Command bunker of General De Castries
Location: The Command
bunker of De Castries lies at the heart of the entrenched camp of Dien Bien Phu
in the middle of the Muong Thanh Field.
Characteristics: The original shape and size, structure and arrangement
of the bunker are kept intact.
Fifty years ago,
one could see the top of the bunker from a high hill. To reach there, however,
Vietnamese troops had to fight heroically during 55 days and nights, amidst
numerous hardships and difficulties. Around the bunker were situated dense
systems of defense lines, including many layers of barbed wires and four tanks.
The bunker is 20m long and 8m wide. It consists of 4 compartments, which serves
as both working offices and resident places.
One now can still find the iron vaults and sandbags atop the bunker. There used
to be a roofed trench connecting the bunker of De Castries with the blockhouse
at Cay Da in Hill A1. French troops piled up wooden planks and sandbags to make
trenches. They took the wooden planks from the houses of the Vietnamese ethnic
minority groups.
Inside this bunker, De Castries received such high-ranking officers as French
Prime Minister Joseph Laniel, US President Dwight Eisenhower, British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, as well as well-known journalists. At 5h30pm on May
7th, 1954, Ta Quoc Luat, head of Company 360, Regiment 209, Division 312
captured alive General De Castries who was sitting at his desk in the corner of
the bunker.
The tunnel had four compartments as follows:
Compartment 2
This is the office of Seguin who was in charge of the French air force in Dien Bien Phu. He was tasked with the protection of the Muong Thanh and Hong Cum airfields. He himself faced shameful defeat. Before attack of Vietnamese troops, the French troops carried out around 100-150 sorties each day, transporting some 100-300 tons of goods to Dien Bien Phu. After assaults of Vietnamese troops, especially when the runways of Muong Thanh Airfield were cut off, French troops had to parachute goods to Dien Bien Phu, many of which came to hands of Vietnamese troops.
Compartment 3
This is the office of De Castries’s secretary. Upon being promoted to the Commander of the Dien Bien Phu entrenched camp, he required to have this secretary, who was both a nurse and a journalist. When the Vietnamese troops attacked Dien Bien Phu on March 13th, 1954, De Castries asked her to come back to Hanoi by airway.
Compartment 4
This is the information and radio transmission
center of the French troops in Dien Bien Phu.
When the Dien Bien Phu campaign ended, Vietnamese troops captured only one
female French nurse, De Galard. She was among one of the first to be released
under Vietnam’s policy.
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Source: Vietnam Administration of Tourism |