One of your adversaries is missing...(merged)
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One of your adversaries is missing...(merged)
Didn't know he was still alive. Have read Bernard Fall's excellent book "Hell in a Small Place" about Dien Bien Phu. A very good general - unfortunately
http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24402278
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http://http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24402278
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Read "the last valley", amazing accomplishment in getting his army supplied in such a remote location.
The French got their asses handed to them.
Interesting to read, the French maintained brothels on the besieged camp pretty much to the end.
Lots of parallels with Helmand province unfortunately.
The French got their asses handed to them.
Interesting to read, the French maintained brothels on the besieged camp pretty much to the end.
Lots of parallels with Helmand province unfortunately.
Last edited by VinRouge; 4th Oct 2013 at 22:50.
The French Soldiers paid a dear price at Dien Bien Phu.
Touring the Battlefield after having studied the campaign certainly showed the folly of choosing such a place for a stand.
That the General Staff were incompetent does not take away from the incredible gallantry shown by so many in that fight.
There are still some old Vietnamese Soldiers there who talk of those days if you look for them.
Touring the Battlefield after having studied the campaign certainly showed the folly of choosing such a place for a stand.
That the General Staff were incompetent does not take away from the incredible gallantry shown by so many in that fight.
There are still some old Vietnamese Soldiers there who talk of those days if you look for them.
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I have never forgotten the extreme respect that was held for Giap amongst all the Australian Army officers when I was in the Green Machine.
His military prowess and his ability to develop military strategies outside conventional thinking - not to mention his fearful persistence - were his outstanding personal characteristics, and these features gave him legendary respect amongst his enemies.
I can still remember seeing the film the Viet Minh made about Dien Bien Phu, showing them dragging the artillery pieces up 45° slopes, to the tops of the mountains, so they could plaster the French troops. Talk about extreme efforts.
However, at the end of the day he was a dedicated Commo and a total warmonger, who never considered for one moment the lives of those under him. They were all totally expendable, without a shred of regret.
On that basis, he stands much lower in stature as compared to Generals such as Sir John Monash, who felt deeply the loss of each man under him, and who took great care with his planning to minimise his mens losses.
I seem to recall Westmoreland making a statement that he could have won in Vietnam, if he cared little for his troops losses, as Giap did.
I'll wager there won't be much celebration in France for him - apart from celebrating his death.
His military prowess and his ability to develop military strategies outside conventional thinking - not to mention his fearful persistence - were his outstanding personal characteristics, and these features gave him legendary respect amongst his enemies.
I can still remember seeing the film the Viet Minh made about Dien Bien Phu, showing them dragging the artillery pieces up 45° slopes, to the tops of the mountains, so they could plaster the French troops. Talk about extreme efforts.
However, at the end of the day he was a dedicated Commo and a total warmonger, who never considered for one moment the lives of those under him. They were all totally expendable, without a shred of regret.
On that basis, he stands much lower in stature as compared to Generals such as Sir John Monash, who felt deeply the loss of each man under him, and who took great care with his planning to minimise his mens losses.
I seem to recall Westmoreland making a statement that he could have won in Vietnam, if he cared little for his troops losses, as Giap did.
I'll wager there won't be much celebration in France for him - apart from celebrating his death.
Last edited by onetrack; 5th Oct 2013 at 02:04. Reason: addendum ..
Westmoreland was not guilty of caring too much....as his was a simple War of Attrition.....where he hoped we would kill far more of them than they did of us.
Westmoreland had it wrong from the Git Go and no matter what folks told him....he was bound and determined to keep waging the same war.
Giap understood how to defeat the American Military....and accepted it would mean losing a lot of his own troops.
He was right in the end.....he won.....Westmoreland lost.
Westmoreland had it wrong from the Git Go and no matter what folks told him....he was bound and determined to keep waging the same war.
Giap understood how to defeat the American Military....and accepted it would mean losing a lot of his own troops.
He was right in the end.....he won.....Westmoreland lost.
I can see both the above posters points of view - Yes Giap was profligate with his troops, but when your only real asset is surprise and numbers - you use what you have.
Westy did have his hands tied and there was a time after Tet in 68 when a complete win should have been possible *with* the political backing. But that was never forthcoming and the result is what it is.
