STATEMENT BY SENIOR REPRESENTATIVE, SAIGON, INDOCHINA

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 03440498
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: July 13, 2023
• Document Release Date: August 30, 2022
• Case Number: F-2022-01173
• Publication Date: May 7, 1953

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STATEMENT BY SENIOR REPRESENTATIVE, SAIGON, INDOCHINA
7 May 1953
It is difficult for us in the field to evaluate the extent to
which the information submitted through various channels is read,
coordinated and absorbed at headquarters and to what extend head-
quarters has benefits from the "take" of other reporting agencies.
It is very discouraging to read statements of various public of-
ficials in the newspapers and to wonder if they have access to any
facts at all concerning this situation here. I have for some time
been resisting the temptation to send in a summary of the conduct
of the war in Indochina because there is so very little, if any-
thing, good which can be said about it. I do not mean by that to
reflect in any way on the bravery and the great sacrifices that
the troops of the French Union Forces and the Associated States
Armies are making here, and in fact, even though I have spent
many days in the field with these troops, it is hard even for us
who are here on the spot to visualize the hardships which are their
everyday fare.
Rather I am speaking of the conduct of the war from the stand-
point of overall command. In the past ten years, I have had the
opportunity to read a great deal of military history. In fact, I
spent over two and a half years doing very little except reading
military history. In all of my reading, I find it difficult to
think of any single instance where a war has been conducted so
poorly. Even the campaigns of the British against the American
Colonials during the War of Independence do not compare with the
bungling which goes on here, day after day.
During the Laotian campaign which is still going on, the
French Command has not failed to violate any given principle of
warfare, and what they have done to the principle of mass is ab-
solutely excruciating. With only limited forces at their dis-
position tney have allowed these forces to become separated and
divided up into four isolated pockets, each one of which must be
completely supplied by air. Not only have they gotten themselves
into these separate pockets and therefore taxed their power of
air support almost beyond its capabilities, but they have holed
up in these places and utterly immobilized their troops, thus
allowing the Viet Minh armies to wander almost at will around
the countryside.
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Outside of the Red River Delta there has not been a single
major engagement during 1953, even though the French have lost
a good deal more of North Viet Nam and approximately one-third
of the state of Laos. I would like to repeat that these losses
have been achieved without one single battle having taken place;
in fact the only engagement during this period was a small patrol
encounter in the vicinity of Moc Chai;at the time when the French
were slow in withdrawing a reconnaissance unit in the face of the
advancing Viet Minh reconnaissance patrols.
The French have simply refused to accept battle even though
they have overall superiority in manpower, in fire power and in
air power. It was over five months ago that the French battalions
found themselves in battle at the airstrip at Na San. Your months
ago the covering Viet Minh troops withdrew after having failed to
take Na San, and since that time eleven battalions of the French
forces have sat there doing absolutely nothing.
Two Viet Minh divisions, battalion by battalion, have marched
by Na San at relatively close range without having been harassed:
in the slightest. These battalions are now retiring from Laos on
their way to Phu Tho, and to the best of our knowledge the French
have no plans again for using the eleven battalions at Na San to
harass the Viet Minh retreat to their major bases at Phu Tho. In
ordinary military terms we could say that the Viet Minh forces in
Laos were completely cut off. However, in order for troops to be
cut off someone has to do the cutting. And this is where the
French have failed so miserably. They simply refuse to give battle.
When the two Viet Minh divisions were moving from their bases
around Phu Tho into Laos, there was every chance for the French,
not necessarily to engage them in an open-pitched battle but to
harass their flanks, to make their passage difficult, to strew
mines in their paths. The mines were available, they have thou-
sands and thousands of them stockpiled in their Do San underground
fortresses and they'll be stockpiled there until Kingdom Come.
The French simply allowed the Viet Minh to march past the
battalions they had sitting in their path and proceed into Laos.
Meanwhile, they constructed strong defenses,they said, at the
town of Sam Neua. In actual fact, General de Linares has told
us that as early as February of this year he had decided to evac-
uate Sam Neua at the time the Viet Minh attacked. He didn't say
if the Viet Minh attacked, he said at the time the Viet Minh
attacked. He knew from his intelligence that they would attack
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Sam Neua and yet after having made the decision to withdraw, he
continued to build, for example, the very costly airstrip in the
area with US funds in the amount of approximately half a million
dollars.
