Hanoi Beachhead

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

As General Alphonse Juin and Minister for Indo-China Jean Letourneau landed at Hanoi's Gialam airfield after the long flight from Paris, a welcoming band struck up the Marseillaise and the Thanly-Nien Hanh Khuc (the Vietnamese anthem, March of Youth). Then the two Frenchmen hurried away from martial music to study the martial setback suffered by France in northern Indo-China.

The retreat of French forces from their strongpoints along the Chinese border was still in full swing. Langson, a fortress often regarded as the key to Hanoi itself, was abandoned without a struggle. Communist Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh troops, now no longer guerrillas but a regular army with mortars, heavy artillery and radio communications, pressed hard.

The French were regrouping in a beachhead around Hanoi and the nearby port of Haiphong. They were pulling out of difficult mountain and jungle terrain for the flat, open, rice-rich lower Red River valley. They hoped to hold a perimeter extending 160 miles around the river's mouth. They were waiting for U.S. tanks and planes and troops from France.

Sixty-five years ago the fall of Langson to a Chinese army had brought about the fall of a French government. Then it was Premier Jules ("Le Tonkinois") Ferry under attack by fiery Georges Clemenceau. Last week no Clemenceaus were on hand to upset the cabinet of Premier Rene Pleven. Yet debate over Indo-China at Paris was bitter. Rightist Deputy Edmond Michelet assailed "successive governments" for "an incoherent policy ... As late as Oct. 7 we were told that the Viet Minh forces could not launch a general offensive." Radical Deputy Pierre Mendes-France warned: "If we want to win the war ... we will have to triple our military forces and . . . our military budget. We must choose between the rearmament of Europe and the war in Indo-China."

Premier Pleven answered: Northern Indo-China will be defended as it has always been. By 353 to 215, the National Assembly voted to keep the French forces in Indo-China.

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