International: We Must Attack’

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

The big French airfield at Nasan, between the Red River delta and Laos, lay all but deserted within its ring of trenches and stout barbed wire. It had been by passed by the Communist Viet Minh forces on their way into Laos. Under the broiling sun the colonel in command, walking disconsolately along the airstrip, looked up as he heard the sound of air craft engines. Within seconds a C-47 airplane, its wings and tail riddled by Red ack-ack fire, rolled onto the runway. The pilot braked it to a stop and his passenger, a prim, neat little man wearing the four stars of a full general, climbed out. The astonished colonel clicked to attention, saluted, and said: “I was not expecting you, general.”

The man with the four stars and unsmiling face was Henri Eugène Navarre, a quiet but steely, cultured but tough general of the French army. He had come from Paris to take command of a war that was going badly for France and the non-Communist world—a Red nightmare that had clung to the green jungles and rice fields of Indo-China for seven years.

Turning his back on the plane, Navarre asked the colonel: “What information do you have?” The colonel answered: “The government in France has fallen. I just heard it on the radio.” “Well, that’s better for them than for me,” said Navarre disinterestedly. “But what information have you about the Viet Minh?”

Will & Means. That was four months ago. French Union troops, slogging through the steamy jungles and paddy mud, were demoralized after seven years of battle with Red Viet Minh forces that seemed to attack from everywhere, only to fade into nowhere when counterattacked. The governments of Indo-China’s three Associated States, Laos, Cambodia and Viet Nam, were taking advantage of the mess to harass France for more and faster independence than France could sensibly give. The truce was on the way in Korea, freeing Communism to turn its attention and resources on the war that Korea had overshadowed. Their fortunes and their spirits at a dismally low ebb, the leaders of France were seriously wondering whether to cut their lines and pull out the one plug that was blocking Asian Communism from flooding through to Burma, Siam, and probably all Southeast Asia.

By last week new spirit and optimism had surged up in the men in Indo-China who must fight the ugly war, and the men in Washington and Paris who must see that they get the means and the will to win it. The new lift in morale came partly from the Allied governments, which had decided to plunge fresh resources into the war—more troops from France, more millions from the U.S. But in great part, it came from slim, trim Henri Navarre.

An old cavalryman with the cavalryman’s inbred dislike for position warfare, he stepped into the command with no illusions of cheap successes or quick victory. Little known outside France, he was a cold, distant figure when he arrived in Saigon and took steps to make himself inconspicuous and to avoid the press. With his chic blonde wife (a descendant of Joachim Murat, the Napoleonic King of Naples), he moved into the rambling residence of the commander in chief. (“Why,” exclaimed Mme. Navarre when she first saw the big place, “it’s like a railway station!”) For weeks he toured the vast conglomerations of forts, villages, roadblocks, airfields and remote outposts which pass for “battle lines” in a war where there has never been a well-defined front. A master at assembling bits and pieces into a pattern and molding the pattern into plans, Navarre took stock.

On the enemy side, the pieces added up roughly to this: the Communist forces of goat-bearded Ho Chi Minh. far too large and well organized to be called guerrillas, total about 300,000 men. They are arranged in six regular divisions, under able, boyish-looking General Vo Nguyen Giap. The U.S.S.R. is supplying them with arms, moved by Red China via the railway from Nanning, which runs south into the huge Viet Minh concentration in northern Viet Nam, crucial sector of the war. The Reds are well supplied with artillery, mortars and recoilless cannon, as well as machine guns and automatic hand weapons. Some of the enemy’s arms come from the big Skoda works in Czechoslovakia. In the seven years of war, the Viet Minh have suffered about 200,000 casualties, but, by force and persuasion, they have built their army bigger than ever.

