The 1954 battle, explained without taking sides

After 1945, France tried to restore its control over Indochina, and from 1946 it was at war with the Viet Minh, the independence movement led by Ho Chi Minh. By 1953 the war had lasted seven years. The French commander-in-chief, General Henri Navarre, decided to set up a strong base deep in the north-west, in the remote Dien Bien Phu valley near the border with Laos.

Between 20 and 22 November 1953, in Operation Castor, French paratroopers dropped into the valley and took over its old airstrip. The idea was to block Viet Minh movements towards Laos and to draw their main forces into a battle on ground of French choosing, where artillery and air power would defeat them. The base would be supplied entirely by air.

The plan rested on two assumptions: that the Viet Minh could not bring heavy artillery through the mountains, and that the airstrip could be kept open. Both turned out to be wrong.

Opening attacks, 13–15 March

The battle began on the evening of 13 March 1954 with an artillery bombardment and an assault on Béatrice (Him Lam), which fell that night. Gabrielle (Doc Lap) was attacked the following night and lost on the morning of 15 March. The speed of these losses, and the accuracy of the Viet Minh artillery firing from the surrounding hills, shocked the garrison. The airstrip soon came under fire, and landing became dangerous and then impossible; from then on, supplies and reinforcements arrived mostly by parachute.

The fight for the eastern hills, 30 March – April

From 30 March the Viet Minh attacked the eastern hills, the Dominique and Éliane positions. Dominique 1 and 2 fell on 30 March. On Éliane 2, which the Vietnamese call A1, the attackers took half the hill, and both sides dug in a few metres apart. Through April, trenches crept across the valley floor towards the camp, squeezing it. By 14 April the attackers held the northern part of the valley, including a third of the airstrip.

The final phase, 1–7 May

In early May the last offensive began. On the night of 6 May a mine dug under Éliane 2 was detonated, and the hill was taken in the early hours of 7 May. That afternoon, the command post of de Castries was overrun and the garrison ceased fighting. A small group from Isabelle tried to escape towards Laos on the final night.

The surrender came on the eve of the Indochina phase of an international conference already under way in Geneva. The Geneva Agreements, signed on 21 July 1954, ended the First Indochina War. Vietnam was divided temporarily at the 17th parallel, with elections promised for 1956 that were never held. French forces withdrew from the north, and within a few years the country was again at war, this time with the United States involved.

For Vietnam, the battle is remembered as the decisive victory that ended colonial rule. For France, it marked the end of its presence in Indochina and is remembered as a defeat in which soldiers fought under very hard conditions, and as a story of prisoners who did not come home.

• Chiến thắng — victory. Used in the names of the museum and monument.
• Nghĩa trang liệt sĩ — martyrs' cemetery, the Vietnamese military cemeteries.
• Hầm — bunker, as in the de Castries bunker.
• Đồi — hill, as in Đồi A1.
• Sở chỉ huy — command headquarters, as at Muong Phang.

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