Profound Change
BATTLE OF INDOCHINA
Five bearded men, in rags that had once been uniforms, staggered into the French outpost town of Tienyen 35 miles from Moncay on the Chinese border one day last week. They were Foreign Legionnaires, former Wehrmacht soldiers, who had been captured by Ho Chi Minh's Communists in the worst days of French reversals last September. Told by Communists that the whole Red River delta, except the port of Haiphong, was in Communist hands, the Legionnaires had escaped, made tracks for Haiphong. They were astonished to find the French still in Tienyen, more astonished when the French told them about the action profonde which had regained the lost ground and changed the entire psychology of the French army and its supporters. When a Legionnaire asked how it happened, the answer was brief: General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.
A TIME correspondent in Hanoi last week described the vital change that has come over the French:
SIX weeks ago, the French were dizzily off balance, hiding their heads in the sand. Soldiers talked about the war as already lost. Vietnamese were changing Viet Nam piasters into Ho Chi Minh's currency. The whole population seemed agreed that Hanoi would be in Ho's hands by year's end.
No Flight. Then De Lattre moved in. He made a thorough housecleaning of the desultory, limp French military and civilian setup. Typical De Lattre gesture: stepping aboard his plane, he noticed that two members of the crew wore luxuriant beards. Said he: "Soldiers are clean-shaven. We take off in ten minutes." Ten minutes later, a clean-shaven crew took off with De Lattre aboard.
He personally coached staff officers in new methods, scrapped the old French system of small outlying strong points for a modern system of strong elements dug in depth. He brought in new ships, planes and equipment (including some U.S. B-26s, Hellcat fighters and 30 Sherman tanks), new troops and a full signal company for his headquarters' use.
He canceled the order evacuating French women & children from the delta, brought his wife to live in Hanoi. Unlike the generals who preceded him, he spends most of his time there. He went out to the units in the field, made short, tough, sentimental speeches, said that he was proud to be a French soldier among French soldiers and that he would not tolerate the shame to France of being licked. I saw Legionnaires shed tears at these speeches.
No Defeatism. Then De Lattre threw in his brief, spectacular counterattack (TIME, Jan. 15). The attack cut off Viet Minh access to the Bay of Tonking and thus to sea communication with Communist Hainan, where a Chinese Communist fleet is reported ready with arms and food for Ho. Today Hanoi is a thronging, roaring place again. There is a feverish movement of troops and a feeling that something vital is happening. The city is geared to war, not to dreary defeatism.
The Vietnamese have been particularly sensitive to De Lattre's influence. Said a Vietnamese spokesman last week: "This man is so strong that I am afraid we will not immediately get the independence that seemed a short time ago only across the road." But De Lattre has guaranteed Viet Nam independence. And the Vietnamese are willing to wait.
Today French and Vietnamese alike boast that the Viet Minh no longer have any chance of taking the deltaunless the Communist Chinese step in to help them. While the Chinese are known to be in close touch with Ho, the six months' rainy season that starts in May will make the roads in northern Viet Nam and southern China all but impassable to large-scale Chinese troop movements. Meanwhile, the Viet Minh were attacking on a 75-mile front north of Hanoi, deploying 30 to 40 battalions for daylight battle in open country for the first time. At week's end the French were holding firm, smashing the Communists with artillery. The test of De Lattre's generalship had arrived.
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