That Siege Again
Illick, Joseph E.
That Siege Again HELL IN A VERY SMALL PLACE. THE SIEGE OF DIEN BIEN PHU, by Bernard B. Fall. J. B. Lippincott. 515 pp. $8.95. Reviewed by Joseph E. Illick T N A RECENT communique from...
...Rather, he would be judged by the permanent effect of his ideas...
...The real question is, what motivated 50,000 Viet Minh regulars and 40,000 porters to defeat an entrenched European force...
...it is definitive...
...Apparently he has been the only historian to discuss Dien Bien Phu with the non-French combatants, who made up seventy per cent of the garrison...
...The personal tragedy is that Fall cannot know whether these ideas will affect the resolution of conflict in Vietnam or whether they will be recognized in the terms of the peace...
...The problem was not (and is not) totally a military one...
...Barely twenty-five pages of this large volume are devoted to political decisions which affected the outcome of the battle...
...But it is not very interesting...
...This information, reinforced by a long acquaintanceship with Vietnam and the French occupation, allows Fall to marshal his facts with a precision that would win battles—but not hearts...
...Those who have followed the recent literature on Vietnam will not be surprised by this single-mindedness...
...That Siege Again HELL IN A VERY SMALL PLACE...
...Reviewed by Joseph E. Illick T N A RECENT communique from Da nang, Bernard Fall wrote: "One of the added pleasures of covering the Vietnam war from inside Vietnam is that it is possible to lose track completely of what is going on elsewhere in the world—not only in the world, but in Vietnam as well...
...He accused Roy of becoming "a party to one of the more remarkable French military feuds of the past decade...
...His analyses have been perceptive and often provocative (see especially, "The Air Raids—Leftover Puzzles," The New Republic, July 16, 1966...
...Bernard Fall describes the siege of Dien Bien Phu as a lecturer in thermodynamics might depict the Eternal Inferno—factually, carefully, dispassionately, distantly...
...A warrior's death is no scholar's reward...
...The antagonists were General Henri Navarre, who had been French commander-in-chief in Indochina, and General Rene Cogny, Navarre's subordinate in charge of the region including Dien Bien Phu—and Roy's source of information...
...involvement is mentioned only briefly in the preface and the epilogue...
...His book is more than useful...
...He recently stated that the United States will believe only Anglo-American sources, but his own work was always based on a wide variety of information...
...Fall states that in one sense the French defeat was an American defeat because the United States had abandoned France at Dien Bien Phu after encouraging her beyond legitimate "political objectives" and military power...
...Fall took a different tack (in The Reporter, April 8, 1965...
...Contrary to the dust jacket's message, where the prominent mention of John Foster Dulles and Lyndon Johnson implies that the book will contain an international and perhaps even a present-minded perspective on the siege of Dien Bien Phu, Fall's focus is almost entirely military and contemporaneous to that event...
...The reader of Hell in a Very Small Place is able to indulge himself in the same pleas ure...
...But its fascination has depended on its vivid portrayal, for which Jonathan Edwards is remembered and his rationalist opponents forgotten...
...Given the activities of the French in Indochina and the careers of such men as the then Foreign Minister Georges Bidault (now in exile for subversion against the de Gaulle government), one finds it hard to sympathize with French objectives...
...Dien Bien Phu contained less than four per cent of French armed forces in Indochina, and, as even John Foster Dulles pointed out, France still had 400,000 men in uniform as the fortress fell...
...When Jules Roy's The Battle of Dienbienphu was published in English in 1965, some reviewers sought to draw parallels to the present, while others argued that little similarity existed between the French and American situations in Vietnam...
...Fall, it seems, puts France in a much better light than she deserves...
...Noting Roy's failure to secure access to the French Army Documents Section (which houses most of the official material on Dien Bien Phu) and his lack of contact with certain prominent commanders, Fall said that Roy's book contained "too many mistakes to cite them all here...
...The current U.S...
...He was most perturbed at Roy's inability to see, or unwillingness to point out, Cogny's guilt in the loss of Dien Bien Phu...
...At that time Fall was using the military archives, and he was personally interviewing French officers and soldiers on an extensive scale...
...No one has done more than Bernard Fall to explain Vietnam to Americans...
...The sad irony is that Fall was killed on the sort of military maneuver which is described so lifelessly in Hell in a Very Small Place...
...Unfortunately, Fall only alludes to the social and nationalistic aspects of the conflict...
...War is hell, and hell has fascinated men through the centuries...
...THE SIEGE OF DIEN BIEN PHU, by Bernard B. Fall...
Vol. 31 • April 1967 • No. 4