Speaking as a former grunt - pretty much he was a tactical genius (with the exception of Tet). He knew that a stand up fight against the US was always going to result in a loss so he used tactics to bleed his enemy white and let public opinion in the US and Australia to win the battle for him.
Battle won against a massively numerically and technologically superior enemy - albeit on ground of his own choice.
Westy did have his hands tied and there was a time after Tet in 68 when a complete win should have been possible *with* the political backing. But that was never forthcoming and the result is what it is.
Speaking as a former grunt - pretty much he was a tactical genius (with the exception of Tet). He knew that a stand up fight against the US was always going to result in a loss so he used tactics to bleed his enemy white and let public opinion in the US and Australia to win the battle for him.
Battle won against a massively numerically and technologically superior enemy - albeit on ground of his own choice.
Compulsory reading when I was an officer cadet - "Street without Joy" by Bernard Fall. It certainly told me why I didn't want to be a platoon commander..
I agree with this review I've posted below.
I agree with this review I've posted below.
If you want to know why the U.S. keeps losing war after war, you need to read Street Without Joy.
The book is a first-hand account of the First Indochina War (1946-1954), France’s attempt to keep its colonies of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam under its thumb, and why they failed to do so. Bernard Fall is no armchair quarterback; he spent an extensive amount of time in Vietnam during the war embedded with several French military platoons, and also exhaustively researched the war with the help of classified French government documents. Originally published in 1961, Street Without Joy was the first book that correctly diagnosed why the French were run out of Southeast Asia with their tails between their legs.
Fall also predicted that America’s efforts in Vietnam would fail for the same reasons, and that the American military leadership wouldn’t learn a single thing from the French defeat.
Put simply, France lost Indochina because the French military, from top to bottom, was completely incapable of fighting counter-insurgent warfare. Like all Western militaries, the French expected to fight in big battles where their superior numbers and equipment would give them the advantage, a la World War II. Instead, the Viet Minh bled the French out over years through hit-and-run tactics, using the Vietnamese jungle and the people to their advantage. France’s generals could not adjust to this new reality, constantly seeking to lure the Viet Minh into a “set-piece battle” that never came.
This desperate search for the set-piece battle became an obsession of the successive French commanders-in-chief in Indochina until the end of the war. But Giap, the Communist commander, had made his mistake once, in 1951, against de Lattre, and he was not going to repeat it. In dozens of different engagements involving units from single regiments to more than two divisions, Giap preferred to sacrifice those parts of his units which were hopelessly trapped rather than let himself be “sucked” into the type of meat-grinder operation which the Americans could carry out so effectively against the “human wave” attacks of North Korean and Chinese Communists in Korea.
The set-piece battle had, in fact, become the credo of not only the French who were fighting the Indochina war but of the United States which, after 1952, had become more and more directly involved in its financial and often in its strategic aspects. The now-famous “Navarre Plan,” named after the unlucky French commander-in-chief in Indochina in 1953-54, provided, according to as authoritative a source as the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that the French forces were to break “the organized body of Communist aggression by the end of the 1955 fighting season,” leaving the task of mopping up the remaining (presumably disorganized) guerrilla groups to the progressively stronger national armies of Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam.
America never really got over Vietnam, and as a result, our own war-hawks keep spinning ridiculous theories as to why we got our asses kicked by a bunch of commies swatting mosquitoes in the jungle. “We were stabbed in the back by the liberal media!” “We won every battle!” Doesn’t matter. The purpose of sending troops to that ****hole was to keep the Commies from taking over; the fact that the red star is flying over Saigon is all the proof we need to know we failed.
America lost the Vietnam War because we had no clue how to fight it. We lost Iraq and are losing Afghanistan because we’ve learned nothing from Vietnam.
“Street Without Joy” is the English translation of “La Rue Sans Joie,” the French nickname for a stretch of Route 1 in the Quang Tri province in central Vietnam, a vitally important road as it served as the primary land route connecting the northern and southern halves of the country. Because of its significance, the Viet Minh frequently launched surprise attacks on French convoys traveling the road, holing up in various villages along the way.
During the Vietnam War, Quang Tri was the northernmost province of South Vietnam, and Route 1 once again became a major ambush point for the Viet Cong. It was on the Street Without Joy that Bernard Fall was killed in 1967 while embedded with the 4th Marine Regiment. Street Without Joy remains one of the most important history books of the 20th century. If you have any interest in war history, read it.
