(3 of 4)
French Foreign Legion, had 22 battle citations and the mystique of a great tradition: "The Legion is Our Country." Many times the Legion had fought for honor in a losing cause, for Gambetta at Orleans, for Maximilian in Mexico. Now there were 1,500 Legionnaires in Indo-China ready to die for Strongpoint Isabelle. They were commanded by Colonel André Lalande from St. Cyr Military Academy, veteran of Narvik, El Alamein, Italy and the Vosges. Lalande was a tough customer: his Legionnaires called him "baroudeur," a brawler. Lalande did not wait for the Communists to come, 20 to 1, to get him. At 0115, he ordered the charge.
One or two French pilots saw it in the flarelight, from far above. The Legionnaires advanced from their shattered trenches toward the massed Red infantry, and the guns. Like the Confederate rush at Franklin, it was forlorn; like the Old Guard's serried march on Waterloo, it was final; like the Light Brigade at Balaclava, it was magnificent, but not war. At 0150, little more than half an hour later, the Charge of the Demi-Brigade was over, and very few men still lived. Isabelle radioed the Drench planes: "Breakout failed. We must break communications with you. We are going to blow up everything. Fini. Repeat. Fini." The C-47s were rocked by the shock waves from exploding Isabelle. "They were enormous explosions," said one pilot later, sadly. And the Red radio crowed:'"All the enemy troops who tried to break out were annihilated. All fighting has now ceased."
The Last Full Measure. So ended the Battle of Dienbienphu, March 13-May 8, 1954. It was the one set-piece battle of the seven-year Indo-China war—a strange affray of bayonets in the age of atom and jet. Now there was only the stillness in the wasteland. The casualty returns:
French Union: about 4,000 killed and wounded, 8,000 missing, mostly presumably captured.
Communists: about 8,000 killed, 12,000 wounded.
"The victory is complete," said Giap's spokesman, via Peking radio. "The French garrison and its commander were captured. We wiped out 17 battalions. We shot down or damaged 57 planes. There were many enemies lying around on the ground." Peking radio later named both De Castries and Lalande as prisoners of war. Said Cogny, weeping: "Dienbienphu is a new name to emblazon on the streamers of France." Said Navarre, in a special Order of the Day to his remaining 230,000 French Union and 240,000 Vietnamese troops: "After 56 days of continuing combat, submerged by numbers, by odds of 5 to 1, the garrison has had to end its fight. . . The fall of the entrenched camp was accomplished only because the enemy, thanks to Chinese Communist assistance, was suddenly able to start a form of modern warfare entirely new to Indo-China. The defenders of Dienbienphu have written an epic. They have given [you] a new pride and a new reason to fight. For the struggle of free peoples against slavery does not end today. The fight continues."