On the French-Vietnamese side: effectives total 248,000, including 18,000 in the navy and air force, and 180,000 in the native Vietnamese army commanded by General Nguyen Van Hinh, combat-pilot son of Viet Nam’s Premier Nguyen Van Tarn. The bulk of non-native forces is composed of 52.000 Frenchmen, plus Senegalese, North Africans and Foreign Legionnaires. The French Union troops have suffered 147,000 casualties, including 60,000 killed or dead of wounds (5,000 more casualties and 35,000 more combat dead than the U.S. lost in three years of Korea). Almost all of the officers and noncoms are French, but the annual drain on trained officers has steadily exceeded the output of Saint-Cyr, France’s West Point. Aside from the toll of blood from a nation that had bled so much in two world wars, the war was costing France a staggering sum—$1.3 billion last year, of which the U.S. supplied $400 million plus direct delivery of war goods, B-26s and Flying Boxcars, World War II Bearcats and Hellcats.

There was little time for planning. The monsoon (May to October), which turns the great Red River delta flats into a mucky red lake, would soon be over, the paddies and jungle trails would soon be alive with the fleet, tough troops of the Communists. The Reds were poising for a mighty—and they hoped decisive—blow at monsoon’s end.

The Plan. From his collection of bits and pieces, Navarre assembled what became known as the Navarre Plan, flew back to Paris to sell it to his superiors. Its three main elements:

1) Get away from the defensive strategy that has dominated conduct of the war since the death of the great Indo-China commander Marshal Jean de Lattre de Tassigny. Go on to the attack.

2) Expand French forces and beef up the Vietnamese army (if possible with small additions from Laos and Cambodia) to an overall total of 500,000 men. This number will enable the French Union to contest the control of every village and clearing against the Viet Minh, also release the mobile French Union forces for massive attacks on major Red bases, concentrations and supply lines.

3) Bring the independence-minded Indo-Chinese into full support of the war by really moving towards the independence that France has long but hesitantly promised. The Indo-Chinese, whose memories of French colonialism often blind them to the threat of Red domination, have not trusted these promises, need more guarantees to give them something to fight and die for.

From Paris, Premier Joseph Laniel fired off an offer to complete negotiations for the full independence of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia—”within the French Union,” the French hoped, but even outside it if the Indo-Chinese insist. Paris gave Navarre nine more battalions of French soldiers (eleven less than he asked for, but a lot when measured against France’s supply). Washington, kept in touch with the detailed development of the plan by Ambassador Donald Heath, joined in further planning. Its decision: an addition of $385 million to the $400 million in aid that was already scheduled for Indo-China in the next twelve months (TIME, Sept. 21).

Victory Is a Woman. Navarre shed his shell of icy reserve and sent a ringing order of the day to his troops: “I have now acquired a personal opinion of the situation and I am sure of the solution . . .

“I speak directly to you because all of you . . . have the right to know how and why you are going to fight. And I wish to make the main point that from now on I will look after you . . .

“Logically victory is certain. But victory is a woman. She does not give herself except to those who know how to take her. One cannot win without attacking . . .

“In all echelons you must have the tenacious will to gather intelligence. In this manner you will gain the initiative—by patrols and frequent ambushes, first in your own zone, and later advancing progressively according to the rhythm and form dictated by the situation. This way you keep the enemy from moving freely and yourself from rotting in your quarters.

“We must attack wherever we find them.”

The polyglot troops had not heard such stirring words for a long time—not at least since dramatic Marshal de Lattre had come to Indo-China (in 1950) to fire his forces to a fervor that might have won the war had he not died (TIME, Jan. 21, 1952) and had economy-minded, casualty-sick France not let its effort degenerate into the grim mess that greeted Navarre.

Portrait on a Cameo. Far different from De Lattre, Navarre also proved that he was a different man from his immediate predecessor, General Raoul Salan, a fully competent professional soldier who was handcuffed both by Paris’ orders to avoid casualties and by his own lack of military panache.

Henri Navarre is an individualist, but a cold and aloof one whose quota of wit, urbanity and charm shows itself only at small, usually intimate gatherings. “He is just a retiring man who suffers in society,” says his only son, Jacques, 27, who is a businessman in Paris. Attractive to women, a man of taste (his Paris apartment houses a Goya, a Reynolds, a portrait of Madame’s distinguished Napoleonic ancestor Murat), and a fancier of cats (because of their independence and aloofness), he was once described by a friend: “There is an 18th century fragrance about him. He is a portrait on a cameo from the time of Louis XV. One almost expects ruffles and a powdered wig.” But another friend says: “He is the hardest general I know—clever and ruthless. He believes in nothing but the army.”

