memot district, Kompong Cham province – Thousands of kilometers from here and five decades ago this month, Prak Lak, 73, was part of a futile military march to prevent the death of French colonialism in Indochina.
In the closing days of April 1954, in the remote mountain-encircled valley of Dien Bien Phu in northwestern Vietnam, the siege of some 13,000 French forces by 49,500 communist Viet Minh troops was drawing to its final bloody end.
The 56-day siege ended on
May 7 and more than 10,000 men on both sides were buried on the battlefield, fodder for the bombs that smashed the jungles surrounding Dien Bien Phu and the battles amid the mud bunkers and barbed-wire fortifications of the French stronghold at the center of the rain-sodden valley.
When the victorious Viet Minh raised their flag over the sand-bagged command bunker of General Christian de Castries, the French commander at Dien Bien Phu, France had lost a battle that would signal the demise of its colonial presence in all of Indochina.
In those last days, Prak Lak, a Cambodian who joined the French colonial army in 1947, was part of a mixed force assembled in nearby Laos to rescue Dien Bien Phu.
Military historians have since written about the futility of the French army’s rescue plans code-named “Operation Condor,” and 50 years on, Prak Lak still has his own bitter and harrowing memories.
“I don’t know how many. Dozens of divisions were gathered and we started to march,” Prak Lak said last month, at his modest farmhouse in Memot district. He admits his memories are foggy, but what has been lost in the details do not detract from the breadth of his story.
“We marched. We were about half way when they told us the French had won so we did not need to go on. But later they told us the French had lost,” Prak Lak said.
“They just told us to withdraw. I only found out they had lost [Dien Bien Phu] when we got back to Prey Nokor,” he said, using the old Khmer name for Saigon—now know as Ho Chi Minh City.
Prak Lak said the troop unit with which he marched from Laos toward Dien Bien Phu came within earshot of the shells landing on the besieged French forces.
Military aircraft bombed ahead of Prak Lak’s route to open a path to Dien Bien Phu through enemy-controlled territory, and French helicopters arrived and departed intermittently to take away the sick and injured, he said.
Casualties were heavy. Those who died were cremated unceremoniously using gasoline and wood, he said.
“We slept with our boots on and our feet smelled very bad,” he said, recounting the jungles and mountains and with remembered awe the immense size of the military field radios and the weight of the machine gun he carried.
Prak Lak joined the French colonial army in Saigon seven years earlier having left his native Svay Rieng province to become a soldier. Many Cambodians joined the French army and “they looked happy,” remembered Prak Lak. He trained for six months and was then given a rifle and sent to battle the budding Viet Minh communist forces that opposed the French in Vietnam.
Mostly he fought in the south of Vietnam, in the vicinity of Saigon, but he also fought in the north, in the Red River Delta area.
Struggling but eventually grasping a hold of another long-forgotten memory, Prak Lak said the numbers “2709.” He was almost certain it was his serial number.
When Prak Lak’s unit eventually returned to Saigon from its failed rescue mission, the wives and relatives of those who died on the march were given a ration of one cup of ash from three sacks where the charred, dusty remains of all the fallen soldiers had been mixed.
“I can’t remember how much compensation [the women] got, but the commander of the battalion scooped up the ash in a cup and the women would collect it in a white cloth or a wooden box,” he said.
The commander in charge of the dead also had to ensure that none of the grieving women were left without at least some ash, and each cup was carefully leveled off at the brim.
Dien Bien Phu was a disaster of France’s own making.
Drained by the Viet Minh’s hit-and-run attacks, the French gambled it all on drawing the elusive Viet Minh into a set piece battle that French tacticians were sure they could win with superior firepower and battlefield strategy.
Dien Bien Phu was the bait, a remote valley sufficiently far from the French army’s command headquarters and supply depots in Hanoi that the guerrillas might be tempted to fight in large numbers.
It was a huge gamble and France lost when General Vo Nguyen Giap took the challenge and threw not just his troops but 55,000 support personnel who hauled food, ammunition and, decisively, Chinese artillery pieces into the hills around the French base. Monsoon rains, which closed in on the valley and hampered close air support and bombing runs for the French, was the final death knell.
Vietnam is enthusiastically celebrating the 50th anniversary of its victory at Dien Bien Phu. On Vietnamese state television, documentaries are lauding the achievements of the Viet Minh and the Vietnam News Agency is running regular stories on the anniversary.
The official language describing Dien Bien Phu is heavy with reference to victory, solidarity and righteous struggle overcoming the tyranny of colonialism.
Prak Lak said the battle for Dien Bien Phu was described shortly after to him as simply “brutal” by a Cambodian veteran who fought and survived the siege.
Reflecting on his years of fighting and being wounded twice for the French in colonial Vietnam, Prak Lak has few compelling words to describe his experiences—just some thoughts on what it was all for.
“At that time, I think I should not have been worked like a slave for French interests. I am old now. I don’t think much about the past. I just try to find some money for granny,” he said in affectionate reference to his elderly wife.
“I am very tired. I am the only one left from all the dead,” he added.
Before finishing his story, Prak Lak inquired about contacting the French Embassy in Phnom Penh and possibly picking up a military pension, which he is sure he is owed, for his years of loyal service to France.
