Forward Lies the Delta

INDOCHINA

One hot, cloudless day last week, General Rene Cogny, commander of North Viet Nam, flew to the troubled southern zone of the Red River Delta. At Namdinh, 45 miles southeast of Hanoi, with evident pleasure, he presented a unit citation to the elite 2nd Amphibious Group, 1st Foreign Legion Cavalry Regiment; he tied the traditional fanon, an Arabian horse's tail, to the regimental colors. Then the strapping (6 ft., 200 Ibs.) three-star general called the legion officers around him. "Dienbienphu was a blow," he said, "but that's all over now. We must turn the page. We must look forward--and forward lies the Battle of the Delta."

In these early days of the new battle, the French and the Communists were redeploying. The Communists were moving east in strength from Dienbienphu. The French were pulling back from their antique forts and were concentrating in mobile groups at centers like Namdinh. The French redeployment was no simple matter: Communist guerrillas had often worked so closely around the forts that full-scale offensive operations were needed to withdraw a two-platoon garrison. The day after the fanon ceremony, Cogny had to send 2,000 men, 200 vehicles and 15 tanks to rescue 110 Vietnamese infantrymen from Doaithan and Thanhne, a couple of surrounded forts less than 20 miles from Namdinh. Cabled TIME Correspondent John Mecklin, who rode with the French column:

Advance. We moved off at 8 a.m., through a delta that lay ostensibly at peace. In the paddies the Vietnamese peasants guided their water buffalo and their plows through the rich, black mud, relying upon Vietnamese flags mounted on sticks to convince the troops they were loyal. In a few harvested paddies there were beds of deep purple flowers. A mine suddenly blew up one of our trucks, but the explosion did not bother a pregnant woman padding impassively along with her bare-bottomed child and her geese. French artillery opened fire, yet a couple of peasants dog-trotted calmly past the guns with a brace of squealing pigs suspended from a pole. They did not waste their glances upon the foreigners and their machines.

We came to a stream. Some laughing Vietnamese soldiers in soaking-wet uniforms were displaying their new collection of Communist rifles and grenades. They held out hatfuls of Communist paper money that bore the portrait of Ho Chi Minh. "My men surprised a Viet Minh company, and we killed 15 of them," a Vietnamese battalion commander explained. "They say our morale is bad, but you should have seen it. My men dived into the river to get at the enemy."

There was a delay: the Communists had dug 8-ft. trenches across the roadway; they had totally removed the approaches to a couple of bridges, which were left resting on their supports in midair. The French brought up bulldozers and 200 sweating Communist prisoners to repair the road, much as the Communists also use "volunteers" when the French planes knock out their supply routes. At midday the column got moving again, past a sign that read: DON'T KILL. DON'T RAPE. DON'T BURN. DON'T ARREST YOUNG PEOPLE. At 1 p.m. our advance elements reached the first objective, Doaithan.

Consolidation. We moved on towards Thanhne--and promptly ran into a Communist ambush. A Red sniper picked off a Vietnamese sergeant in his tank turret, and the Communists lobbed in some mortars. There was firing all around us: French artillery, tanks and mortars opened up, and small-arms fire clattered back from nearby villages. Red mortars and anti-personnel mines went off, curr-rump, curr-rump, along the road. It was almost certainly one of these mines that killed LIFE Photographer Robert Capa (see PRESS). Moroccan infantry quickly deployed against the villages and put an end to the shooting. At 3 p.m., the column entered Thanhne.

Like Doaithan, the fort was decayed and rotting. The signs of siege and uselessness were everywhere: overgrown paths, cracked-mud earthworks and rusting barbed wire. The two-platoon Vietnamese garrisons had long been immobilized, their mission--protecting the countryside from Communists and collecting rice--a bitter joke. The Communists--barefoot guerrillas, not even regulars--had even burrowed deep into the outer fort defenses.

That was the pillbox war that had died with Dienbienphu, and now General Cogny's theme was "consolidation for offensive action elsewhere." So the men of the column hauled down the French and Vietnamese flags; they planted explosives; they withdrew the garrisons (with their furniture and pots and pans) for more useful work in the coming Battle of the Delta. Then the French blew Doaithan and Thanhne to bits.

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