The book is a first-hand account of the First Indochina War (1946-1954), France’s attempt to keep its colonies of Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam under its thumb, and why they failed to do so. Bernard Fall is no armchair quarterback; he spent an extensive amount of time in Vietnam during the war embedded with several French military platoons, and also exhaustively researched the war with the help of classified French government documents. Originally published in 1961, Street Without Joy was the first book that correctly diagnosed why the French were run out of Southeast Asia with their tails between their legs.
Fall also predicted that America’s efforts in Vietnam would fail for the same reasons, and that the American military leadership wouldn’t learn a single thing from the French defeat.
Put simply, France lost Indochina because the French military, from top to bottom, was completely incapable of fighting counter-insurgent warfare. Like all Western militaries, the French expected to fight in big battles where their superior numbers and equipment would give them the advantage, a la World War II. Instead, the Viet Minh bled the French out over years through hit-and-run tactics, using the Vietnamese jungle and the people to their advantage. France’s generals could not adjust to this new reality, constantly seeking to lure the Viet Minh into a “set-piece battle” that never came.
This desperate search for the set-piece battle became an obsession of the successive French commanders-in-chief in Indochina until the end of the war. But Giap, the Communist commander, had made his mistake once, in 1951, against de Lattre, and he was not going to repeat it. In dozens of different engagements involving units from single regiments to more than two divisions, Giap preferred to sacrifice those parts of his units which were hopelessly trapped rather than let himself be “sucked” into the type of meat-grinder operation which the Americans could carry out so effectively against the “human wave” attacks of North Korean and Chinese Communists in Korea.
The set-piece battle had, in fact, become the credo of not only the French who were fighting the Indochina war but of the United States which, after 1952, had become more and more directly involved in its financial and often in its strategic aspects. The now-famous “Navarre Plan,” named after the unlucky French commander-in-chief in Indochina in 1953-54, provided, according to as authoritative a source as the late Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, that the French forces were to break “the organized body of Communist aggression by the end of the 1955 fighting season,” leaving the task of mopping up the remaining (presumably disorganized) guerrilla groups to the progressively stronger national armies of Cambodia, Laos, and Viet-Nam.
America never really got over Vietnam, and as a result, our own war-hawks keep spinning ridiculous theories as to why we got our asses kicked by a bunch of commies swatting mosquitoes in the jungle. “We were stabbed in the back by the liberal media!” “We won every battle!” Doesn’t matter. The purpose of sending troops to that ****hole was to keep the Commies from taking over; the fact that the red star is flying over Saigon is all the proof we need to know we failed.
America lost the Vietnam War because we had no clue how to fight it. We lost Iraq and are losing Afghanistan because we’ve learned nothing from Vietnam.
“Street Without Joy” is the English translation of “La Rue Sans Joie,” the French nickname for a stretch of Route 1 in the Quang Tri province in central Vietnam, a vitally important road as it served as the primary land route connecting the northern and southern halves of the country. Because of its significance, the Viet Minh frequently launched surprise attacks on French convoys traveling the road, holing up in various villages along the way.
During the Vietnam War, Quang Tri was the northernmost province of South Vietnam, and Route 1 once again became a major ambush point for the Viet Cong. It was on the Street Without Joy that Bernard Fall was killed in 1967 while embedded with the 4th Marine Regiment. Street Without Joy remains one of the most important history books of the 20th century. If you have any interest in war history, read it.
Last edited by TBM-Legend; 5th Oct 2013 at 11:09.
In this part of France there are 2 local heroes, Lattre de Tassigny and Clemenceau, both born in the same small village. For kilometres around nearly every village and city has a street named after each, and there is a very good museum in the village of their birth.
Any number of very well researched and written books confirm what TBM is saying.
We American's lost the War before we started sending large numbers of Troops into South Vietnam as Westmoreland was determined to use Large Conventional Units in a War of Attrition with the goal of having that elusive Set Piece Battle.
That is what Khe Shanh was all about....and even then it was a near thing depsite all of the Air Power and Artillery we could bring to bear. KS took us out into the scrub and drew our attention away from the Urban areas.
