fears and the reservations of his subordinates by noting, “the art [of war] is not to conquer with the means that one would like to have, but with those one actually possesses.”431

The new commander of forces in Cochinchina in the summer of 1947 was a newcomer to Indochina, but an old hand of the “Colo.”432 After service during all four years of the First World War, Latour had transferred to the colonial army in North Africa

431 SHAT, carton 10H985. “Instructions pour le combat et la pacification dans le Vietnam-Sud.” Prepared by General Boyer de Latour. Reprinted for use by the F.T.S.V. in 1952 under the auspices of General Bondis. 432 “Colo” was the common shorthand for the French colonial army established in 1900. Prior to 1900 the Troupes de marine from which much of the colonial army’s heritage was derived primarily handled military matters in the colonies. Pierre Montagnon, Histoire de l'Armée française: des milices royales à l'armée de métier (Paris: Pygmalion/G. Watelet, 1997), 194. 158 where he served until the outbreak of World War II.433 Most of this time was spent in

Morocco as part of the Service des affaires indigènes, those officers who provided the cadre for locally-raised units for the ongoing campaigns of pacification against the contumacious Berber tribes. While there he of course became acquainted with the legacy of Herbert Lyautey, France’s first Resident-General in Morocco, and his notion of the

“Maroc utile,” viz. that portion of Morocco that was worth having in contrast to the inhospitable mountains, which were good for nothing but burying troops and wasting material in endless, futile maneuvers.434

Latour was among those who stood aside during the American invasion of North

Africa in November 1942 and then joined the Free French.435 As a lieutenant colonel he assumed command of the 2nd groupe de tabors marocains (G.T.M.). The 2nd G.T.M. was composed of Berber tribesmen in a loose, paramilitary structure held together by the force of personality of its chef.436 Born and bred in the rugged Atlas Mountains, they were hardy soldiers, renowned for excellent marksmanship at a distance and for brutal knife work up close. In the difficult fights against the Germans in North Africa, Latour and his goumiers developed a reputation among Americans for skill and an aggressive commitment to offensive action.437 From there Latour led his troops into Corsica and

433 Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 73. 434 Erwan Bergot, La Coloniale (Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1983), 16. 435 Boyer de Latour, 9. 436 A G.T.M. at this time had three tabors (battalions) in addition to a headquarters goum (company) and a service goum. Their heaviest weapons were a section of 81mm mortars (four pieces) assigned to each tabor. Edward Bimberg, The Moroccan Goums: Tribal Warriors in a Modern War (London: Greenwood Press, 1999), 51. Douglas Porch, in describing the strangeness of North African irregular units called them neither a military unit after the European fashion or a militia, but rather a “tribe” created by the officer who was their patriarch.” Douglas Porch, The Conquest of Morocco (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1983), 129. 437 Bimberg, 7, 32. 159 suffered greatly in the hardscrabble fight to try and stop the German retreat to Bastia.438

After Corsica, Latour’s goumiers landed in Elba for Operation BRASSARD. It was again bitter fighting against an entrenched enemy. The 2nd G.T.M.’s fine performance during BRASSARD convinced the French command to assign the unit to Operation

DRAGOON, the descent on southern France in August 1944. In the subsequent drive on

Marseille Latour and the 2nd G.T.M. distinguished themselves once more in the heavy fighting for the town of Aubagne east of Marseille and again in the massifs that anchored the outer defenses of Marseille itself.439 The battle for the Vosges Mountains and the reduction of the Colmar pocket followed. Latour and his men ended the war on the

Voralberg massif high in the Austrian Alps.440

The future commander of the T.F.I.S. was a soldier cut from Herbert Lyautey’s cloth; and indeed it was a regal cloth embroidered with self-assurance and thinly disguised monarchical tendencies. The champion of French colonialism’s actual, rather than metaphorical robe was a lustrous burnoose in “royal purple, bordered in gold and decorated with the silver stars of his rank.”441 With few resources and episodic attention paid to the details of his exploits, Lyautey achieved remarkable feats, especially according to his own propaganda.442 Along with military skill, Lyautey traded heavily on verve, diplomatic subtlety and cultural sensibility. Latour’s gait in his sterling white

438 Bimberg, 45. 439 Bimberg, 82-84. 440 Bimberg, 103-111. 441 Porch, The Conquest of Morocco, 131. 442 It is obviously important to note that how Lyautey and his like accomplished things and how they claimed to have accomplished those things could diverge considerably. His emphasis on the peaceful “penetration” of Morocco carried out by Moroccans themselves was largely propaganda and ignored the brutal reality of colonial warfare even under the putatively enlightened auspices of Lyautey. Hoisington, 34. 160 uniform was certainly less grandiose, but animated by a kindred spirit; the differences were of degree, not inclination.

Like Lyautey, Latour believed deeply in the French colonial empire. To his mind and the minds of the other colonial officers the creation of the empire was an “act of civilization” and in the case of Indochina the only thing holding back the tide of communist subversion.443 Whatever horizontal bonds of coerced fraternity communism offered came at the expense of the natural, vertical linkages of French imperial patronage towards its wards. In this sense there was no distinction between pacification à la colonial war and what was to be done in Indochina. Indeed, much of Latour’s attitude toward his labor in Cochinchina can probably be traced to that long service in the colonial empire where officers after Lyautey’s fashion worked many years with meager resources and sporadic notice from the métropole. Latour despised France’s lukewarm commitment to her empire and its subjects. His was an honest, thorough paternalism. As he understood it, France’s role in the world was neither cynical, nor self-serving. If he took any umbrage with France’s mission civilisatrice it was that it was insufficiently

Catholic in tone.444 In the years after the French wars of decolonization he would complain bitterly about the “rottenness” of the French public and decried the implicit racism that he believed explained de Gaulle’s withdrawal from Algeria.445 Though not directly involved in the plot himself, he went so far as to testify in defense of those who

443 Augustin-Léon Guillaume, Les Berbères marocains et la Pacification de l'Atlas central, 1912-1933 (Paris: René Julliard, 1946), 8. 444 For the best view of France’s civilizing mission and the paradoxes of a Republic pursuing an imperial vision see Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire in France and West Africa, 1895-1930 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). 445 Boyer de Latour, 13. 161 participated in the Algiers putsch of 1961.446 Such was Latour’s commitment to a bygone France.

In 1947, however, the collapse of the French colonial empire was far from a reality. The French army had dispatched Latour to Indochina, not for his colonial experience, but for his demonstrated excellence in mountain warfare. On arrival he was ferried north to survey by air the foreboding and beautiful karst mountains of Tonkin.

Instead, and for reasons of French military arcanum, the command returned Latour south to Saigon to take over the T.F.I.S in a country that can barely brag of a hill.447

Latour took command of a backpedaling, weakening conglomerate of French and indigenous troops. His role was to maintain an economy of force in the south while

Valluy sought decision in Tonkin. Whether he liked it or not, and whether or not it undercut people’s belief in the power of French arms, significant withdrawals had been necessary. And though Latour argued against the full-range of pullbacks preferred by

Valluy, the scope of French withdrawals in the summer of 1947 was significant. Large tracts, some of which were not too far removed from urban centers, were left unoccupied.

What remained were thin bands of pseudo-control running along the principal arteries and around the major cities. In Go Cong district, for example, only a single village out of

40 could boast an active council of notables, a good indicator of the superficiality of

French control.448 In nearby My Tho, in July the commander reported his total inability to extend the zone of pacification, stating it was nearly impossible to “pacify” areas

446 Bimberg, 128. 447 Boyer de Latour, 19-23. 448 Boyer de Latour, 26. 162 removed from direct French presence.449 Outside of these locales were those areas where

French troops might periodically show the flag. Beyond these were the régions évacuées, or as the Viet Minh undoubtedly called them – home.

Figure 7. T.F.I.S. evacuations 1947450

Even within the French-controlled zone a steady rumble of violence was the norm. Can Gioc district, for example, lies north of Go Cong and a short drive south from

449 SHAT, carton 10H4322. “Compte-rendu sur la pacification: secteur de Mytho,” prepared by Lt-Col Noblet, Cdt le Secteur de MYTHO. Dated 11 Aug 1947. 450 Figure based on map of “Réduction des régions controlées de 1947 à 1949,” in SHAT, carton 10H984. 163

Saigon. In October 1947 French troops of the 10th R.A.C. along with elements from the

G.R.C. were responsible for security. Harassment of their positions was constant; beyond more conventional attacks, on multiple occasions just in this one month alone Viet Minh assailants managed to break into G.R.C.-held posts and either kidnap or slit the throats of the occupants, usually fleeing with stolen arms in the process. At night the French relied on unobserved artillery fire to disperse strong Viet Minh bands assembling under their noses. Viet Minh agents cut telephone lines, kidnapped and killed people along some roads and sabotaged the others.451

Latour undertook several initiatives to attempt to stem the bleeding of his command. He imposed sharp new guidelines to minimize the loss of weapons to the enemy, as the Viet Minh equipped themselves on the main with what they stole from the

French.452 To address the problem of insecurity along Cochinchina’s roads, Latour made them the charge of the commanders of the armored forces and relieved the zones of their maintenance. He gave each unit a set of roads to open on a weekly schedule, allowing at least a semblance of traffic to flow out from Saigon. Under this scheme, for example, the

5th Cuirassiers opened and secured the route from Saigon to Dalat on Mondays and

Thursdays and cleared the way to Ban Me Thuot on Tuesdays and Wednesday.453

His second move was to expand and reinforce the system of surrogates begun under Nyo. He started in September by moving eight Cao Dai “flying brigades” out to

451 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu bi-mensuel: periode du 8 au 31 Octobre 1947,” prepared by Lieutenant Froitier, Officier de Renseignements, 1/10e R.A.C. 452 SHAT, carton 10H985. “Instructions pour le combat et la pacification dans le Vietnam-Sud.” Prepared by General Boyer de Latour. Reprinted for use by the F.T.S.V. in 1952 under the auspices of General Bondis. 453 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Situation des unités blindées de Cochinchine, Août 1947.” Prepared by the État-major – 3e Bureau. 164 the Ca Mau peninsula to make up for French retractions and to divert attention from the brutal fight the Viet Minh were still waging against their Hoa Hao defectors.454 Also, like in Tonkin, Cochinchina had a substantial minority of Catholics around which Latour believed he could build a concerted node of support for the French-backed government.

Their most significant presence was in the province of Ben Tre where they constituted perhaps 10 percent of the population.455 Ben Tre also had a wonderful go-between in the form of Jean Leroy, whom we met earlier during the initial French attacks to retake My

Tho. A métis, i.e. of mixed French and Vietnamese stock, Leroy had served in the Garde indochinoise during the Japanese occupation.456 In February 1946 Leroy led a band of

Vietnamese partisans and seized the island of An Hoa in Ben Tre province from the Viet

Minh. He then was elected as an administrative delegate from Binh Dai, his hometown and a region with a strong Catholic presence.457

Having proved his reliability and competence, Leroy was authorized to form three

“Catholic Brigades” in October 1947 with a total strength of about 2,000 men. They would be remunerated according to the Cao Dai pay scales and put to work primarily in

Ben Tre.458 The actual Catholic bishops of Ben Tre were alarmed by Leroy’s activities.

His motto for his troops – “Pro Deo et Patria” (For God and Country) – undermined the studied neutrality they hoped to maintain vis-à-vis the Viet Minh. Leroy obliged them

454 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. 455 Mai Elliott, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Nguyễn Thị Định, No Other Road to Take: Memoirs of Mrs. Nguyễn Thị Định, trans., Mai V. Elliott (Cornell: Southeast Asia Program Publications, 1976), 9. 456 Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 272. 457 Savani, 124. 458 SHAT, carton 10H2217. “Note de service: création de brigades catholiques.” Dated 19 Oct 1947. Prepared by General Latour, Commandant les troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud; “Note de Service No. 527/3,” dated 27 Oct 1947. Prepared by General Chanson, Commandant l’AD/3 et la Zone Centre. 165 only slightly by changing the name of his units to the Unités mobiles de defense des

Chrétientés (Mobile Units for the Defense of Christendom) or U.M.D.C.459 Whatever their title, Leroy’s men proved quite capable. By April 1948 the U.M.D.C. would expand to 10 brigades and move some of its elements outside of Ben Tre.460 Within Ben Tre itself Leroy pursued a dual strategy of reform measures – i.e. building schools, clinics, imposing rent controls – and exemplary violence.461 It is hard to gauge which was more effective, but results were nonetheless forthcoming and the “paix Leroy” (Leroy peace) soon prevailed. In August 1948 Latour named Leroy a Capitaine Suppletif; by February

1949 he would be a Chef de Bataillon and virtual master of Ben Tre with his headquarters at An Hoa complete with a Vietnamese staff and a training center for his troops.462

The last initiative was a reorganization of Latour’s staff. The new commander found the T.F.I.S. staff in Saigon bloated and unwieldy, stuck in poor habits and slow to respond to changing situations. Against considerable opposition Latour ordered the size of the staff reduced by a third. He then relieved a major source of that opposition and replaced his chief of staff with a new man, Lieutenant-colonel Édouard Méric. Méric was the commander of the Ben Tre sector at the time of his elevation. It was probably through him that Latour became aware of the opportunities to be afforded by using Jean

Leroy. He was a long service officer of the 3rd R.E.I. (Régiment étranger d'infanterie),

459 Mai Elliott, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Định, 10. 460 Despite the title, after the initial three the additional U.M.D.C. “brigades” each had a nominal strength of only about 60 men, making them companies rather than brigades by Western measures. SHAT, carton 10H2217. “Note 364/IP,” dated 6 April 1948. Prepared by Capitaine Boss, Inspecteur des forces suppletives; “Mise sur pied des brigades de Sampans,” dated 30 Sept 1948. Prepared by Colonel Redon, Commandant la Zone Ouest. 461 Mai Elliott, “Translator’s Introduction,” in Định, 13. 462 Savani., 125; SHAT, carton 10H2217. “Note de Service: Centre d’instruction des unités mobiles de défense des Chrétientés,” dated 29 Aug 1948. Prepared by Général de Brigade Latour, Commandant les troupes françaises en Indochine Sud. 166 but was an odd choice for the position.463 Latour admitted in his memoirs that Méric was a poor organizer – never a good thing for a chief of staff – and so had to provide him with an administratively savvy subordinate in the form of an artillery lieutenant-colonel named

Radix.

What Méric did have, according to Latour, was the “gift of imagination.”464 He was a welter of ideas – some good, some bad, all interesting. In his capacity as the second in command of the 3rd R.E.I. Méric had conducted an extensive review of the situation in Ben Tre at the end of 1946.465 What he found was an army struggling to adapt its skill at “European war” to the exigencies of the conflict in Cochinchina.

Commanders at the level of sub-sector and quarter had as their base mission the destruction of Viet Minh bands operating within their areas of operation. They did not, however, have the means to accomplish this. Ben Tre, like most of Cochinchina, is swamp, crisscrossed with rivers, canals and rachs. Viet Minh bands could run amuck and then easily retreat beyond reach by burning the simple wooden bridges that spanned most waterways. He determined that local commanders were not neglecting their mission; they simply had no other real choice. Méric noted that just the maintenance of their posts and a semblance of route security required all their energies.

463 Méric was also married to Marie-Madeleine Fourcade, who was the head of the one of France’s largest resistance networks during the war. Their marriage, unfortunately, ended this same year. See Marie- Madeline Fourcade, Noah's Ark: The Secret Underground (New York: Kensington Publishing Corp, 1974). 464 Boyer de Latour, 45. 465 What follows concerning Méric’s opinions on Indochina are gleaned from his report of December 1946. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Rapport de tournée effectuée du 17 au 20 Décembre dans la region du sous- secteur de Ben Tre (Quartier du Batri, Quartier d’An Hoa, Quartier de Mocay).” Prepared by Lieutenant- Colonel Méric, Commandant en second le 3ème R.E.I. Dated 22 December 1946. 167

He began with straightforward material recommendations. Line infantry needed river craft down to the level of the quarter. Troops required light vehicles, like jeeps, not heavy trucks likely to get stuck if they ventured even slightly off the roads. Engineers needed to replace rickety wooden structures with substantial metal treadway bridges to facilitate traffic and patrols. And finally those patrols, often small and operating far from support, needed radios.

There were deeper criticisms as well. At base Méric found the French modus operandi for Indochina wrongheaded. The assumptions of war based on the experience of World War II needed to be reevaluated. The T.F.I.S. required a reordering of perspective, far beyond mere technical or tactical adaptation. Rather shockingly for a

Frenchman, Méric encouraged his compatriots to try and think of themselves as

American-style “entrepreneurs.” It was even more off-putting coming from a legionnaire. The Legion had a sterling reputation for marching straight into the teeth of a fight and battering down opponents or dying in the attempt; most of the art of subtlety or finesse, however, was someone else’s bailiwick. And yet Méric argued that, stripped of operational preconceptions, an officer so oriented could take stock of what was actually at hand and come to sensible solutions, reduce “overhead” where possible and carry on an effort solely where it would be most “profitable.” As Latour would later order, Méric suggested that large staffs – appropriate to highly articulated, resource-intensive

European war – be drastically reduced in size.

Méric also argued that officers no longer think so much about “time” as a crucial factor in their operations. Of course conventionally speaking, time in war is crucial. No

168 less than Napoleon himself had defined strategy as “the art of making use of time and space.” And for Napoleon time was the more critical element. “I am less concerned about the latter than the former,” he quipped. “Space we can recover, lost time never.”466

World War II had born out the importance of time. Rapidity of planning and action were generally better than minute preparation and ponderous operations. The French themselves learned this lesson the hard way. Onerous preparations in the form of the

Maginot Line and its accompanying doctrine of “methodical,” defensive battle, born from their brutal losses and offensively stillborn World War I experience, served them badly in the opening gambit of a new style of war in 1940.467 The Nazis reduced once proud

France, the victor of World War I, to a satellite state. This first-order failure thoroughly discredited defensiveness in all its forms and facets within de Gaulle’s Free French. To the metropolitan military mindset, therefore, Méric was advocating for a return to the defeatist tendencies of 1940. In his report he argued that it was more important to “act continually and patiently” (emphasis in original) than to move quickly, “for the war

[would be] long.”

In any other circumstances this perspective would have likely raised eyebrows.

Colonial and metropolitan views on warfare could diverge rather significantly, and only came forcibly crashing back together with the amalgamation of all forces available within

466 Napoleon quoted in David G. Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon: The Mind and Method of History's Greatest Soldier (New York: Scribner, 1966), 149. 467 Robert A. Doughty, Pyrrhic Victory: French Strategy and Operations in the Great War (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2005), see conclusion; Robert A. Doughty, The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940 (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1990). Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), Chap 4 (France). And most important, Robert A. Doughty, The Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939 (Hamden: Archon Books, 1985). 169 the loose structure of the Free French.468 But the senior officers in Cochinchina were of colonial stock, as was Méric. In fact, in his report he made explicit reference to what the

French had accomplished over many years of dutiful labor in North Africa. Like in

Morocco, Méric thought it wise to establish as soon as possible a Service des affaires indigènes capable of providing cadres and cultural experts for locally raised troop contingents; the Moroccan experience had shown that local troops without proper oversight were notoriously unreliable.469 This was classic French colonial warfare, the hallmark of which had always been to “recruter sur place.”470 Indeed most of the pacification of Morocco had to be accomplished with troops raised in North Africa. With the exception of the Foreign Legion, large bodies of European troops were rarely on hand, especially after the initial conquest. And so colonial officers had become accustomed to working closely with and adapting to local attitudes in order to make the most of the soldiers available to them. Many officers in Indochina, however, were dismissive of partisan (local) troops. Méric chastised them for acting towards partisans as if they were “discount soldiers” suitable only for manual labor. In his (and Latour’s) view these men were indispensable to the task in Cochinchina. As in earlier colonial campaigns, Méric did not believe France would ever supply a sizable enough quantity of metropolitan infantry for use overseas. It would be up to commanders on the ground to

468 After their existence as troupes de marine under the authority of the Ministry of the Navy, these forces were redubbed the troupes coloniale in 1900 and though they were placed under the authority now of the Ministry of War, they were entirely separate from the metropolitan army. Les Troupes de Marine, 1622- 1984 (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1986), 54. 469 Porch, The Conquest of Morocco, 186. 470 To recruit locally. Montagnon, 188. 170 find their own troops and over time add them to the “ossature solide” provided by the regulars.

Méric did not believe this would be easy. At the level of the sector and sub-sector commanders would need to focus their energies on constructing posts and “effectively controlling” the nearby population. From there would proceed the drive to open and control Cochinchina’s transport network, both terrestrial and waterborne, by the construction of new posts along the critical arteries. What commanders would not be able to do was destroy significant enemy formations. This, Méric concluded, could not be accomplished at less than the regimental level; in other words, with more troops than were ever available for mobile operations.

Even this final caveat did not remain strictly true. The early portion of 1948 would afford Latour and his new chief of staff an attempt at the destruction of the principal Viet Minh redoubt at the far eastern edge of the Plain of Reeds. With the failure of Operation LEA – the attempt to decapitate the communist hierarchy in Tonkin – the commander-in-chief, Jean Valluy, was recalled to France. Sadly for Latour it seems the failure of LEA had convinced Valluy that a slow march begun in Cochinchina was now the only way forward.471 His interim replacement, however, was Raoul Salan, the operational commander for LEA. Salan carried out his former boss’s intent in terms of geography, but not in terms of tone. Seeing how near-run a thing LEA had been (Salan had quite nearly captured Ho Chi Minh and his principal military commander, Vo

471 According to Latour Valluy intended before his recall to “faire désormais l’effort dans le sud …pour remonter ensuite lentement et progressivement vers le nord.” Boyer de Latour, 97. 171

Nguyen Giap) the corps new chef opted for a similar gambit in the south.472 The place des giongs was the obvious target. There the leadership of Zone VII had ensconced itself along with a number of its principal units and the main portion of its logistical and governmental infrastructure. The goals were to destroy the main units stationed in this region, to “ruin” the area for Viet Minh further use, and if possible capture or kill Nguyen

Binh.473 To this end Salan dispatched south four infantry battalions and an artillery group.

Latour protested that the time was not right, that a rapid decision was not possible. Salan overrode him and pressed forward, hoping to exploit the remaining days of the dry season in the south. They dubbed the operation VEGA. With aid from the north Latour amassed nine infantry and two parachute battalions in addition to significant quantities of artillery, aviation and riverine assets, or 4,800 men all told.474 If successful,

VEGA would tear a gaping hole in the communist war effort. As the French suspected and would learn more fully after the operation, the targeted area was home to virtually everything Nguyen Binh had been building in Cochinchina since his arrival. Beyond

Binh’s own headquarters, the region of the giongs was home to strong elements of eight different chi doi as well as numerous independent companies. There were also Binh’s military school for cadet training, his topographical section, supply headquarters

472 de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 145. 473 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Ordre d’Opération: VEGA,” dated 12 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt-Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant l’OPÉRATION “VEGA.” 474 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’Opération “VEGA”. Dated 23 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt- Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant la 13e D.B.L.E, Secteur de HOC MON, Commandant l’opération “VEGA.” 172 including financial section and armaments manufacturing operation, prison camp, Viet

Minh judicial section and propaganda arm.475

Latour gave direction of the operation to his sector commander for Hoc Mon and the head of the 13th D.B.L.E., Lt-Colonel Gabriel Brunet de Sairigné. The T.F.I.S. commander had met Sairigné in November 1944 in the Vosges Mountains when his

Legion battalion came to the aid of Latour’s goumiers in a critical moment amid a driving snowstorm.476 From an old family of the Vendee, de Sairigné was a force within the

Foreign Legion. He had entered the Second World War as a lieutenant and left it a lieutenant colonel. During that time he participated in nearly every Legion operation from the descent on Narvik in 1940, to his escape to England when France fell where he pledged to “fire the last cartridge” if necessary against the Germans, to Bir Hakim in

Libya in 1942, to the liberation of Lyon in 1944. 477 At the time of VEGA he was only

35 years old, but certainly well-versed in the craft of warfighting.

Sairginé knew VEGA would be tough going. In the first place the element of surprise – so important if the goals of the operation were to be achieved – would be a difficult thing to maintain. A similar, though much smaller venture, had been launched into the giongs in 1947 at nearly the same time with thoroughly mixed results. The much larger scale of VEGA would make maintaining the element of surprise even more difficult. Sairiginé limited aerial reconnaissance of the area to help prevent tipping his

475 The units present either in part or in totality in the vicinity of operation were chi doi 1, 5, 6 (one company), 11, 12, 13, 15, 23, 25. See Annex II of SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’Opération “VEGA”. Dated 23 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt-Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant la 13e D.B.L.E, Secteur de HOC MON, Commandant l’opération “VEGA.” 476 Boyer de Latour, 89. 477 See André-Paul Comor’s forward to Gabriel Brunet de Sairigné, Les Carnets du Lieutenant-Colonel Brunet de Sairigné (Paris: Les Nouvelles éditions latines, 1990), 12-17. 173 hand, but it would be extremely difficult to hide the arrival of reinforcements from

Tonkin or the movement of the two squadrons of amphibious landing craft (36 vehicles)

– or “crabes” as the French called them – from their yards near Saigon. There was also the movement of elements of four dinassauts and three armored platoons meant to secure the waterborne and land routes to the various jumping off points.

The operation itself was conceived of as a “complete encirclement” of the giongs region beginning on 14 February 1948. On the 14th the units were to step off and attack toward their objectives, trying their utmost to bring to battle and destroy as many Viet

Minh units as possible. The next two days would witness an assiduous combing over of the landscape for caches, encampments, and remaining enemy forces. By the 17th and

18th, having captured or destroyed anything of value to the enemy, the battalions would fall back on their starting points and withdraw. For a scheme of maneuver Sairigné envisioned three sweeping pincer movements, the main effort of which went into the far south where the French rightly suspected the largest portion of Zone VII personnel to be located. The highly choreographed maneuver was perfectly emblematic of French tactical proclivities at the time. Not only would ground-based infantry battalions move in on three sides, but airborne troops were dropped to seal the trap while the amphibious squadrons smashed across the water-logged terrain to tighten the noose and evacuate the wounded. Sairigné declared the entire area of the operation to be a “zône de guerre.”

Anyone attempting to flee could be shot.478

478 The only exceptions to this were those units, principally to the northwest, who would traverse Cambodian territory. Sairigné directed these men to show greater discretion. SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Ordre d’Opération: VEGA,” dated 12 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt-Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant l’OPÉRATION “VEGA.” 174

Figure 8. Operation VEGA (Feb 1948)

175

The actual execution was problematic. Paratroops landing on Drop Zone #2 (DZ) found it covered in anti-personnel bamboo stakes. These were utterly ineffective. The second wave of troops into DZ 1, however, found their jump delayed by a thick haze over the objective. When they did go in the descent was far too rapid (the French attributed it to the heat of the day). Numerous paratroopers were seriously injured; the crabs had to evacuate them. The line battalions found themselves more opposed by the marshy terrain than by the Viet Minh. The 3rd/13th D.B.L.E, the Annamite Battalion, the 5th/R.T.M. and the amphibious units encountered some opposition, but not anywhere close to what they had expected or desired. In total the French killed only 150 combatants and suffered 10

KIA themselves, though eight of those were killed in the botched jump into DZ 1. The combat that did occur was hindered by problems of communication and coordination.

The undifferentiated swath of swampland left maps all but useless. Aerial photography helped in terms of navigation but seriously handicapped commanders’ ability to request and adjust indirect fire support, since their photos did not allow for easily laying on of map-oriented artillery batteries. Radio problems greatly handicapped aviation support.

Units could not maintain contact with aircraft flying in support. Fighter-bombers frequently could not identify the unit for which they were searching, or their targets.

Morane observation planes attempted to ameliorate this situation ad hoc by guiding attack aircraft on to their targets, but they generally flew too high to do this effectively; it seems the coordination of air support using this method had not been practiced beforehand.479

479 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’Opération “VEGA”. Dated 23 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt- Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant la 13e D.B.L.E, Secteur de HOC MON, Commandant l’opération “VEGA.” 176

For the purposes of VEGA, however, even had the various arms been more closely coordinated, it is unlikely it would have much mattered. The simple fact was that

Nguyen Binh and his men were, by and large, no longer there when VEGA began.

Prisoner interrogations conducted during and after the operation as well as a trove of captured documents made clear that Binh had been apprehensive about an operation directed against the giongs for the previous two or three months. Whatever exactly it was that tipped off Binh to the imminent approach of VEGA remains unknown; it was probably a number of things in concert. In any event, Binh ordered the evacuation of the region on 9 February. Binh himself did not leave until the 12th.480 Most of the units to the south began to withdrawal on the night of the 13th, just as VEGA was set to begin.

The Viet Minh rearguard that Binh left in place amounted to no more than 400 or 500 men and most of these still managed to escape. On the level of its first goal – the destruction of the armed forces of Zone VII – VEGA must be counted an abject failure.

Sairigné could claim much more success for the second goal: the destruction of the Zone VII base area. Despite their suspicions the Viet Minh did not begin their withdrawal early enough to save the entirety of their war materiel. The destruction was extensive. Sairigné savaged Binh’s armament production facilities, no small concern for a Viet Minh organization that relied on local manufacture for a great deal of its weaponry, particularly explosives. Along with the components for thousands of grenades, the French seized mines, mortar rounds, cartridges for small arms and 600

480 See Annex II, “Renseignements.” “Ordre confidentiel,” prepared by Nguyen Binh (French translation), dated 9 Feb 1948 in SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’Opération “VEGA”. Dated 23 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt-Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant la 13e D.B.L.E, Secteur de HOC MON, Commandant l’opération “VEGA.” 177 kilograms of high-grade dynamite. The French also captured and destroyed building materials, gasoline, and six unit hospitals worth of hard-to-come-by medical supplies.

Most devastating, perhaps was the loss of rice and the ability to transport it. Sairigné’s men captured 32 junks (most of which were loaded with rice) and 100 sampans. They also seized approximately 250 tons of rice elsewhere, in addition to sizable quantities of salt, sugar, eggs and milk. Everything that the French could not carry away they put to the torch.481

Though the T.F.I.S. made no attempt to occupy the giongs, VEGA forced the cadres and troops of Zone VII to abandon their principal base area. The Nam Bo committee continued to operate out of the western reaches of the Plain of Reeds for a time, but never again would they have the same amount of forces so close to the center of

Cochinchina. In coming years this loss would facilitate the split of the Viet Minh resistance into eastern and western halves without the luxury of a centralized hub through which communications could be realized. The advantage of the area had always been that it offered accessibility to the heartland of Cochinchina while remaining inaccessible to their adversaries. VEGA certainly challenged that assumption. After the operation ended it was too difficult and too risky to remain there in force any longer.482

Viet Minh revenge came quickly. In the early morning on 1 March the convoy for

Dalat departed Saigon loaded with soldiers and civilians alike, among them a sizable portion of Vietnamese women and children. Lt-colonel de Sairigné also traveled with the

481 See “Annexe 1: bilan de l’opération des GIONGS,” in SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’Opération “VEGA”. Dated 23 Feb 1948. Prepared by Lt-Colonel de Sairigné, Commandant la 13e D.B.L.E, Secteur de HOC MON, Commandant l’opération “VEGA.” 482 Bùi Thanh Vân, Lịch Sử Bộ Tham Mưu Quân Khu 7 Miền Đông Nam Bộ (1945-1975) (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Quân Đội Nhân Dân, 1994), 57. 178 convoy that day. He was in his jeep with two other legionnaires. Behind them they pulled a trailer carrying a baby bed. It was for his new daughter living with his wife in the relative calm of the popular resort city.483 As they traveled to the east of Bien Hoa, just near the beginning of the mountainous region of Annam the convoy fell under fierce and repeated attack. Huỳnh Văn Nghệ, the commander of chi doi 10, selected his site well. The road there became thin and tortuous. It was dominated by high ground and thick brush obscured the route from aerial observation. The convoy itself was nearly seven kilometers long and its occupants fatigued. Harassment and blockages of the route closer to Saigon had gravely delayed their movement. As they arrived at the ambush spot it was already late in the day.

The attack began when the convoy commander’s vehicle, a scout-car, ran over a mine around 1630 hours. The commander was immediately killed in the explosion and his radio, one of the few in the convoy, destroyed. Huynh Van Nghe’s men, nearly 500 strong and positioned above the road where they could survey the action, immediately opened fire, raking the now trapped vehicles with machine-gun fire and grenades.484 In the opening fusillade, Sairigné was shot through the neck, arms and legs.485 With vehicles burning everywhere and unable to extricate itself from the kill zone, the convoy’s escort troops struggled to maintain their position. The terrain hindered effective radio communication, as did a rainstorm that broke over the beleaguered travelers. Distress calls had to be relayed from post to post in order to reach back to Bien

483 André-Paul Comor’s forward to Brunet de Sairigné, 21. 484 SHAT, carton 10H4255. “Declaration du prisonnier Nguyen Van Lu dit Lai, agent de liaison du Service de propagande de la province de Bien-Hoa,” taken prisoner by 13th D.B.L.E. on 3 March 1948. 485 André-Paul Comor’s forward in Brunet de Sairigné, 21. 179

Hoa, the closest station from which aid could come. This process took nearly an hour.

When news reached Saigon another 45 minutes after that, attack aviation scrambled out of Tan Son Nhut, but could make out little in the deep jungle of the ambush site.

Meanwhile two battalions – one paratroop, one Moroccan – set out from Bien

Hoa. Additional reinforcements were called for from Xuan Loc to the south of the ambush, but the storm prevented the relay of instructions until 1900 hours. The relief forces did not reach the stricken convoy for another two hours. They found the convoy a collection of smoking hulks.

Latour flew into the site in early the next morning. There were nearly sixty destroyed vehicles littered along the deathly stretch of road.486 In his memoirs the general recounts the “staggering spectacle” of the burned out convoy littered with the

“half-charred” bodies of women and children.487 The Viet Minh kidnapped a great many people as well. Over the next few days Latour directed up to five battalions into the forests to search out and find the missing. The Moroccans, in particular, caught their quarry unawares and forced the Viet Minh to flee in haste, leaving most of their prisoners

(over 140 people) behind in the process.488 Not everyone was found, however. Ten

French civilians disappeared into the jungle never to return, as did fifteen Vietnamese.

Forty-six civilians, mostly Vietnamese, died in the attack. Military losses were five killed, eleven wounded and one missing.489 Sairigné’s body was never recovered.

