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When he returns to his headquarters next month, he will find IndoChina's war machine waiting for him (little gets done while the boss is away) and for the end of the rainy season, when the Communists are likely to attack again. De Lattre is confident that he can crush the attacks as before—always provided that the Chinese Communists do not directly intervene. His plan, which he is expounding in Washington this week, calls for decisive defeat of Ho's forces by 1952.
What Does De Lattre Want? To help him carry out his plan, De Lattre wants, first of all, old pledges fulfilled. He has already got upwards of 100 American fighter planes, 50 bombers and transports, ground arms for 30 battalions, artillery and naval craft; but other promised deliveries—trucks and tanks—are seven months behind schedule. He also needs additional arms of every kind.
But De Lattre wants even more. A scornful opponent of bits-&-pieces warfare, De Lattre burningly wants the U.S., Britain and France to agree on a unified strategy against Communism in Southeast Asia. He insists that Korea, Indo-China and Malaya (where 32,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers are still fighting Red guerrillas) are only different battles of the same war; they should all be fought within an overall plan.
As he spoke for his program in Washington, De Lattre was impressive and persuasive. He speaks a fluent, heavily accented English, in words that sometimes trip over an English idiom. (Once, meaning to say "I point upward." he came out with, "I point my finger through the ceiling.")
Washington gave him the No. 1 treatment—honor guard, military band, howitzer salute, receptions, dinners. At the White House he talked with President Harry Truman. He prayed at George Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon, went to Mass on Sunday. At the Pentagon he lunched with General of the Army George Marshall and his successor as Defense Secretary, Robert Lovett. At the State Department, he briefed Dean Acheson on Indo-China. "Very interesting . . . I got a clear picture for the first time," said the Secretary. "We shall do all that is possible for you."
Intense and indefatigable though he was, De Lattre seemed, to U.S. friends who knew him in the past, a subdued man in contrast to World War II days, when he used to play host at lavish parties and declaim his own poetry at the dinner table. The death of his son has hit him very hard. Sometimes a sudden memory will wring from him an uncontrollable sob. He is, like MacArthur, essentially an old-fashioned man who believes unbendingly in the old-fashioned virtues—but also in the new-fashioned ways of waging war. "The only thing," says De Lattre, "that matters any more is duty—duty to France, duty to end all this killing, duty to end all this chaos in the world."
*The old Indo-China is now divided into the three Associated States of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia, of which Viet Nam is the largest (its 23 million people comprise more than 80% of all Indo-Chinese).