Ambuscade

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

It was a beautiful morning, with wisps of mist clinging to the jungle-covered hills. But the grimy, green-clad French Foreign Legion marched down Route Coloniale No. 2 beside their guns and tanks with curses on their lips. It was the luck of war: they had made a lightning strike into the heart of enemy country, but just as they had been about to descend on the Communist stronghold of Yenbay, the whole operation had been called off. Operation Lorraine it had been named--parachute troops leapfrogging an armored spearhead of 15,000 infantrymen, as pretty a piece of planning as you would find in the book. What had happened?

In the headquarters of eagle-faced General Gonzales de Linares, they had only an approximate idea of events that morning last week. Stretching out from the apex of the triangular French-held Hanoi delta to the China border is a string of hedgehog defenses: the Black River line. Three weeks ago, when Communist General Giap (TIME, Nov. 17) attacked Laichau at the westernmost end of this line, General Linares had thrown in Operation Lorraine. It was a counterpunch, aimed to throw Giap's armies off balance and to cut one of his main supply lines from Communist China.

But Giap's Viet Minh forces, ignoring Operation Lorraine, suddenly swept south, swarmed across the Black River and swallowed the fortified French outposts Mocchau and Yenchau. Now they were advancing on the town of Sonla and the nearby airstrip of Nasan, where 12,000 French troops were cut off. There was another point of worry for General Linares: What had become of Communist Giap's crack 308th Viet Minh division, which had suddenly vanished from the Black River front?

"Cut Off Their Heads!" At 8 that morning, the withdrawing French Legionnaires had an answer to that question. Hidden in the jungle at the road's edge and concealed in the ruins of an old Chinese fort on a nearby hilltop, the 308th was watching the approach of the French column. Now, over a 2,000-yard strip of the road, they let the French have it. Lobbed hand grenades turned trucks into burning wrecks, while rifle and machine-gun fire blasted down the Legionnaires. Then the Viet Minh leaped into the road with daggers and machetes. The French column, cut in half, pulled back north and south of the ambush point. Dazed survivors gasped incoherent stories: one had seen women charging with the Viet Minh, others had seen a European leading the charge, shouting "Coupez les tetes!" (Cut off their heads).

Sandy-haired Breton Lieut. Colonel Louis Kergaravat rallied the southern half of his forces on a hill overlooking the road. Spotting the Viet Minh in the old Chinese fort, he called in the artillery. Said Kergaravat later: "They did not take cover. They acted as if they were drunk. We could see their bodies tossed into the air by the explosions of our shells." An hour later, driven off the old fort, the Viet Minh stormed Kergaravat's position. "I couldn't believe my eyes, there were so many of them," said Kergaravat. "It looked like a football stadium emptying." Screaming Viet Minh charged to within 30 yards of the French position, were finally blasted off the hillside by Chaffee tanks.

Trumpet Charge. For six hours the French held off the Viet Minh while B-26s from Hanoi strafed the roadside. By that time the northern half of the French column was in position to counterattack. In the jump-off position was the 1st Bataillon de Marche, reckoned the finest Vietnamese unit in the French Union forces, whose tradition it is to charge to the call of a trumpet. Now, as the shrill trumpet echoed over the green jungle, the Vietnamese stormed the small hill where the Viet Minh had dug in. The fourth wave got in among the Reds with the bayonet. The fanatical young Communists died to the last man. By 5 p.m. the Legionnaires commanded the hilltops on either side of the road. The northern half of the severed French column could now come through.

By dusk all had passed the ambush point except the heavy armor of the rear guard, when suddenly a new wave of Reds jumped the road, recapturing the ambush area and cutting off the rear guard. Bucking their way through in the darkness, the tanks reached the center of the ambush area, with hundreds of suicidal Viet Minh swarming aboard with potato-masher stick grenades and plastic explosive charges. Some Viet Minh threw themselves under the grinding treads with armfuls of explosives. Six armored halftracks were destroyed and their crews slaughtered.

The blind, lumbering tanks had to clean the antlike Viet Minh off each other with machine-gun fire. Almost overwhelmed, the rear guard called for artillery support. The French gunners laid down a skillful box barrage which enclosed the tanks in a wall of fire. As the tanks moved forward, so did the barrage, until finally the column broke into the clear. The battle had lasted 14 hours.

The Hedgehog's Spikes. In Hanoi, General Linares faced a new and alarming situation. Though he had extricated his center, his left flank was crumbling. First, farflung French outposts, and then Sonla itself had to be abandoned. The French pulled back into Nasan 117 miles west of Hanoi, the only remaining bastion of the Black River defense line. An airlift (a plane every 15 minutes) was bringing reinforcements into Nasan and flying out thousands of Sonla's refugees. Situated in a wide-open plateau, rare in that country, Nasan, with its fortified air strip and embrasured artillery, dug in for a spiky hedgehog battle.

Too readily, some critics think. With more men than Giap, with an abundance of U.S. equipment, with an overwhelming superiority in guns and planes, the French, instead of ranging all over the map as Giap is doing, seem to be handicapped by the bunker--or Maginot--mentality. In the high command there is a conflict of personalities: two four-star generals, Linares and Salan, competing for military advantage. What France badly needs is another De Lattre, one who knows'how to use the material at hand.

The coming battle may be decisive. If Nasan should be overwhelmed, the French would be bottled up in the Hanoi delta, and there would be little to stop the Communists' sweeping down the entire length of Indo-China.

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