486 SHAT, carton 10H4255. “Declaration du prisonnier Nguyen Van Lu dit Lai, agent de liaison du Service de propagande de la province de Bien-Hoa,” taken prisoner by 13th D.B.L.E. on 3 March 1948. 487 Boyer de Latour, 88. 488 SHAT, carton 10H4255. Unsigned report on “convoi Dalat.” 489 Boyer de Latour, 87-88. 180

VEGA was a failure; the attack on the Dalat convoy was a professional and personal tragedy for Latour. Several days after the attack he presided over a memorial service for Sairigné. Speaking in front the late officer’s widow, Latour intimated that an

“immense grief” had descended over the French Expeditionary Corps. It certainly descended over Latour. Attempts to destroy the Viet Minh rebellion would not do any longer. Large-scale opérations d’envergure simply required too much. They were resource and manpower intensive; but more importantly, they asked too much of the

T.F.I.S. in terms of intelligence and secrecy. Even if the Deuxième bureau (French military intelligence) could accurately locate the enemy, there was no guarantee they could keep the secret of their own designs.

In short, these types of operations hung on prediction, and predictions, Herbert

Simon, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, reminds us, “are commonly the weakest point in our armor.”490 Our ability to forecast the future is bad enough with unthinking phenomenon; add in a dynamic, adaptable enemy and achieving the necessary prerequisites usually recedes beyond our grasp. Military operations, indeed most human problems, are “ill structured” or, to use today’s more common parlance, complex in that they defy rigid quantification and are not subject to any real discernible laws by which fixed, prescriptive action can be maintained. The response to this kind of situation can come in one of two forms: the active response is to invest massive resources to overwhelm the issue; the more apparently passive is to restrict the size of the problem for

490 Simon, 149. 181 the time being, engage in simpler, well-rehearsed activities, and wait for the situation to develop, in this case for the opponent to demonstrate some weakness.491

In the near term, trying another VEGA was an impossibility. Following close on the heels of the Dalat convoy disaster several companies of Hoa Hao dissenters who objected to the French-sponsored leadership of Tran Van Soai killed their French advisors and deserted their posts.492 By the mid-point of April the so-called “Hoa Hao crisis” had become so dire that Latour was compelled to send the bulk of his operational reserve to western Cochinchina to salvage the situation and assure Tran Van Soai’s authority.493

By necessity, opportunity and inclination Latour began a restrained program of pacification in Cochinchina that would cover the rest of his tenure. He was aided in this by the appointment of a new commander-in-chief, Roger Blaizot. Blaizot took command in April and resolved once more to carry on the war decisively in Tonkin. For Latour this would mean the diminution of resources again, but also a measure of salutary neglect as to the manner in which he carried on his campaign. Blaizot was occupied fully with

Tonkin. This disinterest – Latour chose to interpret it as confidence – also allowed the

T.F.I.S. commander to serve simultaneously as Commissioner for the Republic in

Cochinchina, thus combining both military and civil power into one man, a perhaps not

491 See “Colloquium with H.A. Simon,” in Herbert A. Simon et al., Economics, Bounded Rationality and the Cognitive Revolution (Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing, Inc., 1992), 28-30. 492 SHAT, carton 10H906. “No. 329/GEN.” Prepared by General de Latour, commandant les Troupes Françaises d’Indochine Sud. Dated 31 Mar 1948. 493 de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 181. 182 unconscious throw-back to the days when French admirals ruled in the south.494 What happened in Cochinchina could be of only episodic concern to the commander up north.495

What did happen was not, strictly speaking, planned. In many respects Latour’s pacification methodology was directly inspired by previous French colonial endeavors.

As he wanted to carry it out, Latour’s scheme conformed to a typical tâche d’huile (oil slick) concept, and was therefore inherently offensive, albeit slow to develop. Much like

Lyautey or Gallieni, Latour wanted to “submerge [a] province with massive regular formations” in order destroy the rebel bands located therein. From there the troops would seize the vital points, fortify them, establish route security and begin the process of building local government with an eye to creating security based on locally-recruited agents. These men would eventually be formed into self-defense units and security for their homes placed in their charge. Once security was firmly established, regular formations would be withdrawn and placed back into the “masse de pacification.” It was then only a matter of repeating the steps above in the adjacent province.496

As a practical matter, even this scheme was not executable. Surplus formations were never on hand in sufficient quantities. Local crises or northern adventures continued to sap T.F.I.S. reserves. The Hoa Hao crisis has already been mentioned.

494 Brocheux and Hémery, 26. 495 For example in December 1948 Blaizot took umbrage with Latour’s conduct of the war in Cochinchina. He disagreed with using units he had designated as part of “groupes mobiles” in fixed locations and implored Latour to find “active” measures to deal with the enemy. The implication, of course, was that Latour’s policies were too passive. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Mesures d’urgence à prendre pour parer à toute tentative de dissidence en Cochinchine,” prepared by Roger Blaizot, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient. Dated 4 December 1948. 496 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Rapport sur la pacification en Cochinchine,” prepared by Le Général de Division de Latour, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 20 August 1949. 183

Then in August Latour was compelled to send a battalion away to restore order in

Phnom-Penh. This was later increased to three battalions.497 In October 1948 Latour would lose more troops, three more battalions to Tonkin in addition to an artillery group and engineers for a total of about 3,000 men. He complained bitterly about the constant demands made on his command for the benefit of the war in Tonkin. “Before such a shortage of means,” he asked Blaizot plaintively, “how can I maintain the current position and not renounce all new extensions?”498

The answer, of course, was that he could not. For all intents and purposes

Latour’s focus could never really move beyond the so-called “old provinces,” the core territories of Cochinchina, and the routes that connected them to the outside world. It was a thoroughly defensive orientation. In most of these areas three-quarters of the troops on hand were entirely tied down in static defense duties. Each battalion was supposed to maintain at least one company free as a mobile reserve, but this did not always prove feasible. In Zone East, Latour lamented, a battalion was lucky to have a reserve of more than a section.499

Latour’s problem was directly analogous to what his chief-of-staff, Méric, had observed in 1946 at the level of the sector. It is a consummate feature of complex problems that they display a certain self-similarity regardless of scale. In more conventional conflicts like World War II, we would expect that the higher one goes in the chain of command the more difficult the problem faced, whereas the sub-components of

497 The first battalion siphoned off was Algerians; the subsequent formations were all Chasseurs cambodgien. Boyer de Latour, 108. 498 SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Latour to Gen. Cdt TFEO. Dated 1 Oct 1948. 499 SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Latour to Gen. Cdt TFEO. Dated 1 Oct 1948 184 an army (or any organization) are specifically designed to handle smaller, simpler components of the more intractable whole; that is to say, Eisenhower’s job was infinitely more difficult conceptually than was that of a tank battalion commander.500 What France and later the United States faced in Vietnam was a situation in which complexity inhered in the situation to the same degree regardless of what scale from which one observed the issue. Though more people and greater territory were at stake for Latour than for his zone or sector commanders, the contours of their problems were perfectly symmetrical otherwise and equally vexing.501 Under such circumstances the normal ability of hierarchical organizations to break down and manage problem solving is severely impaired.502

Despite the continued rhetoric of hunting down and destroying “rebel bands” at every level, in practice this was not realizable. Appreciation of their limitations on the part of sector commanders was too profound. They had to content themselves with something less than the putative object of war, i.e. that the “aim is to disarm the enemy;” that at base war is “an act of force to compel the enemy to do our will.”503 Of course

Clausewitz directly adds the caveat to this apparent prescription that “[s]o long I have not overthrown my opponent I am bound to fear he may overthrow me. Thus I am not in control…” The natural military response – and we might add Enlightenment response –

500 James March and Herbert A. Simon, Organizations, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1993), 173. 501 Benoît Mandlebrot’s exposition of self-similarity across scale in his exposition of fractal geometry is the most famous use of this idea. Gleick, 103. 502 Yaneer Bar-Yam, Making Things Work: Solving Complex Problems in a Complex World (Cambridge: Knowledge Press, 2004), 99. See section on “Complexity and scale in warfare.” 503 Clausewitz, 75,77. 185 to that unenviable position is to redouble one’s efforts to assert control. What the French were learning, however, was how to live out of control, as it were.

It is interesting to note how much of Méric’s remarks from 1946 were stated in economic terms. We have already mentioned his invocation of an entrepreneurial spirit as an important aspect of success for the French officer. Latour even picked up on this language, calling the various aligned sects “véritable entrepreneurs de pacification.”504

Méric employed this terminology again when he discussed the course sector commanders had adopted given their inability to come to grips with the Viet Minh. Their emphasis on route security and the maintenance of their own positions Méric called the “solution optima,” the optimum solution.

It was not, in fact, the optimum solution, far from it. Clearly the best of worlds would have been for the commanders to hunt down and destroy the Viet Minh bands in their areas of operation. Of the range of conceivable outcomes, that would have been optimum. What Méric meant, however, was that the course of action adopted was the best available to the commanders, given their limited means and limited intelligence about enemy location and activities. It was not “optimum,” it was “satisfactory,” with local commanders perforce abandoning optimal solutions in favor of good enough ones.

They were, to borrow Herbert Simon’s neologism, “satisficing.” This idea is, in brief, that humans can rarely pursue or even devise optimal solutions, and so as a matter of course more frequently opt for sub-optimal behaviors that nevertheless meet certain minimal or

504 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Rapport sur la pacification en Cochinchine,” prepared by Le Général de Division de Latour, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 20 August 1949. 186 satisfactory criteria.505 We cannot really blame Méric for groping after this word. After all, it did not really exist in 1946. Simon would only begin to lay this important groundwork for behavioral economics and its associated terminology in 1947 with his publication of Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-making Processes in

Administrative Organizations.

It was a seminal work. Prior to Simon classical economics506 – the language that

Méric sought to borrow – concerned itself primarily with the notion of homo economicus

(economic man), the powerfully rational man of the Enlightenment capable of ordering his own future, selecting with near perfect information from among various alternatives so as to maximize his own utility, usually represented as profit.507 Economic theory generally examined the extension of economic man, the firm, and how it related to its external environment, i.e. competition with other firms within a market system. Simon’s work changed the focus from the interactions of firms with one another to the actions within the firm itself.508 With this change came the observation that organizations frequently, even usually content themselves with far less than the pursuit of optimal solutions, and that given the severe limitations under which human rationality actually operates, that the continued pursuit of optimal solutions can be incredibly dangerous for it

505 March and Simon, 162. 506 For our purposes here we are not making and need not make any real distinction between so-called “classical” and “neo-classical” economics. 507 “Economic man” was actually a derisive term coined by his critics for the concept of the narrowly economically-motivated individual found in the writings of John Stuart Mill. Joseph Persky, "Retrospectives: The Ethology of Homo Economicus," The Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 2 (1995): 222. 508 This change was not universal, however. The majority of economic thought continued down another path in which the powers of the putative “economic man” increased dramatically under models which critics would label “hyperrational.” Richard H. Thaler, "From Homo Economicus to Homo Sapiens," The Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no. 1 (2000): 134. 187 proposes a model of human skill and aptitude at variance with man’s more limited reality.509

It is quite notable then that Méric chose to couch his strategic analysis in classical economic terms even as he grasped for something beyond the standard formulations.

That Herbert Simon was much more famously doing the same thing a world away perhaps speaks to a powerful, if minority strain of thinking among some about an era humbled by the failures of man to prevent the horrors of World War II and less confident about humanity’s ability to plan, pave and parade its way bravely into the future.

This was not, however, the majority report, especially among policy makers, high government officials and senior allied military leaders. For these groups the war seemed to confirm the powers of governments given adequate direction and coordination. In general the years following the war were typified by “general planning optimism” in the field of economics.510 These were, of course, the decades of the “Keynesian revolution.”511 In strategy as well, the U.S. drive to victory, its ability to see the end of the war from the beginning, was as remarkable as it was exceptional.512 This optimism even extended into the French military, where one would assume, a good deal of sangfroid should have prevailed after the travails of World War II.513 Of course, the

509 Simon has noted that systems too highly dependent on prediction run the real risk of being subjected to “undamped oscillation” and that it is occasionally beneficial, if counterintuitive to “omit prediction entirely…unless the quality of predictions is high,” which for military operations is a terribly difficult thing to achieve. Simon, 149. 510 Agnar Sandmo, Economics Evolving: A History of Economic Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 329. 511 Sandmo, 339. 512 David Rigby, Allied Master Strategists: The Combined Chiefs of Staff in World War II (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2012), 210. 513 In the early 1960s no less than General André Beaufre, veteran of all the aforementioned wars, described strategy as the “method of thought permitting the choosing and the prioritizing of events, then the 188

French educational system and general culture had long vaunted the opposite perspective.

Gallic schooling in science and engineering, that system which had produced so many army officers, stressed centralization and an abstract Cartesian ethic that downplayed the value of the independent entrepreneur.514

But the endgame is not always clear, and neither are the policy prescriptions.

French policy in Indochina was maddeningly opaque for the commanders involved. In the first few years of the war French policy toward Cochinchina had devolved upon the

High-Commissioner who, as we have seen, chose to pursue a goal of an independent, separatist Cochinchina. By late 1947, however, as Latour and Méric were trying to navigate the parameters of their situation, French policy shifted once more. As French political leadership despaired of a workable military solution to the Indochina problem they hoped for a diplomatic coup to restore their fortunes. French leadership, particularly Léon Pignon, posited that a significant plurality of independence-minded

Vietnamese could be pulled away from the Viet Minh, if a leader of acceptable nationalist credentials could be found. Their solution was the emperor Bao Dai. Though a profligate playboy, he enjoyed not inconsiderable support among certain non- communist nationalist factions within Vietnam. Moreover, if the French would opt for an independent, unified Vietnam with Bao Dai as its head, they could effectively rebrand the

choosing of the most effective procedure.” He went so far in his work to eventually reduce strategy to a formula with few variables. In Beaufre’s work, originally published in 1963, he argues that strategy can be calculated by S = KF Ψt. In this case K is a “specific factor of the particular case,” F stands for the material forces involved, Ψ is the moral force and t is time. Beaufre, 24, 176-177. 514 Margaret C. Jacob, Scientific Culture and the Making of the Industrial West (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 170-173. 189 war to the world as less a colonial struggle, and more a fight against international

Communism.515

The French reached an initial agreement with Bao Dai in December 1947. A formal, provisional centralized government representing Tonkin, Annam and

Cochinchina came into being in March 1948.516 Whatever increased legitimacy it offered the French effort, it also scuttled the hopes of the separatist bourgeoisie of Saigon and irrevocably committed the French to the defeat of the Viet Minh. Now French and

Vietnamese sovereignties were on the line in all parts of Vietnam. Any chance, no matter how slim, of prioritizing within the three Kys was gone. By opting for the “Bao Dai solution” the French openly accepted the Viet Minh premise that a unified, independent

Vietnam was the future and committed them to defending an ideal entirely different from that which had animated the start of the war.

For his part, Latour thought the decision to unite Vietnam was wrong. It undermined Cochinchina’s special status as a French colony, and prevented its full exploitation as the “weak point of the Viet Minh” infrastructure. As he understood it, the union of the three kys strategically committed France to defending all of Indochina. A step-wise war, beginning in Cochinchina and only gradually extending back toward the north, went from an unlikely course of action to total political infeasibility.517 It also

515 Fredrik Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012)., 198-199. 516 See “Bao Dai solution,” in Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 53-54. 517 After the war Latour argued that no occupation of the north should have been contemplated before 1952 at the earliest. Boyer de Latour, 72-74. 190 meant that Latour could not count on serious reserves ever being put at his disposal. His desire to initiate a colonial tâche d’huile scheme would never get off the ground.

Raymond Aron, the French journalist, political scientist, philosopher, interpreter of Clausewitz and scourge of intellectuals, has argued “to survive, this is to conquer.”518

He made this assertion in relation to the prospect of thermonuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and their attendant economic systems. But his basic point was that it was extraordinary difficult to imagine an active strategy involving nuclear arms that could bring about the downfall of the Soviet Union without also destroying the globe.

Aron contended, however, that the West did not need to conquer the communist world. It could afford to wait. Communism, according to Aron, could do no such thing. The so- called “laws of history” dictated constant war, or the credible threat of the same.519

Communism’s existence was predicated on the assumed antagonism of the capitalist,

“imperialist” system and its struggle to eradicate them. Of course the paradox of nuclear weapons meant that there was no clear, direct way to this end. The “revolution” of the proletariat, bound to arrive by certainty of historic materialism, would never arrive.

Rhetoric could never be made reality and so ideology would wear thin until such point as the communist world was forced to recognize the West’s right to exist. At the point at which the Soviet system was compelled to admit its “own limitation” communism as an ideological force “would be dead.”520

518 Raymond Aron, Paix et Guerre entre les Nations (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1962), 654. 519 Aron, 661. 520 Aron, 666. 191

By dint of circumstance this notion was what the T.F.I.S. had to contemplate in

1948. Survival was paramount; everything else hovered out of reach. The outcome, as we have hinted, was a folding in on itself of operational perspective and, for the time being, the shunting aside of long-term questions about defeating the Viet Minh. The short-term answer was to build, to firm up the “ossature” of the T.F.I.S. position as Méric had noted and recommended. Unlike the nuclear dilemma discussed above, it was not that the T.F.I.S. could count on the Viet Minh never to attack; far from it. What they could do that the Viet Minh could not, however, was opt to survive and have that be enough. As we shall see later, the Viet Minh ideology of revolution could not and would not abide the continued existence of a non-communist Vietnamese state. The logic of revolution would not allow it. It had to be destroyed; their attack would come eventually.

Though it does not seem the French in Cochinchina were thinking explicitly in these terms, by turning it on themselves and preparing a powerful, defensive core, the T.F.I.S. was making sure it would be successful when the attack finally did arrive.

Discussing adaptive systems, Herbert Simon would call this an emphasis on homeostasis, to wit, those “mechanisms that make [a] system relatively insensitive to the environment…”521 In organizational terms Simon labeled this manner of activity coordination by feedback as opposed to coordination by plan. In the first method organizational behavior, however affected by routine, is more open-ended. The latter methodology relies on “established schedules” and is relatively insensitive to new

521 Simon, 149. 192 information, or the lack thereof.522 Though it may seem counterintuitive, given that war is, according to Clausewitz, a test of wills, militaries are naturally inclined to coordination by plan.523 Unfortunately for militaries (and unlike almost all other professions) most of their time is spent not fighting. No matter how rigorous the training, what comes about for armies is a series of plans, contingency scenarios in which minute preparation is the order of the day. It has to be this way for in some cases, there is only one roll of the iron dice. The French army in 1940 certainly learned this lesson. On the other side of the coin, one hardly thinks of Italy’s hapless Marshal Graziani (“when the cannon sounds everything will fall into place automatically”) as a competent military professional.524 What was needed in Cochinchina was something in between: a methodology for conduct, but one not so prescriptive as to choke off all alternatives.

Latour’s experience with colonial warfare helped. The normal military concentration on planning comes from a rigid distinction between war and peace. At least since the French Revolution, Europeans on the continent (and Americans) have considered peace the norm and war a brutal exception to the rule. Under this rubric there becomes an ethical imperative to bring war to a conclusion as speedily as possible.525

Protracted war ipso facto takes on the sheen of immortality, whatever the original cause.

However pragmatic strategy may seem, it must, under these circumstances, bend at least

522 March and Simon, 182. 523 Clausewitz, 77. Clausewitz calls war the “collision of two living forces.” 524 Graziani quoted in MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy's Last War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 121. 525 Here I am borrowing David Bell’s argument that the French Revolution marked a watershed in Western history during which peace became normative and war, which prior generations had understood to be man’s basic state of existence, became an aberration to be concluded rapidly, and if possible, banished altogether. See David Avrom Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2007). 193 partially to the dictates of a normative peace. Strategies of decisive victory and unconditional surrender naturally followed in its wake.

This was not the case in colonial warfare; Latour innately understood that. In wars of empire the distinctions between war and peace always blurred. The need to decisively break an opponent, so powerfully felt in continental wars, was unrealistic, even quixotic for the colonial commander chasing tribal leaders and shadowy bandits.

The campaign was frequently an exercise in the management of a state of war, not an exercise to bring about the end of it. If peace happened to break out, so much the better, but few could believe it would last for long, and certainly not into perpetuity. In the colonies it was not states at war with ideas about rationality and legitimate sovereign interests, but civilizations, ways of life, religious philosophies or the endless succession of cantankerous headmen chaffing at the colonial bit. In such a world there could be armistice, but rarely peace.

A defensive orientation for the T.F.I.S. commander was not the dirty word it was for so many others. According to Douglas Porch’s condensation of colonial pacification,

“[t]here were three ways to pacify a country.” According to the first – Porch considers this the self-defeating Spanish/Italian method – the colonial power builds forts in the center of the country and makes no effort to control the unruly. Little is ventured, nothing gained. The second method – at times a French standard – was to launch continual raids until the rebel element “made peace from sheer exhaustion.” The downside naturally was that the enemy and population would come to hold the colonizer

194 in utter contempt. The third – the “Lyautey method” – was to combine the prior two.526

Build forts to establish a zone of security around which economic life could flourish and slowly wick away support from the rebel groups, while raids kept them off balance, ruined economically and incapable of massing against isolated outposts. This was the method Latour perhaps reflexively adotpted.

Latour’s focus was the so-called vielles provinces (old provinces) of Cochinchina:

Saigon, Bien Hoa, Gia Dinh, Go Cong and My Tho. His concentration was that portion

Latour and others referred to as “Cochinchine utile” (useful or gainful Cochinchina).

Effort, Latour maintained, must be tailored to the specific political and economic objectives, particularly the near “complete security” of the capital and control of the rice harvest and other important commodities, such as rubber.527 In these areas the T.F.I.S. embarked on an extensive campaign of fortification. The exact process had actually been pioneered in the western reaches of Cochinchina after a provincial official in Sa Dec noted the ineffectiveness of the local commander’s offensively-minded troop disposition.

By trying to keep too many troops centralized, uncommitted and available for aggressive action, nearly the entire sector was functionally at the mercy of the Viet Minh.528 A new commander in Zone West worked to change things. Colonel Redon, another colonial artilleryman, took over Zone West in April 1948. Taking to heart the need to shore up the T.F.I.S.’ position, Redon began systematically clearing routes in his zone, both

526 Porch, The Conquest of Morocco, 184. 527 SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter No. 668/3-S. Prepared by General de Brigade de Latour, Commandant les Troupes Françaises en Indochine du Sud to Monsieur le General de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême-Orient, dated 10 Aug 1948. 528 SHAT, carton 10H4322. “Essai des nouvelles mesures pour assurer l’ordre et la securité en Cochinchine,” prepared by Ho Van Sao. Dated 1 Jan 1948. 195 terrestrial and aquatic, thus depriving the Viet Minh of places to lay in ambush. He also devised a system of fortification whereby posts were built in groups of threes. A larger,

“mother” post equipped with gendarmes, a radio and machine guns supported two other smaller posts, mostly garrisoned by locals. In the event of an attack the “mother” post could come to the aid of the smaller or call for help from nearby reserves.529

The building campaign across the heart of Cochinchina was prodigious. Lucien

Bodard, surveying the scene at the time, called Latour’s plan “not a war of fresh offensives, but one of public works.” Progressively Cochinchina was transformed into an

“artificial forest of watchtowers.”530 As the T.F.I.S. became more sophisticated under

Latour and in the years to follow, the command published field manuals on the proper construction and stewardship of these posts; over time their design became quite standardized. Main posts were triangle-shaped, situated near villages and capable of offering overlapping fields of fire in all directions. Smaller towers went up every kilometer or so along critical roads. These posts were small, occupied by only a handful of men. Their presence, however, discouraged ambushes along the routes. They were furthermore strong enough to stave off small attacks until reserves or artillery support could arrive from the larger posts.

529 de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951., 181-182. 530 Bodard, L'enlisement, 119-120. 196

Figure 9. Layout and Fields of Fire of Main Post531

Figure 10. Basic Guard tower in Betelnut Wood532

531 SHAT, carton 10H985. Images from tactical manual, entitled “Le Poste,” printed by the F.F.V.S., 1953. 197

Over the course of 1948/49 and on into the tenures of Latour’s successors, the system of fortification extended throughout the central portion of Cochinchina. By 1949

Zone East had roughly 450 towers/posts in operation. In the west it was over 650. In the center there were over 1,300 fortified positions with another 500 or so securing Saigon-

Cholon alone.533 Provinces like Go Cong in the delta, one of the most fertile parts of

Cochinchina, became riddled with towers as the French lined the roads with them and then garrisoned them with partisans or regulars, as need required.

Figure 11. Go Cong Sector Map534

532 SHAT, carton 10H985. “Instructions pour le combat et la pacification en Indochine du Sud: Additif No. 3,” printed in August 1952 by the F.T.S.V under Gen. Bondis. This manual was first printed by the T.F.I.S. under Latour. An original copy of this manual printed during Latour’s tenure is not to be found in the SHAT, as far as I can tell. 533 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 406. 534 Large black dots represent full posts. The smaller dots are guard towers. SHAT, carton 10H908. Map prepared by E.M.I.F.T., 3e Bureau, 1952. It is important to note, however, that the recovery of Go Cong was not at all immediate. The operational graphic presented here shows the state of affairs in 1952. Much 198

The corollary to Latour’s plan for political and economic security on a reduced scale was to ruin, as much as was possible, economic life within the Viet Minh-controlled portions of the country and “dry up the rebel sources of supply.”535 The area of the

Transbassac was the principal target. This was the great rice basket of the Viet Minh.

Moreover the French had abandoned nearly all of it, leaving its rice production in communist hands. From here the Viet Minh could ship rice east to their comrades in Zone

VII or, as events required, trade it to Thailand for weapons, medical supplies and other consumer goods.536 The French presence beyond the Bassac really amounted to little more than three “points d’appui” (supporting points) around Rach Gia, Long Xuyen and

Can Tho.537 These were the major warehousing areas for rice and excellent spots to interdict the shipments of bulk paddy (unhusked rice) headed east out of Mien Tay.

The French correctly understood that the Viet Minh economy was entirely

“parasitic” in nature, relying – however much it pained them – on intercourse with the

French-controlled core of Cochinchina. Latour took advantage of his central position between the two wings of the Viet Minh disposition to impose an economic blockade of

of Go Cong, mostly the maritime cantons, was still in Viet Minh hands well into 1949. SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Général de Brigade Boyer de Latour, Commandant les Troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud to Général de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême-Orient. Dated 12 Jan 1949. 535 SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Général de Brigade Boyer de Latour, Commandant les Troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud to Général de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême- Orient. Dated 12 Jan 1949. 536 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Note: approvisionnement en matériel de guerre du Viet Minh par le Siam et la Birmanie.” Dated 4 Dec 1950. Report prepared by the Direction générale de la documentation. 537 Boyer de Latour, 106. 199 the Transbassac, the full force of which was not truly imposed until January 1949.538 Not only did blockade severely reduce the foodstuffs available to Viet Minh fighters in the eastern Zone VII, it also deprived units everywhere of their principal access to funds, since an “export tax” on the sale of rice constituted the major source of revenue for the

Nam Bo communists. In late 1948 the French estimated that this “tax” on rice netted the

Viet Minh about 300 million piastres per year, or about 5 billion francs.539

Latour’s scheme was of great concern to the Viet Minh. Deprived of adequate rice, the Viet Minh could neither eat nor buy weapons. By September 1948 the Viet Minh economic situation in Zone VII was already “precarious,” according to French intelligence accounts of a meeting of the Zone VII command structure that month. Their predicament was serious enough that the Nam Bo committee felt compelled to send agents into Thailand in the hopes of brokering a deal to sell rice to their western neighbor.540

In the years to come the blockade would increase in scale and scope and come to incorporate a regulation on the transport of proscribed goods anywhere within

Cochinchina. As it developed the French looked to prevent the movement of any and all products that might be “usable by the rebels.” Gendarmes stationed at critical road or watercourse junctures inspected shipments. A merchant had to verify the sender and

538 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 539 The second major source of revenue to the V.M. was the age-old system of “contributions” enacted mainly in French-controlled areas by threat of force and terrorist actions. This revenue source was relatively immune from the blockade but suffered as the T.FI.S. tightened its hold over the central portions of the country. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note No.3: Attaque du potential economique Viet Minh,” prepared by 3e Bureau, T.F.I.S. Dated 4 Nov 1948. 540 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin technique de renseignements,” dated 17 Dec 1948. Prepared by Bureau federal de documentation. 200 recipient of his wares and have the proper permits in order to move his cargo.541 Over time the command added nearly any good capable of being employed in arms fabrication to a list of regulated items.542 In actions such as this the combination of civil and military power within the commander of the T.F.I.S. streamlined the process of choking off Viet

Minh resources. Because of this status, the T.F.I.S. was able combine the efforts of what the French called “postes d’interdiction” with other “postes de contrôle” into a single system. The former were manned by military personnel and were responsible for stopping all cargo attempting to circumvent the customs and police officials located at the

“postes de contrôle.” These latter could siphon off the illicit material and hopefully ensure that trade was being carried out within the strictures set by the lists of banned materials.543 An additional advantage for the T.F.I.S. in these seizures was that the

French could turn around and resell the seized contraband. Money raised in this way was, at least in part, turned over to the zone commanders to help pay their large and growing establishment of local partisans. Other portions were turned over to the navy and to the Sûreté, doubtless to help them pay informants.544

541 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Circulaire d’application. Reference: decision du Général Cdt. Les F.F.V.S. no. 207 du 7 Février 1950,” dated 13 Feb 1950. Signed by Chanson. 542 For example in March 1951 the T.F.I.S. under Chanson added machine tools, oxygen, acetylene, hardwood, calcium carbide, tungsten, molding sands, mounting rails, and ovens to the list of regulated items. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Modificatif No. 2 aux décisions du Général Commandant les F.F.V.S. sur la réglementation des transports routiers et ferroviaires,” signed Général de Brigade Chanson, commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud, dated 9 March 1951. 543 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note No.3: Attaque du potential economique Viet Minh,” prepared by 3e Burea, T.F.I.S. Dated 4 Nov 1948. 544 Though it is unclear how early this practice began, it was in force by mid-1952. Considering the T.F.I.S.’ chronic shortage in resources, it seems safe to assume they started shortly after beginning the economic control measures themselves. There was obviously massive room for corruption here, and Saigon merchants consistently asked for an end to the blockade. SHAT, carton 10H4727. “Note de service No. 1907/Bloc/ZO,” prepared by Colonel Noblet, Commandant Zone Ouest. Dated 7 July 1952. In this particular case, the money (21,280 piastres was divided between the Army (13,280), the Navy (4,000) and the Sûreté (4,000). 201

The Viet Minh did try to combat these procedures beyond simply attacking

French positions. Sometime prior to the summer of 1948 Hanoi sent south the one-time

Nam Bo delegate to the Central Committee, Phạm Văn Bạch with instructions to unify the command situation and thereby streamline the economic/administrative dealings of the southern Viet Minh.545 Bach did attempt to create a single bureau for signal services and administrative actions directly answerable to the Nam Bo executive committee, but it is unclear how effectively it was able to undercut regional autonomy.546 Nguyen Binh’s attempts to ravage the economic system in Saigon were also a strange example of potentially self-inflicted wound, in that he required Chinese merchants be able to sell Viet

Minh rice (and pork) if he wanted the revolution to stay funded.547

In May 1949 Binh ordered his commanders to burn all markets operating in

French-controlled territory. He particularly singled out merchants who supplied the

French with bricks to build blockhouses; he instructed his subordinates to deal with them as “traitors.”548 A more far-reaching action was the creation of an alternate currency for the Viet Minh-controlled zones, the Ho Chi Minh (H.C.M.) piastre, which was to replace

French-backed money altogether. The problem, of course, was that any time specie became tight, Viet Minh cadres had simple recourse to print more money. As could be expected, ruinous inflation took hold in Viet Minh areas by late 1950, forcing the end of

545 SHAT, carton 10H87. “Texte démarque:” Vo Nguyen Giap to Pha[n] Van Bach, Nguyen Binh and Nguyen Thanh Son,” dated 13 July 1948. 546 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin technique de renseignements,” dated 17 Dec 1948. Prepared by Bureau federal de documentation. 547 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note No.3: Attaque du potential economique Viet Minh,” prepared by 3e Burea, T.F.I.S., dated 4 Nov 1948. 548 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction document récupéré: circulaire du Commandant du Nambo aux commandants des Zones 7,8,9,” prepared by Nguyen Binh, command du Nambo. Dated 12 May 1949. 202 the Viet Minh endeavor and belief that they could build an entirely separate, functioning economy.549

The overland or riverine portion of Viet Minh economic activity was complemented by a healthy traffic in goods carried by ship out of the Ca Mau peninsula and then off-loaded in Binh Xuyen-controlled coastal portions of the delta. From there the wares could be shipped to recipients in the eastern zone. Latour attempted a naval blockade of the Binh Xuyen coastline, but it is unclear how effective this was. His attempt to blockade entirely the Plain of Reeds also had to be abandoned in the planning stages for lack of resources.550

If many of these measures were passive in nature, Latour’s command insisted on more active measures as well. To compound the Viet Minh monetary difficulties, the

T.F.I.S. took a hand in printing large quantities of fake H.C.M. piastres and distributing them liberally within Viet Minh-controlled areas. Another important area of action was to try and reduce the price of rice. The French had learned that the Viet Minh benefited greatly if the price of rice could remain high, as their export tax fluctuated accordingly.

