Embers of War (129 page)

43
Quoted in Jules Roy,
The Battle of Dienbienphu
, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Harper & Row, 1965; reprint Carroll & Graf, 1984), 144. See also Robert Guillain,
Diên-Biên-Phu: La fin des illusions [Notes d’Indochine, février–juillet 1954]
(Paris: Arléa, 2004).

44
Graham Greene diary entry for January 5, 1954, Box 1, Greene Papers, GU; Graham Greene,
Ways of Escape
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980), 189. Greene’s article appeared in two installments in the newspaper, on March 21 and March 28.

45
On Viet Minh gains in the south in early 1954, see David W. P. Elliott,
The Vietnamese War: Revolution and Social Change in the Mekong Delta, 1930–1975
(Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2007), 80–82.

46
Bernard B. Fall, “Solution in Indo-China: Cease-Fire, Negotiate,”
Nation
, March 6, 1954. On February 20, Bao Dai startled the U.S. and British ambassadors by suggesting seriously that the best solution to the “pourriture” in the delta would be to remove all, or nearly all, its residents and transport them to southern Annam. After this exodus, the army could then launch an all-out bombardment of the barren zone. Saigon to FO, February 25, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA.

47
Fall, “Solution in Indo-China.”

48
A superb treatment of these early days in the battle remains Rocolle,
Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?
, 343–90. See also Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais,
Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent
(Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 111–31. For the harrowing first hours, see Erwan Bergot,
Les 170 jours de Diên Biên Phû
(Paris: Presses de la cité, 1979), 85–98.

49
Gaucher letter quoted in Ted Morgan,
Valley of Death: The Tragedy at Dien Bien Phu That Led America into the Vietnam War
(New York: Random House, 2010), 256.

50
Howard R. Simpson,
Dien Bien Phu: The Epic Battle America Forgot
(Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 1994), 53–54.

51
Ibid., 63.

52
Lich Su Bo Doi Dac Cong, Tap Mot
[History of the Sapper Forces, Volume I] (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 1987), 68–70; Hanoi to FO, February 17, 1954, FO 371/112024, TNA. See also John Prados, “Mechanics at the Edge of War,”
VVA Veteran
22, no. 8 (August 2002); Simpson,
Dien Bien Phu
, 64–65.

53
Edgar O’Ballance,
The Indo-China War, 1945–1954
(London: Faber & Faber, 1964), 218.

54
Quoted in Roy,
Battle of Dienbienphu
, 167.

55
Phillip B. Davidson,
Vietnam at War: The History, 1946–1975
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 236.

56
Roy,
Battle of Dienbienphu
, 172.

57
Bernard B. Fall,
Street Without Joy: Indochina at War 1946–1954
(reprint ed., Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole, 1994), 321.

58
Bernard B. Fall,
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu
(Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966), 156.

59
Pellissier,
Diên Biên Phu
, 268–72.

60
Paul Grauwin,
J’étais médecin à Dien-Bien-Phu
(Paris: France-Empire, 1954). A shorter English translation is
Doctor at Dienbienphu
(New York: John Day, 1955).

61
Simpson,
Dien Bien Phu
, 89.

62
Navarre pour Ministre Etats Associés, March 23, 1954, Dossier I 457 AP 53, Conférence de Genève, AN.

63
Devillers and Lacouture,
End of a War
, 72.

64
Comité de défense nationale to Schumann, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE.

CHAPTER 19:
America Wants In

  
1
Memo of discussion, 189th NSC meeting, March 18, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1132–33.

  
2
Memo of conversation, March 19, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1133–34; Comité de défense nationale to Schumann, March 11, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE.

  
3
Télégram a l’arrivée, March 24, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Memo for the record, March 21, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1137–40;
NYT
, March 23, 1954; Paul Ely,
Mémoires: L’Indochine dans la tourmente
(Paris: Plon, 1964), 59–60.

  
4
Conversation tenue, March 23, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Ely,
Mémoires
, 65–67.

  
5
Memo of conversation with the president, March 24, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1150; Dulles-Radford telcon, March 25, 1954, Box 2, Telephone Calls Series, John Foster Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  
6
Ely,
Mémoires
, 67–83; Bonnet to Paris, March 24 and 25, 1954, vol. 297, Série Asie-Océanie 1944–1955, Sous-série Indochine, MAE; Arthur Radford,
From Pearl Harbor to Vietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford
, ed. Stephen Jurika (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 391–401; Joseph Laniel,
Le drame indochinois
(Paris: Plon, 1957), 83–88; Kathryn C. Statler,
Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 89; George C. Herring and Richard H. Immerman, “Eisenhower, Dulles, and Dienbienphu: ‘The Day We Didn’t Go to War’ Revisited,”
Journal of American History
71 (September 1984), 347–48.

  
7
Richard H. Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu,” in Richard A. Melanson and David Mayers, eds.,
Reevaluating Eisenhower: American Foreign Policy in the 1950s
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 131.