If we had paid attention to the VC Infrastructure and protected the urban areas, towns, and hamlets....rooting out the VC and ridding the SVN Government and military of VC infiltrators and sympathizers we might have fared a lot better.
At the Ia Drang fight....Giap figured out how to fight us and win. That is where the "Grab them by the Belt Buckle" concept came from. Get so close and intermingled in our lines that we could not use our fire superiority to good effect.
Western societies do not like wars of attrition....the Vietnamese knew that. They also had a cause they were willing to sacrifice for....where we did not.
Had we taken the War North and into the Sanctuaries and fought a conventional war on the Enemies home ground....then perhaps it would have been far different in outcome. After TET of '68....the NVA and VC were all but combat effective and had to rebuild over a long period of time to regain their combat power. About that time is when the Political Will of the American effort died as so many of the lies being forwarded by LBJ, McNamara, and Westmoreland became known to the American People.
The NVA did not beat us.....we defeated ourselves.
We American's lost the War before we started sending large numbers of Troops into South Vietnam as Westmoreland was determined to use Large Conventional Units in a War of Attrition with the goal of having that elusive Set Piece Battle.
That is what Khe Shanh was all about....and even then it was a near thing depsite all of the Air Power and Artillery we could bring to bear. KS took us out into the scrub and drew our attention away from the Urban areas.
If we had paid attention to the VC Infrastructure and protected the urban areas, towns, and hamlets....rooting out the VC and ridding the SVN Government and military of VC infiltrators and sympathizers we might have fared a lot better.
At the Ia Drang fight....Giap figured out how to fight us and win. That is where the "Grab them by the Belt Buckle" concept came from. Get so close and intermingled in our lines that we could not use our fire superiority to good effect.
Western societies do not like wars of attrition....the Vietnamese knew that. They also had a cause they were willing to sacrifice for....where we did not.
Had we taken the War North and into the Sanctuaries and fought a conventional war on the Enemies home ground....then perhaps it would have been far different in outcome. After TET of '68....the NVA and VC were all but combat effective and had to rebuild over a long period of time to regain their combat power. About that time is when the Political Will of the American effort died as so many of the lies being forwarded by LBJ, McNamara, and Westmoreland became known to the American People.
The NVA did not beat us.....we defeated ourselves.
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SASless - There was one idiotic, over-riding policy of the war in Vietnam, that goes against the very basic idea of war - and which explains simply, why American war efforts were forever doomed there.
That policy was - that ground could be fought over, but it was never captured and securely held.
To fight an enemy, and never capture their ground and deny access of that ground to them, goes against the very basic tenet of war.
How this policy ever came into being as military strategy, is one of the enduring mysteries of the Vietnam War.
How it came to be part of standard American strategy for every war fought by America since, is an even bigger mystery.
If ever there was a policy that has led to America being bled dry by unwinnable wars, this is it.
Giap exploited that stupid policy to the max, and showed America how idiotic the policy was, by continuously sending his guerrillas back into "American" terrain that had never been secured.
That policy was - that ground could be fought over, but it was never captured and securely held.
To fight an enemy, and never capture their ground and deny access of that ground to them, goes against the very basic tenet of war.
How this policy ever came into being as military strategy, is one of the enduring mysteries of the Vietnam War.
How it came to be part of standard American strategy for every war fought by America since, is an even bigger mystery.
If ever there was a policy that has led to America being bled dry by unwinnable wars, this is it.
Giap exploited that stupid policy to the max, and showed America how idiotic the policy was, by continuously sending his guerrillas back into "American" terrain that had never been secured.
Last edited by onetrack; 6th Oct 2013 at 03:05. Reason: addendum ..
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onetrack
Understand what you are saying but the Aussies in their AO
managed to get the VC / NVA to effectively give up that area
because of aggressive patrolling yet they had few bases.
Understand what you are saying but the Aussies in their AO
managed to get the VC / NVA to effectively give up that area
because of aggressive patrolling yet they had few bases.
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Giap wrote;
"Every inhabitant is a soldier, every village a fortress"
You would have had to completely destroy everyone and everything in Viet Nam to defeat us. That's why we won.
My condolences to Dang Bich Ha.
"Every inhabitant is a soldier, every village a fortress"
You would have had to completely destroy everyone and everything in Viet Nam to defeat us. That's why we won.