Naturally the blockade did not help the situation, adding time and therefore cost to the problem of transport and thus helping raise the price for that portion of rice that did get through. To partially offset this problem, the T.F.I.S. tried to reduce transport costs for

549 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Notes sur les activities et financieres Viet Minh: renseignements parvenus du 16 au 22 Novembre 1950,” prepared by Direction génerale de la documentation. Dated 24 November 1950. 550 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note No.3: Attaque du potential economique Viet Minh,” prepared by 3e Burea, T.F.I.S., dated 4 Nov 1948 203 rice by engaging in projects like the dredging of canals, in the hopes this would speed shipments and allow economies of scale to come into effect.551

The last piece of Latour’s economic warfare repertoire was offensive action directed against rice stockpiles and industrial/manufacturing targets within Viet Minh- controlled regions. All of these regions Latour declared “zônes de guerre,” meaning among other things, that they could be strafed and bombed “liberally” in order to make life uncomfortable for the Viet Minh and, ipso facto, for anyone else who decided to stay.552 This was not, to be sure, a campaign for “hearts and minds,” but a rather cold- blooded attempt to make life unlivable in Viet Minh stretches of the country. In these attacks, unlike the previous, overly telegraphed attempts – qua VEGA – Latour insisted that offensive action be constrained to a “succession of deep raids” carried out with minimal preparation by local forces and based on timely intelligence.553 “Like fish,”

Latour insisted,” intelligence must be consumed fresh.”554 The advantage of this system was that, if a raid fell flat, the potential loss was minimal. If, on the other hand, the intelligence was accurate, as was often the case, the raid could inflict serious material hardship on Viet Minh units. In one such raid conducted in early 1949 elements of a dinnassaut as well as infantry from the 2nd and 3rd B.C.C.Ps. descended on a known transfer point for Viet Min rice south of Saigon at the confluence of the Vaico and Soi

551 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note No.3: Attaque du potential economique Viet Minh,” prepared by 3e Burea, T.F.I.S. Dated 4 Nov 1948. 552 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 553 SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Général de Brigade Boyer de Latour, Commandant les Troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud to Général de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême- Orient, dated 10 August 1948. 554 SHAT, carton 10H985. “Instructions pour le combat et la pacification dans le Vietnam-Sud.” Prepared by General Boyer de Latour. Reprinted for use by the F.T.S.V. in 1952 under the auspices of General Bondis. 204

Rap rivers. From this point the rice was intended for shipment up to the Viet Minh units operating in Zone VII. The raid made no contact with the enemy, but did succeed in capturing several junks loaded to the gunnels with rice. Whatever could not be speedily transported back was burned on the spot.555 This was the typical procedure.

When possible, the T.F.I.S., particularly in Zone Center, would launch operations aimed at gaining control of nearby, but heretofore Viet Minh-held rice-growing regions.

Like the much more common raids, these attacks were short in duration, limited in scope and carried out soon after the receipt of important intelligence. One such operation in early February 1949 in Go Cong allowed the troops of Zone Center to not only capture a productive portion of a Go Cong coastal canton, but also saw them inflict rather heavy casualties on a Viet Minh battalion.556

Such actions, however, were not universally successful, especially when the planners became overzealous and the operations overlarge. In March 1949 in Go Cong the command tried to up the ante and move against rebel bands with three battalions – one of which was Roger Trinquier’s 2nd B.C.C.P – in the hopes of destroying enough of them to make the occupation of the area north of Tay Nien Tay possible. The execution was slipshod by its participants’ own admission and the Viet Minh escaped entirely unmolested.557 The original plan for taking back Go Cong had called for six battalions,

555 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte-rendu d’opérations,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon Ayrolles, Commandant 3ème B.C.C.P. Dated 27 January 1949. 556 The battalion in question was TD 306. The French reported killing 121 and capturing 247. SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Projet de communiqué à la presse au sujet des operations de Go Cong des 6 & 7 Fevrier,” prepared by Colonel Durand, Commandant Zone Centre Cochinchine. Dated 16 February 1949. 557 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Secteur de Go Cong: Compte-rendu d’opération,” prepared by Chef de Bataillon Trinquier, Commandant 2e Bataillon Colonial de Commandos Parachusistes. Dated 16 March 1949. 205 but such strength was unavailable. It is nevertheless irrelevant whether or not this larger plan would have been more or less successful. The command had to be content with less.

The highpoint of Latour’s system of “deep raids” came in spring 1949. At this point Latour was finally able to close off the Plain of Reeds to all but sporadic Viet Minh activity. This was Operation JONQUILLE (Daffodil). VEGA, of course, had required

Nguyen Binh to pull most of his administration from the plain, but he had attempted to keep the area open as a transit hub on a reduced scale. He eventually positioned three battalions (tiểu đoàn) as part of a front (mặt trận) in the Plain of Reeds. French intelligence detected this uncommon concentration of forces at the very end of May 1949.

Gathering what forces he could (4 infantry battalions and two paratroop groups with hefty marine and engineer support), Latour attacked the suspected concentration on 2

June 1949 from jumping off points near Cai Lay.558

As with VEGA, though more quickly executed, paratroopers dropped on the principle objectives, while ground columns moved into cut off any retreat. Fighting was particularly intense due to the apparent surprise and probably because Binh attempted to briefly test the mettle of his newly forming “main force” units. Despite problems with artillery coordination – once more called into field operations after so long operating from fixed positions – French firepower (including aviation support) proved too much for the Viet Minh, who were obliged to withdraw after suffering significant casualties. The getaway this time was not nearly as clean as it had been during VEGA, and yet the

558 These forces accounted for all of Latour’s reserves and then some. Following his decision to pursue a solid plan of pacification after VEGA and the deductions from his command for use elsewhere, Latour’s reserve generally consisted in nothing more than the BM/4e R.T.M., the LVTs or “crabes,” the 1er R.E.C. and whatever paratroops were on hand. As a general rule, paratroops were kept away from any static duties. Gras, 227. 206 majority of the Viet Minh formations were able to extricate themselves from the trap.

Nightfall and thick vegetation prevented Latour’s men from mounting anything like a hot pursuit.559

As it was, Latour’s war rolled on slowly, but steadily. Jean Leroy in Ben Tre managed to clean out Viet Minh with remarkable efficiency. By early 1949 the T.F.I.S. could declare with confidence that the island of An Hoa was entirely pacified. With the aid of Catholic and Cambodian partisans, partial control was extended into Tra Vinh.560

The halting construction of a Vietnamese national army to serve the Bao Dai government had also begun and the T.F.I.S. commander ensconced its first battalion in Mo Cay in

October 1948. Latour’s understandable obsession with route security also paid off. The

T.F.I.S. opened the road from Go Cong to My Tho in the first half of 1949, as they did with the routes between Cho Lon and Ben Tre, My Tho and Saigon, Cho Lon to Duc

Hoa, Saigon and Trang Bang and Go Vap to Hoc Mon.561

Rampant insecurity, economic and otherwise, in the Viet Minh-controlled regions also created a general flight of refugees to the comparative wealth and safety of the country’s center. Latour estimated that in late 1948, 20,000 people per month were

559 The French reported killing 500, and capturing 130. The Viet Minh battalions in question were tiểu đoàn 307, 309, 311. This was also the first operation when the French navy was able to employ their Landing Craft Gun (L.C.G.) in support of an operation. This vessel came equipped with 1 x 40 mm Bofors cannon, 2 x 20mm cannons, 2 x 81mm mortars and 4 x 12.8 mm machine-guns. de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 184-186; Gras, 258-259; Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954) (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Quân Đội Nhân Dân, 2009), 15. 560 The Cambodian population of Tra Vinh was substantial and largely hostile to the Viet Minh. The area had been retaken at the beginning of the war, but the French had been compelled to abandon portions of it in 1947. Bernier, 133. 561 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. 207 fleeing Zone West for the stability of the center.562 Shipping costs fell dramatically and control over the rice harvest increased markedly.563 In August 1949 alone the T.F.I.S. reported that with the aid of Dinassaut No. 8, assigned to rice convoy protection, Zone

West was able to move approximately 33,000 tons of rice for sale in Saigon.564

Still, the setbacks were far from inconsequential. From 1948 through to 1949

Latour did not manage to increase the scope of his control by much. Those areas in Viet

Minh hands remained largely the same as they had after the widespread withdrawals of

1947. The sects also remained hard to handle. Internal strife with the Hoa Hao saw the faction of Ba Cut turn briefly against the French and the mainline of the cult in late 1948.

Similarly and close to the same time the Cao Dai called a halt to offensive action against the Viet Minh in an attempt to cut a third way between an entirely pro-French line and the Viet Minh. They would defend themselves, but no more. They changed course again in June 1949 and resumed aggression against the communists.565 The vagaries of sect politics were frustrating to Latour and his commanders, but there was little to be done.

The French did not have the resources to even contemplate suppressing the sects; their adhesion to the anti-communist struggle was more important, in the short term, than their unreserved commitment to the Bao Dai government.

562 Boyer de Latour., 109. While it is impossible to confirm this number, subordinate commanders dating back to mid-1947 did report a steady flow of refugees from Viet Minh areas to those under French protection. SHAT, carton 10H4322. “Compte-rendu sur la pacification: secteur de Mytho,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Noblet, Cdt Secteur de Mytho. Dated 11 August 1947. 563 Boyer de Latour., 109. 564 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 565 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 208

Commentators then and more recently have seen this as a chief failing of the

French policy in Cochinchina. Lucien Bodard derided the reliance on the sects as the expeditionary corps clothing itself in a “tunic of Nessus,” a classical reference to the poisoned garment that killed the Greek hero Heracles.566 David Elliott fundamentally agrees. In his study of the Vietnamese revolution in My Tho he termed the problematic nature of sect politics as the “most important cause of French decline.”567 Even if we grant this assertion as true of the later period, it is unlikely the French would have gotten as far as they did without sect aid. When they were cooperating, the sects were frightfully useful and provided the French a degree of plausible deniability about excesses committed against Viet Minh agents. The French did attempt to undercut the sects’ autonomy by folding some of their units into the newly forming Vietnamese

National Army, but this was a plodding, delicate process and one in which Latour did not fully believe.

Latour could have elected against this process of strategic “coping,” as it were, but only by putting himself at variance with reality. The sects were unruly, but however much they bothered the French, they stung the Viet Minh even more. The Viet Minh’s unforgiving attitude in general, and Nguyen Binh’s in particular, had already cost them the support of the Cao Dai and the Hoa Hao. The year 1948 saw their status with the

Binh Xuyen flag as well. In this respect Nguyen Binh was perhaps more a doctrinaire revolutionary than even his compatriots in Tonkin. It is possible that Binh simply could not accept any rival to his authority and that his subsequent actions do not necessarily

566 Bodard, L'enlisement, 124. 567 Elliott, 73. 209 betoken any special adhesion to the communist view of history. And yet Binh always had subordinates and powerful ones at that. What seems to have been the deciding factor in whether an energetic leader lived or died was his commitment to a revolutionary ideology.

Either way, since the beginning of their uneasy alliance, Nguyen Binh and Bay

Vien had viewed each other with a great deal of distrust. Violent episodes between the communists and the Binh Xuyen had broken out on numerous occasions, frequently due to Nguyen Binh’s attempts to infiltrate communist agents into Binh Xuyen units.568 To allay this situation the Central Committee in Tonkin in spring 1948 restated a policy of unity and directed that while Nguyen Binh would be Military Commissar for

Cochinchina, Bay Vien would assume the role of commander of Zone VII.569 Despite deep reservations – Bay Vien traveled with several hundred bodyguards and had opened discrete contacts with French intelligence beforehand570 – the leader of the Binh Xuyen traveled to the Plain of Reeds in May 1948 to be officially invested as the commander of

Zone VII at the temporary headquarters of the Nam Bo Central Committee.

568 These also included reportedly two attempts on Bay Vien’s life by communist agents. Darcourt, 308. 569 In July Giap instructed his nominal subordinates in the south to effect a unification of effort at all costs and urged the factions to put an end to their disagreements lest the French strangle off the rebellion sector by sector. SHAT, carton 10H87. “Texte démarque:” Vo Nguyen Giap to Pha[n] Van Bach, Nguyen Binh and Nguyen Thanh Son,” dated 13 July 1948. Nguyên Hùng, Nguyển Bình, Huyền Thoại và Sự Thật (Hano: Nhà Xuất Bản Văn Học, 2000), 363. 570 Always one to hedge his bets, Bay Vien had opened a dialogue with French intelligence through one of his concubines as early as the summer of 1946. SHAT, carton 10H995. “Rapport sur les contacts pris par la Section des Etudes Historiques avec les Chefs de l’armée Binh Xuyen en vue d’un ralliement,” Saigon, 10 September 1946. Unsigned. The Service des Etudes Historique (S.E.H.) was a section of the SDECE charged with counter-espionage. Porch, The French Secret Services: A History of French Intelligence from the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War, 299. 210

This was too much for Nguyen Binh. Before Bay Vien’s arrival the Nam Bo

Committee decided on a policy of “purification” with respect to the Binh Xuyen.571

What he could not control, Nguyen Binh would destroy. Though the Viet Minh chief made a good show of his reception for Bay Vien, secretly communist forces moved in and disarmed a significant portion of Vien’s troops in the Rung Sat area south of

Saigon.572 Now Binh strategically absented himself from the meeting and made ready to ambush and annihilate Bay Vien’s cohort still encamped in the Plain of Reeds. But the leader of the Binh Xuyen had been made aware of what was happening – he had friends among the other Viet Minh units present who apprised him of what was afoot. Leaving behind a small rear-guard to give the appearance that their camp was still occupied, Bay

Vien and the main force of his guards stole away in the night. Days later they managed to reach the outskirts of Saigon.573

With the Rung Sat occupied by Viet Minh and the duplicity of Nguyen Binh on full display, Bay Vien sent his adjutant to find the chief of the French Deuxième Bureau.

He instructed him to seek authority to pass through French positions and to rally to the government of Bao Dai. Latour was quick to accept. By mid-June, just days after his escape from Nguyen Binh, Bay Vien began, with French aid, the process of prying the

Rung Sat from the communists. The operation was dubbed HURON and Bay Vien’s men acted as scouts for French troops. Though it ran into problems initially, in time

French forces succeeded in cleaning out the communists and freeing Bay Vien’s captured

571 “Thanh lọc.” Vân, 60. 572 A.M. Savani, Visage et Images du Sud Viet-Nam (Saigon: Imprimerie françaisd d'outre-mer, 1955), 133. A.M. Savani, on whose account I am relying for much of this, was himself the chief of the French intelligence section and the one with whom Bay Vien negotiated his rallying. 573 Darcourt, 310-313. 211 troops. The government named Bay Vien a colonel in the South Vietnamese Guard and he was accorded authority over the Rung Sat and Cho Lon. Henceforth Bay Vien’s men were not bandits, but the Forces Armées Nationalistes Binh Xuyen. Back in his domain,

Bay Vien issued a strident proclamation against the communists and their “bloodthirsty dictator, Nguyen Binh.”574

The loss to Nguyen Binh was more than just the well-armed troops of the Binh

Xuyen to the Viet Minh cause. Much of the Viet Minh’s access to arms (other than those they manufactured themselves or stole from the T.F.I.S.) came through the Binh Xuyen’s contacts with the international underworld.575 Furthermore, as discussed above, the Viet

Minh Zone’s VII relied heavily on rice shipped in from the west and offloaded on Binh

Xuyen-controlled coastline. That avenue was now lost.

Throughout 1948 into 1949 Latour continued his methodical operations to maintain control of the vital areas of Cochinchina. Though the high command remained concerned about the inability of Latour to extend his zone of control or to strike at the main body of communist regulars, the situation in French-backed Cochinchina was stable and strong, if limited in geographical reach.576 Latour himself described the disposition of his command as a “very complex structure” built around a “great number of

574 Savani, Visage et Images du Sud Viet-Nam, 135-136; Darcourt, 321. 575 SHAT, carton 10H995. “Rapport sur les contacts pris par la Section des Etudes Historiques avec les Chefs de l’armée Binh Xuyen en vue d’un ralliement,” Saigon, 10 September 1946. Unsigned. 576 SHAT, carton 10H906 . “Inspection en Cochinchine,” prepared by Commandament des Forces Terrestres d’Extrême-Orient. Dated 15 July 1948. Copy Unsigned. 212 adjustments of detail and of experience.”577 And so it was. Latour had accommodated himself to his weakness and, following the failure of VEGA, had looked to tie ends to means in a useful, though frustrating fashion. The coping posture of the T.F.I.S. was indeed “solid” and supple at the same time. Economic warfare was gradually making conditions unbearable in the Viet Minh reaches of the country. A widening array of doctrine, penned at Latour’s direction, gave to pacification a robust, homogenous complexion.

This is not to say that Latour left his command in November of 1949 entirely pleased with his accomplishments. However successful Latour’s pattern of neo-colonial war might have been, it was not feasible for him to truly enact anything like a tâche d’huile strategy. At the end of 1949 the armed forces available to the T.F.I.S. (now

Forces Terrestres du Sud Viet-Nam F.T.S.V) amounted to 76,400 men.578 Not an inconsiderable number of troops, one must bear in mind that of these only 33,500 were in the regular establishment units of the French army. A little more than 10,000 were units of the Vietnamese guard and one battalion of the Vietnamese National Army. The rest were an assemblage of sect forces and partisan units.579 Given the constant demands to reinforce the north as the communist Chinese approached ever closer to the border,

577 “Édifice très complexe.” SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Général de Brigade Boyer de Latour, Commandant les Troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud to Général de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême-Orient. Dated 10 August 1948. 578 With the official unification of Vietnam in mid-1949 the various military structures in play were renamed to reflect the new political realities. The T.F.I.S. became the F.T.S.V to demonstrate Vietnam’s unity among its three parts and separateness from the other French Indochinese colonial possessions. 579 SHAT, carton 10H984. “Situation des Forces terrestres du Sud Viet Nam: Fin 1949.” 213

Latour spent most of his tenure with a meager general reserve of troops.580 As was the case with many of his subordinates, the poverty of his command forced Latour to fall back on the well-rutted perspectives of a colonial soldier, and eventually discard the breathtaking, but ephemeral lessons of war derived from the recent experience against

Germany.581 In a sense, it was the satisficing that had always been integral to colonial warfare. The same could not be said of the French perspective everywhere.

From his vantage point in Saigon, Latour could not prognosticate the way to defeat once and for all the revolution touted by his Viet Minh foes; that was beyond his ken. His was a strategy of a different sort. It certainly fails Richard Betts test of strategy, which is to “be able to devise a rational scheme to achieve an objective” and that this course must “be value maximizing.” For Betts, and for many others, to have strategy, one must discern the end from the beginning.582 By this metric, Latour had no strategy; indeed, hardly anyone ever has. What Latour did do was improve his position in

Cochinchina and husband his forces, while keeping them from overblown actions that might have denuded his resources and fruitlessly weakened his troops. At base he kept his options for the future open – he survived. Perhaps Norman Friedman is right and the

580 In the summer of 1948, for example, before the force reductions of the fall, Latour had a general reserve of only four battalions. SHAT, carton 10H906. Letter from Général de Brigade Boyer de Latour, Commandant les Troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud to Général de Division Commandant les Forces Terrestres en Extrême-Orient. Dated 10 August 1948. 581 This contention, at least for the modern French perspective, affirms in part Douglas Porch’s idea that pacification or counterinsurgency techniques are, in the final analysis, the retooling of colonial practices. See Douglas Porch, Counterinsurgency: Exposing the Myths of the New Way of War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 582 Richard K. Betts, "Is Strategy an Illusion?," International Security 25, no. 2 (2000): 6. 214 strategy that is best is the one that promises the “fewer mistakes.”583 Each step for

Latour, if it maximized anything, was the potential number of viable routes into the future. The French in Cochinchina in 1949 did not see their defeat as imminent or inevitable, nor the road to the end of empire the only one on which they might tread. It was not so for their adversaries. For the proponents of revolution there was one clear row to hoe - it was only a matter of getting down to work.

583 Norman Friedman, The Fifty-Year War: Conflict in Strategy in the Cold War (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1999), 486. I am indebted to Colin Gray’s work, Strategy for Chaos, for bringing this quip of Friedman’s to my attention. 215

CHAPTER 5: “ALL FOR THE GENERAL COUNTER-OFFENSIVE” – VIET MINH STRATEGY AND TACTICS584

In 1949 Alain Savary, an agent of the French Workers’ Party (Section française de l’Internationale Ouvrière), secreted himself to the headquarters of the Nam Bo military forces in Cochinchina, in an ultimately futile effort to find a way to a negotiated settlement between France and the southern communists. While there Savary observed, however briefly, the workings and air of Nguyen Binh’s command. The Trưởng phòng

Quân giới Nam Bộ (Chief of Southern Military Arms) command center was orderly and professional. Maps of the various zones blazoned the walls. Shredded bamboo covered the floor, keeping things tidy and dry. And protecting the command post was a platoon of professional soldiers uniformed smartly in khaki.585 They were emblematic of what

Nguyen Binh was building in the south - a regular establishment professional army capable of confronting its enemies and finally, in great set-piece battles, driving them from Southeast Asia.586

The southern Viet Minh, like their Maoist contemporaries, were reluctant guerrillas; or more accurately, they were only ever temporary guerrillas. Viet Minh

584 “All for the … general counter-offensive” quoted in SHAT, carton 10H4004. “Bulletin de renseignement No. 6062: Activité militaire V.M. – Nambo – campagnes d’automne et d’hiver province de Long-Chau-Hau.” Translation of Viet Minh tract. Dated 3 October 1950. 585 Hùng, 427-430. 586 It seems likely, but not certain, that the troops Savary observed were members of tiểu đoàn 410 chủ lực, tasked with protection of the main Nam Bo administrative headquarters in the Plain of Reeds. Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 27. 216 strategy in Cochinchina from nearly the very beginning was predicated on a methodical march through the Maoist three-phase war paradigm,587 inevitably culminating in the tổng phản công (general counter-offensive) to be followed by a response from the populace in the form of the khởi nghĩa (general uprising). For Nguyen Binh and his compatriots this was the only path to victory. The dialectical outworking of historical materialism ensured that this was how the Vietnamese would beat the French, and any other reactionary power.

Still, reconstructing the strategic perspective of the southern revolutionaries in the period up to 1950 is a difficult task. Written accounts by Viet Minh participants are relatively few in number and, when available, tend to focus much more heavily on the later period and the 2nd Indochina War.588 Nguyen Binh himself, of course, did not live long enough to leave us a written account of his life as the commander of the southern resistance and later biographical works must perforce reconcile his role into the approved

Hanoi narrative of the struggle. Similarly, Vietnamese government histories of the war are far removed from the world of impartiality. They necessarily shoehorn the early war in the south into the larger story of the successful revolution and effectively minimize

Nguyen Binh’s tenure and his attempt at a large-scale offensive in 1950. Each episode is carefully woven retrospectively into the warp and woof of the approved communist

587 This will be discussed more fully below. In brief the three phases to Maoist revolutionary warfare were an initial defensive stage, a holding or stalemate phase and finally a general counter-offensive to defeat the revolution’s enemies in toto. 588 See for example Tran Van Tra, Vietnam: History of the Bulwark B2 Theatre, Vol 5: Concluding the 30- Years War, trans., unlisted (Springfield: Joint Publications Research Service, 1983). Tran Van Tra was the commander of Zone VIII during the phase of the war in question here and briefly commander of the Saigon/Cho Lon special zone. Even so his 5-volume work about his life starts with the Geneva Accords of 1954. 217 storyline. Unsuccessful attempts to launch into the final phase of the Maoist struggle are recast as necessary developments in the longer, finally victorious struggle. This narrative labels the problematic offensives of 1950 as successful, albeit “exhausting” attacks with limited objectives. 589

In the minds of those involved at the time, this was not the case. Establishing the importance of the 1950 offensive, however, cannot be done through Vietnamese records, as Vietnamese military archives remain closed. Moreover, there is at least some doubt among scholars that military records for much of what happened in the south exist.590

And yet while the Nam Bo’s military records are inaccessible (and perhaps lost), there does remain a significant kernel of documentary evidence for its activities during this period. French operations frequently captured stores of Viet Minh documents which the

Deuxième Bureau (French Military Intelligence) carefully translated. Additionally, police at various levels as well as the ubiquitous Sûreté maintained a vast network of agents in and among the communist ranks. Reports from these agents and captured Viet

Minh documents - both of which can be found in sizable quantities in the French military archives in Vincennes (Service historique de la Défense) - provide us the only way to access the unvarnished thinking of Viet Minh cadres during the years in question.

This picture is naturally far from complete. The French did not capture every

Viet Minh document, nor did their agents proffer anything like uniformly accurate information. We must assume that in some cases the Viet Minh were engaged in campaigns of misinformation. Nevertheless, in Cochinchina where its connections ran

589 “Kiệt sức.” Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 411. 590 Author conversation with Lien-Hang Nguyen, February 2014. 218 deep, French intelligence was able to garner a great deal of knowledge about the Viet

Minh and the broad contours of its program. What emerges is an organization bent upon beating its foe through a strategy of annihilation, culminating in a great offensive to drive out the French and crush its puppet regime.591 From almost the outset then Nguyen

Binh’s focus was not on terrorism or guerrilla action in and of themselves, but was devoted to building his chủ lực (main force) regiments. It was an idealogical committment to the Maoist three-phase revolutionary war paradigm, entirely incongruous with the situation and material constraints of the southern Viet Minh.

In short, the strategy pursued by the Nam Bo military forces was exactly the same as that of their northern counterparts, despite significant differences that should have militated against it. The situation in Tonkin was far more hospitable to the Viet Minh’s anti-colonial struggle. In the first place, the wilds of Tonkin made for a much better sanctuary for the building of military forces than even the remotest portions of the

Mekong delta. More important was the access to China afforded by its common border with Tonkin. As victory in the Chinese civil war carried Mao’s men to the border, Giap’s revolutionarries could not only get substantial weaponry from the detritus of Kuomintang armies, but by 1949 were able to move their forces piecemeal into the safe-haven of

Chinese territory for extensive training. By April of 1950 the Viet Minh were training

591 The theoretical distinction of a strategy of annihilation (Niederwerfungsstrategie) from a strategy of exhaustion or attrition (Ermattungsstrategie) was made by German military historian Hans Delbrück. This was eventually carried over into American military parlance, with finer distinctions being made between attrition and exhaustion. Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 108-109. 219 entire regiments in Yunnan with Chinese assistance.592 Within a short time the northern

Viet Minh would be fielding entire divisions, something never achieved in the south.

Material aid was noticeable even earlier, particularly in the realm of artillery, so much so that the Viet Minh in late 1950 could field fifteen artillery battalions (tiểu đoàn pháo binh); the problem for Nguyen Binh was that thirteen of these were in Tonkin. The one battalion in Cochinchina (the other was in Annam) had little in the way of armament.593

The Viet Minh had captured one 105mm howitzer from the French in 1948 but there is no evidence it was ever put to use.594 “Artillery” for the Nam Bo communists really meant nothing more than mortars, medium-weight (usually 82mm) if they were lucky.

This deficiency in heavy weapons was a major problem, and one that might have pushed hard against the notion that a successful “general counter-offensive” was possible in the south, at least for some time, certainly far beyond 1950. Lacking the artillery necessary to punch holes in Latour’s ever-expanding network of fortifications, the southern Viet Minh had to rely on convoluted schemes involving “petards” (special shaped charges) to knock down towers walls or doors. In late 1949 the Viet Minh even opened specialized schools in Nam Bo to train troops in the use of explosives and

592 Qiang Zhai, China & the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2000), 28. 593 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Note sur l’artillerie V.M.,” prepared by Chef d’Escadron Boussaire, Chef du 2ème Bureau, Commandement en Chef des Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, dated 9 Nov 1950. 594 As the French believed at the time, the howitzer was probably never utilized for want of ammunition. SHAT, carton 10H168. “Rapport sur l’affaire du convoi de la Ferme “Gressier” – Secteur CANTHO – 20.4.1948,” prepared by Gen. Boyer de Latour. Dated 27 April 1948.

220 sapping.595 Soon thereafter these troops and their munitions were a critical demand of

Nam Bo units.596 Specialists, of course, were in short supply, as were their devices.

This shortcoming meant that the Viet Minh had to rely on guile and infantry for the taking of fortified positions, a far dicier option than the relative certainty of a well- placed pack howitzer. Large swaths of the population, including various and sundry ethnic and religious minorities, held the Viet Minh in varying degrees of contempt. In keeping with colonial practice the French relied extensively on these groups for the garrisoning of fortifications. Bereft of real firepower, the Viet Minh had to attempt to induce these men to treason, a prospect fraught with risk. In one instance in the Hoc Mon sector in February 1950, Viet Minh agents contacted a group of Cambodian partisans occupying a tower. The Viet Minh demanded that the partisans desert with their arms and ammunition. The tower’s chef maintained contact with the Viet Minh, but also notified the local French intelligence officer, who arranged an ambush. When the dozen or so Viet Minh returned one evening to collect their spoils they were admitted to the tower where, unbeknownst to them, a trio of legionnaires lay in wait with a machine-gun.

As the Cambodians passed down ammo crates filled with rocks, the legionnaires concealed in the tower opened fire, killing six and wounding several others.597

Viet Minh efforts to take towers were not all unsuccessful, however. Many positions did fall to treason. This was one of the French command’s primary concerns

595 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 407-410. 596 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignments: activités du T.D. 300,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau F.F.V.S. Dated 22 Feb 1950. 597 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Exemple de Dich Van: Secteur d’Hocmon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, F.F.V.S. Dated 22 Feb 1950. 221 throughout the war.598 Saigon therefore devoted considerable counter-propaganda efforts to try and inoculate their partisan troops against Viet Minh infiltration.599

If taking fortifications by treason could be so dangerous, why would the poorly armed, thoroughly outgunned southern Viet Minh consider doing so by storm, a far bloodier affair? The answer, as we have stated, is the seemingly deep ideological commitment of southern revolutionaries to the mythos of the general counter- offensive/general uprising. Given recent scholarship on the Vietnam Wars, this commitment should not be entirely surprising. Especially for the later period, Lien-Hang

Nguyen has established rather convincingly that the strategy of southern communists towards their war with the United States was overly driven by ideological factors, much to the chagrin of the “northern faction” of Vietnamese leaders, including many like Vo

Nguyen Giap and Hoang Minh Chinh, who had probably come to appreciate that Western firepower made the prospect of a successful general counter-offensive/general uprising very unlikely. The argument between these factions came to a head in the months preceding the Tet Offensive of 1968 when a vocal group of northerners increasingly found fault with the leadership of General Secretary of the Central Committee, Lê Duẩn, and his insistence that the war in the south could only proceed along rigidly Maoist lines.

Long after the fact leaders involved in this vexed affair would complain that in discussing

598 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Analyse: document V.M. en date du 18.6.1949 du Cte. Provincial de Vinh Long,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau. Dated 22 Nov 1949. 599 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note d’Orientation: ref lettre No. 2169/Cab en date du 13.10.1949 du Général en Chef F.A.E.O.,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Radix, Chef d’Etat-Major, F.F.V.S. Dated 14 Nov 1949. 222 strategy with southern revolutionaries, hard military realities always had to give way to hazy abstractions expressed in Marxist-Leninist terms.600

What is most interesting about Nguyen’s work is that it dispels that notion of an incredibly sophisticated and subtle communist strategic doctrine that utterly befuddled its

Western adversaries. This has been the general American perspective (as well as French) since before the wars’ end. Harry Summer’s book on the Vietnam War, On Strategy, famously (or infamously) begins with the story of an American colonel chiding his

Vietnamese counterpart in 1975 that the Americans were undefeated on the battlefield throughout the war, to which the Vietnamese colonel retorts that this was true and “also irrelevant.”601 The chapter in which this vignette occurs is entitled “Tactical Victory,

Strategic Defeat.” Despite their tactical skill and logistical superiority - so the argument goes - America was unable to defeat the communist forces in Vietnam because the

Vietnamese were playing a long game, counting on the American public’s eventual fatigue to the lead to the abandonment of the war effort. According to this logic the massive tactical defeat suffered by communist forces during the Tet Offensive was altogether unimportant compared to the titanic blow inflicted on American morale. The ability of the Viet Cong to hunker down, return to a lower level of guerrilla action and bide their time was evidence of their strategic brilliance and unsurpassed flexibility.

Douglas Pike in his work on the Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam (People’s Army of

Vietnam), states this belief forcefully: “the Vietnamese communists conceived, developed, and fielded a dimensional (sic) new method for making war … and most

600 Nguyen, 334. 601 Quoted in Summers, 1. 223 important, that it is a strategy for which there is no known proven counterstrategy”

(emphasis in original).602

The French preceded the Americans in this view. Even before the fall of Dien

Bien Phu in 1954, military theorists had developed a mania for so-called guerre révolutionnaire and the Fourth Republic’s seeming inability to deal with it or prosecute war effectively.603 And whereas the defeat in Vietnam opened a serious rift in civil- military relations in the United States over the perceived failure of the home front to stay the course, in France the belief that the state needed dramatic remaking to counter the power of revolution unleashed by the Viet Minh’s equally dramatic re-authoring of the strategic paradigm ultimately played into the army’s various attempts to overthrow the

French government and arrest the “decay” set in by the failure to live up to the challenge of international communism.604

The belief that the Vietnamese communists could effortlessly slide up and down the revolutionary ladder – from guerrilla to conventional warfare and back again – became fixed in the minds of Western observers, and contrasted unfavorably with the

American/French system, stuck endlessly in resource-intensive conventional warfare, viz. incapable of adapting to conditions. According to this notion, Tet in 1968 then was the height of Vietnamese craft and guile. The wide-ranging offensive was never intended to win in a physical sense; its purpose was to show the American public the tenacity of

602 Pike, 213. 603 See J. Hogard, "Guerre Révolutionnaire ou Révolution dans L'art de la Guerre," Revue de la Défense nationale, (1956). The best overview of this attempt by the French military to deal with revolutionary war and then to apply it to their war in Algeria remains Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1964). 604 For an analysis on how this came about see Kelly, Lost Soldiers. 224

Vietnamese resolve and induce despondency about any victorious end to the war. The prolonged three-phase tactical failure during the Tet Offensive was proof positive that Le

Duan, the architect of the attack, was a strategic master, willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of troops in what he knew was an abortive enterprise, but one that would in the long run cripple U.S. endurance to stay the course.

Lien-Hang Nguyen, however, has shown that this assessment makes the communists too clever by half. Le Duan never intended anything but a clear military victory in the Tet Offensive(s). There was no plan as Nguyen puts it, to launch these attacks (and others) with the intent of “striking a political and psychological blow to the

United States and its foreign policy...” Instead, she says, the goal was to “present

Washington with a fait accompli by toppling the Saigon regime through mass insurrection sparked by coordinated attacks aimed at urban centers.”605 Not only was the strategy not nearly as subtle as most had assumed, it was in fact pursued by Le Duan and his ilk without any real assessment of the situation. It was a rigid and blinkered view of strategy centered on the idea of the great battle to decide all. Le Duan would of course return to this plan again in 1972, and finally (successfully) in 1975. The notion of the ultimate efficacy of the “general counter-offensive/general uprising” was a matter of communist faith in the incontrovertible march of dialectical materialism. What is apparent from a study of the war in Cochinchina is that Nguyen’s assessment of communist strategy is correct, but needs to be pushed back in time to nearly the beginning of the war in the south. It was certainly a chief tenet of Nguyen Binh’s war

605 Nguyen, 310. 225 making schema. And Le Duan, we must remember, was the leader of the dân quân or popular forces under Nguyen Binh’s overall military leadership during those early years.

