Re: Ddie^.n Bie^n Phu?

[Nguyen Tuan Trung <nttrung@alfa.mimuw.edu.pl>]

Hi anh Aiviet and everybody on this thread,

>   Before Nava, the "Chie^'n Di.ch Ddo^`ng ba(`ng", "Na` sa?n" were failures
> under Gen. DeLatre de Tasigny. However, in those offensives, the French were
> in defensive role. In Ddie^.n Bie^n Phu?, Nava maight want to initiate
> the offensive role and was defeated.

Perhaps you should have said whose failures they were. As far as I
remember
these campaigns were recognized as _our_,to the very least, "failing to
reach
objectives". 


>   On the one side it was a professional army with Gens trained in the best
> schools in France, on the other side it was the peasant-soldiers
> surviving from the 1945's famine with a teacher-Gen VNG peasant-gen NCT and
> a will.
....
>   After HimLam surrendered, the advantage was in Giap's hand, but the job
> was not trivial at all.

To be more precise, French forces had about 10,000 soldiers. Ours had at
least
five times as many, but for forces attacking heavily entrenched
positions this 
ratio in manpower was quite normal. But had it not been for General
Giap's choice
of the right tactics, a force even twice as big would have been crushed
easily by
French firepower in a massive frontal attack.

Best,
Trung