'[1954] The French command, frustrated by the hit-and-run engagements
with an adversary who was all-too-often invisible, had in early 1954
devised a trap which it intended to spring on an unsuspecting
enemy. Since the Vietnamese, as General Marcel Le Carpentier had said,
did not have colonels and generals and would not understand a
sophisticated war, it would be easy to fool them. The idea was to use
a French garrison as bait at an outpost in the highlands, have the
Vietminh seize on it for a set-piece battle and mass their forces
around it. Then when the Vietminh forces were massed, the French would
strike, crush the enemy who had so long eluded them, and gain a major
political and psychological victory, just as peace talks were starting
in Geneva. The name of the post where the trap was to be sprung was
Dienbienphu.
'… the French built their positions in the valley and left the high
ground to the Vietminh, a move which violated the first cardinal rule
of warfare: always take the high ground. An American officer who
visited the site just before the battle noticed this and asked what
would happen if the Vietminh had artillery. Ah, he was assured by a
French officer, they had no artillery, and even if they did, they
would not know how to use it. But they did have artillery and they did
know how to use it. On the first night of the battle the French
artillery commander, shouting “It is all my fault, it is all my
fault,” committed suicide by throwing himself on a grenade.'