Why southern revolutionaries were so much more unwaveringly committed to the

Maoist progression must to some degree remain a speculative issue. The most probable answer is that southern communists understood that the fate of the south would be the main playing card wielded by northerners in any peace negotiation, as indeed happened in 1954. In fact it seems that as early as 1950, in light of the failures to seize the south by force, the Central Committee in Tonkin was beginning to entertain thoughts that

Cochinchina would be lost, leaving the revolutionary forces in charge only in the north.606 For southern communists this was an unimaginable compromise, if ever made permanent.

Conversely there is also the possibility that a belief in the “general counter- offensive/general uprising” strategy was universal in the beginning, but that northern Viet

Minh began to understand its limitations after experiencing the full-weight of Western firepower in battles like the those for the Red River Delta in 1951, at Na San and even at

Dien Bien Phu. Many figures, like Giap, who had experienced firsthand the devastation to be wrought by French airpower and artillery became the very same who would question the advisability of attacking head on the much more well-equipped U.S. military in later years.607

606 Greg Lockhart, Nation in Arms: The Origins of the People's Army of Vietnam (Sydney: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen and Unwin, 1989), 234. 607 This theory comes to me by way of personal conversations with John Guilmartin. 226

These varied reactions to military technical power in light of an assumed acceptance of the appropriateness of revolutionary warfare are not without parallels in the communist world. A similar schism occurred among the Chinese leadership during their prosecution of the war in Korea. Stung by American firepower, the Chinese leader during much of the Korean War, Peng Dehaui, attempted to professionalize the Red

Army through greater tactical and technical expertise and increasing reliance on modern military hardware during his time as defense minister. Party officials, including Mao and

Lin Biao, disagreed heartily and argued that the ideological perspective of the army should not be imperiled for the sake of professionalization. Revolutionary people’s war was ipso facto sufficient to meet China’s security needs. In 1959 the Party, at Mao’s urging, threw Peng and his supporters out of all positions of influence.608

In hindsight, this perspective seems almost laughable, were it not so tragic. After all, what does revolutionary fervor have to do with the stark reality of well-placed artillery and machine-gun nests? On the surface it would seem there is room to accommodate a degree of “technicalism” in pursuit of military objectives within the rubric of revolutionary people’s war of the Maoist variety.609 However, one must remember that the technical, managerial aspects of Western warfare, for strict Marxists, were products of bourgeois society, and more distinctively, products of a particularly

608 Shu Guang Zhang, Mao's Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950-1953 (Lawrence: University Presss of Kansas, 1995), 259. 609 Here I am borrowing David Ralston’s notion that society and armies in Europe were particularly “technicalistic,” i.e. that European armies of the modern period have been noticeably successful in their ability to “mobilize a multitude of diverse, individual energies and to integrate them into a single, articulated whole for the accomplishment of some larger purpose.” David Ralston, Importing the European Army: The Introduction of European Military Techniques and Institutions into the Exta-European World, 1600-1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 2-3. 227 bourgeois logic.610 This practice of ascribing mutually-exclusive systems of logic based on class identity meant that borrowing too heavily from the bourgeoisie could not be politically neutral. Techincalism is suffused with bourgeois thinking; to experiment too much with it is to run serious risk of reactionary thinking. In the case of artillery for instance, its historical roots in middle-class, technically-minded military professionals made it an especially dangerous branch of service.

That is not to say that communist armies/societies did not eventually integrate technology – of course they did. The Soviet Union, North Korea, and the Vietnamese communists all eventually built what we would consider “modern,” technology- dependent forces that, apart from their distinctive ethos, looked and operated much as their adversaries. What should be noted, however, is that this process was not immediate and was fraught with danger for those who advocated for it. To argue for any type of accommodation with American firepower – to use the Vietnamese example – put its proponents at a distinct rhetorical disadvantage, which as Hang Nguyen notes, finally resulted in their ouster. The doctrine of the efficacy of the “general counter- offensive/general uprising” remained the orthodox position throughout both Indochina

Wars, and remains so today. Even now Vietnamese historiography of the wars, at pains to reconcile the actual course of events with the neat three-phase Maoist paradigm, has jumped through considerable intellectual hoops to modify it to a five-phase process.611 In this respect then, a great deal of the technicalism of communist armies required the

610 Detractors termed this idea of class-based logics “polylogism” in the 1940s. Ludwig von Mises, A Treatise on Human Action: The Scholar's Edition (Auburn: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2008), 5. 611 See Lien-Hang Nguyen, “Vietnamese Historians and the First Indochina War,” in The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis, 42. 228 collective putting aside of stricter Marxism-Leninist thought, or a keen ability to talk around the problem.

The issue is the linkages that bind the notions of the “general counter- offensive/general uprising” together with the larger dogmas implicit in communist thought. Both ideas - obviously the former nested within the later - provide points of resolution for otherwise intractable situations and therefore, once accepted, provide a degree of intellectual satisfaction, hence the appeal. The first point is philosophical and has to do with communism itself. As Greg Lockhart has shown, Vietnamese

“nationalism” was really a product of French conquest and colonization. Prior to these events any concept of patriotism for Vietnamese-speaking peoples was really an aspect of loyalty to the imperial throne. Some exception may be made for Tonkin where nascent patriotism was less a function of commitment to the, from their perspective, upstart

Nguyen dynasty, but more to an abstract Confucianism also threatened by French rule.612

Then the French defeated and functionally did away with the monarchy (and whatever attendant Confucianism lingered on), forcing contemplative individuals across the country to rethink what it meant to be Vietnamese.613 To be sure, a brand of nationalism could be incorporated from the French colonial overlords. As Benedict Anderson has shown, nationalism, especially the French version thereof, had become “modular” and therefore readily incorporated by the new peoples with whom the French had contact.614

And much like with Germany or Italy, whose national origins came about largely due to

612 Taylor, 478. 613 Lockhart, 41-44. 614 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (New York: Verson, 2006), 87. 229

French occupation, Vietnamese nationalism too would involve an acceptance of the rubric, but a rejection of the source.

Many disparate national groups tried to incorporate some sense of nationalism in the hopes that they could eventually wean such a notion away from its Gallic parentage.

Nevertheless such an enterprise placed Vietnam and the Vietnamese as subsidiary players within the larger skein of French history. Any identity or role so conceived was, to the cynically-minded, derivative, contingent, and somehow inauthentic. The fact that colonial administrators in the early 20th century actually then pushed a notion of

Vietnamese national identity capable of self-expression, but indebted to French tutelage was simply unacceptable, hypocritical and fictitious.615 Despite the Vietnamese desire to distance themselves from the French, much of the strange unresolved tension that exists in Vietnamese nationalism with its limiting scope of action versus communism and its avowedly internationalizing impetus can perhaps be attributed to its schizophrenic French parentage where the inherent particularity (and practical inaccessibility) of French national identity played out against the claims of a universalizing empire offering to bring civilization to the world and theoretically open to all.616

This process of rejection and reappropriation took on special import in the region of far northern Annam, particularly in the provinces of Thanh Hoa, Nghe An and Ha

Tinh, the home of Ho Chi Minh and a great many other future communist leaders. The region, known for its poverty and erudition, had been poorly governed under the Nguyen

615 Taylor, 492-493. 616 Once again, the best analysis of this contradiction of France as both republic and empire is Alice Conklin’s A Mission to Civilize: France and West Africa, 1895-1930. 230 kings, and also escaped much notice during most of the period of French colonial rule. It is one of the ironies of history that this insular provincial hinterland would become the training ground of so many advocates for world revolution. Here, scholars maintain, intellectual affection developed for an equally fictional, “idealized nation,” with the intricacies of historical materialism eventually providing a ready alternative to a discredited Confucian mandarinate and its absentee French successor.617

As is well known, a young Ho Chi Minh working in Paris was brought into the communist fold by way of the writings of Lenin, particularly Lenin’s work on “National and Colonial Questions.”618 In this and other writings (e.g. Imperialism, the Highest

Stage of Capitalism) Lenin put forth the contention that anti-imperialism and anti- capitalism were two equal halves in the great crusade for world revolution, i.e. that in imperialism capitalism had reached its inevitable tipping point. Colonial peoples fighting for national liberation would rise up and shake the European proletariat loose from a lackadaisical revolutionary sense brought on by the unnatural life colonialism had lent to otherwise outworn capitalist injustices.619 For the first time, the colonies were not derivative, but crucial to the working out of world revolution. The Vietnamese were not drifting behind – they were the very bow wave of history. This Marxist-Leninist perspective, as Lockhart, puts it, “freed Vietnamese history from the course of French

617 Taylor, 485-486. 618 See “The path which led me to Leninism,” in Ho Chi Minh, Ho Chi Minh: On Revolution - Selected Writings, 1920-66, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Publishers, 1967), 5-7. 619 Huynh Kim Khanh, Vietnamese Communism, 1925-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 55. 231 colonial rule…and had permitted radicals to imagine an independent alternative for the

‘the people’ within a socialist world order.”620

The details of the world revolution, however, were a bit thorny. The colonialists and the capitalists were quite rich and well-armed. They had professional armies of counterrevolutionaries and networks of spies for hunting down agitators. The forces of reaction were adept at quashing ill-planned and ill-timed attempts at upheaval. The records of the 1930 Yên Bái mutiny and the 1940 Southern uprising (Khởi nghĩa Nam

Kỳ) provided grim testimony to this fact. Marxism needed a great deal more specificity.

For Marx the ultimate end of capitalism would come about by a spontaneous revolution of the laboring classes. What precisely would trigger this revolution, or what would ensure a sufficient scope to paralyze the forces of repression remained maddeningly vague. For as later critics noted, Marx assumed the end of capitalism as a matter of scientific certainty almost spurred on by the impersonal forces of production themselves.621 Despite being a future event, it was already an object of historical knowledge by which the past and present could be understood.622 Lenin’s concept of a political “vanguard” could partially alleviate the difficulty in Marxist praxis, but its efficacy had only been proven against a quasi-feudal regime already in its death throes.623

The colonial capitalists – such as Japan or the French in Indochina – were a bit more tenacious. Also, the problem of Stalin’s policy of cooperating with colonial powers to

620 Lockhart, 59. 621 Marxist theoretician G.V. Plekhanov explored this problem first in 1908. See “the Materialist Conception of History,” in G.V. Plekhanov, Fundamental Problems of Marxism (New York: International Publishers, 1992). 622 Richard Vernon, Committment and Change: Georges Sorel and the Idea of Revolution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 51-52. 623 Lenin’s concept of the “vanguard” party appeared in his pamphlet What is to Be Done? in 1902. 232 fight the Axis during World War II undermined the Russian example for many Asian revolutionaries.624

Douglas Pike has noted that the Vietnamese idea of the “general uprising” (khởi nghĩa) served as a “social myth in the Sorelian use of the term.”625 This is quite correct and was the original contribution of Vietnamese communist thinking to the Maoist system.626 Unlike vague Marxism in which the rising up of the proletariat was an assumed historical fact to be waited upon without any clear guide to personal action,

Georges Sorel’s notion of the “general strike” was the combined action of all workers to simultaneously present the capitalist hegemony with a situation so widespread and dire that it would cause the end of the exploitative system and the dawn of something new.

The “general strike” would provide a central, directed consciousness to workers’ action, i.e. it would constitute how socialist episteme and praxis could be brought fruitfully into one.627 In short, this sort of myth provided a call to action within the context of Western

European capitalism.

A similar, if intellectually independent, adaptation of Marxist thought developed in China under Mao. With a revolution removed from the urban centers, Mao required a vehicle to build military strength and induce political militancy amongst the population.

Mao’s elucidation of the three-phase paradigm of revolutionary, or people’s war, was his response to this need. Initially Mao had focused on a theory of guerrilla warfare, but by

624 Lockhart, 71. 625 Pike, 218. 626 Ronnie E. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise (New York: Frank Cass, 1995), 10. 627 Vernon, 50-51. 233

1938 in response to the Japanese invasion, the communist leader laid the groundwork for the entire revolutionary development.

The pressing issue Mao addressed in On Protracted War was how to defeat this much more skilled, better-equipped enemy. The key was that victory could not be quick.

To build the requisite strength Mao argued that in the first phase China would be in the position of the “strategic defensive,” a time marked by mobile warfare and guerrilla activity. Military defeat of the enemy was not possible at this time. Instead the revolutionaries should focus on merely staying alive and denying the enemy any significant successes against the core of the revolutionary forces. The enemy, by contrast, sees his designs frustrated, and his economy and morale exhausted.628

The second phase in Mao’s concept is one of “strategic stalemate” in which the enemy, having reached the culminating point of his offensive, finds his energy largely spent. During this phase, according to Mao, he will “attempt to safeguard the occupied areas and to make them his own by the fraudulent method of setting up puppet governments.” This stage is marked by intense guerrilla activity in enemy-controlled areas, while preparatory work is done in base areas removed from enemy reach. During this phase political indoctrination of the people is all-important. Beyond just building military strength, the revolution must “mobilize the whole people to unite as one,” to

“sweep away all pessimism and ideas of compromise” and finally to “prepare for the counter-offensive.”629

628 Tse-Tung, 211-212. 629 Tse-Tung, 213. 234

Once the balance of forces has swung irrevocably in the revolution’s favor, the third phase opens. Here at last the enemy would be expelled from the country, his hold on the occupied areas broken. The form of fighting then would transition from guerrilla combat to mobile warfare fought in more or less conventional terms. The “counter- offensive” phase in Mao’s thinking and due to the vastness of China took the form of many strategic offensives.630 In its Vietnamese variation it tended to collapse into one great, final action.

This Maoist paradigm was compelling to those who accepted it. In the first place, it partially resolved the paradox of the Marxist position vis-à-vis individual action, i.e. that revolution is inevitable despite any particular individual’s potential apathy. The paradigm’s aesthetic was also appealing to true believers. Mao laid out his revolutionary war strategy in Hegelian dialectical form, just as Marx established all of history as the working out of oppositional tendencies that birth out necessarily the subsequent optimal means of production. As each stage reached its inevitable crescendo the next would emerge from the interplay while simultaneously rooting out “subjectivism” and assuring the primacy of political considerations. In Mao’s thought this dialectic is nested within the larger struggle between “just” and “unjust” wars, a process that will end in the campaign to “eliminate all wars.” The matter of Maoist strategy, therefore, is not fundamentally a practical matter, but is subject to the “science of strategy” beholden to the “laws” of historical certainty.631

630 Tse-Tung, 214. 631 See “Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” in Tse-Tung, 78-79. 235

Assuming proper understanding and implementation (granted that this is where so much of the argumentation resides), Maoist strategy was not subject to correction or emendation in its form or direction. Its appeal was not its fundamental flexibility, but its inherent rigidity. As François Furet, discussing Hannah Arendt’s conception of ideology has noted, communism was indeed a “closed system of historical interpretation that denied the importance of creative action.”632 This is to say that, once Mao derived his strategy from the assumed scientific “laws” of historical development, it became impossible to depart this course without running afoul of the political certainty of the communist vision.633 Armed with such irrefutable strategic science, Truong Chinh was able to declare much later on that the “resistance will win” after the “necessity” of passing through the three stages and apart from any hope in negotiation.634

The so-called “Vietnamese Modification” to the Maoist paradigm began very quickly and contrary to later commentators’ belief, tracked very closely to its Chinese original.635 In 1938, Vietnamese communists began producing their own syntheses of

Maoist thought, most notably those of Nguyen Duc Thuy and Nugyen Van Tay. These authors stressed the importance of unifying the people (peasants not workers) behind the revolution. Nguyen Duc Thuy’s translations of Zhu De introduced Vietnamese communists to most of the key Maoist concepts, including the idea of forming chủ lực

632 François Furet, The Passing of the Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century, trans., Deborah Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 435. 633 One must note here that European socialist “revisionism” à la Eduard Bernstein in which much of the rigidity of communist certainty was replaced by practical and looser Marxist formulations during the 1890s had no real equivalent in the communist camp of Indochina in the 1940s. Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents of Marxism, trans., P.S. Falla (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 433. 634 Truong Chinh, The Resistance Will Win, Reprinted from original 1966 edition ed. (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2001), 148. 635 See Chapter 6, “The Vietnamese Modification,” in Hammes, 56. 236

(main force) units from guerrilla bands for use in mobile operations. While the formal concept of the three-phased Maoist system was not fully articulated in Vietnamese at this date, segments of writings reproduced from Zhou Enlai charted the course in as yet inchoate form. By 1939 the Indochinese Communist Party (ICP) had formally adopted a

Maoist line.636

Although the first military publication by PAVN itself was Ho Chi Minh’s Cách

Đánh Du Kích (Guerrilla Tactics) released in 1944, which does not mention the development of regular forces, the Maoist strategic regime moved quickly into

Vietnamese communist thinking.637 Giap’s writings from immediately before the beginning of World War II show him thoroughly conversant in Chinese communist strategy.638 His later works produced shortly after the First Indochina War, describe the war in thoroughly Maoist terms, and whatever his later misgivings, they describe a system that would “entail several phases” culminating finally in the “general counter- offensive.”639 For the Vietnamese the first step was the phòng ngự (defensive) stage; this was followed by the second or cầm cự (holding) phase. Following Mao’s model, the last phase is the tổng phản công (general counter-offensive).640

636 Lockhart, 68-71. 637 Edward O'Dowd, "Ho Chi Minh and the Origins of the Vietnamese Doctrine of Guerrilla Tactics," Small Wars & Insurgencies 24, no. 3 (2013): 561. 638 David G. Marr, Vietnamese Tradition on Trial, 1920-1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 328. 639 Vo Nguyen Giap, Peoople's War, People's Army: The Viet Cong Insurrection Manual for Underdeveloped Countries (New York: Bantam Books, 1968), 23. 640 Lockhart, 71. 237

From nearly the beginning the efforts of Viet Minh military organization in

Cochinchina flowed logically from a commitment to the Maoist strategy. The initial plan to pin the French within Saigon failed rapidly and so did the short-lived strategy of

“attack fast, win.” The hope that a weakened France would give up her empire was dispelled. The Viet Minh recoiled before the lightning strikes of Leclerc’s reoccupation force. As Nguyen Binh arrived in Cochinchina in November 1945 he found the various resistance organizations in disarray. He immediately set to work to organize the disparate units, homogenize them and place them firmly under his leadership.641 From this point forward, the goal of the southern communist military organization was to prepare regular forces to participate in the countrywide “general counter-offensive” against the French occupiers.

The first step was to reorganize the existing fighting bands into something like a discernable army capable of concerted action. From the outset, however, Nguyen Binh’s span of control was limited. Although Binh was the Hanoi-appointed leader of Zone VII, he could not count on the unquestioned loyalty of all of his putative forces. The Cao Dai and Binh Xuyen remained skeptical of his authority, until such time as they all removed themselves entirely from the anti-French alliance. In reality even after he was elevated to overall command in Cochinchina, Binh’s sway was most pronounced in Zone VII, the eastern portion of the country including Saigon and its environs. There had been a brief attempt by armed forces from Zone IX (the far west of the country beyond the Bassac river) to travel east to join with Binh’s nascent army closer to Saigon. This policy (xuyên

641 Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," 36. 238

Đông – through to the East) foundered straight away. Zone IX forces could not breach the French stranglehold on the western river network. In mid-February 1946 Zone IX leader Vũ Đức cancelled any further attempts. Zone IX would instead focus on local issues, on government improvement and the eradication of non-communist elements within their area. Vu Duc withdrew most of his forces to the isolated U Minh Forest to prevent their destruction. French action had stifled communist military organization in the far west at level of the guerrilla band.642

642 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 259-261. 239

Figure 12. Viet Minh War Zones643

In Zones VIII and particularly in Zone VII, military organization proceeded on a better footing. To replace the system of variegated units, Binh instituted a regimen of chi

đội (sub-units). Though given various translations including “regiment,” the term chi doi is best understood as a proto-battalion, though some of them were not much larger than a company at their inception. This process began with a Viet Minh military conference

643 War Zone VII included Baria, Bien Hoa, Thu Dau Mot, Tay Ninh, Gia Dinh, Cho Lon and Saigon. Zone VIII: Tan An, Go Cong, My Tho, Sa Dec, Vinh Long, Tra Vinh, and Ben Tre. Zone IX: Chau Doc, Long Xuyen, Ha Tien, Can Tho, Soc Trang, Bac Lieu, Rach Gia. Lịch Sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam, vol. 1 (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Quân Đội Nhân Dân, 1977), 235. 240

(Hội Nghị Quân Sự) in November 1945. The formation of chi doi 1 followed soon thereafter. Binh recruited this formation from among disaffected Tonkinese workers at southern rubber plantations and placed it under the command of Tran Van Hoi. It took up operations in the vicinity of Gia Dinh.644 To strengthen and professionalize his units,

Binh also started a staff training school in Zone VII that was eventually expanded to include men from Zone VIII as well.645

Figure 13. Viet Minh Chi Doi, 1945-1946

By spring 1946 Binh had established sixteen chi doi in Zone VII, though a large number of them were Binh Xuyen or Cao Dai formations simply rolled into the chi doi

644 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Bulletin de renseignements: traduction de Tran Van Hoi, commandant en chef de la garde Nationale (Ve Quoc Quan), Chi doi 1, adressée au chef du Comité d’Assassinat no.3,” prepared by C.E.F.E.O., 2e Bureau. Dated 14 Dec 1946; Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 279. 645 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 283. 241 taxonomy.646 Binh tapped into a variety of populations to build his units. Some, like chi doi 13, were formed around union workers from Saigon. Others had as their nucleus the so-called Nam Tiến (“Southward”) forces recruited amongst Tonkinese youth and sent to

Cochinchina to aid in the war.647 Most had a regional complexion, e.g. chi doi 16 was formed in Baria, while chi doi 11 had its home in Tay Ninh. Lastly a number of these formations were based in part on those units belatedly constructed by the Japanese at the end of their occupation of the Indochina. Chi doi 5 and 25 had their genesis after this fashion.648

War Zone VIII under Trần Văn Trà followed suit in the fall of 1946, aided by the cessation of French hostilities under the terms of the modus vivendi (See Chap 1).649

Upon his request two sections (phân đội) of chi doi 12 left Zone VII to act as cadre for the formation of a new unit in Zone VIII, chi doi 14. Subsequent units followed. Chi doi

17 was assigned to My Tho; chi doi 18 to Sa Dec; chi doi 19 went to Ben Tre, while chi doi 20 stayed in reserve under zonal command.650 Chi doi would eventually appear in

Zone IX as well, but not until the summer of 1947, and even then their capabilities remained far behind their eastern comrades.651

646 The table above is compiled from several sources: Vân; Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951."; Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến; Elliott. 647 Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," 36. 648 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 279-280. 649 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam, État-major, 2e Bureau. Dated 10 January 1952. 650 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 280. 651 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam, État-major, 2e Bureau. Dated 10 January 1952. 242

While some of these units would become quite effective – e.g. chi doi 10 under

Huỳnh Văn Nghệ (See Chap 4) – most were at a fairly low level of tactical and organizational sophistication in 1946. They were more impressive on paper. The

Executive Committee of the Nam Bo Viet Minh reported to Giap in November of 1946 that only one chi doi in Zone VII and another in Zone VIII were prepared for active operations. Zone IX was considerably worse, lacking entirely in “mobile troops.”

Though the Executive Committee could report good progress in military organization in

Zones VII and VIII, it also noted that the eastern forces were badly equipped and short on foodstuffs. The financial situation was exceedingly poor.652

But unlike in Tonkin, where the Viet Minh were afforded significant time to prepare themselves for the French return, the Nam Bo revolutionaries had little time to develop. Nguyen Binh’s situation worsened at the end of 1946 when the Central

Committee of the Party (Trung Ương Đảng Cộng Sản) in a pair of directives from the later portion of December informed their southern comrades that the most pressing task was to maximum difficulties for the French in Cochinchina. It was imperative that the

Nam Bo fighters do their utmost to pin French resources in the south and so give the hub of the revolution in Tonkin more time to prepare. The conflict, so they were told, was now a “total war,” “protracted” and “difficult.”653 Saigon, however, was the “nerve center” of the colonial power’s war effort.654 It was there that the Party should carry on

652 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents vietnamiens: Comité exécutif du Nambo à Vo Nguyen Giap.” Dated 10 Nov 1946. 653 “Chiến tranh toàn diện” – total war; “lâu dài” – protracted. Quoted from “Gửi Xứ Uỷ Nam Bộ” in Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1945-1947 156. 654 “cân não.” Quote from “Thư của Trung Ương Đảng Gửi Các Đồng Chí Nam Bộ” in Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1945-1947 163. 243 its principal effort. The city had to be crippled through subversion, sabotage, boycott and outright violence directed at the “puppet regime” and the “traitors” who collaborated with it. The Party faithful were to sow a “sense of menace” in the southern capital.655 Political action and armed endeavor were to proceed side by side, in order to build a party both

“strong and unified.”

Nguyen Binh did not need the Central Committee to give these orders, however.

Earlier in the month in a communiqué to Tonkin, Binh had urged the northerners to essentially oppose the French on the beaches of Haiphong, to construct artillery batteries to fire upon French warships and planes, and to lay waste the cities before them, should the expeditionary corps make it inland. Meanwhile he begged for authorization to launch an offensive in the south.656 As Christopher Goscha has noted, Binh’s problem was that his chi dois were not yet up to the task of fighting against French regular forces.657 What he did have recourse to was terror. In another example of superfluous instructions, the

Central Committee directives exhorted Binh to not forget the “suicide assault team” (đội cảm tử xung phong) as the primary means of creating disorder in Saigon.658

At this point the second pillar of Nguyen Binh’s southern campaign took shape in earnest. Terror would remain a fixed feature of life in Saigon until its dramatic curtailment in 1950, after which the city would resort to a rather peaceful existence until late in the subsequent decade. Terror, as Wole Soyinka reminds us, is a “statement of

655 “ý thức uy hiếp.” Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1945-1947 156. 656 SHAT, carton 10H602. “Documents vietnamiens: Nguyen Binh à Vo Nguyen Giap,” dated 8 Dec 1946. 657 Goscha, "La Guerre par d'autres moyens: réflexions sur la Guerre du Việt Minh dans Le Sud-Vietnam de 1945 à 1951," 38. 658 Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, 1945-1947 163. 244 power, directed at the world.”659 For those directly afflicted, terror entails a “loss of self apprehension: a part of one’s self has been appropriated.”660 Any room for freedom and choice is radically curtailed. It has a parallel, but contrasting effect on others, who become enamored of access to that power, who want to gain back some of that lost self and so commit themselves to engage the “thrill of membership in the quasi-state…”661

Either way, the revolution prospers.

It must be remembered, however, that terror in Saigon was never an end to itself for Nguyen Binh. Long before the Party’s Central Committee declared in 1947 that

“conservation and maintenance of long-term main force resistance” was the key to winning the war, it was obvious in the south that beating the French head-on was a bootless plan.662 Binh first had to establish base areas where regular forces could be nurtured and trained. To accomplish this he needed to keep significant French forces tied down policing the major urban center of Saigon, and if possible make a ruin of

Cochinchinese economic life, even though his own sustenance largely depended on the

Viet Minh’s parasitic relationship to the French-backed economy. By harassing lines of communication and the political/economic hub of Cochinchinese life in Saigon, Binh could hope that a large enough portion of French forces would be tied up to give him a

659 Wole Soyinka, Climate of Fear: The Quest for Dignity in a Dehumanized World (New York: Random House, 2005), xx. 660 Soyinka, 8. 661 Soyinka, 45. 662 Lịch Sử Cuộc Kháng Chiến Chống Thực Dân Pháp, 1945-1954 Phần Ba (Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Quân Đội Nhân Dân, 1986), 35. 245 free hand to develop his strength in various base areas, i.e. the forests east of Saigon, in the Plain of Reeds and in the U Minh forest to the far west.663

Terror combined with steady guerrilla action was Binh’s only recourse in Saigon.

The violent and rapid French invasion in 1945 left little conventional Viet Minh military formations within the city. “Regular” units, insofar as that term is appropriate for Viet

Minh formations in 1945, withdrew to the suburbs, while various paramilitary forces went to ground within the capital and awaited instructions. When Binh arrvied in late

1945 he reorganized these remaining paramilitary/guerrilla forces into “action teams”

(ban công tác) of variable size. By the middle portion of 1946 Binh had six such teams operating in Saigon, the largest reportedly being around five hundred members in size.

Each team was then subdivided into smaller units of twenty to thirty members. These teams would engage in all manner of sabotage, supply and intrigue. Binh entrusted particularly sensitive sabotage targets, such as army headquarters and arsenals or railway depots, to them.664

Their most infamous activity, however, was assassination.665 The preferred method was the grenade attack, but the “action teams” also had special “dagger” men for closer work. In the chaotic days of 1950 the number of grenade attacks in Saigon would

663 Giap reiterated this plan to Nguyen Binh in the summer of 1948, stating that it was imperative that Binh 1) create base areas totally under Viet Minh control; 2) systematically sabotage French lines of communication; 3) destroy rubber production and the means by which it is transported; 4) reinforce his actions in the large cities, particularly Saigon. SHAT, carton 10H87. “Note: Fait envoi à la Defense Nationale des récentes directives adressées par le Gouvenement rebelle aux Forces rebelles de Cochinchine,” prepared by Colonel de Crevecoeur, Chef d’État-major, LTC Marion, Commandant la Section Opérationnelle. Dated 16 July 1948. 664 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note transmis par le Service Français securité Sud Vietnam sous le No. 5313/S le 23 Mar 1950: projets d’attentats terrorists dans la region Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, Chef d’État-Major, FFVS. Dated 25 Mar 1950. 665 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 282. 246 occasionally reach nearly one hundred per month.666 Later in the war the Viet Minh of

Saigon/Cholon fused the various “action teams” into a more formalized battalion, primarily to economize on leadership and arms. This became the infamous Volunteer

Death Battalion No. 950 (Tiểu đoàn 950). By 1950 this unit was subdivided into three platoons (trung đối) based on the former action teams.667

Of course of inestimable aid to Battalion No. 950 was the so-called “Red Sûreté” of Saigon/Cholon (Công An). Clearly modeled on the ubiquitous and much-feared

French internal security service, the công an eventually spread itself to most of the chief cities and provinces, but achieved its greatest penetration and efficacy in and around

Saigon.668 Beyond the system of provincial sections that pertained elsewhere, in the capital the Viet Minh established a special security section just for the urban area of

Saigon/Cholon. This organization had a number of subordinate structures: the first was an investigation committee focusing on intelligence and information (trình sát) ; the second was the actual police (cảnh sát) responsible for maintaining public order and fostering the appearance of Viet Minh legitimacy by building a parallel hierarchy to the one maintained by the French-backed government. The công an also maintained special assault cells for direct action. Below these city-wide services were communal sections

666 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 282. SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Rapport mensuel du Secteur Saigon/Cholon: mois d’avril 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 May 1950. 667 The three platoons were numbered 3018, 3019 and 3020. As is often the case, the standard translation of “platoon” is less than helpful, as these units were much larger than the normal conception of a platoon. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950; SHAT, carton10H4969. “Bulletin de Renseignements: déclaration d’un P.G. arrete le 23 Fevrier 1950,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, État-Major, 2eme Bureau, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. 668 Công an Nam Bộ Trong Kháng Chiến Chống Thực Dân Pháp Xâm Lược (Ho Chi Minh City: Nhà Xuất Bản Công An Nhân Dân, 1993), 114-115. 247 operating at the level of the city quarter and then down to the level of particular neighborhoods.669

Within the city, and in tandem with the “action committees,” the Viet Minh’s public security services worked to propagate the Viet Minh party line and to punish those deemed reactionaires and traitors in the hopes of squeezing out any and all public life separate from official communist cant.670 The công an would offer bounties for the killing of Euroepean or colonial soldiers. They offered restauranteurs training on how to discreetly poison the food of French military clients, though it does not seem that this was ever particularly effective.671 And while the killing of low-level Vietnamese “traitors” was generally left to local militiamen, the công an would direct the assassination of higher profile personalities, such government police agents, academics, prominent business leaders and politicians.672 Finally the “Red Sûreté” raised funds for the Nam Bo committee by organizing “kidnapping committees” that abducted businessmen and intellectuals for ransom.673

669 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Document récupéré à Anlong Tien (sur un cadaver): service de la Sûreté du Nam Bo,” dated 3 May 1951; SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Analyse: rapport de la Sûreté du Nambo,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 24 Nov 1949. 670 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Renseignement – Objet: Le 6eme Congrès National du “Cong An” Vietminh. Critiques des activités et décisions prises,” prepared by SDECE. Dated 17 Nov 1953. 671 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 938: activités V.M. – Ville de Saigon/Cholon – l’assassinate des militaries français,” prepared by Chef de Btn, Berard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, Source: S.R.O. Dated 16 Feb 1950. There are only occasional notes of suspecting poisoning by cooks to be found the French records. One such occurred on 18 Feb 1950 when multiple officers fell sick from food prepared by Vietnamese cooks, whereas evidently no Vietnamese soldiers were afflicted. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Surveillance du personnel autochtone travaillant dans les mess et popotes,” preparedy by Capitaine Monnet, Chef du poste “S.M.” des FFVS. Dated 27 Feb 1950. 672 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements: Secteur Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 22 Mar 1950; SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950 673 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin de renseignements: Novembre 1948,” signed by M. Dubouchage, Haut Commissariat de France pour l’Indodochine. Dated 17 Dec 1948. 248

On the espionage front Viet Minh security agents worked carefully to cultivate relationships with potential informers. Instructional documents encouraged Viet Minh recruiters to give easy tasks at first and to keep track of those who completed them efficiently. They futhermore highlighted the importance of recruiting fewer, more capable agents rather than a mass of workaday liaisons.674 As one might expect, the Viet

Minh security services recruited quite heavily among young women, encouraging them to become concubines to French soldiers and partisan troops. So positioned they were excellent sources of information. It was also hoped that they would be able to assassinate their unsuspecting partners once the word for the “general counter-offensive” was given.675 The French would ultimately grow wise to this game and Nguyen Binh had to advocate the use of older or less comely women for intelligence purposes, as French agents had taken to watching attractive girls too closely.676

Espionage is naturally a reoccurring cycle of one-upmanship and the công an was therefore heavily invested in counter-espionage. It directed its agents to track down and kill known agents working for the French. This activity would become more concerted as the war progressed. In time organizations in Saigon would develop special cells concerned entirely with counter-espionage, e.g. the eradication of French agents within

674 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note No. 19,626: constitution d’une “cinquieme colonne” au profit du Viet Minh dans le region de Travinh,” prepared by Marcel Bazin, Controleur de la Sûreté Federale. Dated 12 Oct 1949. 675 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 6,555: Activité V.M. – Zone VII,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, dated 19 Nov 1949. 676 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Memoires de voyage ecrites par Nguyen Binh à l’intention de sa femme Thanh: documents recuperes à Tanot le 30 Octobre 1951: Annexe II – L’action Viet-Minh dans les villes,” prepared by 2eme Bureau. 249 certain sectors of the city, and would at times place bounties on the heads of French intelligence agents.677

In many respects Nguyen Binh’s campaign of terror and subversion in Saigon was brutally successful. He succeeded for much of his tenure in establishing a regime of fear and uncertainty that would call into question the ability of the government to protect the people. Terror and kidnapping made Saigon extremely lucrative for the Viet Minh, viz. the veritable “milk cow” of the revolution, but also succeeded in alienating a great deal of the population.678 By 1948 certain intercepted intelligence reports recovered by the

French Sûreté and coming from quarter bosses in Saigon expressed grave skepticism about their ability to regain control of the populace.679

Binh also tied down significant French resources in defense of the city. From

1948 forward the French were compelled to create a special garrison battalion just for

Saigon/Cholon proper, as well as to make Saigon its own sector complete with substantial forces tied directly to its maintenance.680 Binh failed, however, in making Saigon the total resource sump the north demanded, as the French did succeed in repositioning forces from south to north on many occasions. His campaign of terror in Saigon also did not prevent the French from at times delivering stinging blows to his base areas in the

677 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Analyse: rapport de la Sûreté du Nambo,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 24 Nov 1949; SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements: Secteur Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 22 Mar 1950 678 Bodard, L'enlisement, 157. 679 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin de renseignements: Novembre 1948,” signed by M. Dubouchage, Haut Commissariat de France pour l’Indodochine. Dated 17 Dec 1948. 680 Just the garrison battalion included a unit of Senegalese, a company of Cambodians, truck detachment and a commando group. SHAT, carton 10H168. “Note de Service: Creation du Bataillon de Garnison de Saigon-Cholon,” signed Jean Valluy, commandant TFEO. Dated 30 Jan 1948; SHAT, carton 10H168. “Stationnement des troupes françaises en Indochine du Sud à la date du 1er Mars 1947,” prepared by État- Major, 3eme Bureau. Dated 1 Mar 1947. 250

Plain of Reeds and elsewhere. Nevertheless, French resources were sufficiently sparse and insecurity in the capital was pervasive enough to compel commanders like Boyer de

Latour to forgo controlling much of the countryside and focus heavily on the political/economic core of Cochinchina.

