This book has the subtitle "Hell in a very small space" which is certainly a good description of the place under siege.
This book was published in 1966 and I wondered if the author had published an updated edition with the release of files etc since the conflict. Nope. His entry in Wikipedia makes for interesting reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_B._Fall and also explains why there was no sequel.
The book has a lot of detail about French troop movements during the siege, almost down to the platoon level. The Vietminh are more handled at the division and sometimes battalion level. Lots of anecdotes and the author was well connected having been in Indochina during the 1950s and later, as well as having access to a range of people, including Ho Chi Minh.
What comes across in the book is the bravery of the combatants, as well as the ultimately pointless slaughter.
The politics are interesting as one forgets that people making decision in the 1950s have been shaped by events going back to the 1930s.
I'm glad I was too young (just) to avoid the wider conflict.
This is a great book about a very interesting subject. There are so many interesting aspects of the battle. But it is nearly impossible to have a wargame in the standard sense. Also most of the board games miss the real tactical situation which happened at an extremely low level. Martin windrow's "the last valley" is a more up to date retelling but the back of Bernard Falls book contains the most interesting info on the make up of the Combatants, dispelling the "all SS"' myth of the make up of the foreign legion.
ReplyDeleteVery difficult to game. The French seemed worried about provoking the Chinese as they had seen what happened when they entered the Korean War. Horribly interesting times!
Delete