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A review by books17
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu by Bernard Fall
5.0
...[General] Giap had decided to accept trial by battle at Dien Bien Phu, it remained only for 15,000 French and 50,000 Viet Minh troops to act out the drama in pain and blood and death.
-p50
Dien Bien Phu is a battle which holds a surprising amount of interest to me - much like Stalingrad, it's an example of the desperate heroism that humans are capable of when their back is to the wall and they have nowhere else to turn.
Martin Windrow's excellent accounting of the siege, [b:The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam|754635|The Last Valley Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam|Martin Windrow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348194320s/754635.jpg|1799172], sparked my original interest in Dien Bien Phu and the Indochinese War, and by extension the Vietnam War, a period I know frightfully little about. Windrow's book draws heavily on Hell in a Very Small Place, and the author credits this book with sparking his own interest in Dien Bien Phu, much like his did mine, and so it immediately became a must-read.
Hell in a Very Small Place is a much more focused book - the first third of The Last Valley is spent discussing the leadup to Dien Bien Phu, the battles and combatants, whilst this book is in the valley within the first 100 pages. Perhaps this is due to it originally being published in 1966, 12 years after the battle itself, and it's assumed that most readers would be familiar with the events - regardless, had I not read Last Valley first I would have been a lot more confused.
After that however, the two unfold more or less the same, with Last Valley glossing over the occupation and fortification (or the lack thereof) of the valley in favour of a focus on the preceding events. Fall and Windrow's opinions on the outcome and the conduct of the siege are also in line with one another - as to be expected, I suppose, when one introduced the other to the event.
All over again I found myself agonising over the fate of the thousands of French paratroopers and others who were trapped in the hellhole - their desperate defense of a mudhole in the middle of nowhere, far from home - and putting paid to the ridiculous modern myth of the Frenchman's propensity to surrender.
It would now be their task [...] to make yet one more desperate effort to finish off the grimly determined French resistance on the blood-soaked hills and filth-laden valley bottom...
-p342
Whereas Windrow focuses mostly on a play-by-play of the battle itself, Fall goes into detail on the political situation throughout - specifically France's pleas to the United States to provide air support in the face of an increasingly disastrous siege battle, and Britain's stubborn refusal to throw their support behind France. As it was written in the midst of America's own disastrous adventure in Vietnam, this book also draws very clear and painful parallels between the French experience and the ongoing war - and how the latter may have been easily avoided with American assistance in the former.
There can be no doubt that Dien Bien Phu, far from being a purely French defeat, became an American defeat as well [...] From 1965 onward, the United States was willing to go to work for the sake of preserving what her President calls her 'national honor'. In 1954, one hundred airplanes could not be found to save 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu.
p461
Following the battle, Fall's book does a slightly better job of explaining the POW situation and the grueling march they were forced on - the attempts of the French to repatriate their dead, scattered across the valley, ultimately unsuccessful due to clashes between the Viet Minh and French diplomats - the fate of the few dozen who managed to escape the encirclement at the end of the siege and flee into the jungle - and where most of the significant players of the battle were when the book was written in 1966. As it was, the majority of these people were still alive to give eyewitness accounts to Fall for his book, whereas Windrow did not have this luxury.
A very enjoyable read, I could not pick between it and Last Valley which I preferred. Both are incredible works of historical storytelling which I would heartily recommend to anyone.
Colonel Bastiani states that "the defenders of Dien Bien Phu have up to now covered themselves in glory and are an object of admiration for the Free World."
The price of that unsullied glory came to 5000 dead, 10,000 prisoners, and a lost war.
p361
-p50
Dien Bien Phu is a battle which holds a surprising amount of interest to me - much like Stalingrad, it's an example of the desperate heroism that humans are capable of when their back is to the wall and they have nowhere else to turn.
Martin Windrow's excellent accounting of the siege, [b:The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam|754635|The Last Valley Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam|Martin Windrow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1348194320s/754635.jpg|1799172], sparked my original interest in Dien Bien Phu and the Indochinese War, and by extension the Vietnam War, a period I know frightfully little about. Windrow's book draws heavily on Hell in a Very Small Place, and the author credits this book with sparking his own interest in Dien Bien Phu, much like his did mine, and so it immediately became a must-read.
Hell in a Very Small Place is a much more focused book - the first third of The Last Valley is spent discussing the leadup to Dien Bien Phu, the battles and combatants, whilst this book is in the valley within the first 100 pages. Perhaps this is due to it originally being published in 1966, 12 years after the battle itself, and it's assumed that most readers would be familiar with the events - regardless, had I not read Last Valley first I would have been a lot more confused.
After that however, the two unfold more or less the same, with Last Valley glossing over the occupation and fortification (or the lack thereof) of the valley in favour of a focus on the preceding events. Fall and Windrow's opinions on the outcome and the conduct of the siege are also in line with one another - as to be expected, I suppose, when one introduced the other to the event.
All over again I found myself agonising over the fate of the thousands of French paratroopers and others who were trapped in the hellhole - their desperate defense of a mudhole in the middle of nowhere, far from home - and putting paid to the ridiculous modern myth of the Frenchman's propensity to surrender.
It would now be their task [...] to make yet one more desperate effort to finish off the grimly determined French resistance on the blood-soaked hills and filth-laden valley bottom...
-p342
Whereas Windrow focuses mostly on a play-by-play of the battle itself, Fall goes into detail on the political situation throughout - specifically France's pleas to the United States to provide air support in the face of an increasingly disastrous siege battle, and Britain's stubborn refusal to throw their support behind France. As it was written in the midst of America's own disastrous adventure in Vietnam, this book also draws very clear and painful parallels between the French experience and the ongoing war - and how the latter may have been easily avoided with American assistance in the former.
There can be no doubt that Dien Bien Phu, far from being a purely French defeat, became an American defeat as well [...] From 1965 onward, the United States was willing to go to work for the sake of preserving what her President calls her 'national honor'. In 1954, one hundred airplanes could not be found to save 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu.
p461
Following the battle, Fall's book does a slightly better job of explaining the POW situation and the grueling march they were forced on - the attempts of the French to repatriate their dead, scattered across the valley, ultimately unsuccessful due to clashes between the Viet Minh and French diplomats - the fate of the few dozen who managed to escape the encirclement at the end of the siege and flee into the jungle - and where most of the significant players of the battle were when the book was written in 1966. As it was, the majority of these people were still alive to give eyewitness accounts to Fall for his book, whereas Windrow did not have this luxury.
A very enjoyable read, I could not pick between it and Last Valley which I preferred. Both are incredible works of historical storytelling which I would heartily recommend to anyone.
Colonel Bastiani states that "the defenders of Dien Bien Phu have up to now covered themselves in glory and are an object of admiration for the Free World."
The price of that unsullied glory came to 5000 dead, 10,000 prisoners, and a lost war.
p361