In these “evacuated zones” Binh worked diligently on building his armed forces, which followed the Tonkinese model quite closely. In the north, as in Cochinchina, there existed a three-fold, “pyramidal” structure to the Viet Minh army.681 At the bottom of this structure was the dân quân (militia or popular forces). With a scope of action limited to their immediate village or district, the popular forces were the most rudimentary, but also most fundamental of the gradations within the Viet Minh military establishment. In theory all males ages 18 to 45 in Viet Minh-controlled villages were de facto members of the popular forces. The induction of “liberated” men into these ranks constituted their first step into embracing the revolution. Le Duan, who served as the commissioner for the popular forces in Nam Bo, viewed the proper organization of the popular forces as the necessary means of stirring the populace from its political “drowsiness.”682 The roles and responsibilities of the popular forces were two-fold. The first was as self-defense units

(dân quân tự vệ ). These men required only minimal training and basic weaponry. Their role was not to fight French or partisan units per se, but to defend Viet Minh controlled villages, root out refractory elements if necessary, and work to supply regional or regular force units when called upon. Sabotage was their chief function, particularly the mining

681 Pierre Labrousse, La Méthode Vietminh: Indochine 1945-1954 (Panazol: Lavauzelle, 1996), 74. 682 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note de service sur l’organisation des Troupes populaires,” translation of a document prepared by Le Duan. Dated 12 Dec 1949. 251 of roads, destruction of bridges or the cutting of overland trails. As one would imagine, their military quality was highly variable. In reviewing his forces Le Duan recognized that while some popular force troops were undoubtedly “reliable and courageous,” most were “disorganized and indecisive.”683

Figure 14. Viet Minh Military Organization

Popular forces had a second mission requirement to which they could graduate.

This was the role of guerrilla (du kích). Unlike the self-defense forces, popular force guerrillas (dân quân du kích) had the function of accompanying regional or regular force units on their missions.684 Guerrilla forces might also be asked to harass posts slighlty

683 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note de service sur l’organisation des Troupes populaires,” translation of a document prepared by Le Duan. Dated 12 Dec 1949. 684 Official communist histories of this period claim that Le Duan was named the head fo the Southern Militias in Nov 1947 and that his department existed separate from the staff answerable to Nguyen Binh. 252 beyond their village limits or participate in ambushes when necessary. In short, their mission as given was to “attack, harass, blockade, [and] sabotage.”685 Guerrilla forces were marginally better armed than their milita counterparts. As the war continued, most also took on at least the appearance of military formations, though platoon/company seems to have been about the limit of their organization. Most importantly, under ideal conditions the best of the guerrilla troops were there to serve as replacements to regional force units as they suffered casaulties or looked to expand their establishment.686

The second tier within the Viet Minh’s military was the regional forces (bộ đội

địa phương). Better organized and with a larger span of action (generally a province) than the militiamen, the regional troops were the intermediary level between the unwashed militia and the apex of the structure, the main force (chủ lực), regular units.

Regional force units were organized like their more conventional and later appearing cousins into companies (đại đội or DD) and ultimately battalions (tiểu đoàn or td).

Indeed, for the first two years or so of the war in the south, regional forces was all to which Nguyen Binh’s command could aspire. Main force units could not be conjured or trained immediately. His initial complement of chi doi fulfilled only a regional force role. But in time Binh would look to these regional forces to construct his highly mobile, geographically independent regular units.

The first step for Binh to be able to grow regular force units was the standardization of his rather hodge-podge system of chi dois, an ad hoc measure with no

While possible, it seems more likely that this detail was inserted into the accounts to provide Le Duan distance from Nguyen Binh’s later failures. Vân, 50. 685 Lịch Sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam, 294-295. 686 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950 253 real analogue in the military experience of the Viet Minh in Tonkin. Greater military organization would indeed serve two mutually-reinforcing purposes for Binh. In the first place, greater and more uniform organization and training were absolutely necessary given the long-term strategy of eventually launching the “general counter-offensive.”

Secondly, Binh’s command over his putative subordinates was far from absolute.

Increasing uniformity was necessary to ensure his control over events, leadership and decision-making. But while this goal was perhaps reasonable from a purely military point of view, his emphasis on total control cost him dearly politically.

Figure 15. Viet Minh Trung Doan, 1947

To homogenize with contemporaneous military terminology in Tonkin and to further unify his command, Binh launched his first major reorganization in mid-1947 after he was appointed commander-in-chief for the entire southern theater.687 Once

687 The official history of Zone VII says Binh was not formally appointed a lieutenant-general and military commissioner for all Nam Bo (Trung tướng and kiêm Ủy viên quân sự Nam Bộ) until Jan of 1948, but he seems to have been exercising de facto control of the southern war effort long before that and French intelligence certainly believed he was in charge. Vân, 55. 254 again the focus of this reorganization was in Zones VII and VIII.688 There he reflagged all chi doi as “regiments” (trung đoàn or TD), though in terms of numbers the title was again somewhat inflated.689 In terms of operational significance, the creation of trung doan only gradually became an important reality. By way of example chi doi 10, one of the more capable of Zone VII’s units, still operated under its original designation in early

1948 with an operational core of only about 500 men.690 These units rarely operated at anything like the regimental level and their span of action only extended in most cases to several districts.691

688 Though the official history of the Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam makes reference to trung doan operating in War Zone IX, these seem to have been little more than fictions of nomenclature, never arising to the organizational level of their eastern brethren. There was also a TD 300 activated in early 1948 from personnel in Saigon. Lịch Sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam, 309-310. Through 1949/1950, TD 300 seems to have operated chiefly around the outskirts of Saigon. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de reinseignements No. 6,520,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2eme Bureau FFVS. Dated 18 Nov 1949. 689 Though they routinely translate Trung doan as “regiment,” the 2eme Bureau recommended that Trung doan be understood as medium-sized tactical grouping. The lack of anything like muster rolls for these units makes any statement of size largely speculative. SHAT, carton 10H636. “Note sur les appellations V.M. No. 5.509,” prepared by État-Major, 2eme Bureau, Commandant en Chef des Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient. Dated 14 Nov 1950. 690 SHAT, carton 10H4255. “Declaration du prisonnier Nguyen Van Lu dit Lai, agent de liaison du Service de propagande de la province de Bien-Hoa,” taken prisoner by 13th D.B.L.E. on 3 March 1948. 691 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 22. 255

Figure 16. Trung Doan Locations, 1947692

Nevertheless, by the end of 1947 – at least on paper – Binh’s command had converted to trung doan. In Zone VII, for instance, chi doi 1 became TD 301; chi doi 2,

3 and 9 were rolled together to become TD 302.693 In Zone VIII chi doi 14 became TD

120, while the vaunted chi doi 19 became TD 99.694 In addition, each zone created one chu luc battalion, theoretically untied from any particular province and held as a zonal

692 Lịch Sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam, 309-310. 693 Vân, 60-61. 694 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 21. 256 reserve of sorts.695 As noted above, forces in Zone IX remained far behind in terms of organization, numbers and overall tactical ability.

As 1947 progressed into 1948 and beyond, Nguyen Binh focused on improving his trung doan. He bloodied his units in action and drastically improved their self- manufacture of weapons. Binh also pushed hard for the development of radio communications to facilitate better maneuver.696 He continued to demonstrate his interest in military education by opening a full, if clandestine military school in the south in

December 1948.697 In fact, as Phillip Davidson has noted, Nguyen Binh’s staff operations and organizational skill almost certainly exceeded that of Giap’s at this time.

His development of a “general staff” and his continued focus on staff competency before analogous efforts on Giap’s part lend credence to the rumor that Binh had received some manner of training at the Nationalist Chinese Military Academy at Whampoa.698

Each trung doan was supposed to boast three tieu doan (battalions); in practice this was not always the case.699 As the tieu doan matured and became better equipped many of them developed into formidable, articulated fighting forces. By 1949 Binh began the process of turning certain of these into powerful maneuver units. As time went on various trung doan would be called upon to yield up the cream of their formations in

695 Lịch Sử Quân Đội Nhân Dân Việt Nam, 308. 696 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam, État-major, 2e Bureau. Dated 10 January 1952. 697 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin de renseignements: Novembre 1948,” signed by M. Dubouchage, Haut Commissariat de France pour l’Indodochine. Dated 17 Dec 1948. 698 Davidson, 81. Lucien Bodard also made this claim. See Bodard, L'enlisement, 153. 699 A latecomer to the game, TD 300 for example had only two tieu doan, td 898 and 899, the former of which actually by 1950 was still only comprised of two companies. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Fiche de reinseignements No. 35/10,” prepared by Chef d’escadron Herrgott, adjutant 10eme RAC et de secteur des VAICOS. Dated 28 Feb 1950. 257 order to establish the so-called chu luc or main force tieu doan, i.e. the vanguard for

Binh’s planned assault on the heart of French-held Cochinchina.

Figure 17. Tieu doan 309 Basic Organization

In the case of td 309 this process occurred in March 1949. The command of Zone

VIII ordered TD 105, 120 and td 305 to build and release companies for use in the new tieu doan. This formation had three line dai doi (companies) with an authorized strength of 152 men each; we can assume, however, that in regular operations they frequently fell far below this figure. Excluding the command company and a host of other auxiliaries, the fighting infantry strength of a full-up battalion in 1949 was just over 450 men.

Interestingly, the influence of Japanese deserters to the Viet Minh cause - even this late in the war - was far from insubstantial. DD 941, for instance, had a Japanese officer as its deputy commander. Finally, unlike many other units, chu luc formations were more

258 party-conscious than their regional compatriots; each company had approximately forty party members on its rolls.700

For weapons the tieu doan outfitted its companies more or less identically. Each company received three medium machine guns, fifteen or so sub-machine guns (most usually Thompsons) and approximately six grenade launchers. This distribution was not universal, however. Other chu luc battalions – seemingly those that operated closer to the highly fortified center of the French position - had a fourth company which served as a heavy weapons detachment. In certain cases these units were equipped with a 20mm cannon, several heavy machine guns (Hotchkiss or Browning), and medium and light mortars (81 and 60 mm).701 Once again, we can assume that this array of equipment was highly variable; Viet Minh weaponry was hugely dependent on what they could pilfer from French units. Given the difficulty of transport, we can also assume that there was little redistribution of weapons across regions to fill in gaps.702

Besides superior armament, the chief advantage of the chu luc battalions was their much increased area of operations. The most feared of Zone VIII’s chu luc battalions, td

307, could be found in combat anywhere from the Plain of Reeds over to Ben Tre, down to Tra Vinh and west to Vinh Long – a far wider berth than the largely district-bound

700 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 24. 701 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950. 702 There were always exceptions. In preparation for the large offensives of 1950 the Viet Minh in Baria began shipping weapons out via boat to units stationed closer to Saigon. These shipments reportedly included mortars, machine guns and sub-maching guns. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 1,599: Activité Viet Minh – Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Savani, Chef du 2eme Bureau, FFVS. Dated 22 March 1950. 259 regional units.703 A clutch of captured documents related to td 307’s operations in and around Tra Vinh reveals in some respects how this kind of movement was effected. At least on the periphery of the French-held center of the country, the Viet Minh had established a considerable degree of organizational purchase; moreover this efficacy could and would be brought to use to support the movement and activity of Nguyen

Binh’s main force units.

Essentially, Binh instituted a contribution system. Provinces, districts, and villages were responsible to Viet Minh “management committees.” These committees would receive stockage lists that detailed what supplies they would need to assemble.

The committees ordered the supplies confiscated from local families, according to their means. These supplies could be any number of things; the most common were rice, corn, dried meat, sugar, and other foodstuffs. Once assembled these supplies were considered

“government stocks for the combatants.” In some cases people would be reimbursed for their supplies; in most they would not.

At the appointed time, logistical officers from the units would come and notify the various village committees of their parent units’ imminent arrival. Various village associations would then be assigned to move the stocks to selected delivery locations. It seems that political commissars accompanied these officers to ensure that giving was both timely and done with the appropriate revolutionary ardor. While it can be assumed that td 307 still had to carry a great deal of supplies with it, the ability to move from

703 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam, État-major, 2e Bureau. Dated 10 January 1952. 260 village to village far from its normal base of operations and find ready provision was immensely useful and further evidence of the growing power and sophistication of

Nguyen Binh’s staff.704

Building chu luc battalions, however, was difficult. The process involved fusing various trung doan into what the Viet Minh term liên trung đoàn (LTD). These were inter-regiments or combined regiments formed by matching a chu luc battalion with one or two others composed of regional troops. In Zone VIII TD 105 was joined with TD

120 to form LTD 105/120 in early 1949.705 In Zone VII Binh formed LTD 306/312.

This unit had one chu luc tieu doan composed of four companies, including a heavy weapons dai doi. Its second battalion, by contrast, was formed from seven regional companies that maintained their dispersed operations. At this point, however, the regional companies functioned more or less independently and it seems that no real battalion staff existed for these units.

Probably to economize on staff, Binh equipped each LTD with a greater array of staff functions, particularly in the intelligence field. A LTD maintained a large intelligence service with specific cells assigned to intelligence gathering, espionage and repression of presumed traitorous elements. By the end of 1949 Nguyen Binh seems to

704 For example, when two platoons of td 307 visited the village of Thanh Phu in November 1949, they received 20 chickens, two roast pigs, 83 packets of dried buffalo, in addition to a variety of other commodities, including tobacco. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note de renseignements No. 1503: documents récupérés au cours de l’affaire de CAUKE,” prepared by A.M. Savani, Chef de Btn, Chef du 2eme Bureau, FFVS. Dated 22 Mar 1950. 705 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 22. 261 have built two of these LTD (105/120 and 306/312) with another in the process of formation (300/308).706

Nguyen Binh would ultimately form four such units, evolving them into what could be called proper regiments.707 Eventually these units expanded their establishment, reshuffled units and took on new names. In the east was TD Dong Nai including td 301,

302, 303 and 304. According to the French this was the best and most reliable of the trung doan, as many of its soldiers were drawn from the Tonkinese chi doi initially recruited from among the rubber plantation workers. In the center in Zone VIII was TD

Dong Thap Muoi composed of tieu doan 307, 309, and 311. There was also independent battalion td 300 that operated near Saigon.708 To the west in the Cisbassac and particularly near Tra Vinh was TD Cuu Long with battalions 308, 310 and 312. Farther out beyond the Bassac river and including tieu doan 402, 404 and 406 was TD Tay Do, probably the least effective of the chu luc formations.709

706 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” prepared by LTC Rousson, commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950 707 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Évolution des forces V.M. du Nambo de Septembre 1945 à Janvier 1952,” prepared by Commandement des Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam, État-major, 2e Bureau. Dated 10 January 1952. 708 French intelligenc vaciallated between dubbing unit 300 a tieu doan or a full trung doan. In actual strength, it was closer to a battalion in the combats of 1950. 709 Gras, 393.; SHAT, carton 10H906. Carte “Region de Travinh: implentation VM au 1-12-1950.” 262

Figure 18. Chu Luc Trung Doan dispositions, 1950

Once fully mobile, the new chu luc regiments had an impressive complement of troops and services, at least on paper. A chu luc regiment had three battalions, each with three companies. There was also a large staff, a political committee and additional companies of engineers and artillery (i.e. heavy mortars at best). Finally each line battalion had a “reserve” company, which most likely served as a holding ground for replacements for the other three dai doi.

263

Figure 19. Organizational table for Trung Doan Chu Luc Tay Do710

Despite his organizational skill and success, Nguyen Binh’s efforts to build his main force units did not come without a price. During 1949 he sped up the effort at an accelerated rate that required Binh to strip his regional units of troops to a significant degree. Documents related to a Viet Minh military conference held in the far west of the country in 1951 sometime after Nguyen Binh’s deposition mention that the general had hollowed out his regional forces. If these reports are to be believed, Binh had reduced most regional units to approximately 57 percent of their authorized strength.711

710 SHAT, carton 10H4004. “Analyse: compte-rendu d’interrogatoire du nommé Tran Quang Dom, rallié le 28 Septembre 1950 au poste Caodaiste de Cantho,” prepared by Chef de Btn D. Fontes, Commandant le Sous secteur de Cantho. Dated 3 October 1950. 711 SHAT, carton 10H621. “Note d’Information sur les forces armée rebelles: pourquoi Nguyen Binh a perdu la confiance,” 2e Bureau, État-major interarmées et des forces terrestres. Dated 5 June 1952. 264

Much maligned after his fall, Binh’s attempts to ramp up phase three of the

Maoist paradigm in 1949/1950 to the purported neglect of guerrilla activity were not without their rationale, the greater part of which was completely in line with what

Douglas Pike would term the “orthodox” line of Vietnamese communist thinking.712 One must not forget as well that Mao himself had warned against those who would make a fetish out of guerrilla activity to the detriment of advancement to the next stage of revolutionary struggle.713

Nguyen Binh’s decision to move forward to the “war of movement” in 1949/1950 had two distinct reasons underpinning it. The first was his overall worsening posture vis-

à-vis the French-backed Bao Dai government in Saigon. Latour’s plan of a dense occupation in and around Saigon and the core provinces of old Cochinchina made Viet

Minh activity amid the enemy (địch vận) very difficult. In 1949 Le Duan, the head of the

Popular Troops and therefore the one charged with carrying out địch vận, noted that the

French “cobweb” strategy of building ever greater numbers of posts around key areas had created immense “difficulties in the zones occupied by the enemy.”714 This was especially problematic because by the end of 1949 popular forces were simply not up to the task of taking posts within so thick a network of fortifications, as their own leaders

712 Pike uses the term dau tranh or struggle to describe the overall politico-military strategy pursued by the Vietnamese communists. I have avoided the term because it was never in use by the Vietnamese themselves as the description of their strategic method. That is not to say, however, that the concept is without merit as a way to conceptualize Vietnamese communist thinking. Pike, 226-227. 713 In his work on “Strategy in China’s Revolutionary War,” Mao cautioned that while the revolutionary must recognize the “guerrilla character” of the war, he must also consistently oppose an untrammeled “guerrilla-ism” within the Red Army. Tse-Tung, 95. 714 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note de service sur l’organisation des Troupes populaires,” translation of a document prepared by Le Duan. Dated 12 Dec 1949. 265 reported.715 Địch vận would have to be limited to propaganda and sabotage, especially directed at partisan troops, whom the Viet Minh assumed were more sympathetic to their cause.716

This kind of low-level guerilla and propaganda activity required time. Surprising as it may seem, this was time the Nam Bo Viet Minh did not think they had or needed, per se. In the first place the French hold on the center of the country coupled with the stringent economic blockade of the far west had reduced many Viet Minh units to near starvation status. Viet Minh agents in Gia Dinh argued that the French were looking to

“create famine” in their ranks and that the willingness of Cochinchinese merchants to sell rice to the French had reduced their co-revolutionaries to living in utter “scarcity.”717

The loss of much of the Plain of Reeds as an effective transit hub and the stranglehold French forces exercised on the routes made communication and travel nearly impossible. In early 1950 the Viet Minh in Vinh Long informed the director of the Nam

Bo liaison service that movement from across Cochinchina had become extremely dangerous. “Liaison agents,” they reported, “were successively killed or captured” en route from west to east. Even travelling up to Sa Dec, the next closest town of any size, they insisted was difficult.718

715 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction d'un document récupéré par le Secteur de Tanan: extrait du procès-verbal de l'Assemblee des T.P. de la delegation du Nhabe en date du 25.6.1949,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, 2eme Bureau, Secteur Saigon-Cholon. Dated 22 Nov 1949. 716 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction d'un document V.M. emanant du Comité éxécutif et Resistance de la Province de Giadinh, intitulé "Commentaires sur la Demarche aupres des ennemis et des traitres," prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2eme Burea, FFVS. Dated 13 Feb 1950. 717 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction de document rebelle: Instruction pour les échelons d'Information de la Province - Sec. d'Inform. de Gia Dinh,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, 2e Bureau Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 15 Mar 1950. 718 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction document V.M.: difficultés du Service de Liaison V.M. - transmis par le secteur de Vinh-Long,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2e Bureau. Dated 18 Feb 1950. 266

Viet Minh spirits suffered as French economic warfare took its toll. Deserters from communist ranks reported that morale was “low.” Rice prices in the black market skyrocketed and increasingly peasants in French-controlled regions felt confident enough to refuse to sell foodstuffs to the Viet Minh.719 Deprived of access to the lucrative center of Cochinchina where in relative terms commerce thrived, the Viet Minh were compelled to levy confiscatory taxation on an already poor peasant base in the hinterland.720 Of course, falling revenues in the far-flung provinces raised the need to make greater exactions in Saigon through kidnapping and the like. These activities kept Binh’s forces above water, but grated on the revolution’s popularity.

Farther out, Viet Minh cadres complained that the morale of the population itself was diminishing “day to day.” One commentator warned ominously that a large portion of the people had “lost their faith in the resistance and in the success of our cause.” The population had grown tired of Viet Minh predation as well as the endless succession of

French raids, which burned crops, pillaged hamlets and made the safety of the government-controlled zone all the more alluring.721 Even later communist historiography admitted that Cochinchinese society demonstrated a dangerous tendency to cluster around the tower network, thus effectively separating the Viet Minh from the population.722

719 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Situation de l’armée Viet Minh: Copie des déclaration faites par un Legionnaire deserteur ayant servi pendant quelques mois avec les Armees V.M. a/s de la situation difficile des V.M. en matière économique,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Lorotte, Chef du Bureau Territorial du Service Militaire d’Information FFVS. Dated 17 April 1950. 720 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Bilan de l’année 1952,” prepared by 2e Bureau FTSV. Dated 4 Feb 1953. 721 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Analyse: Document VM en date du 18.6.1949 du Cte Provincial de Vinh Long,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, FFVS. Dated 22 Nov 1949. 722 Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 405. 267

Something needed to be done and soon. On the other hand, there was reason for optimism. The Viet Minh noted that the French, for all their efforts, had not succeeded in expanding their “conquered zone.”723 A proper Maoist would have interpreted this situation as a sure sign that the period of “strategic stalemate” was ripening appropriately.724 Viet Minh observers also believed that the French were foolish to entrust such an increasing portion of their defensive apparatus to partisans and local troops. These “traitor soldiers” were assumed to be feckless and frail, unlikely to stand against concerted assault. Moreover, with an army cobbled together from various races, ethnicities, languages and classes, it was presumed that such a force necessarily “lack[ed] unity.”725 Interestingly enough, General Thomas Trapnell, the Chief of the U.S. Military

Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) made nearly identical remarks about the efficacy of the French colonial army in 1954. He called its diverse soldiery a “weakness,” and noted with disapproval how too many units were “diluted” with local troops.726

Most importantly, at this stage in the war Nam Bo communists still followed events in China with rapt attention. There by 1949 the Red Army was on the verge of casting its Nationalist foes into the sea. The Maoist system had validated itself in its first attempt; why would it not bear emulating? And though it may seem unrealistic in hindsight, at the time many Viet Minh cadres fully expected the Red Army’s victory to

723 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin de renseignements: Novembre 1948,” signed by M. Dubouchage, Haut Commissariat de France pour l’Indodochine. Dated 17 Dec 1948. 724 See above. 725 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction d'un document V.M. emanant du Comité éxécutif et Resistance de la Province de Giadinh, intitulé "Commentaires sur la Demarche aupres des ennemis et des traitres," prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2eme Bureau, FFVS. Dated 13 Feb 1950. 726 National Archive and Record Administration (NARA), Record Group 330, Box 157. Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs) Office of Military Aid Progs – Operations Division, Control Branch Subject File, 1950-1953. See Folder “Indochina Background Book” for comments made by Gen. Trapnell at his debriefing as MAAG chief, 3 May 1954. 268 echo throughout all of Southeast Asia. In one fell swoop international Communism would carry all colonial regimes before it. Even after his failures in 1950, Nguyen Binh remained convinced that Indochina would soon form a “front” in an impending “third world war” pitting Marxist internationalism against the Western powers.727 In 1948/1949 things looked even more certain. Viet Minh propaganda played up their “inevitable” victory, counting on the steamrolling Chinese to come down to their aid.728 By the end of

1949 the Viet Minh found Chinese victory compelling enough that they felt capable of reducing the “preparatory period of the general counter-offensive.” They were further inspired by the apparent ease with which the Red Army took supposedly Nationalist-held cities and extrapolated the experience to their own situation.729

In the waning days of 1949 Binh was set to begin; perhaps the thời cơ (fortunate moment) had finally arrived. In November 1949 he ordered his trung doan commanders to study their plans for action against the center of the country with a view to undertaking the “general counter-offensive.”730 There is even some reason to believe that Giap in the north approved of this course of action, despite the later recriminations heaped upon Binh for moving too quickly to the third phase. French intelligence - specifically the service de renseignement opérationnel (SRO) - obtained information that Giap himself had ordered Binh in February 1950 to undertake a general mobilization of all the citizens of

727 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Rapport sur la Base opérationnelle du Sud - Indochinois: rapport établi par le General V.M. Nguyen Binh à destination au Haut-Commandament pendant son voyage à travers l'Est – Cambodge.” Date uncertain. 728 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Bulletin de renseignements: Novembre 1948,” signed by M. Dubouchage, Haut Commissariat de France pour l’Indodochine. Dated 17 Dec 1948. 729 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note No. 19,626: constitution d'une "cinquieme colonne" au profit du Viet Minh dans la region de Travinh,” prepared by M. Bazin, Controleur de la Sûreté Federale. Dated 12 Oct 1949. 730 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 6,457: A/S – Activité V.M. – NAMBO,” S.R.O. prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2e Bureau. Dated 15 Nov 1949. 269

Vietnam in preparation for the launching of the “general counter-offensive.”731 While it is impossible to be certain as to the authenticity of this telegram, it is reasonable to believe that Binh’s orders were entirely in keeping with a great deal of Central Party thinking. In his New Year’s message for Tet in 1950 Ho Chi Minh informed the populace that the war was entering a “new phase” (giai đoạn mời ), that all citizens were to do their utmost to help the rapid transition to the “general counter-offensive.”

Nineteen-fifty, declared Ho, was going to be the “year of decision” (năm quyết định).732

It was more than just rhetoric for public consumption. In late January 1950 he wrote to the Party’s national conference urging them to move quickly to the “general counter- offensive.” If the chu luc and regional forces could be grown and organized, could attack the material and spiritual power of the French in both “liberated” and occupied zones, Ho felt confident of “great victory.”733

The published volume of Central Party Directives for 1950 (Văn Kiện Đảng) released in 2001 shows substantial dissent from Ho’s proclamation, however. Reports purportedly from that year demonstrate a belief by some within the hierarchy that 1950 was not the “year of decision,” but instead was a “transitional” time during which the

Party still faced substantial difficulties and was unprepared for an all-out attack.734 It is impossible to know fully to what extent these documents accurately depict thought at the

731 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 1,268: Activité V.M. – Mobilisation générale chez les Viet Minh,” prepared by Chef de Btn A.M. Savani, Chef du 2eme Bureau, FFVS. Dated 6 Mar 1950. 732 Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, Tập 11 - 1950, 1. 733 Ho Chi Minh, “Thư gửi Hội Nghị Toàn Quốc Của Đảng, Ngày 20-1-1950,” in Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, Tập 11 - 1950, 17-18. 734 “Hoàn thành nhiệm vụ chuẩn bị, chuyển mạnh sang tổng phản công,” in Văn Kiện Đảng Toàn Tập, Tập 11 - 1950, 19-20. 270 time and not ideological redaction performed years, if not decades later. Events themselves paint a slightly different picture. By October 1950 Giap himself would hurl his regiments against the border forts in Tonkin. Then in early 1951 he was closing in on the Red River delta for what he assumed at the time would be the final reckoning.

Needless to say, it was not. If Nguyen Binh’s attack in 1950 represented a strategic mistake, a move made too soon, it was not one he alone believed possible.

In either event Nguyen Binh closed out 1949 by launching shaping operations to the west of the French position in Tra Vinh. A series of quick, strong strikes there, he hoped, would draw French reserves away from the center of Cochinchina where the real hammer would fall. With the example of the red giant to the north for inspiration, his chu luc battalions standing by, and the force of materialistic fatalism on his side, Binh’s first assault would fall against the Cambodian partisans who held much of the tower network in Tra Vinh. Once his shock troops crushed their morale and sowed panic in their ranks, general disarray would flow eastward driven on by a propaganda campaign aimed at undermining partisans everywhere. Simultaneously, a renewed paroxysm of violence would seize Saigon itself to be followed by the “general uprising” of the citizenry. Or so went the plan.

But Mao had conceived of the third phase of his paradigm as great “decisive engagement,” of “mobile warfare” against a thoroughly demoralized opponent.735 To what extent he appreciated the reality of the situation we do not know, but in fact what

Binh was engaged in was a vast siege spanning entire provinces. And though his initial

735 Tse-Tung, 130. 271 assault troops – the chu luc units – were competent and capable, his follow on forces had been undermined to build the first. Binh would also not be able to redistribute forces around the French periphery with anything but the greatest of difficulty should adjustments be necessary. A great deal hung on the opening roll of the proverbial iron dice.

Binh’s opponents, while certainly not united in race, religion or a common language, were bound together by a shared fear and hatred of the communist yoke and their desire to avoid it. At their head as the offensive opened was Général de Brigade

Charles-Marie Chanson, protégé of Latour and a perfect image of the bourgeois artilleryman. Sleight and retiring, he seemed more bookkeeper than brawler. He certainly cut a far different figure from the one-eyed, cutlass-wielding romantic that was

Nguyen Binh. Still, in this unassuming, but highly competent commander, Binh would find his nemesis. In Saigon itself and at the eleventh hour, a Vietnamese-run Sûreté would cut the heart of our Binh’s revolution and lay its bloody remains on the altar of communist ideology.

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CHAPTER 6: LA GESTE DE CHANSON –THE BATTLES OF 1950

In the writing of the history of the First Indochina War, 1950 is usually the annus horribilis of the French cause. In the fall of that year the French stake in Tonkin would come very close to unraveling completely in the unmitigated disaster that was the retreat from Cao Bằng and the brutal combats of Route Coloniale 4. These fights cost the

French Expeditionary Corps almost nine battalions worth of crack infantry and brought the Viet Minh army to the outskirts of Hanoi.736 This catastrophe of the first order has overshadowed what in Cochinchina was a remarkable year of success, indeed a miracle year for Franco-Vietnamese arms and the nascent Saigon republic. Beginning in late

1949 the Viet Minh chu luc (main) forces of General Nguyen Binh would subject the

French-backed position in Cochinchina to concerted, repeated assault as they looked to initiate what they thought would be the irrepressible “general counter-offensive” to upend the army of their adversaries while simultaneously unleashing a wave of terror in Saigon to touch off a massive uprising among the people.

The year 1950 constituted the clash and audit of two military systems (i.e. strategies, forces and perspectives) assiduously crafted over the previous half-decade.

The Viet Minh’s system was rooted in the notion of control, viz. the rigid ordering of events, persons and attitudes to achieve goals according to a highly predictive linear

736 Longeret et al., 377. 273 scheme. For the communists this scheme was the Maoist three-phase paradigm to which all else was ruthlessly dragooned. There was one notion of victory and one path by which it would be achieved. The French in the south, by contrast, gave up on the phantasm of control. A series of commanders, stuck of their elements, instead adopted coping perspective. Theirs was a restrained, opened-ended perspective in which the path to victory remained uncertain and satisfactory short-term solutions outweighed the illusive quest for decisive victory. In the combats of 1949/1950 the second system bent under the weight of enemy action; the first, however, splintered into ruin. That French decisive victory arrived unheralded was the paradox of the whole prolonged encounter.