Though his surname seems to have historic overtones, Henri Navarre was born of solid bourgeois stock at Villefranche de Rouergue, in southwestern France. His father, a polished, urbane scholar, was a professor of Greek at Toulouse University, but his son set out early on a military career, served on the front in 1916, and with the Americans at Chateau-Thierry in 1918 (retaining from that an unwavering admiration for U.S. troops). He graduated from Saint-Cyr in 1918, later went back for further studies.

Between the wars he served as a cavalryman in Syria and Morocco, but he also studied armored war at Saumur. He still refers to himself occasionally as un vieux blindé (an old tank officer). In the late ’30s he became chief of the German Section of the Deuxième Bureau (Intelligence), and by war’s beginning he was well known as a good intelligence officer. When the Nazis entered Paris in 1940, the Gestapo made a beeline for his apartment, but their bird had flown, joined up with the headquarters of the army in the retreat to the south.

Dentists Have Uses. Navarre made his way to General Weygand in North Africa and became his chief of intelligence. He harassed to distraction the Italian Fascists who came in as members of the armistice commission. In order to persuade the Italians that they needed bodyguards, Navarre’s hommes lourds (heavy men) clubbed and beat up the Italians in the dark. Navarre installed microphones in the Fascists’ telephones and overheard their most confidential plans.

Navarre’s proudest exploit in those delicate days when the French were Germany’s captives came later, when he openly radioed information on German sea movements to the British on Malta, then sat back to await the fireworks. R.A.F. squadrons sped west from Malta and in minutes destroyed two-thirds of the 15th Panzer Division, destined for Rommel’s Afrika Korps. Admiral Darlan got wind of this feat and sent Navarre to Vichy, where he was kept under surveillance. He soon escaped into the underground—thanks to a guard who became his friend (and later became one of his top agents in the Resistance).

Navarre organized a spy and counterspy ring which was never uncovered during the Nazi occupation, although he had a series of hairbreadth escapes. Once, when he had a rendezvous with an agent in Paris’ gloomy old Gare St. Lazare, the man failed to appear. He had been seized by the Germans, and they had squeezed out of him the word of the appointment with Navarre. There were six Gestapo men in the station looking for the spymaster. But Navarre, scenting the new wind, coolly joined a long line of ticket buyers, stood on a crowded platform reading a newspaper, then joined a crowd leaving a train, and got out of the station, scot-free. Once he was saved from capture when a prolonged session in a dentist’s office made him 15 minutes late for a rendezvous which the Gestapo had learned about. “Dentists,” he later said wryly, “have their uses in this world.”

Two Kinds of Guts. After the Allied landings in Normandy and southern France, Navarre got command of an armored regiment of Moroccan Spahis, as part of General de Lattre’s Army of the Rhine and Danube. One day while Navarre, the assiduous information gatherer, was reconnoitering alone along a forest road in a jeep, he found himself looking down the burp-gun barrels of the German rearguard—about 40 men. Navarre, who speaks excellent German, barked out: “Drop your guns. You are surrounded. You are my prisoners. March down that road and surrender to my Moroccans.” The bluff worked and the Germans did as they were told—but De Lattre instructed Navarre not to go reconnoitering any more in jeeps.

When the time came for a man to follow the successful De Lattre and the unsuccessful Salan in Indo-China, hard-boiled Marshal Alphonse Juin, France’s No. 1 soldier, looked only to the next desk for the man; Navarre had become Juin’s chief of staff. Of Juin’s choice an official in Washington remarked: “In our opinion, Navarre is a man of courage, energy and imagination. He knows his business and has military and political guts of a high order . . . [He] is leading a new team which looks pretty good to us.”

