Anniversary of the Điện Biên Phủ victory, 7 May

In 1953, after almost eight years of war, France sent General Henri Navarre to command its forces in Indochina with a plan to win decisively within eighteen months. On 20 November 1953 French paratroopers dropped into the Mường Thanh basin at Điện Biên Phủ, a broad plain set among the mountains of the northwest near the Lao border, to block the Vietnamese army's advance into Upper Laos.

Within a few months Điện Biên Phủ became the strongest fortified complex in Indochina under Colonel Christian de Castries, with 49 strongpoints grouped into three sectors, two airstrips and more than ten thousand troops, later about sixteen thousand. The French command believed their opponents could never haul heavy artillery over the high mountains or supply a long battle deep in rugged forest country.

On 6 December 1953 the Politburo decided to open the Điện Biên Phủ campaign, appointing General Võ Nguyên Giáp as commander-in-chief and Party secretary of the front. Troops cut roads through the jungle and pulled guns weighing more than two tonnes by hand over steep passes into position. The hero Tô Vĩnh Diện gave his life throwing himself under a wheel to stop a gun from rolling into a ravine.

The original plan was a swift strike for a quick result. But on 26 January 1954, only hours before the attack, General Võ Nguyên Giáp postponed the battle, pulled the guns back and switched to a strategy of steady attack and steady advance. He later called it the hardest decision of his career as a commander, one paid for with many more weeks of gruelling preparation.

Behind the front stood the whole home front. More than two hundred and sixty thousand porters and over twenty thousand pack bicycles carried rice, ammunition and medicine along hundreds of kilometres of forest tracks. The pack bicycle loaded with hundreds of kilos of supplies became an image that astonished foreign military observers.

On the afternoon of 13 March 1954 the campaign opened with an assault on the Him Lam strongpoint. The hero Phan Đình Giót threw himself across a gun port so his comrades could charge. In the first phase the strongpoints of Him Lam, Độc Lập and Bản Kéo were destroyed or surrendered, and artillery took control of the airfield, gradually cutting the garrison's air supply.

The second phase, from 30 March to 30 April, brought bitter fighting for the eastern hills, fiercest of all on A1 hill. Troops dug hundreds of kilometres of trenches to tighten the ring, burrowing into hillsides, sleeping in dugouts and living on rice balls through endless rain. On the night of 6 May an explosive charge of almost a tonne went off beneath A1, opening the way for the final general assault.

On the afternoon of 7 May 1954 troops stormed the command post and captured General De Castries with his entire staff. The flag reading Determined to Fight, Determined to Win flew over the command bunker. The whole fortress of Điện Biên Phủ was destroyed and thousands of French soldiers were taken prisoner, ending 56 days and nights of battle.

Nine years forged one Điện Biên, a crown of red flowers, a golden page of history.

Tố Hữu, from the poem Thirty Years of Our Life with the Party (1960)

Just one day after the victory, on 8 May 1954, the Geneva Conference began its discussion of Indochina. Success on the battlefield gave the Vietnamese delegation led by Deputy Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng a strong hand. On 21 July 1954 the Geneva Accords were signed, with the parties pledging to respect the independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

French troops withdrew from the North, and the country was temporarily divided at the 17th parallel pending a general election that never took place. Around the world, Điện Biên Phủ is remembered as the first time a colonised people defeated the expeditionary army of a Western power in a large-scale battle, an event that inspired liberation movements in many countries of Asia and Africa.

In 2009 the historic battlefield of Điện Biên Phủ was classified as a special national monument, including A1 hill, De Castries' command bunker, the Him Lam and Độc Lập strongpoints, the campaign headquarters at Mường Phăng and the martyrs' cemeteries. The Victory Monument on D1 hill was unveiled in 2004, and the Điện Biên Phủ Historical Victory Museum, shaped like a soldier's woven helmet, opened in 2014.

Every year around 7 May the province of Điện Biên holds a commemoration, with large parades in round-number years such as the 70th anniversary in 2024. Veterans from all over the country return to light incense for fallen comrades at the A1 hill cemetery. It is also the end of the season when white ban flowers cover the northwest highlands, the blossom that has become the symbol of this land.

For working people today, the lesson of Điện Biên lies less in slogans than in method: prepare thoroughly, dare to change the plan when victory is not yet certain, and keep going day after day until the finish. Many offices and companies use the occasion for a heritage trip, a visit to veterans and an evening together listening again to the stories of the spring of 1954.