In most every way imaginable Charles-Marie Ferréol Chanson, Général de

Brigade and commander of French forces in Cochinchina by late 1949, was the mirror opposite of his chief Viet Minh rival, Nguyen Binh. Though their careers in the war saw them face off again and again, their personalities were quite different; in many respects they were perfect foils of one another. Binh was gallant and quixotic, a commander’s commander. He had grown up on the margins, a rake and a criminal, and had fought his way tooth and nail to the center of the historical limelight. He appreciated women and strong drink. By all accounts the one-eyed captain was terse and forthright in a way others found charismatic and compelling.737 Binh had swagger, panache and a temerity that surely irritated his nominal superiors as much as it endeared him to his subordinates.

On the other hand, Binh’s rival Chanson, who took over the Forces Françaises du

Viet Nam Sud (F.F.V.S.) in October 1949 and was named Commissaire de la République

737 Davidson, 81; Hùng, 58. 274 one month later, was a third generation artilleryman stretching back to his grand-père,

Achille Chanson.738 Also like his father and grandfather before him, Chanson was a polytechnicien, attending France’s most illustrious science and engineering school, in

1922.739 Indeed he looked the part of a long-serving staff officer. He was bespectacled and slightly built – one might even call him gaunt, and some did. A one-off for an officer of the French army where generals were preferred tall, dapper and athletic, Chanson instead had the air of “staff theorist,” according to his longtime friend and subordinate,

Pierre Guillet. 740 He walked with a noticeable limp and could speak German fluently.741

Chanson was reserved and thoughtful. During his time in Cochinchina he went everywhere by jeep, often alone. The Viet Minh eventually became privy to the general’s dangerous habit and actively sought to kill him during his roaming of the countryside.742

To those he encountered – French or Vietnamese – he was a careful listener and won over many locals with his punctilious observation of every courtesy.743

738 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; Guillet, 75. 739 Guillet, 8. 740 Guillet, 20. 741SHAT, carton 10H328. “Modèle E: Général de Brigade CHANSON, Charles, Marie, Ferréol, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud et Commissaire de la République pour le Sud Vietnam.” Dated 1950; de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 42. 742 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Traduction de document récupéré par le Quartier Autonome de Giong Ong To le 10 Juillet 1950.” Original document dated 9 Mar 1950, attributed to Tran Dinh Xu, chief of L.T.D. 306/312. French translation dated 12 June 1950. 743 Guillet, 20-21. 275

Figure 20. Chanson Receiving Flowers From Vietnamese Delegation, June 1951744

At first blush Chanson certainly seemed the consummate staff officer. At the start of the Second World War he had been on the état-major of the French 6th Army.

Following the German invasion and subsequent armistice he transferred to North Africa.

At the U.S. arrival he joined Eisenhower’s staff as the chief of the French section devoted to rearmament (Groupe Français de Réarmament) and the building of Free French divisions, evidently despite multiple requests on Chanson’s part that he be sent to a fighting command. Nevertheless Chanson’s superiors found him to be a skilled administrator, an “elite officer to whom a great career is assured.” 745 At the end of the war he was promoted to colonel and reassigned as artillery commandant to the Third

744 SHAT, carton 10H176. This picture was taken at a ceremony on the occasion of the reopening of the route from Tan Lap to Go Cong. 745 SHAT, carton 10H328. Letter referencing Charles Chanson from Général de Brigade Regnault, Etat- Major de l’Armée, détaché auprès des Missions Militaires Américaines et Britanniques en France. Dated 15 October 1945. 276

Colonial Infantry Division (3e Division d’Infanterie Coloniale or D.I.C.) slated for redeployment to Indochina.746

But appearances are often misleading. Upon his arrival to Cochinchina in March

1946, Chanson proved himself an able commander – dynamic and innovative, decisive and industrious. Of course the mobile portion of the war was long over by then. Instead it fell to the numerically disadvantaged 3e D.I.C. to occupy ground and begin the thankless job of pacification. With no reason to maintain a divisional artillery establishment, in April General Nyo gave Chanson’s bigors (the military colloquialism for colonial artillerymen) the task of holding the crucial Secteur des Vaicos, the area facing Nguyen Binh’s main base in the Plain of Reeds and the only terrain impeding direct communist access to the capital.747

The most pressing task was organizational. Chanson’s men were nearly all artillerymen of the 10th and elements of the 4th Régiments d’artillerie coloniale (R.A.C.).

These units were designed to fire their pieces in support of maneuvering infantry, redeploy as necessary and shoot again. They were not configured, equipped, or manned to hold ground. Unlike the infantry establishments that came to Indochina, artillery units could not hope to mesh the needs of pacification into the schema of their existing tactical norms; they were simply too different. This meant that whereas infantry commands could and would try to shoehorn the needs of pacification into existing operational/tactical perspectives, Chanson and his men were forced to abandon all and

746 Guillet, 8. 747 The Vaicos sector included the provinces of Cholon, Ta Nan, My Tho and Go Cong. SHAT, carton 10H328. “Modèle Ebis: Colonel Chanson, Charles, Marie, Ferréol, Commandant l’A.D.3. et le Secteur des VAICOS.” Dated 1946. 277 quite nearly start afresh.748 Conventional artillery still had significant roles to play in the war for Cochinchina, but massed batteries firing neutralization missions at tank or infantry assembly areas would not be among them for the foreseeable future. They put the nomographs away and learned to do something else.

That something was to become infantry. They were not entirely unprepared for the challenge, at least theoretically. Aboard their boat bound for Saigon Chanson organized conferences among his officers to discuss what would be required of them.749

Once in Vietnam Chanson insisted that the staff in Saigon provide him with at least a dribble of small arms and radios.750 There were never enough. French supply at this stage depended almost entirely on British largesse and what could be extracted from the departing Japanese.

Even then, however, the need to occupy fixed positions would immediately exhaust his supply of manpower. Chanson could partially offset this difficulty by a reorganization of his command. He reorganized his artillery units so that each regiment consisted of two “groups” rather than a plethora of batteries to minimize the need for personnel-consuming staffs.751 Though not yet authorized to incorporate the locals into

French units, Chanson began fleshing out his units with Vietnamese soldiers. In this initiative he followed the example set by an artillery lieutenant named Pierre Bergerol, who had formed perhaps the first Cochinchinese commando in late 1945. Not wanting to leave when the 9e D.I.C. went north to Tonkin and having had a great deal of success

748 There are interesting parallels and contrasts here between French artillerymen in Indochina and what American artillery units experienced when given territorial roles in the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011. 749 de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 40. 750 Guillet, 24. 751 de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 102. 278 against the Viet Minh, Bergerol requested that he and his commandos be transferred to

Chanson’s command.752 For his part Chanson recognized the utility and striking power of the commandos and expanded the system in his sector.

His first move was to transform the spotting section of his headquarters battery into a section d’intervention or groupe franc by culling some enterprising officers from other units and placing them in charge of a group of nearly forty Vietnamese commandos. In a bit of wry humor and to ward off prying eyes from the command in

Saigon, which was still wary of bringing Vietnamese into established units and having them treated as “regulars,” Chanson called his commando team the sector’s

“topographical section.”753 This concept quickly spread throughout Chanson’s command; eventually every sector would be required to form such units. Commandos became the main offensive arm of the Vaicos sector. Later Chanson authorized his adjutant to form an entire company of Vietnamese from a population of ex-tirailleurs.

This compagnie annamite, which performed respectably in its own right, included among its ranks several future ARVN generals, most notably Dương Văn Minh or “Big” Minh, as he was later known.754 Through their intimate familiarity with the language, culture and geography of Cochinchina, these commando units allowed Chanson’s command to punch well above its weight in the first few years of the war. Without them Chanson’s

752 de Brancion, Commando Bergerol: Indochine, 1946-1953, 18. 753 Guillet, 25. Even after Bergerol’s own death in an ambush in September 1947, his commando continued to operate at an incredible pace. Part of this, of course, came from the fact this unit primarily paid and fed itself from what it could take from captured Viet Minh stocks. For example, the log of his commando’s activity for November 1948 shows the unit engaged in patrol, ambush or ratissage on nearly every day of the month. SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Activité du Commando Bergerol pour la periode du 1er au 30 Novembre 1948,” prepared by Capitaine Pic, Commanndant le IIe/4eme R.A.C. et le Quartier de Mytho. Dated 4 December 1948. 754 Guillet, 26. 279 force would have been ill informed, inert and overwhelmed. Instead his men gave as good as they got, if not better. During his review at the end of 1946 General Nyo, the commander of the 3th D.I.C., remarked of Chanson: “he is in every sense of the word: a chef.”755

Toward the end of his time as chief of the Vaicos sector, Chanson wrote to his own commander to establish what he believed should be the principles guiding French action in Cochinchina, and by implication what was not happening enough heretofore.

Ever the diplomat, Chanson couched his remarks in terms of interesting insights he had found by perusing a book from 1896 by the Commandant Chabord entitled Opérations

Militaires au Tonkin.756 It was a potentially awkward affair; not only was Chanson subordinate to General Nyo, but the letter amounted to a metropolitan officer (Chanson was a late comer to the colonial army) lecturing a colonial general on his putative specialty. In any case, the principle Chanson claimed to have discovered in the book was that, despite their inclinations to the contrary, the army cannot reasonably expect to be able to “militarily destroy” the Viet Minh. Quoting liberally from the author Chanson noted that it was incorrect to believe that pacification was somehow a simple “reduction of classical warfare.” It was something else entirely. It was not new a phenomenon, but in fact a reversion in some ways to older techniques. Pacification required the active participation of the population. They must be armed to provide for their own defense and made to take stock of their own security dilemma. This in turn would assist in the

755 In French chef is a general term for boss, leader, commander or chief. See General Nyo’s “notes d’année courante” in SHAT, carton 10H328. “Modèle Ebis: Colonel Chanson, Charles, Marie, Ferréol, Commandant l’A.D.3. et le Secteur des VAICOS.” Dated 1946. 756 It has taken considerable time to rediscover the utility of this work. See Thomas Rid, "The Nineteenth Century Origins of Counterinsurgency Doctrine," Journal of Strategic Studies 33, no. 5 (2010). 280 mission of the regular forces, for as Chanson argued, once protection became functionally meaningful timely intelligence would be forthcoming.757 Far from being unimportant, the “regular” forces had to process that intelligence and work incessantly to keep the

“rebel bands” out of the selected areas and to sever their ability to influence the protected population.758

In February 1947 Chanson took command of the newly formed Zone Center. The principles and methodologies that had formed the basis of his own brand of pacification he now extended to the entire core area of Cochinchina. Though he despised the meandering and often contradictory course of French policy toward Cochinchin – e.g.

Cochinchinese independence, the modus vivendi, tacit union of the three kys and then formal union - Chanson did his level best to inspire confidence among the Vietnamese population.759 He believed, like Latour, in the workability and desirability of a separatist

Cochinchinese republic. He never truly reconciled himself to the Bao Dai solution of

March/April 1949 that unified the three kys of Vietnam and effectively quashed the rather forlorn hope of an independent southern state.

Perhaps more so than was absolutely warranted, Chanson had great faith in the tiny middle-class of Cochinchina to form a core of support that would buoy the French effort going forward. The people of Zone Center were not, as was the case further to the east, landless laborers struggling to exist amid of world of plantations, but small, independent farmers. They were by and large cool on revolution and suspicious of

757 Guillet, 28. 758 “Extraits ‘dune lettre adressée, le 17 Janvier 1947, par le Général Chanson au Général Cdt les T.F.I.S.,” reprinted in Guillet, 125-126. 759 Guillet, 23. 281 northern intentions.760 Both as the Zone Center commander and later as overall chief in the south, Chanson would rely heavily on this class of yeoman farmers and their small network of administrator representatives, the đốc phủ, as a bulwark of the counter- revolutionary endeavor.761 To reinforce their natural predisposition toward a non- communist regime, Chanson matched military operations with the building of schools, the opening of medical dispensaries and the reconstruction of the organs of commerce

(markets, roads and bridges).762

Once Boyer de Latour became commander of the T.F.I.S., Chanson modified his directives to provide route security by way of tower construction and diverted some resources toward fortifying key population centers. Perennially short of funds, Chanson also imposed a “tax” on Chinese merchants traversing Zone Center to help pay for security projects.763 Because they were “foreigners” whose good graces he needed not cultivate, Chanson was perfectly content to fleece them when required.764 Pacification under Chanson did have a “hearts and minds” focus, but it by no means attained to universal applicability. Some mattered more, others less.

By contrast, near My Tho and Ben Tre there was also a sizable quantity of

Catholics. And as with Latour, Chanson believed overmuch in the efficacy and advisability of making widespread use of Catholic Vietnamese support, a perhaps

760 Guillet, 16. 761 District civil servants became part of the French officialdom in 1905 in Cochinchina. Brocheux and Hémery, 101. 762 Guillet, 30. 763 This was really a fee imposed on Chinese merchants who found themselves needing immediate aid or, having been attacked, a tow to the safety of a French post. Guillet, 47-48. 764 The Chinese in Cochinchina were only “foreigners” in the sense that they were non-Vietnamese. They were not, however, newcomers to the south. Many of the Chinese communities far pre-dated those of their Vietnamese neighbors. Taylor, 323. 282 unavoidable, but problematic inheritance for the the 2nd Indochina War. Even the commando units, like Commando Bergerol, relied extensively on Catholic recruits. It must be assumed that this at times created the potential for abuse when these units operated away from Catholic hamlets. Indeed in operations in Zone Center the

U.M.D.C. of Jean Leroy would become a constant fixture.765 Later as overall commander in Cochinchina and as Commissaire de la République Chanson pushed hard to give Leroy complete civil and military power in Ben Tre, even authorizing him to collect taxes.766

Leroy’s successes had been important and prevented the overtaxed French from losing control of Ben Tre in the crucial period of 1947-1948, but this policy amounted to the granting of prerogatives to Catholics that he was simultaneously looking to withdraw from the other sects. This fact was not lost on interested observers.

In military terms Zone Center under Chanson hummed with activity.767

Operations were limited in objective and short in duration (rarely more than two days) to minimize wear on equipment. Once intelligence was forthcoming, sector commanders launched raids to destroy Viet Minh depots and arms fabrication centers. They looked to dislocate larger bands and keep a healthy distance between them and the local Viet Minh cells operating in the villages. More important than the body count in these actions was the amount of food and supplies destroyed. It was a constant, never-ending effort, not

765 In many operations in Zone Center, especially in the western portion, it was not uncommon for U.M.D.C. to make up at least a plurality of the infantry component. For example see SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte rendu d’opération 20 Mars 1949,” prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Riou, Cdt le 10eme R.A.C. et le secteur de TANAN. Dated 21 Mar 1949. 766 SHAT, carton 10H995. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à Monsieur le Général de Corps d’Armée Commandant en Chef des Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 2940/FFVS,” dated 26 June 1950. 767 Later communist historiography noted that, even with the French deeply committed to the war in Tonkin, the level of French activity in and around the center of the country made things very difficult for Viet Minh units operating there. Lịch Sử Nam Bộ Kháng Chiến, 287. 283 unlike white blood cells fighting off pathogens but relatively powerless to prevent reinfection from time to time. Operations were almost always combined, featuring a fusion of river forces, regular infantry, and commandos with artillery and aviation in support. Chanson’s commanders were aware of their limitations and in many ways were ahead of their overall commander, Latour, in this realization. Reporting on his activities in the late summer of 1947, one colonel stated that he had “neither the means, nor the desire” to occupy the impenetrable Viet Minh haunts. Instead he would hold the whole of the “useful country” while simultaneously preventing communist bands from implanting themselves in the “pacified zone.”768

A profound converging of operational/strategic perspectives formed during this phase of the war. From Latour at the top to Chanson and his sector and quarter commanders, the method of waging war in Cochinchina achieved a remarkable coherence across the hierarchy. In his “Political Directives” disseminated to his command in 1948,

Latour stressed that the program of pacification could be divided into two “grand categories,” i.e. the “means of repression” and the “means of attraction.”769 One set was not more important than the other; both employed in conjunction were indispensable if

Cochinchina were to survive. In Chanson this doctrine found a receptive audience; his zone was after all probably the source of this insight. Whatever their personal misgivings about one another – Latour hardly mentions Chanson at all in his memoirs – Chanson’s

768 SHAT, carton 10H4950. “Compte rendu mensuel pour le mois de Septembre 1947,” prepared by Lieutenant-Colonel Durand, Commandant le 10e R.A.C. et le secteur de Cholon. Dated 7 October 1947. 769 SHAT, carton 10H168. “Directives politiques pour les troupes d’Indochine du Sud,” Général de Latour, Commandant les Troupes Françaises de l’Indochine du Sud, Commaissaire de la Republique en Cochinchine. Dated 13 Mar 1948. 284 assumption of command in Cochinchina at the end of 1949 brought with it a tremendous continuity of perspective and emphasis.

That continuity, including its economic warfare component and the tenacious denial of the center of the country to communist infiltration, had placed the Viet Minh on the horns of a considerable dilemma. Starving in the east and brooding in near exile in the west, the Viet Minh high command began its great campaign. It would make

Chanson’s first few months in command the direst time in the war for Cochinchina.

Nguyen Binh’s new chu luc regiments were considerably stronger formations than anything the Viet Minh had fielded previously. Through 1950 Binh would evolve them into all chu luc mobile regiments. By the end of 1949 due to necessity and inclination,

Binh launched them against the tower network, beginning in the Cisbassac in Tra Vinh.

Chanson called it the “period of misery,” as for the first time since 1945 the Viet Minh came out and opposed the French in open battle.770

770 “Period of misery.” General Chanson quoted in “Après les durs combats de Décembre 1949 dans la region de Travinh,” document reproduced in Guillet, 127. 285

Figure 21. Tra Vinh province

The battle opened in the district of Cầu Kè in early December. This region, bounded on its west by the Bassac (Hậu) river, was mostly of Khmer stock. In the early days of the war the French had taken the important transit hub of Tiểu Cần, southeast of

Cau Ke, without opposition. Despairing of finding enough troops to occupy the region, the French were pleasantly surprised to find Khmer men volunteering to form self- defense units rather faster than the French could hope to arm them.771 By 1949 this region was strongly anti-Viet Minh and policed by Khmer partisan bands operating from a network of posts built along the major thoroughfares.772 The strength and reliability of

771 Bernier, 150-152. 772 Later communist reports would complain of their almost total inability to make inroads among the Khmer populations of Cochinchina. They particularly noted that among a Khmer population of nearly 135,000 around Soc Trang, the communists had only 17 party members. SHAT, carton 10H636. “Traduction d’un document V.M. recuperé le 20 Avril 1951 par le secteur Saigon-Cholon ayant pour object 286

Khmer partisans allowed the French to economize greatly in their garrisoning of Tra

Vinh with regular units.

This also made the region a prime target for the opening communist offensive.

The Viet Minh assumed partisan “puppet” troops were inherently unreliable. The relative isolation of Cau Ke from regular French troops meant that the Viet Minh could pit their new chu luc formations against relatively weak opposition with some time to spare before

French reinforcements could arrive. Also, Cau Ke lay just alongside Viet Minh- controlled areas south of Vinh Long, which would allow the command of Zone VIII to amass its troops in relative secrecy. Finally, taking Cau Ke would deny the French a significant manpower pool in the Khmer population and necessitate a significant shift of resources away from the capital to fill the gap. Unlike previous actions, the Viet Minh command intended to seize ground after the campaign against Cau Ke, to disarm the recalcitrant Khmer population and to ambush incoming French relief forces, all as part of the opening phase of the general-counteroffensive.773

A prior attempt to break into the French post system in late December at Cai Lay, on the edge of the Plain of Reeds west of My Tho, by an entire chu luc battalion had miscarried badly. Though assailed on numerous occasions in a highly coordinated attack featuring supporting fires and dedicated assault elements, the Hoa Hao-held post managed to survive. Even with parts of the post captured, the defenders held on until a

“projet concernant la formation des Comités parti au Nam Bo en 1951,” Chef d’Escadron Boussaire, Chef du 2ème Bureau. Dated 2 May 1951. 773 Much of the narrative that follows is highly dependent on the unit history of td 307, one of the premier Viet Minh battalions in 1949/1950. Viet Minh unit histories are difficult to come by. In this case, it is very fortunate that we have one for td 307, a key player in the battles in Tra Vinh and a unit that the French even at the time recognized was extremely skilful. Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 37. 287 relief force and supporting artillery from a nearby station forced the Viet Minh to break off the attack.774

This setback demonstrated the folly of striking directly at the center of the French position where artillery and reserves were close at hand. The coming campaign at Cau

Ke would be more remote and, more importantly, feature far more troops. The spearhead of the operation was tiểu đoàn 307, considered the best of the mobile units of Zone VIII.

It was also superior tactically to what was available in the vicinity of Tra Vinh. In late

November the Zone VIII command released td 307, which began its covert movement out of the Plain of Reeds. It crossed the Mekong in canoes on 25 November near Sa Dec, narrowly avoiding French river patrols. From there it moved down to the Trà Ôn district of Vinh Long province to link up with other forces under the command of Nguyễn Hữu

Xuyến, commander of LTD 109-111 (soon to be reflagged as TD Cuu Long).

For the fight the Viet Minh had brought in more than three battalions worth of troops. The heavy lifting, of course, was to be provided by td 307 and 308, the two chu luc outfits designated for the operation. There would be three regional companies in support (DD 975, 368, and 889) in addition to a unit of công an (communist sûreté) and local militia. Opposing them all in all was perhaps a battalion worth of Khmer partisans divided into squad-sized blockhouses strung out along the route from Cau Ke to Tieu

Can. Cau Ke itself, the district seat, was a fortified town.775 Split between there and Tieu

Can to the southeast was approximately one company of the B.M.E.O (brigade marine

774 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 309 (1949-1954), 38-39. 775 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 37. 288 d'Extrême-Orient).776 Numerous waterways converged at Tieu Can, however, making it the obvious point at which the French would look to pump in reinforcements. The key to the position was a larger post situated directly on the route from Cau Ke to Tieu Can at

Bằc-sa-ma. A heavily armed platoon of Khmer partisans occupied this post as well as the

Buddhist temple directly adjacent to it.777 This was the “mother” post to the various nearby blockhouses; it if it fell straight away, maintaining the others was highly doubtful.

The Viet Minh operational concept was well crafted, given the overall strategic intent. The two chu luc battalions (td 307 and 308) would strike the main posts; td 308 would attack posts southeast of Cau Ke and block reinforcements coming from there, while the main effort went to td 307. This unit would assault the network of posts along the route and then fall back into an ambush position to await relief columns coming from either Tra Vinh or Tieu Can. The battalion commander of td 307, Nguyễn Văn Tiên, selected the larger post at Bac-sa-ma as the center point of his attack. While his battalion assaulted and took this post, the regional companies would take the lesser blockhouses and systematically disarm the population. Local militia would be employed to sabotage the route to prevent easy movement by motorized forces.778

Around 2000 hours on 7 December 1949 the lead company of td 307 approached the post at Bac-sa-ma and began laying down a base of fire to support assault elements

776 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Articulation et commandement des F.F.V.S.” Lieutenant-Colonel Radix, Chef d’État-major. Dated 25 Feb 1950. Leclerc formed the B.M.E.O. August 1945 from ship-born personnel to serve as a ground troops for the recapture of Indochina and after 1946 served as the manpower for the amphibious corps in Tonkin and Cochinchina. In Cochinchina this was the Flottille amphibie Indochine Sud. Paul Ladrange, "La Brigade Marine D'extême-Orient," Revue historique de l'armée 4, no. 88-94 (1992): 88-91. 777 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 37. 778 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 41. 289 carrying grenades and gasoline-soaked fasces with which they intended to set alight the walls of the fort. At the same time, the regional dai doi moved in and surrounded the other blockhouses along the road. Unfortunately for this first attack wave at Bac-sa-ma,

Viet Minh intelligence had failed. The post at Bac-sa-ma was of brick construction, and therefore relatively impervious to arson. The Khmer defenders drove off this assault, inflicting heavy losses on the Viet Minh. The troops of td 307 withdrew and awaited the next morning to renew their attack.779

By midday on 8 December td 307 was prepared to strike again at Bac-sa-ma.

News had arrived that another post near Cau Ke had surrendered and better reconnaissance of the position revealed that the post at Bac-sa-ma was situated far too close to the temple, making it vulnerable to fire from that position. From there attackers could fire into the post and perhaps set a portion on fire. At 1230 hours, Viet Minh attackers stormed the temple, scaling the walls and hacking through doors and windows.

After killing most of the defenders and driving out the remainder, the men of td 307 turned on the post at Bac-sa-ma. They repositioned their machine-guns to fire down into the camp. A hail of grenades ruined one of the watchtowers and succeeded in setting the kitchen area of the post on fire. This blaze spread quickly. By 1730 hours the defenders surrendered.780

779 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 43. 780 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 45. 290

Figure 22. Viet Minh troops storming temple at Bac-sa-ma781

Figure 23. Burning of Watchtower at Chông-Nô outside of Cau Ke782

781 SHAT, carton 10H636. As with many Viet Minh propaganda photos, this picture may well represent an after-the-fact restaging of the event, rather than the attack itself. 782 SHAT, carton 10H636. 291

With the fall of Bac-sa-ma the defenders of the lesser posts abandoned their stations and fled into the bush. The Viet Minh torched the abandoned blockhouses. At this point td 307, reinforced with two companies from td 308, moved toward the giong

(an elevated dune) near Phong Phú to establish their ambush. About 3 kilometers long and 600 meters wide, the giong at Phong Phu was covered in thick vegetation, affording excellent concealment. It also sat directly astride the road from Cau Ke to Tieu Can. It directly abutted the only bridge for some distance over a canal running perpendicular to the route west of Phong Phu. Nguyễn Văn Tiên, commander of td 307, elected to leave two platoons facing southwest toward the river in case of an assault from that direction.

The remainder of his forces he positioned in concealment on both sides of the route. A smaller detachment (one platoon) he sent northwest to establish a blocking position for forces coming out of Cau Ke.783

On 9 and 10 December the French sent reconnaissance planes to observe the situation and worked furiously to move the 2nd battalion of the 1st R.T.M. (régiment de tirailleurs marocains) out of Ben Tre and down to Tieu Can to rectify the situation. On the 11th the battalion stepped off and reoccupied Bac-sa-ma without a fight. On the morning of the 12th, the Moroccans pushed out a platoon to recon the situation near

Phong Phu. The Viet Minh position was so well camouflaged, however, the recon platoon did not discover the ambush. The platoon leader sent a squad to cross the bridge and move toward Cau Ke. The Viet Minh, knowing a more lucrative target was coming, exercised strict fire discipline and did not engage this lead element. The remainder of the

783 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 46-47. 292

Moroccan battalion moved forward shortly thereafter, obviously believing that whatever

Viet Minh force had been there had moved off.784 This was not at all unreasonable.

Hardly ever did Viet Minh units opt for stand-up fights. And nothing prior to this point would have led the relief column to believe they were walking into an ambush staged by the better part of two entire chu luc battalions. In 1947 Binh had gone so far as to order his troops to avoid combat with North African units, feared for their skill.785 The coming combats were something new.

Once the bulk of the battalion had entered the ambush site, the Viet Minh opened fire from both sides of the road. Concerted resistance was nearly impossible. The battalion commander was cut down and many men were taken prisoner.786 A unit from

Cau Ke had set off as well to link up with the advancing Moroccans, but was turned back by the blocking element east of the town. After this setback a detachment of 10 amphibious vehicles (most likely M29 Weasels or “crabes”) departed Cau Ke down the

Bassac River to attack the Viet Minh position at Phong Phu. This troop, however, had insufficient men to mount a full assault. Instead the “crabes” poured fire into the giong from their deck-mounted machine guns allowing the remainder of the Moroccans to withdraw without further molestation back to Tieu Can.787 Still with new forces gathering

784 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 48-49. 785 Gilbert Bodinier, Le Retour de la France en Indochine, 1945 - 1946: textes et documents (Vincennes: Service historique de l'armée de terre, 1987), 36. 786 The unit history of td 307 claims that they took 97 men prisoner. Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 51. 787 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 50. 293 in Tra Vinh, Tieu Can and Cau Ke, the Viet Minh thought better than to stay and slipped out of Cau Ke back up towards their havens near Vinh Long.788

Figure 24. Viet Minh leading prisoners away after Cau Ke campaign789

In total, though Nguyen Binh’s units had been unable to retain control of the district after the fighting, the campaign in Cau Ke represented a remarkable success for the Viet Minh. Binh’s men had demonstrated the ability to operate at the multi-battalion level, supply large formations on campaign, and execute complicated attacks against strong positions. They had also bested a vaunted French unit in the field and managed to withdraw with their forces largely intact and on their own terms. The affair at Cau Ke also seemed to validate, the resistance at Bac-sa-ma notwithstanding, the Viet Minh belief that partisan units in fixed fortifications would abandon their posts if pressed. The

788 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 51. 789 SHAT, carton 10H636. 294

French response, by contrast, was slow and ill coordinated. Obviously stunned by the ferocity of the attack, regional relief units accustomed to localized incursions attempted and failed to fight the breakthrough piecemeal. Without a doubt the opening round went to Nguyen Binh and his chu luc battalions.

Emboldened by this success, Binh sensed his chance and struck again in Tra Vinh in late December seeking to expand and exploit the chaos he had begun there. On 26

December elements of TD Cuu Long hit the line of posts between Tra Vinh and Tieu

Can, focusing their efforts at Hiêu Từ. At this point Chanson had become aware that the attacks near Cau Ke represented something fundamentally different for the Viet Minh.

He did not wait. He immediately requested a company of the B.E.P. (Bataillon étranger parachutiste – Foreign Legion Parachute Battalion) from the Expeditionary Corps general reserve and dropped it into Hieu Tu. Caught off guard by the speed of the riposte, the Viet Minh broke off their action.790

Still spurred on by the initial success at Cau Ke, Nguyen Binh’s forces in Tra

Vinh province regrouped and rearmed in little less than a month’s time. They would pursue generally the same formula: isolate the region; attack a line of posts and look to encircle and destroy the largest to discomfit the rest; and lastly, prepare an ambush to meet onrushing relief forces. On the evening of 18-19 January Viet Minh forces cut the two main routes leading into the Cầu Ngang district by digging out the roads and constructing abattis in multiple locations in order to isolate the quarter. A first group then

790 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 190,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 11 Feb 1950. 295 attacked the posts running along the route from Hiệp Hòa down to Nhị Trường including the important bridge at Bàu Cát slightly north of Hiep Hoa, while a second moved in to attack and encircle Cau Ngang itself. In the first stab four blockhouses on the line from

Hiep Hoa to Nhi Truong fell. The post in Cau Ngang and those southward, however, held without exception. Unlike in the action against Cau Ke, where partisans garrisoned nearly all the posts involved, in Cau Ngang a fair number were occupied by more heavily armed garde units (Garde du Viet Nam du Sud) and some regulars. Even so the post at

Đôn Châu had to be evacuated after having expended all of its ammunition driving off repeated assaults.791 A near simultaneous assault, carried out by the now famous td 307 went in on 27 January at a post in Cao Lanh up near Long Xuyen. The attack demonstrated this battalion’s remarkable mobility, the unit having clandestinely marched from Tra Vinh up to Long Xuyen in five days’ time. This attack, which Nguyen Binh hoped would disperse the force of the French riposte, could not carry the post and was ultimately called off after the arrival of a nearby dinassaut.792

French reaction speed and efficacy were also improving. Local units d’intervention set out immediately on the 19th pushing down to Bau Cat, though they could make little headway. On the morning of the 20th larger reinforcements were available, once again in the form of the 2/3rd R.T.M, this time with substantial aviation in direct support. They pushed hard on the bridge at Bau Cat and thanks to the planes overhead retook the village rapidly. From there they drove on Cau Ngang and occupied

791 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général de Corps d’Armée, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 277,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 18 Feb 1950. 792 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 53. 296 the area the same day. By the evening of the 20th Chanson had transferred two squadrons of “crabes” to Tra Vinh, carrying the 10th B.T.M (Bataillon de Tirailleurs Marocains) on board to Tra Vinh.

These reinforcements moved toward the threatened area around Don Chau in the southern reaches of the province on the 21st. Supported by fire from the minesweeper

Pimodan and the aviation tender Robert Giraud, the crabs and mounted infantry blasted their way into the besieged quarter. A Viet Minh ambush against one of the crab squadrons inflicted some casualties (3 killed, 8 wounded), but was no match for the assembled firepower marching into the region. Once again, Nguyen Binh’s forces were obliged to break off their attack and retreat to the north and west of the area, though some attempted to go to ground northeast of Don Chau (Long Hữu district) where they had established a large supply dump and headquarters. They left about 100 dead on the field.

With the units already committed, Chanson now launched several nettoyage

(clean-up) operations against the fleeing Viet Minh. Forays into Long Huu netted a sizable quantity of rice (200 tons) and overran headquarters facilities. Spotter aircraft directed artillery fire onto another band in this area and put it to flight. French units aided by a dinassaut, which patrolled the Bassac River to prevent escape to the west then pursued the disorganized communists as they fled northwest past Tieu Can and beyond.

Attempts to surround and destroy the fleeing units continued until the end of the month.

Once again artillery fire directed by spotter aircraft proved very effective. By 31 January it was clear that the Viet Minh, though wounded and running, had made good their

297 escape. No significant formation was destroyed or captured. Chanson recalled his mobile forces to Tra Vinh and awaited the next blow.793

The delay would last more than a month. Binh’s forces had suffered heavily in the most recent action and their forward supply dumps had been lost. In similar circumstances (i.e. following a failed attack) in the Red River delta in 1951, Giap would change fronts and try his luck elsewhere. Binh’s situation in Cochinchina was different.

Though his mobile units were certainly capable of farther flung action, it was beyond his power to fundamentally change the arrangement of his chu luc regiments out of contact with the enemy. When the next attack came it would be in Tra Vinh yet again.

Conditions for an offensive against the center of the French position around Saigon had not been met. Binh had not significantly altered the French circumstances. Zonal reaction forces had proved, in the main, sufficient to counter his blows. He had not permanently drawn away any forces from their positions guarding the capital.