My condolences to Dang Bich Ha.
HJ,
Not quite everyone....a significant number of Vietnamese citizens had no desire to fight for or join with the North. They were failed by corrupt inept leaders that relied too much on foreign help and were seemingly incapable of getting their message out. 'Strategic Hamlets' was not the answer.
I'd also wager that, in line with standard communist doctrine, several members of the NVA and COSVN cadres were 'encouraged' to join the fight under duress.
However, none of this detracts from Giap's achievements. Hal Moore's 'We are Soldiers Still' has some fascinating accounts of meeting Giap, inter alia, and is a warming tale of enemies becoming friends. As a Brit, I do permit myself the occasional rueful smile at the thought of a US general seeking a decisive battle in a foreign land only to be thwarted by a motivated guerilla force which refuses to 'play fair'......
Not quite everyone....a significant number of Vietnamese citizens had no desire to fight for or join with the North. They were failed by corrupt inept leaders that relied too much on foreign help and were seemingly incapable of getting their message out. 'Strategic Hamlets' was not the answer.
I'd also wager that, in line with standard communist doctrine, several members of the NVA and COSVN cadres were 'encouraged' to join the fight under duress.
However, none of this detracts from Giap's achievements. Hal Moore's 'We are Soldiers Still' has some fascinating accounts of meeting Giap, inter alia, and is a warming tale of enemies becoming friends. As a Brit, I do permit myself the occasional rueful smile at the thought of a US general seeking a decisive battle in a foreign land only to be thwarted by a motivated guerilla force which refuses to 'play fair'......
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HJ - You won because you practised terrorism on a scale unseen in modern history. In case you don't recall, or weren't taught this in school - the standard technique of the NVA and VC during the Vietnam War was to enter any village in the South that wasn't supporting the Norths aims - butcher the Headman and his entire family in cold blood, display the corpses to the remaining villagers, and tell them the exact same thing would happen to them, if they didn't comply with NVA/VC demands and pay the NVA taxes.
Your country and your society is founded on terrorism and your dictatorial Govts corruption and nepotism is known worldwide. No country founded on terrorism has ever known long-term peace.
Your country and your society is founded on terrorism and your dictatorial Govts corruption and nepotism is known worldwide. No country founded on terrorism has ever known long-term peace.
of course the final solution was to round up every SVN person on "our" side and put them on boats off the coast, bring in the B-52's and carpet bomb the rest who must be VC, VNA or others. Re-arm and go back and sink all the boats. Voila, problem solved!
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Giap said "We'll lose ten men for every man you lose. But you'll tire before we do".
He was correct.
I notice that the 'body count', such a prominent feature of the Vietnam war, has never made a comeback.
I suspect it was deliberately abandoned after Vietnam- and of course explains why we have no idea how many Iraqis were killed in GW2.
He was correct.
I notice that the 'body count', such a prominent feature of the Vietnam war, has never made a comeback.
I suspect it was deliberately abandoned after Vietnam- and of course explains why we have no idea how many Iraqis were killed in GW2.
No country founded on terrorism has ever known long-term peace.
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I beg to differ. Australia was not founded on conquest, nor terrorism. Our early settlers didn't arrive and immediately seek out the Aboriginal camps and slaughter the elders and their families, and then warn the remaining tribespeople that the same would happen to them if they didn't buckle under to white peoples demands. Neither did we impose taxes on the Abos to support our style of Govt.
The Aboriginals were largely left in peace and it was only the raiding parties of the Abo's, seeking to grab easy food, that brought about conflict. There were a few isolated massacres of Abo's, but these were not settler policy - nor were the individuals who led those massacres, supported by the other whites - and the whites who did carry out those few isolated massacres were, in the main, condemned by many other whites.
The Aboriginals were largely left in peace and it was only the raiding parties of the Abo's, seeking to grab easy food, that brought about conflict. There were a few isolated massacres of Abo's, but these were not settler policy - nor were the individuals who led those massacres, supported by the other whites - and the whites who did carry out those few isolated massacres were, in the main, condemned by many other whites.
My point onetrack is that it's a just a question of perspective - one man's terrorist..., and all that. An Aborigine would likely have a different perspective on early Australian history than you do.