Off Duty Book Review

Hell in a Very Small Place by Bernard Fall

Reviewed by Capt. Nolan Vihlen, USMC

Bernard Fall’s Hell in a Very Small Place provides detailed insight into the siege of Dien Bien Phu during the last days of French colonial rule in southeast Asia. By late 1953, French control was increasingly fleeting and the army had only narrowly disengaged itself from successive battles with the Viet-Minh. As a result, French leaders in Hanoi were only too willing to rely on the hope for a decisive battle to reestablish their tenuous position in Vietnam. This epic tragedy examines the failings of French logistics, chronicles the enduring fighting spirit of the defenders, and ponders the potential of an American air intervention that never materialized. The battle of Dien Bien Phu serves as a tragic reminder of the importance of detailed logistical planning. The lack of a coherent raison d’être for the base at Dien Bien Phu ensured that the French only perceived logistical throughput requirements well after the first paratrooper landed in a drop zone. While planning had identified exact tonnage to construct adequate defensive positions, paratroopers unsuited to the static nature of a siege were slow to establish appropriate defenses with the limited materials available. Detailed logistical planning rarely evokes a stirring romantic view of warfare, but the Viet-Minh’s fanatical single mindedness pervaded a logistical emphasis that played a central role in driving the French from Vietnam.

Hell in a Very Small Place describes the daily sacrifice and élan of individual French soldiers, subjected to the maddening inflexibility of leaders incapable of making the difficult decisions required to extricate their forces from the dilemma they had created. Despite the horrific account of the doomed French garrison, Fall does not completely disparage the former colonial power. As locally raised indigenous auxiliaries and colonial forces evaporated in the face of overwhelming Viet-Minh artillery, French paratroopers and legionnaires steadfastly defended their crumbling positions as the Communist vice strangled any hope of victory. The central role of Marcel Bigeard in Fall’s telling of the battle offers a rare example of competence among the senior officers present. This intimate profile not only examines the contribution of a principal character in the battle but personifies the enduring martial spirit among the remnants of colonial French prestige.

Fall’s eagerness to shift blame for French failure to American policy makers represents a flawed emphasis on air power in counterinsurgency. The responsibility for the ultimate failure of Dien Bien Phu lies squarely on the shoulders of senior planners in Hanoi. The author fails to appreciate the obstacles to American involvement that made overt intervention untenable. After supplying American-made aircraft and augmenting cargo airlift capacity with civilian aircrew, there was little more the Americans were willing to contribute to a conflict that they still perceived through the lens of colonial antagonism. It is true that exponentially more air power enabled the isolated American firebase at Khe Sanh to outlast a similar Communist onslaught fourteen years later, but that tactical success was in no way indicative of the impact of air power at the strategic level. Had the author survived to witness the fall of Saigon, he would have understood the foreign policy failure of an overreliance on repeated strategic bombing campaigns.

The battle of Dien Bien Phu would have been compelling enough as told by most other authors, but the impartial approach of the book's narrative style will leave a lasting impression on his audience. The meticulously researched failure of French logistical planners, the sacrifice of a garrison fighting for an increasingly apathetic Metropole, and the obsessive fixation with the role of strategic airpower make Hell in a Very Small Place the definitive account of the downfall of French rule in Indochina. Unfortunately, the lessons of this work went largely unheeded as the United States launched headlong into the quagmire vacated by the French.