Hell in a Very Small Place; The Siege of Dien Bien Phu

Philadelphia, PA: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1967. Second Printing [stated]. Hardcover. Good/Good. xii, [8], 515, [1] pages. Front endpaper map. Rear endpaper photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Notes. Appendices [ including The Order of Battle, The Role of Airpower, and French Military Abbreviations]. Bibliography. Index. This is one of the Great Battles in History series. DJ has wear, soiling, edge tears and chips. Bernard B. Fall (November 19, 1926 - February 21, 1967) was a prominent war correspondent, historian, political scientist, and expert on Indochina during the 1950s and 1960s. He started fighting for the French Resistance at the age of sixteen, and later the French Army during World War II. In 1950 he first came to the United States for graduate studies at Syracuse University and Johns Hopkins University. He taught at Howard University for most of his career and made regular trips to Southeast Asia to learn about changes and the societies. He predicted the failures of France and the United States in the wars in Vietnam because of their tactics and lack of understanding of the societies. He was killed by a landmine while accompanying United States Marines on a patrol in 1967. The 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu ranks with Stalingrad and Tet for what it ended (imperial ambitions), what it foretold (American involvement), and what it symbolized: A guerrilla force of Viet Minh destroyed a technologically superior French army, convincing the Viet Minh that similar tactics might prevail in battle with the U.S. A stunning piece of reportage, the story of the ill-fated French expedition to Dien Bien Phu. Offered by the author as a cautionary tale, the French-American journalist's hard lesson was largely ignored, to the American military's ultimate mortification. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the climactic confrontation of the First Indochina War between the French Union's French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Viet Minh communist-nationalist revolutionaries. The battle occurred between March and May 1954 and culminated in a comprehensive French defeat that influenced negotiations underway at Geneva among several nations over the future of Indochina.