"Operation Castor" Topic

Friends and I are going to start a major campaign commencing with the French airborne assault on Dien Bien Phu on Nov 20, 1953. Will try to upload some early photos to give a sense of what we are going to do.

You can't upload photos to TMP, you have to upload them somewhere else first, then link to them from here.

Just finished Martin Windrow's "The Vast Valley", awesome book. I'm looking forward to your campaign reports!

Using 15mm, with a 1-5 scale! Rules are my own (very simple yet I hope realistic) which we have been using and evolving for about 10 years now.Windrow's book was great. In the last month I devoured the, Valley of Death by Ted Morgan, Jules Roy's and Howard Simpson's DBP and rereading Hell in a Very Small Place for the second time in the last month! I'm retired and love to dig deep into a subject. I just finished putting up the first photos on my web page and tomorrow hope to link them. Thanks for your comments.

Trying to link to my photos but obviously not working yet

link

So I haven't been able to link the individual photos, but this links to my webpage with what I have uploaded so far. Hope it works!

Love the look of the battlefield, great job. I am looking forward to follow this one!

Looking good!

Thanks for your comments, will continue to add to the story.

You have inspired me. I'm starting 'The Last Valley', thanks, been wondering what to read after 'Task Force Black'.

Nice work.

Sorry I couldn't seem to get my account recognized. Added some more photos to the website showing some of the game we started on Operation Castor. I believe Milites, you will enjoy "The Last Valley'. Each of the accounts listed above have something to add to the story.

Thanks ktb I really enjoy putting projects together.

Good book, getting very interested in all the small unit actions during that conflict. Interesting as well, that Windrow suggests Dien Bien Phu could have been a pyrrhic victory for Giap, if the French government had bucked popular opinion and stuck it out.

With the change in the French government to Mendes-France I don't think that was a good chance. You'll see Windrow cover that well at the end of his book.

Only just started, but it was an interesting what if he dangled at the start. Nice crisp writing style, looking forward to my nightly encounter with a period of history I know little about, apart from a cursory understanding of the big events.

Wonder what would have happened if the French had maintained control and Giap had been defeated?

Now that is a very interesting question. If Navarre had sent in the paras of say II/1 RCP or the 2 BEP earlier than was the case, and the French weathered the storm so to speak, who knows. The Viets would have more likely just melted back and contiuned the fight similar to what they did following Tet of '68.

Has anyone seen this movie?

YouTube link

Only just started the 'Last Valley' so cannot comment on accuracy, subtitles are dire, but some of the scenes are pretty evocative, especially the perpetual artillery strikes.

I love war movies, and seem to be out of Russian/Chechnya ones.

I have wanted to see this film for years, ever since hearing about it in the 90s. The subtitles were awful but it was amazing nevertheless! Seeing the stories that Fall wrote about in Hell in a Very Small Place…wow. The Brunbrouck and the 'singing charge' stories gets me everytime!

The Director, Milites, was the photographer in the film, who later unsuccessfully attempted to escape following the fall of DBP. His story is pretty accurate although the Howard Simpson depiction seems to be a little off. Just finished Simpson's book and he didn't really raise much of a stink about the depiction.

I liked the fact combat was often off screen, or the combatants only saw fleeting glimpses, unless during the human wave attacks!

Certainly an artistic depiction of a war movie. However I thought it did an excellant job of portraying the suffering. I hope that it is relezsed on DVD (USA Region) someday so I don't have to watch it in 15 minute segments on YouTube.

"Only just started the 'Last Valley' so cannot comment on accuracy"… It is spot on.

The Director is Pierre Schoendorffer who as MacGregor says was at DBP. He also narrates the film is portreyed in it by his son Ludovic.

About the only bit that plays fast and loose with history is the casting of Donald Pleasance as Simpson. Simpson was 29 at the time!

Schoendorffer also directed the La 317e Section which tells the story of a French unit retreating from northern Cambodia after DBP. He was helped on that movie by Brigitte Friang, (of "Petticoats and Parachutes") who was another ancien of DBP having marched on the Christmas link up. Schoendorffer also won an Oscar for "The Anderson Platoon" about a US unit in Vietnam.

link

All his movies are available on DVD from Amazon and they are all brilliant.

His books "La Crabe Tambour" about a naval officer in Vietnam and the North Atlantic, and "Farewell to the King" about guerrillas in Borneo in WWII are both cracking reads.

All in all a very accomplished chap.

Cheers,
Bertie

I'd wonder though as to whether a film on Dien Bien Phu by someone who was there is that impartial, though some people think so from the comments on youtube:
'It specifically states he routinely ordered the execution of his own men, and that by the end of the battle Viet Minh casualties were so great he was forced to call in his last reserves. Same in 1968. TET was a disasterous failure. Giap was a butcher and his reputation as a "military genius" is pure propaganda.'

