Adventure Dien Bien Phu, The former Battle Field

South of Muong Lay the road splits: Highway 6 takes off southeast to Tuan Giao and is the shortest route to Son La; Highway 12 ploughs on south for more than 100km (about 3–4hr), making slow progress at first but then zipping through the second 50km, to the heart-shaped valley of DIEN BIEN PHU, scene of General Giap’s triumph in a battle that signalled the end of French Indochina . The isolated valley is roughly 19km by 8km, oriented north– south and edged by low mountains. Though only a trickle of tourists visits Dien Bien Phu, drawn mostly by its historic battlefield, the town is undergoing a construction boom fuelled in part by lucrative smuggling across the border from Laos. The valley’s population is predominantly Thai (53 percent), while only one third are Viet in origin and they are concentrated in the urban area. Though there are daily flights from Hanoi, it’s a much more interesting journey by road, but this demands a five-day round trip or an overnight stop on the circuit through Vietnam’s northwest. For the moment, the border with Laos, only 35km away by road to the southwest, remains firmly closed to foreigners. However, there are persistent rumours that it will open in the near future – check with the embassy in Hanoi for the latest information. 

++ Highlights in Former Battle fields

Highway 12 enters the valley from the north, skirts the airfield 5km out of town and enters Dien Bien Phu at a T-junction on the western edge of town, where the bus station is located. From here it’s a couple of hundred metres, crossing the Nam Rom River, to a busy roundabout and market which form the town centre. To the left the highway leads to Tuan Giao and on to Hanoi or Muong Lay, while heading right you go past the bank, the Dien Bien Phu hotel and finally the museum and Viet Minh Cemetery, about 800m further along.

The town’s museum (daily 7.30–11am & 1.30–5pm; 5000VND) is set back slightly from the road on the right-hand side as you head south out of town. There’s a display of weaponry including American-made guns of World War II vintage captured from French troops. Alongside them languish Viet Minh guns, also American-made but newer: these were booty from the Korean War which came via China into Vietnam, to be dragged up the battlefield’s encircling hills. Familiar photos of the war-torn valley become more interesting in context, as does the scale model where a guide describes the unfolding catastrophe – the message is perfectly clear, even in Vietnamese. Also on display is one of the sturdy bicycles capable of carrying 200-kilo loads along the Viet Minh supply trail, along with plenty more examples of ingenious homemade weapons and equipment.

Directly opposite the museum is the Viet Minh Cemetery, where some of the fallen heroes are buried under grey marble headstones marked only with a red and gold star. In 1993 an imposing imperial gateway and white-marble wall of names was added in time for the fortieth anniversary of the battle. The outside of this wall features bas-reliefs in concrete of battle scenes.

A small hill overlooking the cemetery, known as Hill A1 to the Vietnamese and as Eliane 2 to French defenders, was the scene of particularly bitter fighting before it was eventually overrun towards the end of the battle. You can inspect a reconstructed bunker on the summit and various memorials, including the grave of a Viet Minh hero who gave his life while disabling the French tank standing next to him, and you also get a panorama over the now peaceful, agricultural valley.

There’s little to see at the last battle site, a reconstruction of de Castries’ bunker (daily 7.30–11am & 1.30–5pm; 5000VND), but it’s a pleasant, twenty-minute walk across the river on a track busy with farm carts. To get there, head back into town from Hill A1 for about 300m before turning left down a road between a small vegetable market and a row of pho stalls. Cross a bridge, and turn left when you can see the bunker’s low, corrugated roof 100m away, surrounded by barbed wire. Around about are captured tanks, anti-aircraft guns and other weaponry rusting away in the fields. Carrying on straight ahead past the old tank for about 300m you come to a concrete enclosure with a memorial "To those who died here for France". 

++ Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 

In November 1953 General Navarre, Commander-in-Chief in Indochina, ordered the French Expeditionary Force’s parachute battalions to establish a base in Dien Bien Phu. Taunted by Viet Minh incursions into Laos, with which France had a mutual defence treaty, Navarre asserted that this would block enemy lines through the mountains, force the Viet Minh into open battle and end the war in Indochina within eighteen months – which it did, but not quite as Navarre intended. His deputy in Dien Bien Phu was Colonel de Castries, an aristocratic cavalry officer and dashing hero of World War II, supposedly irresistible to women, although Graham Greene, visiting the base in January 1954, described him as having the "nervy histrionic features of an old-time actor".

Using bulldozers dropped in beneath seven parachutes apiece, the French cleared two airstrips and then set up nine heavily fortified positions on low hills in the valley floor, reputedly named after de Castries’ mistresses – Gabrielle, Eliane, Béatrice and so on. Less than a quarter of the garrison in Dien Bien Phu were mainland French: the rest were either from France’s African colonies or the Foreign Legion (a mix of European nationalities), plus local Vietnamese troops including three battalions drawn from the Thai minority. There were also nineteen women in the thick of things (a stranded French nurse, plus eighteen Vietnamese and Algerian women from the Expeditionary Force’s mobile brothel).

Meanwhile, General Giap, Commander of the People’s Army, quietly moved his own forces into the steep hills around the valley, mobilizing an estimated 300,000 porters, road gangs and auxiliary soldiers in support of up to 50,000 battle troops. Not only did they carry in all food and equipment, often on foot or bicycle over vast distances, but they then hauled even the heaviest guns up the slopes, hacking paths through the dense steamy forest as they went. Ho Chi Minh described the scene to journalist Wilfred Burchett by turning his helmet upside down: "Down here is the valley of Dien Bien Phu. There are the French. They can’t get out. It may take a long time, but they can’t get out." In early 1954 Giap was ready to edge his troops even closer, using a network of tunnels dug under cover of darkness. By this time the international stakes had been raised: the war in Indochina would be discussed at the Geneva Conference in May, so now both sides needed a major victory to take to the negotiating table.

French commanders continued to believe their position was impregnable until the first shells rained down on March 10. Within five days Béatrice and Gabrielle had fallen, both airstrips were out of action and the siege had begun in earnest; the French artillery commander, declaring himself "completely dishonoured", lay down and took the pin out of a grenade. All French supplies and reinforcements now had to be parachuted in, frequently dropping behind enemy lines, and when de Castries was promoted to general even his stars were delivered by parachute; at the end of the battle, 83,000 parachutes were strewn across the valley floor. The final assault began on May 1, by which time the rains had arrived, hindering air support, filling the trenches and spreading disease. Waves of Viet Minh fought for every inch of ground, until their flag flew above de Castries’ command bunker on the afternoon of May 7. The following morning, the day talks started in Geneva, the last position surrendered and the valley at last fell silent after 59 days. A ceasefire was signed in Geneva on July 21, and ten months later the last French troops left Indochina.

The Vietnamese paid a high price for their victory, with an estimated 20,000 dead and many thousands more wounded. On the French side, out of a total force of 16,500, some 10,000 were captured and marched hundreds of kilometres to camps in Vietnam’s northeastern mountains; less than half survived the rigours of the journey, diseases and horrendous prison conditions.

More than fifty years on, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu remains one of the most significant military conflicts of the twentieth century, with its importance in Vietnam’s struggle for independence commemorated in nearly every town by a street named in honour of that famous victory.