Rice & Men. Though the Navarre program will take time—two years, perhaps longer—before something resembling victory comes in Indo-China, the general and his team have already given a taste of some of its potentialities. With a crisp stream of orders for reconnaissance, forays, ambush raids and harassing attacks, Navarre this summer broke the usual pattern of the monsoon, when the French in the past stopped fighting in order to build up supplies and strengthen their outposts, and the Reds sortied into villages to terrorize, recruit men and collect the rice on which they live.

Navarre launched a spectacular and well-executed airborne assault on the Communist base at Langson (TIME, July 27), where supplies for Ho Chi Minh’s forces were coming in from Red China. The French paratroopers put the base out of action at least temporarily, destroyed 5,000 tons of ammunition and other supplies, and got away with almost no casualties. Next, Navarre mopped up a cluster of Viet Minh strong points called the “Street without Joy” near Hué, on the central Viet Nam coast; he routed a bothersome Red commando battalion that was operating near Haiphong; from the air he attacked Viet Minh command posts, concentration and supply.

In the delicate and crucial political field, the French and Indo-Chinese have settled down to sincere and generally smooth negotiations that promise to give the Indo-Chinese the independence they crave and deserve after 90 years of French colonial rule, and to give the French the help and manpower needed to transform the bloody stalemate into victory. To support their fighting men, the French sent to Indo-China one of their topnotch negotiating men as French Commissioner General—shrewd, experienced Maurice Dejean, an old friend of Navarre and France’s postwar Ambassador to Tokyo. Under Dejean’s direction. French and Indo-Chinese negotiators last week were carefully charting the approaches to a suitable independence formula. The general idea: a plan which will allow the French to stay and fight until it is certain that independence will not be exploded overnight into engulfment by Communism.

Viet Nam’s Emperor Bao Dai and his tough-minded Premier, Nyguen Van Tam, have brought IndoChina’s countless nationalist sects and groups fairly well into line (so intense is the desire for cutting French ties that even leaders of Viet Nam’s 2,000,000 Catholics have been heard to prefer domination by the Reds if necessary). Laos’ King Sisavang Vong, who doughtily insisted on remaining in his capital last spring when the Viet Minh invaded his kingdom (then inexplicably retired a few days later), is cooperating. The government of Cambodia’s saxophone-playing young King Norodom Sihanouk, though it has been making the West nervous with some neutralist sounds beamed to the Reds, has reached agreement on most of the more important snags. There was good reason to hope that the French were purposeful enough and the Indo-Chinese sensible enough to convert mutual distrust into mutual effort.

Light in the Tunnel. Behind the fighters and the negotiators stands the third ally in Indo-China the U.S. The U.S. has come to realize that the Red nightmare in the jungles and paddies is really a twin of the Red nightmare in the forlorn heights and valleys of Korea. It is committed—not with men and blood, but with its resources and its prestige. Early this month Secretary of State John Foster Dulles extended the commitment in a sharp warning that direct intervention in Indo-China by Red China “could not occur without grave consequences which might not be confined to Indo-China,” and the U.S. extended it further with its promise of doubled aid. There is no guarantee that it will not some day have to be extended with American blood.

So in Washington, as in Paris, in Saigon, in the villages and river settlements of Indo-China, ears perked up last week at word from the jungles that Ho Chi Minh is on the march. In a few days his Red troops launched attacks against 15 French outposts. The long-anticipated big offensive seemed only weeks, perhaps days away. With their new spirit and their new commander, the French Union forces expect to blunt the attack. After that, the best the West can look forward to is a long and costly battle of attrition.

The Reds cannot be dealt with around a council table; a Korea-style truce would, more than Korea, represent defeat. There is no battle line behind which they can be confined by armed force or ultimatum. Even if the Navarre Plan goes ahead on oiled bearings, the Viet Minh probably can never be wiped out to the last unit. But with an aggressive plan aggressively carried out, the defenders can hope to show the Communists they cannot win, to pound and slash them until they finally will simply stop fighting—as the Greek Communist guerrillas did in the Greek civil war.

Henri Navarre himself is confident of ultimate victory, and he has communicated this to many of those who are counting on him. Said one of them last week: “A year ago none of us could see victory. There wasn’t a prayer. Now we can see it clearly—like light at the end of a tunnel.”