  
8
On Vulture, see John Prados,
Operation Vulture
(New York: ibooks, 2002).

  
9
Memo of discussion, 190th meeting of the NSC, March 25, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1163–68.

10
Reported in Washington to FO, April 1, 1954, FO 371/112050, TNA.

11
NYT
, March 28, 1954.

12
NYT
, March 28, 1954; Richard Rovere, “Letter from Washington,”
New Yorker
, April 17, 1954, pp. 71–72.

13
Quoted in Richard Nixon,
RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 151.

14
Prados,
Operation Vulture
, 112.

15
The speech is reproduced in
U.S. News & World Report
, April 9, 1954.

16
Robert Bowie, quoted in Immerman, “Between the Unattainable and the Unacceptable,” 132.

17
Wall Street Journal
, March 30, 1954;
U.S. News & World Report
, April 9, 1954;
New Republic
, April 12, 1954;
NYT
, March 30, 1954.

18
Melanie Billings-Yun,
Decision Against War: Eisenhower and Dienbienphu, 1954
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 66; Robert Mann,
A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam
(New York: Basic, 2001), 142.

19
Ronald H. Spector,
Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960
(Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 202. See also Robert Buzzanco,
Masters of War: Military Dissent and Politics in the Vietnam Era
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42; and Ridgway’s memo to the JCS, April 6, 1954, Folder 17, Box 37, Ridgway Papers, U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center, Carlisle, Pa. I thank the center’s reference historian, Arthur Bergeron, for making this document available to me.

20
George W. Allen,
None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 65.

21
Quoted in Mann,
Grand Delusion
, 143.

22
James C. Hagerty diary entry for April 1, 1954, Eisenhower Library.

23
The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution requested by Lyndon Johnson, by contrast, was more far-reaching. It did not “authorize” action by the president and was carefully crafted so as to avoid any suggestion that he needed congressional authorization; indeed, it sought to put lawmakers on record as agreeing that he had that power as commander in chief. The 1964 resolution thus stated that Congress “approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The 1954 draft resolution had a termination date of June 30, 1955; the Gulf of Tonkin resolution had no fixed end date.

24
Memo of conversation with the president, April 2, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1210–11. The draft resolution is on pp. 1211–12. See also Lloyd C. Gardner,
Approaching Vietnam: From World War II Through Dienbienphu
(New York: W.W. Norton, 1989), 205.

25
There is no indication that the FBI investigation came to anything. On June 18, 1954,
U.S. News & World Report
published an article under the title “Did U.S. Almost Get Into War?” For evidence that this article was planted by the administration and represented an official response to Roberts’s
Washington Post
story, see Dulles-McCardle telcon, July 23, 1954, Dulles Telcons 3, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

26
Chalmers M. Roberts, “The Day We Didn’t Go to War,”
Reporter
11 (September 14, 1954): 31–35. Roberts’s account draws mostly on interviews with several of the participants as well as McCormack’s “copious notes,” which he let the reporter see. The article has been seen as suspect by some historians for its heavy reliance on the recollections of Democrats with a possible interest in tarnishing the administration, but in fact it largely accords on the main issues with the only other record of the meeting, a brief memo Dulles wrote for his files. See Dulles memorandum for the file, April 5, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1224–25. And see also Chalmers M. Roberts,
First Rough Draft: A Journalist’s Journal of Our Times
(New York: Praeger, 1973), 114–15; and William C. Gibbons,
The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part I: 1945–1960
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 191–95. Roberts’s initial article is in
Washington Post
, June 7, 1954. The account here relies on all these sources.

27
Dulles memcon with congressional leaders, April 5, 1954, Chronological Series, April 1954, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library; Billings-Yun,
Decision Against War
, 91–92.

28
Dulles-Eisenhower telcon, April 3, 1954, Dulles Papers, Eisenhower Library.

29
Memo of conversation, April 3, 1954,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1225–29.

30
High Commissioner in Auckland to Colonial Office, April 7, 1954, FO 371/112051, TNA; Munro to Auckland, April 6, 1954, FO 371/112052, TNA; Gardner,
Approaching Vietnam
, 207–8. The passage from which Dulles read is in Winston Churchill,
The Gathering Storm
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 78–79.

31
James Waite, “Contesting the Right Decision: New Zealand, the Commonwealth, and the New Look,”
Diplomatic History
30 (November 2006): 908; Washington to FO, April 5, 1954 FO 371/112050, TNA.

32
Editorial note,
FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina
, XIII, 1:1236; Sherman Adams,
Firsthand Report: The Story of the Eisenhower Administration
(New York: Harper & Bros., 1961), 122.

33
See, e.g., Billings-Yun,
Decision Against War
and especially Gareth Porter,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 70–71. For the problem with claims that Eisenhower was deliberately setting forth conditions for intervention that he knew could not be fulfilled, see William J. Duiker,
U.S. Containment Policy and the Conflict in Indochina
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994), 190–91.

34
See, e.g., Prados,
Operation Vulture;
Gibbons,
U.S. Government
, 178.

35
A point made in Duiker,
U.S. Containment
, 161.