WHAT HAPPENED AT DIENBIENPHU

As S Vietnam's forces reel ›ack under the sledgehammer ›lows of the invading N Vietlamese army, Workers Press :ecalls the greatest victory ol he long struggle againsi mperialism in Vietnam: the ›attle of Dienbienphu.

Dienbienphu was the culminaion of eight years' bitter warfare gainst the French colonial lower, reimposed with British ind American aid at the end if World War II.

It began as a demonstration if the French commanders' conempt for their revolutionary idversaries; it ended in the most rushine and humiliatine defeat ¡ colonial power has ever known.

Dienbienphu is a fertile valley mong the iungle-covered mountains of "N' Vietnam. It lies on the border with Laos, and to the French command it seemed, in 1953, an ideal place for a fortified encampment to straddle the route from Vietnam to Laos.

Isolated • it might be, but the French had absolute mastery of the air, and the Vietminh would surely not be able to storm a camp of 10,000 heavily-armed men. So the French command reasoned as the crack paratroop brigades and Legion battalions dropped from the sky into the Dienbienphu basin on November 20, 1953.

They reckoned without the revolutionary determination of the Vietminh and the military genius of their commanderGeneral Vo Nguyen Giap. When he learned of the French parachute drop, Giap began to prepare the war's decisive battle.

His troops were concentrated in the Red River. Delta area, N of Hanoi. They had to transport their weapons and supplies through the almost impassable jungle up to the Laotian border.

His peasant soldiers, "ill-equipped, ill-fed and relentlessly disciplined by a burning hatred of colonial power, were to be pitted against the flower of the Legion, hardened veterans of the SS and World War II.

French author Jules Roy gives this vivid picture of the Vietminh tarano manchina towards пиил luwalus Dienbienphu, 50 miles by night or 20 day: Each soldier carried his weapon. sometimes a non-recoil gun or mortar tripod, a bag, a 30lb bundle of rice slung over one shoulder, his individual shovel, waterbottle and a little salt in a bamboo tube.

'He marched from dawn to sunset and vice versa, with • ten minutes' rest every hour. At night the distance covered was exhausting. On arrival, he dug trenches in which to take shelter or sleep after washing his feet a bowl of hot salt water.

'Not all the soldiers had footwear; many of them, like the porters, had only sandals cut out of tyres, which sometimes hurt them. • The porters with even smaller rations, performed the hardest task of all. In endless columns, they carryi pushp to 12 times a mans, weight, over the rough country roads, up hills and over ravines, constantly harassed from the air by the French planes.

Huge teams of Vietnamese peasants built roads in the mountains around the camp, set up hospitals, dug emplacements and made meticulous preparations to take the fortress.• Inside the perimeter of Dienbienphu, the French waited complacently, hardly even bothering to patrol the surrounding area. Their aircraft spotted few signs of the feverish activity in the •surrouncing ionala the ine surrounding Viet ming prepared tor battle.

Their planes failed completely to discover the 24 105mm euns which had been hauled up from the Delta region, manhandled across the mountains and set up in concealed emplacements overlooking the camp. The French gunners were so breezily confident they left their own guns in the open.

When Giap's 105s began to bark from their hidden emplacements, the French guns were wrecked in a matter of days. The artillery commander at Dienbienphu crept into his dugout and blew himself up have colleagues might as well done the same.

The battle itself began on March 12, 1954. Before it started, the political commissars among the Vietminh units read out Giap's order of the day: 'Officers and troops, the battle of Dienbienphu is about to begin . . it will be an honour to have taken part in this historic battle. 'Determined"to destroy the adversary, keep in mind the motto: "Always attack, always advance". • Master fear and pain, overcome obstacles, unite your efforts, fight to the very end, annihilate the enemy at Dienbienphu, win a great victory!' Carefully planned and executed, the Vietminh began systematically steamrollering the French defences. The outlying posts were the first to tall. The planes on the runway were destroyed and the camp virtually -1-1 al----outgunned ramnletely demnralized the French could only sit in their dugouts and watch their 'allies' the Vietnamese and the Thais, melt away to join the Vietminh. The Algerian and Morroccan soldiers refused to fight. One by cne the French strong points fell.

In Paris, among the government circles the Third Republic, the mounting debacle was watched with horror. France's big brother, the United States, which had put up much of the money for the Indo-China war, discussed dropping atomic bombs into the surrounding jungles to annihilate _the com. munist troops.

But John Foster Dulles, author cf this barbaric plan, was overruled. On May 7, 1954, the Vietminh broke through the final French perimeter and overran the French command post, capturing , 10,000 prisoners and winning an annihilating victory.

Fi the event, it was not the atomic bomb but Stalinism which enabled the imperialists to salvage a position from the ruins of the Dienbienphu debacle.

While the Vietminh fighters were tightening their steel noose round the fortress, the Chinese and Soviet diplomats were getting around the table in Geneva with Britain, France and the US.

The result was the Geneva agreement of 1954 which part!toned Vietnam between the N, where the Vietminh were able to torm a government, and the S Aominatad ho TIC imnarialico Geneva betrayed the victory of Dienbienphu and laid the foundation for another 18 years of bitter warfare.

The current offensive of the N Vietnamese is conditioned by the legacy of Geneva. In 1954, the Chinese leaders, together with the Soviet Stalinists, connived at the division of Vietnam Eighteen years later, Nixon was ADIUM VI TILLIALIS. invited to Peking, raising fresh fears of a new Vietnam sell-out.

Today, as in 1954, the counterrevolutionary politics of Stalinism poses the main danger to the Vietnamese revolution.