The Colonel's Week

INDOCHINA

A slim woman in a blue linen suit spoke into the radiotelephone at French GHQ: "This is Mme. de Castries calling Dienbienphu. Is that you, darling?" In the fortress command post 175 miles away, Colonel de Castries came to the set. Asked Mme. de Castries: "Are you all right, Christian?" Said the colonel: "Never better." Mme. de Castries warned of the coming monsoon: "I hope your raincoat has not been destroyed." The colonel later messaged his wife for razor blades and shaving cream. "He is extremely confident," Mme. de Castries told a London Daily Express reporter. "I know he'll be safe."

Aside from Mme. de Castries' reassuring radio calls and her air-dropped food and wine packages, it was another difficult week for the colonel. His biggest job: strengthening his cracked fortifications, keeping up the morale of his weary 12,000-man force. His best news: several hundred paratroop reinforcements. His biggest problem: hundreds of wounded men, who cannot be evacuated due to Communist interdiction of the airstrip; some of them have died for lack of special medical care. All week, too, the colonel could hear Red loudspeakers mock him: "You'll never get your general's stars." Despite President Eisenhower's suggestion, the French government decided that it would not promote him until the battle's result was in.

At week's end the colonel himself restarted the fighting. De Castries threw out a battalion, with light tanks in support, against a cluster of Red outposts to the northeast. Three and a half hours later, the Communists withdrew. Red General Giap put in five counterattacks, but the colonel held his gains.

Back at Hanoi, French GHQ optimistically noted that Giap's fourth counterattack showed "definite lack of conviction," and the tired, outnumbered French garrison is still given a 50-50 chance to hold Dienbienphu.

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