DIEN BIEN PHU, Vietnam — Atop a tranquil, sunlit hill, the raw memories of battle amid red-earth trenches and barbed wire are still vivid for the elderly men who make the pilgrimage.
With their ramrod straight backs, mismatched uniforms and medal-pinned chests, Dien Bien Phu's veterans are hard to miss. Hundreds have filed into this small border town in recent weeks to celebrate a long-ago victory, to mourn fallen comrades, but mostly to remember.
"I was in hell back then. Today feels like I'm in heaven," Vu Van Nay, 77, said as he leaned heavily on a cane, his left sleeve empty.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, which ultimately ended France's colonization of Indochina. It comes upon a nation of 80 million that still adheres to the communist ideals that propelled its war of liberation, but is steadily embracing the capitalist lifestyle.
The stunning victory of a peasant Vietnamese army over a military giant is remembered as a historic wake-up call and strategic masterpiece that is still studied by military historians.
"It was a defeat that reverberated around the world," said Carlyle Thayer, a Vietnam expert at the Australian Defense Force Academy. "For Vietnam, it was electrifying on a global level. This was a major defeat for a colonial power at the hands of a Third World population."
It wasn't supposed to turn out that way. In this valley 260 miles northwest of Hanoi, ringed by mist-shrouded mountains, the French chose to make their stand, hoping to strangle supply routes from Laos and China to Ho Chi Minh's ragtag army.
Commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap, the legendary military strategist, the peasant army had been inflicting significant damage. The French plan was to draw the Vietnamese into a conventional battle and crush them.
Instead, the French ended up trapped in the remote valley when the Vietnamese managed a near-impossible logistical feat of dragging disassembled heavy artillery over the mountainous terrain before beginning the 56-day siege that choked their enemy.
Col. Christian de Castries, the French commander, surrendered May 7, 1954, as the Vietnamese raised their flag above his bunker. It was the end of a colonial war and a triumph for communism that set the stage for the U.S. war in Indochina a decade later.
The human price was terrible: The French suffered more than 2,000 deaths in battle and countless others died during a forced prison march; the Vietnamese had at least three times as many deaths, plus tens of thousands wounded.
