Last Outpost

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

Ho Chi Minh's advancing Communists closed a siege ring around Laokay, last French outpost in northern Indo-China. By one of history's ironies, the Vichy French, with Japanese consent, had built up the fortress at Laokay during World War II. Then, in the postwar years; Nationalist Chinese occupation forces had destroyed it. Now, only partly rebuilt, and held by a thin garrison of Foreign Legionnaires, Moroccans and Vietnamese, Laokay looked untenable. It was under Communist mortar fire. Its abandonment and the retreat of its garrison 160 miles down the Red River valley to the Hanoi-Haiphong beachhead seemed likely.

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