Battle of Vĩnh Yên, 1951: de Lattre stops Giáp at the gates of Hanoi

Vĩnh Yên was the battle that saved Hanoi in 1951. Coming after a string of French disasters, it showed that the Việt Minh could be beaten in open battle, and it made the reputation of the general who had promised that the French would not yield another inch.²

A war going badly

The war in Indochina had begun at the end of 1946, after the Japanese left. It changed character when the Communists came to power in China: with Chinese support, Giáp's army received modern weapons and sophisticated training. In September 1950 the French were routed along the Chinese border in the battle of Cao Bằng, and the north of Tonkin became impossible to hold. As the French Remembrance magazine Les Chemins de la Mémoire puts it, France only then seemed to discover the war it was fighting 13,000 kilometers away.³

In that crisis the government sent General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, and gave him full political and military powers. In December 1950 he told the officers in Hanoi that the era of drifting was over: from now on they would be commanded, and the French would not give up another inch of ground. He also stopped the evacuation of Hanoi; he later admitted to the American minister that he had said all this to raise morale, before he was sure his troops could hold.⁴

Giáp's offensive

Giáp struck on 13 January 1951 at Vĩnh Yên, on the northwestern edge of the Red River delta. According to the US Army's official history, it was the first of three major Việt Minh attacks in Tonkin that year, followed by Mao Khê in March and the Day River in June, and if Vĩnh Yên had fallen the road to Hanoi would have been open. According to French accounts passed to the American minister in Saigon, Heath, the Việt Minh attacked in this sector with 21 battalions, against French defenders numbering only six or seven. The US Army's official history puts the defenders at about 6,000 men and says the attackers reached 21 battalions as Giáp fed in reinforcements. Pen and Sword's anniversary note calls it a major engagement that marked a turn in the tide of a war until then characterized by Việt Minh victories.⁵

Heath's informants described the tactics. The first assault waves were made up of recruits armed with grenades and machine pistols, attacking in fairly close order, and they were followed by first-class Việt Minh battalions. The French losses were extremely high in places: one mobile reserve group of three battalions, about 2,000 men, had 540 casualties. A battalion of Muong and Thai auxiliaries, on the other hand, fought with great success and few losses.⁶

Aircraft, guns and napalm

On 19 January Heath and General Francis G. Brink, chief of the US Military Assistance Advisory Group in Indochina, flew and drove over the battlefields of Vĩnh Yên and Phúc Yên with de Lattre. Heath reported that the French Union troops had very obviously fought with supreme gallantry, but that it was their superiority in aviation and artillery that threw the Việt Minh back. Napalm supplied under the American Mutual Defense Assistance Program was, he wrote, one decisive factor in the French holding.⁷

He judged Việt Minh losses undoubtedly much heavier than the French; several hundred prisoners were taken, and the number of wounded was certainly higher still; he thought an estimate of at least a thousand Việt Minh killed probably not excessive. The US Army's official history says that when the Việt Minh withdrew on 17 January they left about 500 prisoners and some 1,500 dead on the battlefield. De Lattre's intelligence reported that Giáp had pulled all his battalions back to the north for ten days of regrouping, surprised and disheartened at failing to break the French lines after being confident of success.⁸

Dates and numbers

The exact figures of the battle remain uncertain: Heath gave only an estimate of the Việt Minh dead, the US Army's official history a count of about 1,500 bodies left on the field. The sources also differ on the date: Les Chemins de la Mémoire places the Việt Minh attack near Hanoi at the end of January 1951, but Heath's telegram of 21 January already describes the fighting as over, and both Pen and Sword and the US Army's official history date the start of the attack to 13 January.⁹

After Vĩnh Yên

In the words of the French ministry's magazine, confidence returned. De Lattre pushed through his program: mobile groups for rapid intervention, partisan units recruited from ethnic minorities, a belt of fortifications around the delta, stronger air and naval forces and surgical teams at the front. He told Heath he would need at least a division and a half more from France, and would resign if he did not get them. Governor Trí of Tonkin summed up the local view: thanks to de Lattre, the Việt Minh would probably not be able to drive the French out of Tonkin.¹⁰

The year 1951 became, in de Lattre's own words, the great year of recovery. But he fell gravely ill, lost his only son in combat, left Indochina and died in Paris on 11 January 1952, to be made a Marshal of France after his death. The magazine doubts that he could have changed the outcome: China's help strengthened a Việt Minh determined to win at any price. Three years later the war ended at Điện Biên Phủ.¹¹