INDO-CHINA: The Anguished Peace

INDOCHINA

AT 10:42 a.m. Peking time, Wednesday July 21, 1954, the Indo-China war came to its end. Geneva’s decision reached out across the sharp-cut hills and jungles, across the paddies swollen in the rain. It settled densely, inevitable and expected, upon the shifting battle lines, upon the doubts of Saigon and Hanoi.

“It is an anguished peace,” said General Paul Ely, commander of the French. “There can be no real peace without the unity of our country,” cried General Nguyen Van Hinh, leader of the Vietnamese. The Viet Minh coldly warned that “remnants of the French and puppet armies still in hiding . . . must present themselves before the People’s Administration.” North Viet Nam was about to retire behind the Iron Curtain; the South would remain beleaguered.

At 7 a.m. Tuesday July 27, the cease-fire would still the Red River Delta.

The Battleground: Geneva’s decision reached out to Vinhyen, 25 miles northwest of Hanoi, where the late Marshal de Lattre de Tassigny had won France’s most notable Indo-China victory 3½ years before. At Vinhyen the French were deploying 5,000 men against four Viet Minh battalions, in the last big fight of the war. “The battle for the delta is a good battle,” insisted General René Cogny, but his soldiers now knew that their purpose was useless. “All we’re doing is wasting ammunition,” grumbled a Parisian sergeant, “and maybe a few men who’ll step on the mines. I’ve been four years in Indo-China and it’s always been the same. We’ve lost, little by little, and there’s never been an end to it.”

Geneva had different meanings for the 100,000-man French Union army, due now for redeployment into South Viet Nam. “Maybe I’ll go home for a few months,” said the sergeant, “but Paris is so expensive. I’ll have to find another war.” Said a young German Legionnaire, whose mustache was already tinged with grey: “A friend I have had since Normandy was killed on the road last night. So we lose again, eh?” The German turned to an American: “We’ve lost before, but you haven’t. How do you like it, eh?”

A Senegalese professional grinned, and capered into a happy jig: “Au revoir chérie, la guerre est finie!” A French paratrooper sipped his Pernod: “In France they are happy tonight. I too am glad that no more will be killed—but there is nothing for us here to be proud of.” And in Hanoi’s sandbagged Citadelle, where once he had wept at the fall of Dienbienphu, General Cogny put his career on the line. “The free world has not lived up to its responsibilities,” said Cogny. “There have been too many deaths for too few results, too many deaths for nothing.”

The North: Geneva’s decision reached into the Hanoi office of Dr. Hoang Co Binh, dentist and head of the Committee for the Defense of North Viet Nam. Stoutly, Dr. Binh proclaimed: “Not a single Viet Minh will be allowed into Hanoi until the proper time. And there will be no Viet Minh flags.”

But Hanoi mostly awaited the Communists in resignation and fatigue. The Viet Minh would enter in 80 days by the terms of Geneva, and there could be no thought of resistance. In Hanoi the talk instead was of evacuation: the French expected that 50,000 Vietnamese would quit the city, that 200,000 to 500,000 would quit the outlying Red River Delta.

At Bacninh in the delta, some 20 miles northeast of Hanoi, TIME Correspondent Dwight Martin asked the Vietnamese governor if he would leave. “If I stay here with the Communists,” the governor replied, pointing skyward, “I shall stay forever-up there.” Then what would happen to Bacninh’s anti-Communist villagers? “We are lost. The Viet Minh will exert pressure against the families and the village elders. It will be easy for the Communists. They are the victors. Who can resist the victors?”

Father Dominique, the Vietnamese curé of Bacninh Cathedral, was asked whether he too would head south. “I do not know, I do not know,” the Father replied. “The Monseigneur must decide. We have 60,000 of the faithful here in Bacninh; 20,000 are already ruled by the Viet Minh, and for the rest it will be difficult to say. Many may leave—but where are they to go? Their land is here. Their homes are here. And so are the graves of their fathers.”

The South: At 3 a.m. on July 22, Geneva’s decision reached into Saigon’s palm-shaded Palais Gialong, 400 miles south of the 17th parallel. A light burned in a first-floor office. Disillusioned and sleepless, Viet Nam’s Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem opened the cablegram from Geneva and read:

WE FOUGHT DESPERATELY AGAINST PARTITION AND FOR A NEUTRAL ZONE IN THE CATHOLIC AREA OF NORTH VIET NAM. ABSOLUTELY IMPOSSIBLE TO SURMOUNT THE HOSTILITY OF OUR ENEMIES AND THE PERFIDY OF FALSE FRIENDS. UNUSUAL PROCEDURES PARALYZED THE ACTION OF OUR DELEGATION . . . ALL ARRANGEMENTS WERE SIGNED IN PRIVACY. WE EXPRESS OUR DEEPEST SORROWS IN THIS TOTAL FAILURE OF OUR MISSION. WE RESPECTFULLY SUBMIT OUR RESIGNATION . . .

—TRAN VAN DO, FOREIGN MINISTER OF VIET NAM

“Until the last second we had hope!” cried Diem’s brother, passionately. “But not the least suggestion, not the smallest detail proposed by our delegations was accepted. Everybody abandoned us. We were sacrificed. It was scandalous.”

Diem considered resignation, decided to fight, and likewise persuaded his Foreign Minister to stay on. Diem wanted time and a chance to wipe out the memory of the graft, inefficiency and indifference of the Bao Dai regime,* wanted time to spark an anti-Communist revolution based upon full independence and land reform.

But Diem could not gain his time easily. “Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” he told U.S. Ambassador Donald Heath, “our problems are immeasurable. We must consolidate our administration; we must detect Communist spies left behind by the Viet Minh. We have maybe one million people to evacuate from the North, 50,000 from Central Viet Nam, and 40,000 loyal tribesmen from the frontiers. We have to find all these people land, medical care, food, work and a place to live. We need help.”

Despite the fine promises of Pierre Mendès-France, Diem was also half strangled by the albatross of French colonialism: if he asked the French army to withdraw, it would take about 80% of Viet Nam’s military equipment in its train; if he asked the French army to stay, the Communists might easily convince the Vietnamese that Diem’s new independence was a myth.

And the greatest of Diem’s immeasurable problems lay in the Asian truth that had already brought one-half of Indo-China crashing down into Communism: the Vietnamese who cared were less impressed by the brave intentions of powerless men, than by the ruthless success of the Communists in a faraway place called Geneva.

*Bao Dai himself was in the French spa of Vittel last week, taking the waters. He had no comment to make (“Sorry”). He would probably never return to Viet Nam.