Counterattack

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, sent out from Paris a month ago to put backbone into the crumbling French forces in Indo-China, last week threw 12,000 of his soldiers into a counterattack against the Reds. He carefully pointed out that it was not the big offensive he hoped to launch, but only an operation de degagement to relieve pressure on the northeastern flank of the French-held Red River delta. Communist probing attacks have penetrated perilously close to Hanoi, threatened to cut the city off from the supply port of Haiphong.

De Lattre's men drove into the hills north of Haiphong. A TIME correspondent accompanying the French reported: "The task force followed a narrow Viet Minh track where the jungle crowds in from all sides. The men crossed numberless ravines on thin bamboo strands. On a better road a mile to the south, a column with mules transporting French 755 provided artillery support, while the French light cruiser Duguay-Tronin also zeroed in on Viet Minh positions. On the second day, Viet Minh opened machine-gun fire, but when Moroccan troops began closing in, they fled leaving behind no dead, no wounded."

By week's end, De Lattre's men had recaptured two previously abandoned French outposts and were 15 miles west of Moncay. The French were sure that they had beaten off an impending Communist offensive. Said De Lattre: "The facts speak for themselves."

But the facts, hard to come by in a stringent news blackout, would have to speak a lot louder before the West could find grounds for optimism in Indo-China.

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