When the Viet Minh did attack, the French forces in Sam Neua
did withdraw. They withdrew very hastily and pellmell. They
had apparently mapped out no route of withdrawal,nor had they
sent out scouts or set up advance parties, or stockpiled supplies
along the route of withdrawal. As a result, what should have
been one of the most orderly retreats in this war turned out to
be a rout, and only one third of the troops which withdrew from
Na San (means Sam Neua) showed up later in the vicinity of Kieng
Khouang. The other two thirds may be presumed lost, due to the
criminal negligence of the French command in not having planned
a retreat which they knew they were going to make two months
before the retreat was actually made.
Now, one of the main Viet Minh supply bases is in the
vicinity of ThanhHoa, in the northern part of central Viet Nam.
From there the Viet Minh gets the major portion of its supply of
food, and there it has a large pool of military manpower. At the
beginning of this campaign, it soom became apparent that the Viet
Minh was going to move most of its troops out of Thanh Boa. One
division went up to harass the delta in the area of Ninh Binh and
the other division moved westward into Laos, leaving the area of
Thanh Hoa and Ninh Binh very much exposed and unprotected. Now
the French had the capability in manpower and in airborne and sea-
borne equipment to launch a very heavy attack in the vicinity of
Thanh Boa, to destroy the Viet Minh bases there, and to prevent
the return of this division (304th Viet Minh Division) to its
base.
Instead of attacking Thanh Boa they massed a great many
battalions in one of the largest marine flotillas to operate in
this war and staged an attack farther south in the vicinity of
Phan Thiet, an area where, even had they achieved a great victory
over the Viet Minh, it would have had absolutely no effect on the
outcome of the campaign in Laos. In the event, however, they
achieved something very, very much short of a great victory.
Pomander was on that operation; he claims that not a single Viet
Minh soldier was killed whereas a great many of the French forces,
including quite a few of his own friends, were killed or wounded
by mines or by Viet Minh machinegun fire. In addition, 12 armor-
ed amphibious craft were left stranded on the beach when the
French withdrew, thanks to poor maintenance before they were used
on this operation.
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Now, there have been many times during the current campaign
when the French could have opposed the Viet Minh with greatly
superior forces locally, with greatly superior fire power, and
with the full support of fighter aircraft. Not only did they
fail to take advantage of these several opportunities which pre-
sented themselves, but they apparently purposely split their
forces up into such small contingents that wherever they were
faced with the Viet Minh they were greatly outnumbered and out-
gunned and simply chose to retreat pellmell to get away from the
advancing Viet Minh troops. Even under the adverse circumstances
which they created for themselves, the least they could have done
was to pull their troops to one side, allowing the major Viet Minh
columns to pass, and then to harass them and dog their footsteps
after the passage, in order to at least slow them down and pre-
vent them from moving at absolute will without any resistance
whatsoever.
It is interesting to compare the forces which have been en-
gaged in this campaign. On the Viet Minh side, there were three
divisions used, roughly speaking. The three divisions amount to
27 battalions. On the French side, we find five or six battalions
bottled up in Lai Chau, supported by airlift. At Na Sam we find
another 11 battalions. At Sam Neua there were five battalions.
In the Plaine des Jarres in the vicinity of Kieng Khouang there
were seven, at Luang Prabang perhaps another five. That makes a
total of 33 French battalions against 27 Viet Minh battalions,
but you will note that the largest single assemblage of French
battalions is 11 at Na San, whereas the Viet Minh throughout
their campaign kept their troops massed and always had at least
one division operating as a unit, that is to say nine battalions.
Generally speaking all 27 battalions were well coordinated.
The Viet Minh had complete mobility, even though on foot, where-
as the French had complete immobility, even though they had this
tremendous capacity for airlift, at least tremendous compared to
what the Viet Minh have, which is nil, and even though the French
have a great many more military vehicles of all types suited for
all terrain than do the Viet Minh.
