Defeat for the West

INDOCHINA

Defeat for the West Three months ago, in a daring parachute swoop, General de Lattre de Tassigny hurled the Communist Viet Minh out of the strategic, battle-scarred city of Hoa Binh, rice-and salt-rich capital of the pro-French Mung tribesmen. It was a major French victory, and the French proudly announced: "We shall never give up Hoa Binh." Hoa Binh was important because it straddles Route Coloniale No. 12, along which Chinese coolies had sneaked loads of ammunition from Red China to Communist guerrillas in southern Indo-China.

Then De Lattre died (TIME, Jan. 21), and with him some of the audacity which had heartened the French Union forces in their mean and costly five-year-old war. To the west of Hoa Binh, Viet Minh hacked out new roads in the jungle. A human chain of 50,000 Chinese moved 4,000 tons of war material south to the Communist forces. Included, according to French reports: 10 million Chinese-made cartridges, 100,000 mortar shells, 100,000 hand grenades. Russian-built trucks hauled in heavy cannon; Chinese "military advisers" stiffened Viet Minh's 45,000 regulars.

To hold Hoa Binh against Communist counterattacks, General Raoul Salan, De Lattre's successor in Indo-China, increased the French garrison to 23,000 men, sent his shoestring air force to strafe Red convoys. But the Reds were too strong: using Russian antiaircraft guns, they shot down ten French planes in seven days' fighting. Viet Minh raiders slipped through the French defenses, infiltrated the delta.

Last week, outnumbered and outgunned, the French pulled out of Hoa Binh, bringing 1,000 civilians out with them. Fighting all the way, they retreated towards Hanoi, abandoning a network of forts along Route Coloniale No. 6 (linking Hoa Binh to the Tonkin capital of Hanoi).

General Salan described the retreat as a "tactical maneuver," and pointed out that it would leave more of his troops free to tackle Communist guerrillas operating near Hanoi. But Communists crowed victory. The capture of Hoa Binh gave them Route No. 12 as a supply line to the Chinese border; it also gave them a commanding jumpoff base from which their guerrilla bands could stab at Hanoi, and the rice-rich Red River delta.

It was the first big French withdrawal since the fall of 1950, and a sizable defeat for the West.

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