BATTLE OF INDO-CHINA: Siege of Nasan

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

A three-quarter moon shone down on the milewide, heavily fortified French perimeter at Nasan, south of the Black River. In the lumpy hills around Nasan lurked 20,000 Viet Minh Communist guerrillas. For several nights the French Union troops had expected attack. They crouched in their holes, not smoking, talking in whispers, waiting. The moon glinted on gun barrels, steel helmets, barbed wire.

One night last week, a few minutes before midnight, the Reds blew their bugles. Then they attacked, driving thick-packed herds of water buffalo before them, to clear paths through the mines and punch holes in the wire. The French put down a dense curtain of fire from light and heavy weapons, including 105-mm. howitzers; leaping, screaming, the Reds answered with machine guns, mortars, bazookas, recoilless rifles. Bearcats and B-26s from Hanoi arrived to light the horrid scene with flares, to strafe the swarming guerrillas and sear them with napalm.

They died by the dozens, but still they came on. By 3 a.m. they had overrun two hilltop posts on the perimeter’s north face, finishing off the Moroccan and Thai defenders with knives, bayonets, machetes, grenades. Within minutes the Viet Minh were putting mortar fire on Nasan’s vital airstrip. Next day the attackers had backed off of one hill, and French paratroopers recaptured the other.

The French Union forces had lost 200 dead, and the Communists more than 500. The French claimed a victory, but it was at most an inconclusive one. Sad-eyed General Raoul Salan was convinced that even if the airstrip became unusable, the French could still supply Nasan’s defenders indefinitely by airdrop.