Posted on 10/04/2013 7:22:37 AM PDT by kronos77
Gen. Giap achieved his crowning moment as a commander in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which marked the end of the First Indochina War and France’s colonisation of Vietnam.
General Vo Nguyen Giap, a key figure in securing Vietnam’s independence and winning the Vietnam War, died on Friday at 102, senior military officials and a relative said.
The general died at the 108 Military Hospital in Hanoi, a senior military official at the facility said.
“He died of old age, not because of any illness,” said the official, who requested anonymity. “The news about his death will only be made public after the Secretariat of the Communist Party of Vietnam approves,” one of his close relatives said.
The general had been in hospital for several years because of ill health.
Gen. Giap achieved his crowning moment as a commander in the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, which marked the end of the First Indochina War and France’s colonisation of Vietnam. The victory over the French led to the partition of the country and the beginning of a fresh outbreak of hostilities, this time between the communist North and U.S.-backed South.
Gen. Giap was also known as the initiator of the final offensive against South Vietnam in 1975.
Keywords: General Vo Nguyen Giap death, Vietnam War, battle of Dien Bien Phu, First Indochina War
They learned from their mistakes and declared Bin Laden alive after Tora Bora. Little did they know that a certain future President would so desperate for a headline to change the subject that he would kill the guy's ISI body double.
“He shaped an army out of sticks, bicycles, and peasants.”
As well as massive material, arms and munitions aid from Russia, China and the communist bloc
and
invaluable moral support from the f*%#*!g American Left and Democrats who ginned the war up.
Jane Fonda and Frenchie Kerry will give eulogies.
Rot in hell Gen. Giap!!
Say hello to uncle Ho.
“A formidable enemy and a worthy opponent. He shaped an army out of sticks, bicycles, and peasants.”
I am not a military man, but I have read that his strategy was brilliant and is now apparently “textbook” for dealing with an apparently more powerful enemy.
Vo Nguyen Giap the “tactical genius” invaded South Vietnam with tanks, artillery, personnel carriers, which were supplied by Soviet trucks on an all weather highway nicknamed the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
During the 1972 `Easter Offensive’ Giap displayed a complete ignorance of armor fire & maneuver, sending tanks in unsupported by infantry using the `converging axes’ tactic. All this accomplished was the destruction of hundreds of Soviet made T-43/85 & T-54/T-55 tanks by ARVN troops using mostly M-72 LAWs. Close air support also helped.
Giap & Le Duan were frank in admitting that they owed a huge debt to the Left in the U.S. in sabotaging domestic support for the war.
The `ragtag peasant guerilla army’ was mostly smashed in Tet ‘68. It was mostly conventional war after that.
I saw Giap’s tanks burning outside of An Loc, one of his three main objectives in 1972. I hope he’s doing the same now; he and Walter Cronkite can salute each other and Fonda will be joining them eventually.
But it is to Giap’s credit — and liberals’ eternal shame — that, disarmed, broken, and virtually defeated after Tet, he used the only tools he had left: the abject cowardice of people like Cronkite, Fonda, Hayden, Hoffman, that c_nt Ramsay Clark, the Berrigans, et. al. to prop up his army where our soldiers had given their lives to defeat them .
Giap was a master at making weapons out of nothing.
A very ruthless and determined and canny mofo
I’ll give him that
But all that blood and guts and horror inflicted on your own people so even when you eventually won in the end
You would slowly start the trek back to freedom and capitalism anyhow
We probably should have told the French tough shit, your rubber colony is getting independence in 46 or 47
Thoughts?
I’m thinking more about Dien Bien Phu. And there, it was less tactical brilliance than dogged determination (and sheer denial on the part of the French) that allowed the NVA to drag dozens of artillery pieces onto the high ground and shell the French off the mountain.
And admittedly, Giap was no armor commander. He never demonstrated more than rudimentary comprehension of armor tactics.
You’re right I left out Dien Bien Phu. I was in one but not the other.
Flying single ship we often spotted old earthworks & berms described as “old French forts”. Middle aged Vietnamese spoke French to me since I knew it a little. Citroen cars are tootling around Saigon to this day. Viets refer to red wine as `French blood’.
“Hell In a Very Small Place” (Bernard Fall, 1967) is probably still the best work on the Dien Bien Phu siege.
“Trial by Fire” (Dale Andrade, 1995) may be the only comprehensive history of our last full year in Vietnam. The enemy onslaught was much bigger than I thought at the time but I was just doing my job.
Don’t forget that the “Lion of the Senate”, Fatso Kennedy led the charge to renig on the promises made to South Viet Nam.
I read an excellent account of the Dien Bien Phu siege years ago but I’m darned if I remember the title. It was a battle of attrition and eventually the French just wore down to nothing. The outcome was a foregone conclusion after a certain point.
The French really screwed up when the built that camp.
Yup. JFK put troops on the ground in Viet Nam, LBJ escalated it over false claims, then Ted and the Democrats turned against the war when we got a Republican President.
Say what one will, he understood on Clausewitz perfectly. War is an extension of politics by other means.
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