Nov the French frequently contend, and this is something
that we seem to fall for quite easily, that they'd have the whole
thing licked if they just had some more supplies. Within my ex-
perience, and I might add that I have access to reports of all -US
reporting agencies here, this matter of not having enough sup-
plies is a myth, the fact is that they have so many supplies that
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they are stumbling over them. Recently, it will be recalled, the
Viet Minh infiltrated a large force about 50 miles behind the
French lines to the area of Kien An and blew up one of the larg-
est French dumps in Indochina. I had, by the way, inspected that
dump about a year ago and had reported through the attache office
and directly to the French command in Hanoi that its security
guard was practically nil. Well, after the Viet Minh had succeed-
ed in blowing it up, one of the officers of the French General
Staff in Hanoi remarked on how fortunate it was that the ex-
plosions had not reached the armored vehicles which were stored
there -- I repeat, which were stored there.
This wasn't simply a motor pool; they had so many armored
vehicles that they could afford to keep them in storage, and I
have seen their motor pools in their depots here in Saigon and,
while I cannot quote any figures offhand, it is a vast assembly
of materiel which is not being used for combat.
One of their main beefs is about their lack of sufficient
airpower, and it is true that they don't have as great an air
capability as would be desirable, but on the other hand, they do
not have enough maintenance personnel for the air equipment
which they now have. The French air force gets about half as
many flying hours out of each aircraft as does the US air force.
It is simply a matter of ability to maintain and service aircraft,
and the French don't have it, Therefore, they cannot use addi-
tional aircraft until they are able to supply or until they are
willing to accept maintenance personnel from elsewhere.
On the general subject of their capability in airlift, right
now as I'm sitting here Al Cox and his boys are doing such a
terrific job with such driving enthusiasm that it really hurts
to say that what they're doing is useless. I'm afraid it is use-
less, however, from everything we have been able to determine --
not only useless, but in a certain way fraudulent.
When Admiral Radford was here, a short time ago, General
Salan,told him that he needed, I think, three C-119's to get
the necessary equipment he wanted into Xieng Khouang and Luang
Prabang. Admiral Radford immediately asked him, "can the air-
fields there accommodate them?" and General Salan replied, "yes,
they certainly can. In fact, one of your own staff flew over
them the other day and said that they were absolutely okay for
C-119's." Well, the fact of the matter is that one of Admiral
Radford's staff did fly over one of these fields, as stated.
However, when he flew over it there was a very thick ground mist
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and the field was at no time observable from the aircraft. This is
an eyewitness account of the incident by Lt. Colonel Bob Taber, who
was also on that flight and who was present when General Salan made
that statement to Admiral Radford at a later date.
So Al and his boys are knocking themselves out along with half
the Far East Air Force to get these C-119's into operation, and the
whole thing apparently has to slow down now until they are able to
bring in parachuting equipment from Japan, because in the event,
as could have been predicted, the fields are not useable for C-119's.
In fact, now that the rains have started they are not useable for
any type aircraft and they have to be completely supplied by air-
drop.
Moreover, by the time they drop these three-quarter ton
trucks, and the jeeps, and the other heavy equipment into Xieng
Khouang, the ground should be such complete quagmire that the gear
will bog down and be useless, so that if it should be necessary to
evacuate Xieng Khouang it will probably all have to be left behind.
And, it might become necessary, because according to the latest
intelligence we have, the entire 304th Division intends to spend
the rest of the rainy season investing the French position in this
area.
Meanwhile, just as a further discouraging note, the Viet Minh
were able to march into the French noncomm school where the cadre
was being trained for the 54 new Vietnamese battalions which are
going to be created this year -- at least we hope are going to be
created this year -- and marched off with 500 of these noncomms.
Now all of this sounds utterly incredible, I realize. I
find it hard to believe myself, but there it is. All the facts
here I can document,and there is no question whatever as to their
validity. Maybe you already know them; I hope so. But as I said
in the beginning, we never know for sure just how much of this
information is getting back and being digested in headquarters,
and therefore here it is. This is not intended to be an orderly
summary of the campaign of the fall and winter of 1952 and 1953,
but simply a sketch to get a few of these things off my mind and
to see that they get to the proper people.
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