(2 of 2)
Mobility & Debate. Was this tragic withdrawal necessary? Failing heavy reinforcements from France and North Africa, the French command insisted that it was overextended, and had no military alternative. "Extremely grave . . . but absolutely necessary," said the GHQ spokesman. The retreat was indeed in line with General Cogny's long-planned redeployment from fixed pillbox defenses to mobile columns in the open. One tough French colonel last week recalled Namdinh's static warfare, looked approvingly over his newly taut armored task force and said: "Now I am free to move."
Nonetheless, there were doubts. Vietnamese Prime Minister Diem protested the abandonment of his countrymen, his fellow Catholics and "the cradle of our rice." North Viet Nam's able, disillusioned Governor Nguyen Huu Tri charged that the retreat from Namdinh either anticipated or fulfilled a secret French deal with the Communists. And there were officers at the Pentagon in Washington who shared this suspicion. They wondered why the Communists did not severely harass the retreating Frenchmen, why the French did not blow up all the bridges and roadways behind them. In any event, the U.S. (which pays 70% of the war's financial cost) was not informed in advance of the dimensions of the French withdrawal.
The Spreading Conviction. Cabled TIME Senior Editor John Osborne: "If the French intend to fight the Battle of the Delta, the withdrawal must be judged a sound military move, and its execution —with minor losses and perhaps the most effective security blackout of the war—does seem to have been a remarkable performance. But do the French intend to fight? That decision rests not with soldiers like Cogny, but with the politicians of Paris and Geneva. And whatever these politicians may decide, a tragic amount—whether measured by land or resources or people—has already been given away.
"In Viet Nam, as in so much of the world, 'the North' is the home of the hardiest people, and the Namdinh-Phatdiem region abandoned last week contained the best of Viet Nam's potential young soldiers and provincial administrators, the strongest of its committed andCommunists, the most productive of its rice growers. Moreover, the truck convoys moving out of Namdinh and the refugees pouring into Hanoi spell Viet Minh triumph for the Vietnamese who saw them, heard them, or heard rumors of them, spreading the conviction that the Communists are irresistible, that a man had better give up while there is still time to save his life, his family and his home.
"The French command is pretty pleased with itself, as it has every right to be in the strictly military sense. But with many more such accomplishments, the Communists will have the rest of Southeast Asia."
Five French Union officers met the Communists 25 miles northwest of Hanoi last week to work out local arrangements of a ceasefire. Drawn up to greet them near the bamboo conference hut at Trunggia were three captured U.S. jeeps and a couple of weapons carriers with Communist inscriptions painted on their sides: SOUVENIR OF VICTORY AT DIENBIENPHU. 7-5-54.