Chanson and his intelligence establishment had adequately sniffed out Nguyen

Binh’s plan well beforehand.794 Writing to his commander in early February 1950,

Chanson typified the actions taken by Nam Bo thus far as representing a “period of peripheral attacks” meant to “wear out” his reserves in “vain” sparring matches on secondary battlefields. He felt that sooner or later the main attack would come and fall on the core of the French position. In the meantime he would wait, not wasting precious

793 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général de Corps d’Armée, Commandant en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 277,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 18 Feb 1950. 794 Military intelligence had learned in November 1949 that the coming operations would be peripheral affairs to precede the main attacks against the center of the country. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignments No. 6,437: activité V.M. – Nam Bo,” prepared by Chef de Btn, Berard, Chef du 2e bureau FFVS. Dated 14 Nov 1949. 298 offensive potential in wild searches for Binh’s forces, as the Viet Minh chief wanted him to do. The time to counter-attack and make a ruin of the Viet Minh organization would come after the power of the communist offensive had been spent. But this hope would prove partially illusory. The threat of a reinvigorated Viet Minh in Tonkin with the Red

Chinese funneling them equipment and training continued to draw more and more French forces northward.795

Chanson’s ability to stay the course rested on the basic reliability of the defensive network. If the system of posts came unglued he would have to move forces out from

Saigon, or abandon even greater stretches of otherwise pacified territory to Viet Minh control. Though temporarily checked, Binh’s preliminary attacks were sorely testing the mettle of the men of the blockhouses. These attacks came after an intense propaganda campaign meant to ruin their morale. At the end of 1949 the Nam Bo command ordered its agents to undertake a “week of dich van” to “shake the enemy administrative base” and spread despair particularly among the partisan troops who manned most of the tower system.796 Viet Minh instructions stressed that agents should spread rumors and push bad news among the guards through merchant contacts or through children.797 Lacking heavy artillery necessary for taking towers by direct assault, action among the enemy (dich van)

795 For example, Chanson was being stripped of the use of the company of the B.E.P. He was also losing an Algerian unit and a number of Seneglais formations. As a sop to his concerns the corps authorized him to form more Vietnamese battalions, but these would not be ready for action for some time. SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 190,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 11 Feb 1950. 796 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction d’un document récupéré à Binh Tuc,” prepared by Chef de Btn, Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 20 Nov 1949. 797 SHAT carton 10H4969. “Traduction d'un document V.M. saisi en opération, traitant des méthodes à employer pour enlever les tours - quelques methodes à employer dans la destruction du système de tours ennemi.” Chef de Btn, Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Document attributed to Pham Duy Hoang, commander of Zone VII intelligence service. Dated 1 Oct 1949. 299 was of cardinal importance. Further Viet Minh directives argued that a necessary prerequisite for the general counter-offensive was to “sow fear, inquietude, the loss of sang-froid” among the partisans upon whom the French so strongly relied. If they could not be made to join the Viet Minh fight openly, Viet Minh agents should sell a brand of subversive pacifism designed in such a way that partisans would come to “hate war” and

“renounce” it altogether.798

French intelligence recognized the danger in the closing weeks of 1949.

Leadership in Saigon stressed to subordinates the importance of the post system and asked that they combat Viet Minh propaganda and the impression that troops in the blockhouses were isolated and in poor spirits. Commanders should ensure that tower troops were given adequate relief and that they were made aware of their importance to the security of Cochinchina; that they were no less important than the commandos who usually received the lion’s share of plaudits.799

Despite French efforts, the Viet Minh success at Cau Ke bolstered their propaganda, which took its toll on the local troops in the blockhouses. At the end of

January the troops of four posts in Zone East deserted, taking all their weapons with them. In Zone Center, Cao Dai troops at another station deserted their position, also with their weapons. The local commander found two more Cao Dai posts to be in a questionable state; Chanson ordered them preventively disarmed. He placed another

798 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Traduction d'un document V.M. emanant du Comité éxécutif et Résistance de la Province de Giadinh, intitulé "Commentaires sur la démarche auprès des ennemis et des traîtres,” prepared by Chef de Btn, Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Document attributed to political commissar of Gia Dinh. Name unknown. Dated 13 Feb 1950. 799 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note d’orientation: contre-propagande visant le personnel des “Tours,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Radix, Chef d’état-major, FFVS. Dated 14 Nov 1949. 300 three Cao Dai locations under “strict surveillance.”800 This incident further soured

Chanson on Cao Dai trustworthiness and caused him to contemplate a more general disarmament of this sect’s forces.801 He ordered the Cao Dai “pope,” Pham Cong Tach, to Saigon for a severe dressing down. The sect leader only escaped the tongue-lashing after the spirit overcame him and reduced him to murmuring Cao Dai scripture.802 In

Zone West, though no posts absconded wholesale, the early months of 1950 witnessed a sharp increase in individual desertions.803

Serious as they were, the desertions of early 1950 were not sufficiently broad to cause Chanson to alter his dispositions in any fundamental way. He would not jeopardize his hold on the center of the country. This was a tough pill for the Zone West commander, Col. James Achard, to swallow. Chanson wrote to him in early February explaining that, despite the strain under which Zone West was now operating, it would need to rely on itself for the foreseeable future. He ordered Zone West to redouble its efforts to form viable reserves at the sector and sub-sector level, thus “making arrows of all wood,” as he put it. Chanson was able to send the 1st B.V.N. (Bataillon

Vietnamienne) to take over the relatively quiet sector of Bac Lieu, but had also to remove on higher orders an important unit of Algerians from Ha Tien. On the plus side, the 2/3rd

800 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Colonel Commandant la Zone Ouest,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 22 Feb 1950. 801 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 190,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 11 Feb 1950. 802 Guillet., 83. 803 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Colonel Commandant la Zone Ouest,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 22 Feb 1950. 301

R.T.M., which was quickly becoming the fire brigade of the west though a unit of

Chanson’s own general reserve, would remain in Vinh Long for the time being.804

And so when Nguyen Binh struck at Tra Vinh again at the end of March, he found a weakened but intact defensive system and the French unites d’intervention well drilled in what would be required to repel the invaders. The attack was meant to coincide with a parallel effort against the French position in Soc Trang that would split the French response and hopefully allow for a breakthrough in one or both regions. The Soc Trang operation, however, had to be delayed due to lack of preparedness. The Viet Minh command in Tra Vinh (LTD 109/111 soon to be renamed TD Cuu Long under Nguyễn

Hữu Xuyến), doubtless fearing their position would be discovered were they to wait, defied orders from Nguyen Binh and decided to go on as scheduled and attacked on the morning of 26 March.805

The initial assault would stretch on a front comprising mainly the districts of Trà

Cú and Tiểu Cần all the way down to the post at Don Chau. The main attack, led by td

307, went in against the post of Bắc Trang near Tieu Can on the morning of the 26th.

Although the post held, elements of td 307 and 309 laid out ambush positions along the roadways leading to Bac Trang. Unfortunately for the Viet Minh their intentions and

804 The Algerian unit to be lost was the 22eme B.T.A. SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Directives pour le Colonel Commandant la Zone Ouest,” preparedy by Chanson. Dated 8 Feb 1950. Later Chanson rescinded this after attacks broke out in Tra Vinh a the end of March and placed the 22eme B.T.A. as well as a company of the B.E.P. at the disposal of Zone Ouest. SHAT, carton 10H4462. “Ordre particulier No. 14,” prepared by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 29 Mar 1950. SAM_9864; the II/3ème RTM had only been reformed in 1948. It’s motto was “je fonce et je vaincs” (I rush and conquer). R. Huré, L'armée d'Afrique: 1830-1962 (Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1977), 473. 805 This attack in Tra Vinh featured elements from five chu luc battalions: 307, 308, 312, 309 and 310. There were also several regional companies, guerrilla units and local militia. Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 55. 302 disposition had been observed by a French dinassaut who then directed the relief forces to make an amphibious landing near Tieu Can. This reinforcement plus news of another

French battalion (most likely the 2/3rd R.T.M) moving southward toward Bac Trang forced the Viet Minh to abandon their ambush positions and direct their efforts toward their secondary target, the post at Don Chau.806

Conforming to their usual play, td 307 launched one dai doi against the post itself while two more set in ambush to await French reinforcements. Two successive assaults against Don Chau failed while the two ambush companies on 2 April inflicted light casualties against an armored relief column coming in from the north – a squadron of the

2nd R.S.M. (Regiment de Spahis Marocains) – that nonetheless managed to reach Don

Chau. Another amphibious landing near Don Chau in the afternoon of 3 April temporarily salvaged the situation. The next morning, however, the second part of the

Viet Minh offensive opened in and around Soc Trang, temporarily drawing away reinforcements westward from Tra Vinh province to the newly threatened sector.807

In an effort to freeze mobile forces in place Nguyen Binh launched a generalized action against many sectors throughout Cochinchina, though none of the rest reached to the level achieved in Zone West. Localized attacks near Saigon, Hoc Mon, My Tho and

Ben Tre succeeded in taking some towers – five in all – but were repulsed with local forces. Similar attacks northwest of Bien Hoa were beaten back with substantial losses to the attacking Viet Minh. Other localized attacks also went in around Can Tho and Long

806 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 55. 807 Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 56. 303

Xuyen. 808 In Soc Trang, by contrast, a more serious problem emerged, with strong Viet

Minh elements attacking north and south of the city to attempt to isolate it. Communist units overwhelmed multiple self-defense posts manned by partisans along the routes near

Soc Trang and others withdrew under pressure. These far western tieu doan, however, were not as skilled as their eastern counterparts and crumpled before the onrushing battalions d’intervention which came in across the river backed by strong naval and aviation support. Four days of scouring the countryside reopened the routes and drove off the attackers, who according to French reports had suffered serious casualties. 809

Just as the situation in Soc Trang stabilized, Viet Minh units in Tra Vinh surged forth again. This time td 309 hit Bac Trang near Tieu Can, while td 307 struck once more at Don Chau. Both posts held. Now relief forces flowed back across the river to southern Tra Vinh combined with artillery and armored units coming south from Tra

Vinh city. On 12 April a large French column driving into Don Chau fell into another td

307 ambush but managed to fight through and relieve the battered and exhausted defenders. French mobile forces remained in the area through the first half of April to clear out the attackers. By May the Viet Minh had withdrawn to Vinh Long and then up to Sa Dec.810

808 SHAT, carton 10H770. “Bulletin de l’activité militaire en Indochine au cours de la 1ère quinzaine d’avril 1950,” prepared by Col. Domergue, Chef d’État-major, FAEO. Dated 17 April 1950. 809 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; SHAT, carton 10H770. “Bulletin de l’activité militaire en Indochine au cours de la 1ère quinzaine d’avril 1950,” prepared by Col. Domergue, Chef d’État-major, FAEO. Dated 17 April 1950. 810 SHAT, carton 10H770. “Bulletin de l’activité militaire en Indochine au cours de la 1ère quinzaine d’avril 1950,” prepared by Col. Domergue, Chef d’État-major, FAEO. Dated 17 April 1950; Lịch Sử Tiểu Đoàn 307 (1948-1954), 56-57. 304

This failure marked the end of Nguyen Binh’s spring offensive in 1950. Despite its scale and ferocity, it ended in a whimper with Viet Minh chu luc regiments forced to withdraw without any significant territorial gains and having failed to destroy or draw away any significant reserves from the Cochinchinese capital. Chanson’s forces had bent but were not broken. One can only speculate as to what would have happened if Binh’s offensive had gone off as intended. The delay of the Soc Trang offensive allowed French relief forces to establish partial control of the situation in Tra Vinh before needing to attend to matters to the west. Deprived of quick relief, the few regular forces stationed in

Soc Trang (two companies of the B.M.E.O and a section of artillery) would have likely been insufficient to the task of defending their positions.811 But alerted to the danger by the premature action in Tra Vinh, Chanson was able to redirect reinforcements (including the 22nd B.T.A) into the region in the waning days of March before the offensive against

Soc Trang opened on 4 April. The course of the war thus far had dictated that victory for

Binh could only proceed along one extraordinarily narrow path requiring immaculate timing and detailed coordination. The restrained nature of French strategy, by contrast, gave a certain degree of freedom to its avenues into the future, the scope of its responses and the range of acceptable outcomes. Nguyen Binh’s failure to open up the western reaches of Cochinchina and the end of the dry season necessitated a pause in action. He had to regroup and weigh his options for his next move.812

811 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Stationnement des forces franco-vietnamiennes du sud à la date du 5 Mars 1950,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Jalenques de Labeau, Chef d’État-Major, FFVS. Dated 5 Mar 1950. 812 From January to March 1950 the FFVS estimated it had killed nearly 1,500 Viet Minh combatants. SHAT, carton 10H906. “Fiche sur l’évolution de la situation depuis le 1er Janvier 1950,” 3ème Burea, FFVS. Dated Mar 1950. 305

Chanson used this time to push further the dislocation between eastern and western Viet Minh and to improve the economy of his own forces. In April he received formal permission to hand over most of the remainder of Ben Tre province to Jean Leroy and his Catholic militias.813 Now divested of the responsibility for holding Ben Tre,

Chanson’s hand-picked successor in Zone Center, Colonel Noblet, was set to work to break any remaining lines of liaison between the western Viet Minh and those in the east.

It was of course natural that having failed in the west, Binh would look redirect assets to the east and try his hand there. To forestall this attack, Noblet launched a series of large operations at the Plain of Reeds (LOIRE BIS – March 1950; POTAGER – May 1950) culminating in OPERATION NORMANDIE in June. Featuring six battalions, three amphibious squadrons in addition to artillery, engineers and aviation, NORMANDIE drove into the southeastern portion of the Plain of Reeds in a large pincer move aimed at a location where the Viet Minh were attempting to warehouse munitions for transit east.

In five days French forces destroyed numerous Viet Minh facilities, large stocks of ammunition and explosives and a sizable quantity of transport vessels of various sizes.814

Chanson also used the break in enemy action to improve the circulation of his units when they went back into action and their potency upon arrival. In studying his subordinates’ ability to respond to crises, Chanson found that the massive shifting of reserves into sectors under attack quickly overwhelmed the meager local staffs’ ability to

813 SHAT, carton 10H4462. “Ordre particulier No. 15: transfert du sous-secteur de BATRI aux éléments du Lieutenant-Colonel des Forces Supplétives LEROY,” signed by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 11 April 1950. 814 Operations NORMANDIE and POTAGER before it were some of the first French operations to use helicopters for casualty evacuation. SHAT, carton 10H770. “Bulletin de l’activité militaire en Indochine au cours de la 2ème quinzaine de Juin 1950,” prepared by Col. de Brebisson, Chef d’état-Major, FAEO. Dated 4 July 1950; de Brancion, Retour en Indochine du Sud: Artilleurs des Rizières, 1946-1951, 228-229. 306 coordinate action. This shortcoming had resulted in mistiming of counterattacks, problems with resupply of units in combat, poor coordination with the higher headquarters in Saigon and confused evacuation of the wounded. To ameliorate this situation Chanson devised a method to reinforce staffs: the détachement de renfort d’État-Major (D.R.E.M.), or Staff Reinforcement Detachment. The goal, as Chanson saw it, was to allow staffs to exploit the “possibilities of the moment” to their fullest extent. The D.R.E.M. included officers to take over communication with the higher headquarters, a logistics officer to help coordinate supply, additional radio personnel, a medical staff officer and an intelligence specialist who would be able to inform local commanders of potential Viet Minh units coming in from outside of their territory.815

But of course conventional warfare was only one of the cards Nguyen Binh had to play in 1950. The necessary corollary of the general counter-offensive for the Viet Minh was the general uprising, and in early 1950 they sought to achieve that in Saigon. Several factors made the capital in the opening months of that year especially vulnerable. To begin with, as a part of the agreement that formed the new national Vietnamese government under nominal headship of the Emperor Bao Dai, the previously French- controlled Sûreté and police in Saigon were transferred over to the Vietnamese government at the very end of 1949.

This was a tall enough order for the fledgling government, but Bao Dai’s choice of prime minister in January 1950 – Nguyễn Phan Long – made a bad situation all the worse. It did, however, demonstrate a degree of latitude in action for which Bao Dai is

815 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note d’orientation No. 725,” prepared by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 22 May 1950. 307 rarely credited. Historians since have claimed that French disdain for Phan Long came from his cultivation of American contacts, but in the case of Chanson, at least, the concern was very much security related.816 A journalist, Cao Daist and long-time critic of France’s return to her Indochinese empire, Nguyen Phan Long wanted to strike a nationalist position and assert Vietnamese independence vis-à-vis her former colonial masters. He believed Vietnamese disunity the result of the French presence. If he could demonstrate a true nationalism and commitment to distance himself from France, he surmised, the rift between the Viet Minh and the other nationalist brands could be quickly healed.817 His government included personalities from various factions in a misguided attempt to peel away nationalist contingents from the Viet Minh. Of course, by 1950 the communists had the Viet Minh infrastructure well in hand. Those who were going to defect had already done so years before. More concerning for Chanson was that Phan

Long’s government coalition created “dangerous instability” at the core of the Saigon regime and gave too large a berth for “fishers in troubled waters,” as he put it.818 Phan

Long inaugurated his ministerial run by appointing a “humanist lawyer” and close friend as head of the Vietnamese Sûreté situated atop the infamous rue Catinat, the wellspring of French colonial repression and now the fount from which reconciliation would hopefully flow. The new security chief released prisoners in droves, forbade the use of

816 Taylor, 553; Goscha, Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (1945-1954): An International and Interdisciplinary Approach, 327-328. This is not to say that the French were unconcerned with his American contacts. French intelligence was indeed suspicious of the “clandestine” contacts Nguyen Phan Long had with Americans. SHAT, carton 10H636. “Analyse: Fiche a/s. entretien avec G.B. en date du 14 Fevrier 1950, transmis par S.E.H.A.N,” Chef de Btn Lamberton, Chef du 2e Bureau, FAEO. Dated 7 Mar 1950. 817 Lucien Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1965), 328. 818 SHAT, carton 10H4369. “Le Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco- Vietnamiennes du Sud à le Général en Chef les Forces Armées en Extrême-Orient, No. 190,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 11 Feb 1950. 308 torture to extract information from suspects and ordered the police disarmed, as a sign of commitment to peace and unity.819 It was the kind of timeless stupidity of which only the very smart are capable.

Saigon slid into gibbering chaos. Propaganda, organized by the new “special information committee for Nam Bo” (thông tin đặc biệt Nam Bộ), assured the city it would soon fall to Binh’s battalions.820 It was no idle threat. Communist units were stocking rice, water and gas in the Saigon suburbs.821 Various units that had infiltrated close to the city had begun constructing entrenchments as defendable jumping-off points for what they believed to be the inevitable main assault.822 Other units received their orders to cut routes, destroy bridges and station mortars where they could fire into the city center, all to isolate the capital, and thereby increase the sense of dread and hopelessness for the functionaries of government and their defenders.823 The opening of

Binh’s offensives in the west only heightened that concern. The French command in

819 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 327-328. 820 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements: activité V.M. dans la region Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Marcel Bazin, Chef du service français de securité au Sud Vietnam. Dated 22 Mar 1950; SHAT carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 6,438: Activité V.M. – Nam Bo,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 14 Nov 1949. 821 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Note pour messieurs: le colonel, commandant superieur du Secteur Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Marcel Bazin, Contrôleur de la Sûreté. Dated 11 Feb 1950; SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Extrait du bulletin de renseignements no. 259 du 14 Decembre, transmis sous le No. 24619 par le Chef de la Sûreté Federale en Cochinchine,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 15 December 1949. 822 These positions seem to have been built to give VM units sheltering in them defensive cover should French patrols discover them prior to the attack. SHAT, carton 10H4969. “LTC Rousson, Commandant le Secteur Saigon/Cholon à le Général de Brigade, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud.” Dated 26 Nov 1949. 823 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements: activité V.M. au sud de Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn Berard, chef du 2e Bureau FFVS. Dated 11 Feb 1950. 309

Saigon scrambled to make emergency preparations to form new unites d’intervention were the city to fall under concerted, conventional attack.824

The more pressing threat came in surreptitiously. With no real authority, French police perforce stood aside as the red tide rolled in.825 Nguyen Binh’s agents, his

“battalion of assassins” (td 950) carrying their “black lists” of those to be purged moved in silently, one by one, to pick up their arms from supply cells permanently within the city.826 The Viet Minh had begun forming additional “assassination committees” in 1949 and now they began entering the city in force.827 Grenade attacks, a staple of life in the capital and for so long simply the cost of doing business, multiplied to staggering excess.

Military posts around the city were subject to constant harassment.828 Life oscillated between an eerie silence during the Viet Minh-ordered strikes and the frenetic activity of teeming demonstrations meant to advertise Nguyen Binh’s absolute control over events.829 Markets burned while students protested waving the red pennants of the Viet

Minh and shouting “Long Live Ho Chi Minh!” throughout the gem of French colonialism. Binh’s killers stalked the streets and with methodical precision gunned down

824 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note de Service No. 1956 – Objet: mesures à prendre en cas de troubles graves,” 3eme Bureau, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Date unreadable. 825 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II., 325. 826 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Situation V.M. dans le secteur Saigon/Cholon à la date du 1er Mars 1950,” preparedy by Lt-Colonel Rousson, commandant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Mar 1950; SHAT carton 10H4970. “Bulletin de renseignements no. 1788: S.R.O.,” prepared by A.M. Savani, chef du 2ème Bureau. Dated 5 April 1950. 827 SHAT, carton 10H4284. “Bulletin de renseignements – source: interrogatoire prisonnier V.M.,” prepared by Capitaine Barthod, Commandant le Quartier V., place Saigon/Cholon. Dated 23 June 1949. 828 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Rapport mensuel du secteur Saigon/Cholon: mois de Fevrier 1950,” preparedy by Lt-Colonel Rousson, commandant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 4 Mar 1950; SHAT carton 10H4970. “Rapport mensuel du secteur Saigon/Cholon: mois d’Avril 1950,” prepared by Lt- Colonel Rousson, commadant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 May 1950. 829 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements: semaine du 10 au 18 Mar 1950: secteur Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Rousson, commandant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 17 Mar 1950; SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État- major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954 310 enemies of the revolution. The “Voice of Nam Bo,” the Viet Minh radio service, announced the murders over the airwaves and reminded everyone what other reactionaries remained marked for death.830 At the end of April Binh’s men demonstrated fully the impotence of their enemies and killed Marcel Bazin, the former controller of the French Sûreté in Saigon.831

Bao Dai’s ill-fated experiment with reconciliation was at an end. The year 1950, the year of the Tiger, would henceforth live up to its name. The emperor replaced

Nguyen Phan Long with a stalwart of old Cochinchina, Tran Van Huu, and charged him to eradicate disorder within the city. Huu, in turn, reached into the lore of the 1940 uprising and selected Nguyễn Văn Tâm to captain the Sûreté and extirpate the rebels by whatever means necessary. Lucien Bodard, who was in Saigon to witness the beginning of Tam’s reign, recalled he was a tiny individual, “dried out and gnarled,” but nevertheless a perfect “instrument of repression.”832 As a county delegate in 1940 Tam had ruthlessly destroyed the rebellion in the province of My Tho, earning him the epithet

“the Tiger of Cai Lay.” In the confusion of 1945 Tam was arrested and tortured in turn by the Japanese and the Viet Minh, though neither experience put him off the utility of the system. The Viet Minh also killed two of his sons and so made themselves an

830 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignments hebdomadaire: semaine du 18 au 24 Mar 1940 – secteur Saigon/Cholon,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Rousson, commandant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 24 Mar 1950; Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II., 337-339. 831 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Rapport mensuel du secteur Saigon/Cholon: mois d’avril 1950,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Rousson, commandant le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 May 1950. 832 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 344. 311 inveterate enemy of the father.833 Tam took his opportunity in 1950 to wreak a bloody vengeance.

His right hand in all things was Mai Hữu Xuân, a top-flight police agent and protégé of Bazin himself. Xuan’s first task was to reconstitute the thoroughly broken

Sûreté. Viet Minh agents had infiltrated the organization, root and branch; even Tam’s own secretary was a communist agent. The network of informers was also gone, disassembled by several months of virtual Viet Minh rule within the capital. To rebuild all that had been undone, Tam informed Lucien Bodard that he would have to do some

“wickedness.” Xuan seems to have employed torture liberally to achieve the purification of the Saigon security services, a task Bodard claims was completed in a matter of weeks.

Rebuilding the informer network was a dicier affair. Fear of communist retribution held sway over the streets and tightened up otherwise loose lips. Tam nevertheless was determined to turn the fear economy in his own direction.834

Bodard maintained that Tam formed his own band of killers that took to the streets not to arrest Binh’s assassins, but to knife them in alleyways pour encourager les autres. Verifying Bodard’s claims has been notoriously difficult, as no records for these kinds of activities were likely kept. We can, however, corroborate some of Bodard’s blackguarded tales –even expand upon them – through French military records of captured Viet Minh documents discussing their authors’ plight. One such report from late in 1950 explains that the security services had obtained a healthy sum of money from the Ministry of the Interior to form a “special assassination committee” to kill the

833 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 346. 834 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 348-349. 312 communist killers.835 Indeed, if Viet Minh reports are to be believed, and in this case there seems little reason to doubt them, there were numerous killer teams hunting the

“reds” at the behest of government and pseudo-government personalities. The aforementioned team apparently operated under the auspices of the Minister of the

Interior, Lê Tấn Nam. Another worked for Nguyen Van Tam and the Vietnamese Sûreté, i.e. the one from Bodard’s account. A final one apparently worked for no less than Tran

Van Huu’s wife, a woman evidently not to be trifled with. A note from French military intelligence declared the existence of such squads to be “perfectly likely,” but argued perhaps they were not formal “assassination committees,” but merely groups of “dagger- men” the likes of which many important Vietnamese bourgeois maintained during the period of disorder, a distinction without a difference if ever there was one.836 Chanson almost certainly knew of their existence and chose not to interfere. Adding to the already crowded field of anti-communist hunters, the Binh Xuyen also formed an anti-terrorism team that the French military commandant in Saigon reported obtained “appreciable results.” The Binh Xuyen even arrested some of the td 950 agents they found; this was no doubt an unexpected show of restraint on their part.837

Free of the constraints of due process, the forces of counter-revolution and their new regime of death got the information flowing once more. Bodard was amazed at how

835 SHAT, carton 10H4284. “Document rebelle récupéré le 12.12.1950 sur le VAM-SAT. UBRCHC du Nam Bo – Sce de Cong An Nam Bo – 4 Oct 1950.” Original document prepared by Nguyen Van Luu, listed as Chef du Cong An in Saigon/Cholon. French analysis prepared by Chef de Btn Laty, chef d’Etat- Major, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 27 Dec 1950. 836 SHAT, carton 10H4284. “Fiche no. 1493: existence de Comités d’Assassinats,” 2e Bureau, FFVS. Unsigned. Dated 30 Dec 1950. 837 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Bulletin de resnseignements mensuel – mois de Mai 1950,” prepared by Lt- Colonel Rousson, le secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 June 1950. 313 the new Vietnamese-run security services in Saigon managed to annihilate in a matter of weeks a rebel network that had resisted French efforts for years.838 Though claims into the matter must remain speculative, this process was probably aided by the high number of northerners who served as Binh’s agents in Saigon. These men would have been identifiable by their language, and largely unknown to local residents. Once Tam had made it clear how deadly serious he was about rooting them out, finding them would not have been exceedingly difficult. Reports are episodic to be sure, and hard figures impossible to glean, but it seems very probable that the Tonkinese were overrepresented among Binh’s agents, a sure defect in an organization dependent upon stealth and impenetrable societal camouflage. For example, in January 1949 French police arrested three members of “action committee No.4” in Saigon. Two of these men were northerners.839 Even the militia, an organization that functioned almost entirely on strength of local contacts and intimate knowledge of the region’s population was placed in Tonkinese hands. In May Tran Van Tra, the head of the Saigon/Cholon special zone, assigned a northerner to command of the city’s dan quan.840

Binh’s brief rule in Saigon came undone. Information now flowed as a steady stream, and in July 1950 Tam arrested Le Van Linh, head of the Viet Minh’s “Red

Sûreté.” With him came numerous documents that furnished Xuan all he would need to gobble up the rest of the network. Days later Xuan’s police captured the chief of the Viet

Minh financial unit in Saigon. Xuan’s ubiquitous police force arrested new Viet Minh

838 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 343. 839 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Note à Chef de la Sûreté federale en Cochinchine (subdivision 1),” prepared by Lieutenant Perron, secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 11 Jan 1949. 840 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 2858 – Activité militaire Viet Minh – Saigon Cholon,” prepared by Chef de Btn A.M. Savani, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 29 May 1950. 314 operatives almost as quickly as they arrived.841 The communists attempted to go back underground, to simply exploit Saigon for money, weapons and supplies. Even this initiative was coming apart. In the fall of 1950 the supply personnel for Zone VII were beginning to fall into French hands.842 By the end of the year the French could report of

Saigon: “calm continues to reign…”843

The general uprising had failed. The all-or-nothing gambit on this and the general counter-offensive had both come to the later, nothing. Both initiatives resulted in bloody reverses for the Viet Minh and unexpected successes for their foes. In July Binh summoned the Viet Minh chiefs together to discuss their situation. The minutes of the gathering at least include no admission of defeat, nor willingness to change course. The chu luc regiments should continue their reorganization, becoming entirely regular establishments. Binh ordered they be augumented to full strength in arms and men.

Guerrilla and militia action would remain limited and subordinate to main force needs.

Despite everything, Binh also decided to continue to complete the plans for an attack in the area north and east of Saigon along three separate fronts. In the west Binh again ordered Zone VIII to be prepared to launch diversionary operations in Tra Vinh. It was the same song, different verse.

841 Bodard, L'illusion: la Guerre d'Indochine II, 351-352. There was another large capture of Viet Minh agents in September, reportedly involving the arrest of 48 men and the seizure of a large quantity of explosive material. Report comes from a copy of Sud-Est Asiatique Number 16, Sept 1950 found at NARA, RG 38, Naval Intelligence Reports, Box 101. 842 SHAT, carton 10H4284. “Fiche no. 167 – au sujet arrestation de Nguyen Van Chanh, member de l’intendance de la Zône 7 – arrêté par le 2ème Bureau du Secteur Saigon/Cholon le 17.11.1950,” 2e Bureau, Secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 18 Nov 1950. 843 SHAT, carton 10H4284. “Bulletin de reseignements mensuel – mois de Novembre 1950,” prepared by Lt-Colonel Blanche, commandant le secteur de Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 December 1950. 315

From the economic/financial front one can glean a better sense of the Viet Minh plight, however. The Chinese were to be given import/export rights within Viet Minh territory, provided they pay a fee. Efforts were made to increase the price of rice to increase revenues from its tax. At the same time the population under Viet Minh control was to be directed to produce more food. Lastly, the Viet Minh would need to “fully” accept French-backed currency in their occupied zones.844 Clearly the plan to build a separate economy was foundering.

It was also obvious by the fall of 1950 that whatever pretense to main effort status

Nguyen Binh could have made in the spring, his was now a secondary theater operating in support of what was happening in Tonkin. The Viet Minh central committee had ordered a “general mobilization” of the population in the north in May to flesh out their regular units and allow them to move from mostly guerrilla action to offensive, conventional warfare.845 In mid-September Giap struck at Dong Khe in Tonkin, severing the supply line along R.C. 4 and setting in train the disastrous events of October. The timing of Binh’s own attacks, which the French dubbed the “High Waters” offensive, strongly suggest, as the French surmised, that Binh was working on orders from the Viet

Minh central committee to fix French forces in the south and prevent the dispatching of reinforcements northward.846

844 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Bulletin de renseignement No. 5056 – Activité militaire V.M.: procès verbal de la reunion tenue du 12 au 16 Juillet 1950 au Nam Bo”. O.S.I.S. Dated 10 August 1950. 845 SHAT, carton 10H636. “La mobilisation generale No. 4938,” prepared by Chef d’Esçadron Boussaire, Chef du 2ème Bureau, F.A.E.O. Dated 16 October 1950. 846 NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Indo-china – Coastal and River Operations – 30 October 1950 to 5 November 1950,” prepared by CDR R.A. Kotrla, US Naval Attaché, Saigon. Dated 15 Nov 1950. 316

As before, Binh opened with a thrust against Tra Vinh/Vinh Long on 2 October.

The Viet Minh succeeded in taking and destroying two blockhouses there.847 A second action by Zone IX units went in simultaneously near Chau Doc. With water at flood stages in much of the west, the Viet Minh hoped to isolate Cambodian garrisons there more easily, as most of the roadways were underwater.848 Chanson’s mobile forces were ready. In both cases, Dinassaut 8 operating out of Can Tho849 rapidly transported in relief forces that put the communists to flight. Chau Doc was clear by 6 October and Tra

Vinh not long thereafter. Further spoiling attacks south of Soc Trang captured important stocks of Viet Minh supplies and destroyed a communist headquarters.850

847 NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Évolution de la situation militaire en Indochine pendant le mois d’octobre 1950,” Col Lennuyeux, s/Chef d’état-Major, FAEO. Dated 6 Nov 1950. R.A. Kotrla, US Naval Attaché in Saigon, dispatched a copy of this report, untranslated most likely for sake of time, to the Office of Naval Intelligence. 848 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-Major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 849 The river post at Can Tho was home to 8 L.C.M.s (Landing Craft, Mechanized) each capable of carrying approximately 100 troops and 4 L.C.V.P.s (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) each of which could carry roughly a platoon. NARA, RG 38, Box 46. “Intelligence Report – French Naval Forces in Indo China,” prepared by CDR R.A. Kotrla, U.S. Naval Attaché, Saigon. Dated 23 Aug 1950. 850 In this case, raids effected with the aid of the dinassaut seized approximately 60 tons of rice paddy. NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Indo-China – Coastal and River Operations – 2 October to 10 October 1950,” prepared by CDR R.A. Kotrla, U.S. Naval Attaché, Saigon. Dated 19 October 1950. 317

Figure 25. Area of Operations during "High Waters" Offensive

The principal portion of Binh’s “High Waters” offensive opened on 7 October in the forested region northeast of Saigon – otherwise known as War Zone D. The attack developed along three fronts in this region: 1) along the Saigon River closer to the capital to disrupt river transport; 2) along the route from Loc Ninh; and 3) along the route stretching from Bến Cát to Dầu Tiếng.851 The purpose of the first two efforts seems to have been aimed at severing lines of communication, while the third eyed the destruction of a significant segment of the French position to give the communists an open staging area closer to Saigon. Along the road from Loc Ninh ambushes multiplied; one against a supply convoy was particularly destructive and witnessed some 25 trucks strewn and

851 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-Major – 3o Bureau. Dated 15 Mar 1954. 318 burning at the roadside.852 While violent and prolonged, these attacks lacked the concentration and coordination of forces that the Viet Minh had mustered in the spring.

