INDO-CHINA: The Fall of Hanoi

INDOCHINA

In a pathetic little ceremony inside Hanoi one evening last week, the French Tricolor was hauled down and handed to a silently weeping colonel. Next day, in well-ordered triumph the first of 30,000 helmeted, green-clad troops of the Communist Viet Minh rolled into the city in Russian Molotov trucks, Russian command cars and jeeps, on bicycles and afoot. Thus IndoChina’s ancient capital (pop. 400,000) passed into Communist hands, in starkly simple faithfulness to the Geneva agreement which turned half of Indo-China over to Red rule.

The week of the changeover began with rumors that there would be riots, drastic restrictions and Red reprisals. But when the moment came, Hanoi, the city where the war began nearly eight years before, met it with Oriental reserve. Those who could had already fled, in a melancholy, six-weeks-long exodus which drained off some 40,000, a tenth of Hanoi’s population, to havens to the south. When the first of the Viet Minh headed into the city, street crowds uttered only occasional, hesitant cheers. As the trickle grew into a rumbling stream of troops, the Vietnamese poured out from boarded and shuttered houses to shrill greetings. Out came banners proclaiming: “Long Live Sino-Russian Friendship!” From housetops red, gold-starred flags of the “Democratic Republic of Viet Nam” broke into view. A Hanoi newspaper, hitherto ardently pro-West, front-paged a huge portrait of Viet Minh Chieftain Ho Chi Minh.

Last Truckloads. As Communist military police with gold stars on their helmets mounted guard in the city, the last truckloads of Foreign Legionnaires clattered across the mile-long Doumer Bridge over the flood-swollen Red River to join the rest of the French Viet Nam garrison 60 miles southeast at the port of Haiphong. There the French may stay till May, when under the Geneva agreements they must withdraw further south, below the Geneva dividing line at the 17th parallel, and leave all of north Viet Nam’s rich rice bowl to the Reds.

For the French, who have bossed Hanoi and its rich hinterlands for nearly 80 years, it was a melancholy occasion to be faced with at best bleak resignation. By the time the last French soldiers withdrew, nearly every useful piece of military equipment had been dismantled and carried off. The first Viet Minh officials to arrive protested that their hospital billets had been stripped bare; the French sent back a few light bulbs, but that was all. “The French are good at retreating,” said a grimly admiring allied officer.

First Visitor. All but a handful of Hanoi’s 6,000 French merchants pulled out rather than try to do business with the Communists (see BUSINESS). Signs on shutters read: “Closed indefinitely” or “Store for Rent.” Boards covered windows of the once-gay cafés fronting on the picturesque little lake in the city center, at whose tables generations of Foreign Legionnaires had drunk and sung and bragged. A few French technicians stayed behind to show the Reds how to run the utilities, and a score or so of European priests and sisters remained. The lycée, which counts Vo Nguyen Giap, the wily Viet Minh army chief, as one of its honor grads, also decided to keep school. For the U.S., Consul Thomas J. Corcoran stayed on with a staff of six.

The businesslike Reds moved right into Hanoi’s government offices as if they always had occupied them. Slight, youthful-looking General Giap prepared to take over at the Citadelle, where French generals had given orders since the days of Gambetta and MacMahon and where, nine years ago, they had gallantly held out against the Japanese.

Missing from the scene of triumph was Ho Chi Minh, who has scarcely been seen by Western eyes since 1947. “He is working on an important task elsewhere,” explained a newspaper, and from “elsewhere” a decree was issued over the 63-year-old Red leader’s name proclaiming Hanoi the capital of Communist Indo-China. President Ho, the Communists indicated, will make his entry next week in time to receive India’s Prime Minister Nehru when he stops off on his way to see Communist China’s rulers in Peking.