It seems rarely did Viet Minh battalions here act as battalions; rather individual chu luc companies were broken out to support separate actions by popular forces.853

The ferocity of the assault was considerably greater along the road from Ben Cat to Dau Tieng where the Viet Minh subjected the entire French position to constant and repeated assaults with new specially designed shaped charges meant to compensate for the Viet Minh lack of artillery. This fact strongly suggests that it was TD 300 that attacked the Ben Cat – Dau Tieng line.854 TD 300 had received explosive specialists from the armaments service of the Zone in February 1950 to construct small “petards” for use in breaching fortifications.855 They now put their expertise to use. Nearly all positions had their walls sundered. The post at Ben Suc suffered the most serious assault; as in previous actions the Viet Minh struck hard at the center portion of a line in the hopes that should a main post fall the remaining blockhouses would capitulate. Viet

Minh fighters, after repeated attempts, stormed the post. The defenders, two platoons of regulars, drove them off after four hours of hand-to-hand fighting within the walls.856 The

852 NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Évolution de la situation militaire en Indochine pendant le mois d’octobre 1950,” Col Lennuyeux, s/Chef d’état-Major, FAEO. Dated 6 Nov 1950. 853 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Bulletin de renseignements – Activité Viet Minh – Zone Saigon Cholon: harcelèment des postes français de Giong Ong To et Cat Lai,” prepared by Chef de Btn Girard, Chef d’état- Major, secteur Saigon/Cholon. Dated 5 June 1950. 854 Once again it is important to note that while bearing the name trung doan, usually translated as “regiment,” TD 300 was more like a reinforced battalion. SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Procès verbal d’interrogatoire du rallié Tran Minh Cang, s/chef du trung doi du Dai Doi 2699 du Trung Doan 300,” secteur Bien Hoa. Dated 23 May 1950. 855 SHAT, carton 10H4969. “Bulletin de renseignements – Activités du T.D. 300, Source: S.R.O.,” prepared by Chef dt Btn Berard, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 22 Feb 1950. 856 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-Major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954; The defenders were elements of 3e R.T.A. and 43e R.I.C. SHAT, carton 319 damage otherwise was severe and the French had to abandon the use of the overland supply route up to Dau Tieng.

The Viet Minh kept up the pressure along this front for several weeks. Supply had to be effected via the river with support from Dinassaut 2 and Cochinchina’s only

Landing Craft, Gun (L.C.G. 111), a ship-born gun platform bristling with firepower that blasted its way up to Dau Tieng against stiff opposition.857 Throughout the latter half of

October into the beginning of November French joint raids, referred to as “operations d’aération” – commandos, amphibious units including newly arrived L.C.V.P.’s – tore into the Viet Minh positions north and east of Saigon destroying supply dumps and compelling Viet Minh units to retire back into the forests.858 Though none of Binh’s units were drawn into decisive engagement during these moves, the French ripostes reopened the threatened area and punctuated the finale of Nguyen Binh’s last true attempt to take

Cochinchina by direct action. By November the command of Zone VII, the one engaged northeast of Saigon, pleaded with Zone VIII to launch diversionary operations to relieve the pressure against them to allow them to break off their action and withdraw in order.859

10H4514. “Stationnement détaillé, Sous-Secteur de Ben Cat, Quartier de Ben Suc.” 25 Nov 1950; SHAT, carton 10H4514. “Articulation des troupes du sous-secteur de Ben Cat: situation au 1er Août 1950.” FFVS, Zone Est, Secteur Thudaumot, s/secteur Ben Cat. 857 NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Indo China – Coastal and Riverine Operations – 30 October 1950 to 5 November 1950,” prepared by CDR R.A. Kotrla, US Naval Attaché, Saigon. Dated 15 November 1950. 858 These raids included Operations DETECTIVE (10 to 11 Oct), ROSSI (12 Oct), ALBATROS and MAURICE (15 to 19 Oct) in addition to numerous smaller actions carried out through the end of the month. NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Indo china – Coastal and River Operations – 15 October to 22 October 1950,” prepared by CDR R.A. Kotrla, US Naval Attaché, Saigon. Dated 8 November 1950; NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Évolution de la situation militaire en Indochine pendant le mois d’octobre 1950,” Col Lennuyeux, s/Chef d’état-Major, FAEO. Dated 6 Nov 1950. 859 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Note sur l’activité militaire V.M.,” Direction générale de la documentation. Dated 17 November 1950. 320

It was a quiet, unassuming victory in keeping with Chanson’s own character.

Indeed Chanson’s own superiors only had brief time to take notice of what he had accomplished. Léon Pignon, the High Commissioner for Indochina, wrote Chanson that first week of October after the outbreak and containment of the last Viet Minh offensive, congratulating him on the “severe defeat” he had inflicted on his adversary.860 Ten days later General Carpentier ordered all the border posts in Tonkin along Routes 1 and 4 abandoned.861 Chanson’s success became a historical footnote. The precipitous withdrawal of places not even yet threatened (i.e. Langson) emboldened the communists and within a matter of months brought Giap’s new army down to hammer on the gates of

Hanoi. Panic seized the French command in Tonkin. In December Nguyen Binh, it seems, explored the possibility of a renewed, wide-ranging campaign against Saigon to coincide and reinforce the coming Viet Minh attack in Tonkin, but it was not to be; his offensive power was spent.862

For Chanson it was the time to strike, and strike hard. Sustained operations against Viet Minh bands could yield impressive results against disorganized opposition, but he needed to act quickly. By the end of December 1950, in addition to territorial reserves, Chanson had at his disposal two unites d’intervention in each of three zones.863

Nevertheless, the general knew it was not enough. He wrote to his commanders just after

860 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Le Haut-Commissaire de France en Indochine à le Général Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud,” prepared by L. Pignon. Dated 7 October 1950. 861 NARA, RG 38, Box 101. “Évolution de la situation militaire en Indochine pendant le mois d’octobre 1950,” Col Lennuyeux, s/Chef d’état-Major, FAEO. Dated 6 Nov 1950. 862 SHAT, carton 10H4970. “Note: préparatifs vietminh en vue d’une action d’envergue dirigée contre le region Saigon/Cholon, dans le cadre de la contre-offensive générale,” prepared by A. Moret, chef du Service de securité du Haut Commissariat Au Sud Vietnam. Dated 5 December 1950. 863 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Directive No. 9,” prepared by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud. Dated 26 December 1950. 321

Christmas in 1950 to explain that although destroying the forces of the Viet Minh remained their foremost objective, as a practical matter this was not possible without the ability to extend the zone of pacification in follow up. Moreover, by January Chanson’s command was stripped of critical units (four infantry battalions and an artillery group) to reinforce the failing French position in the north. He protested bitterly that these reductions could cost him the initiative, so sorely won over the course of 1950, and that whatever their setbacks, the Viet Minh’s potential for growth in military power remained greater than his own.864 No matter. The situation in Tonkin, as Chanson knew, had grown far too desperate. Chanson told Carpentier he would do all he could with what he had; he would not court disaster by going too far. Something sub-optimal would have to suffice.

As he had laid out in December 1950, Chanson carried his campaign for 1951 forward on the basis not of wiping out Viet Minh opposition wholesale (this was beyond his power), but instead by completing their internal dislocation by driving a firm wedge between their western and eastern halves. This involved two efforts, one in the east and one in the west. In the east Chanson would push back on Viet Minh formations, keeping them off Saigon. He would also strike, multiple times, into the Plain of Reeds to prevent the Viet Minh from regaining any transit points there. In the west Chanson planned a series of “offensive destruction operations” aimed at breaking and/or driving off communist units along the Bassac River, smashing their offensive potential and forcing them to retreat further west where they could do little harm. In this regard, Chanson’s

864 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Général de Brigade Chanson à le Général d’Armée, Haut-Commissaire de France en Indochine et Commandant en Chef,” prepared by Chanson. Dated 18 January 1951. 322 plan for zonal staff reinforcements also came to fruition. In January he was able to assign an Organe de Commandement Opérationel (O.C.O.) to both Zones East and West to facilitate the planning and execution of continuous action against the Viet Minh.865

He began by clearing Minh Island between Ben Tre and Tra Vinh, an important crossover point for Viet Minh moving between the two provinces. For the remainder of the dry season in the west (about January to April) Chanson launched a series of hard- hitting raids near Sa Dec, Vinh Long and Ha Tien (Operations MANDARINE,

MANGOUSTAN, PAMPLEMOUSSE, SAPOTILLE) killing hundreds and overrunning important stockpiles of arms and munitions. In the east he attacked along the Be River to destroy Viet Minh base areas and workshops. In the Plain of Reeds Chanson unrolled another bevy of operations that inflicted significant losses on Viet Minh battalions and then another set of actions, Operations TOURBILLON (I, II, III and IV) – i.e. whirlpool

- that drove the Viet Minh out of the plain’s southern reaches, rendering the Viet Minh

Zone VIII command all but superfluous.866 By the end of the dry season in May Chanson had effectively unhinged Nguyen Binh’s disposition and made concerted Viet Minh action across zones a near impossibility. Communist base areas in War Zone D were in tatters. Most of their main force regiments had suffered stinging losses to the point that some chu luc battalions were broken up to work as cadres for regional forces.

When the rains came in May it was none too soon for both the Viet Minh and the

French. Though his forces had accomplished a great deal, the tempo of operations had

865 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Note de Service No. 37/EMIFT – Objet: organes de Commandement Opérationnels des F.F.V.S.,” preparedy by Colonel Allard, Chef de l’Etat-Major Interarmées et des Forces Terrestres. Dated 9 January 1951. 866 SHAT, carton 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-Nam,” prepared by Capitaine Menard, État-major – 3o Bureau, dated 15 Mar 1954. 323 taken a tremendous toll on equipment and personnel. Chanson ordered his commanders to turn back to reconstituting their reserves, back to pacification and the turning over of more areas to local control. Chanson himself set his mind to planning the next year’s campaign.867

The Viet Minh turned to communist auto-criticism and the laying of blame. At some point in the spring of 1951 the Viet Minh High Command in Tonkin ordered

Nguyen Binh to come north and answer for his failures. Initial French intelligence suspected that Tonkin distrusted Binh for his “nationalist tendency.”868 Later estimates determined that his removal had been effected on the basis of military competency alone, not for any doubt concerning the “purity of his political convictions.”869 At a Viet Minh military conference held in the far west of Cochinchina in mid-1951 the participants made Binh their scapegoat. He had pushed too hard for the general counter-offensive, had neglected the political struggle and the regional units for the sake of his main force regiments, and in so doing had succumbed to a certain “subjectivism” in his prosecution of the Maoist formula. Nam Bo was not ready to move to the next, offensive stage; the irony that Tonkin was not ready either seems to have been lost on all involved.

Cochinchina was a secondary front where the guerrilla was the “principal mission” and

867 SHAT, carton 10H906. “Instruction personnelle & secrete pour les Colonels Commandants de Zone,” prepared by Général de Brigade Chanson, Commandant les Forces Terrestres du Sud Vietnam. Dated 25 May 1951. 868 SHAT, carton 10H4005. “Note No. 11360 – projet de depart de Nguyen Binh pour le Tonkin,” prepared by A. Moret, Chef du service de securité du Haut-Commissariat au Sud Vietnam. Dated 29 June 1951; An informer told French intelligence Binh had been recalled for “moral improvement.” SHAT, carton 10H4005. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 3870,” unsigned. Dated 12 Oct 1951; yet another informer claimed Binh was assassinated on orders of the central government because of his “intransigent” nationalism. SHAT, carton 10H4005. “Bulletin de renseignements No. 3903,” unsigned. Dated 15 October 1951. 869 SHAT, carton 10H621. “Note d’information sur les forces armée rebelles: pourquoi Nguyen-Binh a perdu la confiance.” 2e Bureau. Dated 5 June 1952. 324 mode of action.870 In late 1951 the Viet Minh eliminated Zone VIII, substituting two

“inter-zones” covering the whole of the country. Le Duan took over command of a much-reduced communist establishment and headquartered himself in the far west amid considerable organizational disarray. Coordination with communists in parts of the east was barely possible. The Viet Minh foreswore large offensive action and disbanded their regimental system. Henceforth their goal would be to build and maintain at least a single battalion per province. In many areas toward the center of the country even this reduced goal was unobtainable.871

As for Nguyen Binh himself, he set off on his mammoth trek to Tonkin in the summer of 1951 with a weak escort, twenty or so men. During this expedition Binh kept a journal chronicling his march through the wilds of the upland jungle. He found the forest unsettling, seemingly endless; the people exotic, primitive. By late July Binh and most of those with him had become seriously ill. He reported needing to be carried in a cart. He had a debilitating cough, fever, headaches and rheumatism. Though it is unclear who exactly, Binh mentioned that some believed he was faking his illness in order to stop the journey and return to Cochinchina and his family. He wrote he could not go back and give credence to the rumors that he valued family more than the revolution. By

September the tiny band was not only sick, but near the point of starvation. The once proud Viet Minh chief and scourge of the south was reduced to eating bamboo shoots for want of rice. The party had to work hard to avoid French patrols and found it

870 SHAT, carton 10H621. “Note d’information sur les forces armées rebelles: pourquoi Nguyen Binh a perdu la confiance,” 2e Bureau – section indochine, Etat-Major interarmées et des forces terrestres. Dated 5 June 1952. 871 SHAT, carton 10H3746. “Bilan de l’année 1952,” prepared by Chef de Btn A.M. Savani, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 5 February 1953. 325 increasingly difficult to contact their liaisons who were supposed to guide them on the way. On 22 September Binh recorded that if they were attacked, such was their disorientation, fatigue and sickness, they would certainly fail. On the 27th he reminisced about home and hoped his children remembered him.872 Two days later Binh and his group fell into an ambush mounted by Cambodian chasseurs. Binh was killed. French forensic scientists identified his body in December by comparing fingerprints they had taken from his arrest in 1929 when he was still Nguyen Phuong Thao, part time subversive and laundryman.873 His death put an exclamation mark on one of the most successful campaigns by French forces in Vietnam, although one nearly lost to history.

872 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Carnet de route de Nguyen Binh destine à sa femme Thanh – documents récupérés à Tanot le 30 October 1951.” 2ème Bureau. 873 SHAT, carton 10H636. “Rapport,” prepared by Florian Birouste, Chef de Laboratoire des Laboratoires & Service d’Identité. Dated 20 December 1950; SHAT, carton 10H636. “Extrait des sommiers judiiaires – Nguyen Phuong Thao,” Florian Birouste, Chef du Laboratorie des Laboratories & Services d’Identité. Dated 21 December 1951. 326

CONCLUSION

In July 1951, Charles-Marie Chanson, chef of the Forces Franco-Vietnamiennes du Sud Viet Nam, visited Sa Dec in the west of Cochinchina. This was not a harried inspection trip, made alone in his jeep, as he wont to do over the years. On this occasion

Chanson was on a sort of victory tour with Thai Lap Thanh, the governor. The rains had brought the active portion of the spring campaign season to an end. During that time and before, Chanson’s men had outdone themselves. The year prior they had taken the best the Viet Minh could offer. In spring 1951 they came back swinging and inflicted stinging reverses on their opponents. The war was not over, far from it. But there was at least a moment to appreciate what had been accomplished.

Around 0930 Chanson, the governor and a host of military dignitaries stepped from their motorcade in the downtown portion of the city. The group stopped ever so briefly to pay honor to the colors of the 2nd Régiment de Spahis marocains, a unit which had proven its worth in the hard combats of the last year or more. At just that moment, a young man, attired in the khaki dress the French habitually gave to partisan soldiers, ran from the crowd of onlookers toward the general, the governor and their entourage. An explosion ripped through the procession. The attacker had armed a grenade and stuffed it in his pants before making the dash. Chanson and Thai Lap Thanh were grievously 327 injured; their attacker was killed immediately. The governor died shortly thereafter at the military infirmary in Sa Dec. Chanson was taken by air to Vinh Long were he succumbed to his wounds.874

The investigation into the murders of Chanson and Thai Lap Thanh was marked by considerable confusion, as various groups tried to avoid blame in endless cycles of mutual recrimination. For days the identity of the young assailant remained uncertain.

Eventually French security services determined with some hesitancy that the attacker was a disaffected Cao Dai soldier. A Viet Minh ambush mounted along the Sa Dec – Vinh

Long road later on the day of the assassination lent credibility to the rumors that the Viet

Minh had some hand in the episode.875 Other intelligence held out the possibility that the attack had been organized at high levels within the Cao Dai hierarchy, certainly possible given Chanson’s disdain for the group.876 Whatever the case, the “Voice of Nam Bo” announced communist elation with the news on 2 August.877 General de Lattre, who was also not long for this world, addressed a letter to the troops of Chanson’s command. “He led you from success to success,” he wrote. “With you, I bow to this admirable chef.”878

874 SHAT, carton 10H3749. “Compte-rendu de l’enquête à Saigon par le Commissaire-adjoint Le Person du Service de Securité au Sud Vietnam, au sujet de l’attentat commis le 31 Juillet 1951 à Sadec contre le Général Chanson et le Gouverneur Thai Lap Thanh.” Service de Securité du Haut Commissariat au Sud Vietnam. Dated 31 Aug 1951. 875 SHAT, carton 10H3749. “Compte-rendu de l’enquête effectuée à Sadec par le Commisaire-adjoint Le Person, du Service de Securité H.C.F. du Sud Vietnam, au sujet de l’attentat commis le 31 Juillet 1951 sur les personnes du Général Chanson et du Gouverneur Thai lap Thanh,” Service de Securité du Haut Commissariat au Sud Vietnam. Dated 15 September 1951. 876 French intelligence a year later received reports that Cao Dai staff officers in Tay Ninh had arranged for the removal of the assassin’s family from the Sa Dec region to Tay Ninh, where they were warmly received. SHAT, carton 10H3749. “Bulletin de renseignments – Source: S.R.O. – Affaire: assassinat du Gen. Chanson,” prepared by A.M. Savani, Chef de Btn, Chef du 2ème Bureau, FFVS. Dated 10 August 1952. 877 SHAT, carton 10H3749. “Extraits de le Radio V.M. concernant l’attentat de Sadec.” 878 De Lattre quoted in Guillet, 118. 328

In Paris at a service for Chanson in Les Invalides, Jean Letourneau, the Minister for the

Associated States, called the general the “the most loyal friend” of the Vietnamese people, to whom he gave “his heart and faith.”879

Despite Chanson’s success, the fight for Cochinchina did not end in 1951. It ground on at a reduced level throughout the remainder of the war and into the next.

Periodic operations were required to break renewed Viet Minh attempts to regain a foothold in the Plain of Reeds. As the war shifted even more heavily to the north, the

F.F.V.S. never disposed of sufficient forces to greatly expand its zone of action, but short-duration raids of the kind practiced and perfected by Latour and Chanson kept Viet

Minh units at bay and in a constant state of reorganization. Progressively the French handed over more and more territory to the new Vietnamese government. By the end of

1952 the French had given over most of the “old provinces” to the Vietnamese. In June

1953 the Vietnamese took control of Vinh Long and Tra Vinh and the growing national army took responsibility for security operations in My Tho. In September the

Vietnamese acquired Soc Trang as well. 880

Constantly denuded of forces, however, the French never could break away from their reliance on the sects, and in the years after Chanson’s death, they actually expanded sect roles in most cases, particularly the Hoa Hao and Binh Xuyen. The sects resisted integration into the Vietnamese National Army and the French were not in the position to

879 SHAT, carton 10H3749. “L’armée française perd en vous l’un de ses plus jeunes chefs sur lesquels elle pouvait fonder de grands espoirs: discours de M. Letourneau aux Invalides.” Newspaper clipping. 22 August 1951. Author unlisted. 880 SHAT, 10H984. “La pacification du Sud Viet-nam, Février 1946 – Février 1954,” dated 15 March 1954. Prepared by Capitaine Menard of the 3ème Bureau, F.T.S.V.

329 force the issue. The task for the new South Vietnamese government, which came into existence after the agreements of July 1954, would be delicate. An effective leader would need to finesse the sects, incorporate them in slowly, if for no other reason than to maintain the cohesion of the anti-communist front. Though American councilors advised the new South Vietnamese leader, Ngo Dinh Diem, to court the sects, he refused. Their mere existence was a quasi-feudal legacy of French colonialism, and Diem was, if nothing else, anti-French. The United States, for its part, did not hold the sects in high regard either, and so did not make firm demands, despite prodding from the French and

Lawton Collins, the U.S. special representative in Saigon at the time.881

The resulting Diem government was a “remarkably insular” collection of friends and family that quickly embittered the sects, whose leadership took to plotting his overthrow.882 Rather than inoculating the country against further communist infection,

Diem spent 1954 -1955 bribing factions within the sects to secure his advantage and maneuvering a recalcitrant army into line. In 1955 during the so-called “sect crisis,”

Diem displayed remarkable tenacity and ability to manage the conflict that saw the Binh

Xuyen purged from the streets of Saigon. Enhanced by this victory that most outside observers found unlikely, Diem was able to enact his own “national revolution,” which though outwardly anti-communist in tone, saw the government also suppress the sects

881 Jessica Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), 104-110. 882 Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam, 75- 76. 330 with all of its newfound power.883 French influence evaporated thereafter as the U.S. put its weight behind Diem, at least for a season.

The vexed years of the government of South Vietnam make clear that the French had certainly not solved problems in Cochinchina – indeed some of their actions created new ones. The point is that with a much greater commitment of men and material, the

United States could not solve the problem either. Finally despairing of outright solutions,

America abandoned the south altogether to a foreign invader in 1975.

The issue is one of perspective. Wars, in most cases, do not solve problems. At best, they allow issues to be handled at an acceptable level of risk within a rubric of shifting political realities and objectives. The perplexing miasma of policy objectives, or lack thereof, within the Fourth Republic can serve to highlight the basic slipperiness of most foreign policy issues for most nations. The policy confusion of the Fourth Republic may have been worse than it has been elsewhere in the Western world, but surely the difference is one of degree and not of kind. Policy cannot be universally coherent for democratic states, because politics are not fundamentally coherent. Politics are not coherent because people’s ability to even define their problems is incomplete and ever transforming. Most human problems are in this sense “wicked.”

Military strategy that advertises itself as a direct route to reach a policy objective will, in most cases, create heightened and unrealistic expectations on the part of the populace, and lawmakers for that matter. The rise of stateless and quasi-state enemies has only made this problem more apparent as violence sublimates to lower levels where

883 Chapman, Cauldron of Resistance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and 1950s Southern Vietnam, 118-119. 331 the state’s supposed monopoly over warfare is easily flouted. To plan the end from the beginning is almost never possible. Except in exceedingly rare cases, this question is fundamentally unanswerable, because the problem is maddeningly ill defined and changes immediately upon engagement. It is a potential recipe for total detachment from the wider world, as France found after the even greater problems posed by the war in

Algeria. But this type of course is not possible, at least not for long. When the tiger turns man-eater, the villagers cannot just ignore the threat. The problem that gave rise to talk of war will not go away because one ignores it. The options are two: accept the slow, dedicated, restrained work of hunting, or burn down the jungle. The 20th century was typified with theories – some put to actual use – for doing the latter.

The war for Cochinchina showed that it was possible to manage a conflict in such as way as to keep options open, to find several paths going forward, despite (even because of) political instability and a dearth of resources. In 1954, 1955, 1965 and beyond the future for South Vietnam was still unsettled. It was not necessary that communism would triumph. Such was not the case in Tonkin, where a less circumscribed perspective made 1954 the end of all non-communist options for the foreseeable future.

And yet, because of the way in which the war was fought through 1951 in Cochinchina, others would get their chance at the helm. Boyer de Latour and Charles Chanson certainly wanted to solve the problems they encountered; they realized, however, that this was beyond their power. Both commanders were far outside their element in

Cochinchina. Latour, the skilled mountain warrior, found himself presiding over a vast swamp, while the artilleryman in Chanson was left searching for answers in occupational

332 duty. The need for rapid adaptation became a stark reality for these men in ways that might not have been case had others been in their places. With no clear end in sight, these men worked instead to keep chance alive for another month, another year. For a long time, the strategic perspective in Cochinchina was fundamentally inward looking.

Not able to influence events beyond its narrow margin, Latour and Chanson essentially opted to improve their forces, to put flesh on the bones of their position. It was a homeostatic response, defensive to be sure, but also much more. It was an effort to cope rather than control. It came from knowledge and acceptance of limitations.

For Latour these limitations became unavoidable in 1948 with the failure of operation VEGA and the disaster of the Dalat convoy. Thenceforward his management of the war in Cochinchina fell back onto colonial patterns of conflict, leapfrogging in a sense the French experience (and his own) of World War II. Colonial warfare for France had always been conducted on the cheap, for the real danger, generals and politicians alike recognized, lay beyond the Rhine.884 It required immense adaptation to local circumstances and an intrinsic recognition that warfare is a semi-perpetual state, that outright victory is usually ephemeral, and finally that the true horrors of war are brought about by an overwrought desire for peace. That was certainly the communist problem.

Colonies, for men like Latour, were outposts of French civilization. What mattered was not the ability to meet and defeat its challenges once and for all; what mattered was that the colony survived.

884 The tension that has perpetually existed between continental and colonial security concerns is neatly bound up in the old French maxim: “Les brumes du fleuve Rouge ne doivent pas masquer la ligne blue des Vosges.” (The mists of the Red River must not obscure the blue line of the Vosges) Quoted in Montagnon, 192. 333

This is not what happened in Tonkin. Seen from early on as the main theater of the war, Tonkin never benefited from the kind of strategic neglect that helped Latour in

Cochinchina. Though France in Tonkin hardly occupied much more than the Red River delta, French policy also did not sanction a contracted presence. To rectify this situation, the French tried the maquis approach in the far north, but also perennially found the wherewithal to try big operations. Paradoxically, these efforts were successful enough

(e.g. LEA, Na San, Hoa Binh) to repeatedly justify trying again. Being the “decisive” theater meant that the command would find the resources (usually stripped from the south) to try just one more time. Lastly, with no clear mandate to abandon anything,

French commanders in the north had to conceive of some way to defend a vast territory.

The boar hunt, however inappropriate to circumstances otherwise, was the only way.

French commanders in Tonkin, with few exceptions, never freed themselves from the notion that with just the right timing and provided sufficient reach, they could force the

Viet Minh into an apocalyptic battle on unfavorable terms. It would be a battle, which would settle things once and for all. For the most part the idea of a longer-term strategy of accommodation and retrenchment did not occur to anyone who mattered. The reasons for this were more structural than anything else. Furthermore, even when great disasters threatened to render the pattern threadbare, minor victories would salvage some vestige of belief for its continued utility. The fact that this suited French tactical proclivities made this arrangement deceptively attractive. It also meant that French action in Tonkin oscillated violently between incredible aggressiveness along with a tremendous expenditure of resources and an almost supine defensiveness as they were forced to

334 restock, replenish and refit. French activity in Cochinchina, on the other hand, hummed along, constant and rarely overreaching. By dint of circumstance the French commanders-in-chief and their proxies in Tonkin needed to end the war; in the south when the war would end was an open question. Due to attention fixed in the north, it was not a question anyone bothered to ask.

What these two parts of the Indochina do not demonstrate is some rigid split between counterinsurgency techniques and conventional warfare, as frequently conditions the debate surrounding the American war in Vietnam. Conventional operations were standard, reoccurring aspects of both the war in Tonkin and in

Cochinchina. Counterinsurgency (or pacification) was also a central feature of both efforts. The primary difference was perspectival. Conventional operations in Tonkin were, on the main, intended as a way to beat the Viet Minh, to force a peace. By contrast, in Cochinchina conventional operations after early 1948 generally had as their immediate objective the destruction of transit sites, the degradation of Viet Minh material resources and aération, as Chanson so frequently phrased it. They were trying to let their own position breath by keeping Viet Minh bands back and the roads open. Latour and

Chanson carefully watched that their operations did not create so much wastage as to outweigh the damage they were doing to their adversaries.

Returning to economics as really a brand of strategic thought, as Latour’s chief of staff Édouard Méric recognized, H.A. Simon countered the classic anthropology of the limitless economic thinker with one of his own – “administrative man.” Here we find an individual whose rationality – i.e. the ability to select and pursue optimal solutions – is

335 much more limited. Simon’s word was “bounded.” Simon discovered that the man’s faculties have intrinsic, inescapable limits. He found that that these limits come about in part because of “the inability of the human mind to bring to bear upon a single decision all aspects of value, knowledge, and behavior that would be relevant.”885 Instead of being able to step back and evaluate all options (a highly time-consuming process in itself), decision-makers tend to fall back on to a “stimulus-response pattern,” with routinized patterns being the most likely to come forward. This should come as no shock. Armies of course opt for doctrine and routine in the face of uncertainty.

But that they do this has long been regarded as anathema for the professional strategist. “Strategy,” Colin Gray tells us, “entails prediction at several levels.”886 This prediction means forecasting the path by which military power will bring about an end- state in harmony with the policy objectives. It means controlling. For an army to suddenly look inward and fall back on routine devised in different situations for different ends is, according to thinkers like Gray, the functional “negation of strategy.” It calls to mind the conflation of ends and means, a “kind of goal displacement which sees armies promote their own organisational advantage as the supreme good.”887 It is not strategic, or perhaps even anti-strategic behavior, and one that leads militaries to lose focus of the real purpose of the war. It is also more often than not all that can be achieved.

Military history is inherently instrumental. The war for Cochinchina shows us that strategy is best not thought of as a course to be charted, but as a map to be made and

885 Herbert A. Simon, Administrative Behavior: A Study of Decision-Making Processes in Administrative Organizations, Fourth ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1997), 117. 886 Colin Gray, Strategy for Chaos: Revolutions in Military Affairs and the Evidence of History (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 98. 887 Gray, 93. 336 improved upon. We do not need or want a narrow itinerary detailing how we can reach some spot where the tiger may be, or may have been; what we need is an idea of what to do and not to do, where to go, when we do not find him there.888

888 Alan Beyerchen has impressed upon me the immense utility of the map as a cognitive metaphor. 337

APPENDIX A: COMMANDERS OF THE C.E.F.E.O.

Philippe Leclerc August 1945 – July 1946

Jean-Étienne Valluy July 1946 – February 1948

Raoul Salan (interim) February 1948 – April 1948

Roger Blaizot April 1948 – September 1949

Marcel-Maurice Carpentier September 1949 – December 1950

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny December 1950 – January 1952

Raoul Salan February 1952 – May 1953

Henri Navarre May 1953 – June 1954

Paul Ély June 1954 – June 1955

338

APPENDIX B: COMMANDERS OF THE TFIS/FFVS

Georges Yves Nyo February 1946 – July 1947

Pierre Boyer de Latour July 1947 – October 1949

Charles-Marie Chanson October 1949 – July 1951 (KIA)

Raoul Salan (interim) July 1951 – September 1951

Paul-Louis Bondis September 1951 – October 1953

Roger Gardet November 1953 – End of War

339

APPENDIX C: FRENCH MILITARY ACRONYMS

B.C.C.P. Bataillon colonial de commandos parachutistes

B.E.P. Bataillon étranger parachutistes

B.M. Bataillon de marche

B.M.E.O. Brigade marine d'Extrême-Orient

B.P.C. Bataillon de parachutistes coloniaux

C.E.F.E.O. Corps expéitionnaire française d’Extrême-Orient

C.L.I. Corps léger d'intervention

D.B. Division Blindée

D.B.L.E. Demi-brigade de légion étrangère

D.B.M.P. Demi-brigade de marche parachutiste

D.I.C. Division d'infanterie coloniale

D.R.E.M. Détachement de renfort d'état-major

Dinassaut Divisions navales d'assaut

F.F.V.S. Forces franco-vietnamiennes du Sud Viet Nam

F.T.C.V. Forces terrestres du Centre Viet Nam

F.T.E.O. Forces terrestres d'Extrême-Orient

F.T.N.V. Forces terrestres du Nord Vietn-nam

G.C.M.A. Groupement de commandos mixtes aéroportés 340

G.M. Groupement mobile

G.O.N.O. Groupement opérationnel du Nord-Ouest

G.R.C. Garde républicaine de Cochinchine

G.T.M. Groupe de tabors marocains

O.C.O. Organe de Commandement Opérationel

R.A.C. Régiment d'artillerie coloniale

R.A.C.M. Régiment d'artillerie coloniale du Maroc

R.C. Route coloniale

R.E.I. Régiment étranger d'infanterie

R.I.C. Régiment d'infanterie coloniale

R.I.C.M. Régiment d'infanterie coloniale du Maroc

R.S.M. Régiment de Spahis marocains

R.T.A. Régiment de tirailleurs algériens

R.T.M. Régiment de tirailleurs marocains

S.A.S.B. Special Air Service Bataillon

S.R.O. Service de renseignement opérationnel

T.F.E.O. Troupes françaises d’Extrême-Orient

T.F.I.N. Troupes françaises de l'Indochine du Nord

T.F.I.S. Troupes françaises de l'Indochine du Sud

U.M.D.C. Unités mobiles de defense des Chrétientés

341

APPENDIX D: VIETNAMESE GLOSSARY

bộ đội địa phương regional forces cầm cự equilibrium or holding stage cảnh sát police chi đội sub-unit chủ lực main forces, i.e. regulars công an security forces

Đại Đội (DD) company dân quân militia

địch vận action among the enemy

đội cảm tử xung phong suicide assault team

Hội Nghị Quân Sự military conference khởi nghĩa general uprising liên trung đoàn (LTD) inter-regiment mặt trận military front phân đội section pháo binh artillery (including mortars) phòng ngự defensive stage thời cơ fortunate moment 342 thông tin đặc biệt Nam Bộ Nam Bo special information committee tiểu đoàn (td) battalion tổng phản công general counter-offensive trình sát intelligence service trung đoàn (TD) regiment trung đối platoon

Trung Ương Đảng Cộng Sản Central Party Committee

Trưởng phòng Quân giới Nam Bộ Chief of Southern Military

343

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