Not sure that if you win, that a battle even where you are down to reserves is a failure. Plenty of generals have reputations as butchers – and like it or not who was the winner at DBP – the French? Also, in terms of a myopic view re battlefield victory (which seems to kind of ignore Clausewitz) though Tet may have been a military failure, its impact on US opinion was pretty significant

Thanks Bertie, it had the ring of authenticity but my knowledge of the conflict is still very vague. I'm trying some of the TOAW III scenarios now, whilst reading Windrow's book.

Hello Bertie, I've only seen DVD from Amazon in French or Thai, but no English subtitle (That can play in the US that is)? Do you know of such a copy that will play in the US? As I said earlier, I would love to watch the film unedited into 15 min segments.

Dear Duncan,
I can't help you with that I'm afraid. I live in Hong Kong and the DVD players here are not limited to any particular region. My copy has English subtitles but it's taken from the video I had years ago. The movie did a theatrical release here as well so I've been lucky enough to see it on the big screen.

GNREP8,
I haven't gone through the Youtube comments but that sounds like someone else's rather uninformed comments on Giap not Schoendorffer's view. The battle is told entirely from the French point of view, that is true, but nowhere does Schoendorffer denigrate Giap or the Viet Minh victory. Since it was filmed in Vietnam, (but not at DBP,)and involved the use of both the French Army and PAVN that is not surprising, but Schoendorffer paints a balanced picture. At the end of the movie he doesn't fail to note that many of the captives died in the Viet Minh camps and also notes how traumatic it was for both French and Vietnamese to make the movie.

I think that the reference to Giap shooting his own people is derived from the scene where the commander of the 5th BPVN "Bavouwan" that had failed at Gabrielle wants to shoot some of his own officers for perceived cowardice, stating that Giap shoots his failures AND SO DID THE FRENCH IN WWI and if the French were serious about winning in Indochina so should they. [My emphasis, sorry about the "shouting" but TMP doesn't do italics.]

Miletes
TOAW III?
Windrow is good, but lifts a lot from Rocolle's "Porquoi DBP?" (nothing wrong with that, but you may as well go to Rocolle in the first place,) and so his analysis is dated to Rocolle's work. Morgan is more up to date,using the Catroux report, (which wasn't available to Fall or Rocolle) and Bruge's "Les Hommes De DBP", and he cites me, so I can forgive him anything. But Fall remains my first choice for an account of the battle, although a little dated his writing is the best and captures the tragedy and Quixotic romance of the battle.

Anyway enjoy the book and the movie. The direction is so straight and understated that I think that much of the film must be lost on people who don't know quite a bit about the battle. For instance when Schoendorffer shows the counterattack on the Elaines you just hear a few voices singing "La Marseillaise" over the gunfire, and if you didn't know that was the Bavouwan going in then it wouldn't mean anything. There are no dramatics such as close-ups of Vietnamese paratroopers belting out a song like there is no tommorrow, (and there wasn't.) Of course if you do know what it is about then the scene is really effective… well it gives me goosepimples.

Speaking of "dated" here's an account of a trip to the battlefield:
hksw.org/Hanoi.htm
A lot of things have changed in Hanoi and DBP since then, for instance the trench works on Beatrice have been rebuilt.
I'll be going back for the 60th Anniversary next year.
Cheers,
Bertie

TOAW III, Norm Kruger's The Operational Art of war III, a pc game about operational battles. There is a massive campaign game and several scenarios for battles, including Dien Bien Phu. As the computer was calculating the result of a crucial counter attack I found myself humming the Marseillaise, it worked!

Thanks for the reply Bartie, I was afraid of that. So far the best I found is a Thai copy with English subtitles but I would be restricvted to playing it on my computer. I can keep hoping.

I totally agree with your comments regarding the film and Schoendorffer's viewpoint. I thought it was very balanced.

Is Rocolle's "Porquoi DBP" in English? I've tried to read everything I can on this topic every since I first read Fall's "HIVSPlace' back in the 70s. Also agree with your comment regarding Fall's book, it may be older but what an account!

"Bertie" your Indochina articles have long been an inspiration for me!

Milites,
Ah,thanks. I'm not really a computer gamer, I spend more time shouting at and thumping the darn things than humming to them…perhaps that is where I am going wrong.

I do have a copy of HPS Simulations Dien Bien Phu. I haven't played it much because I prefer figures or board games with a real opponent I can drink pastis with, but I quite liked it because it has sort of board game, rather than computer game, mechanics if you know what I mean.

link

Anyway I'm not sure if we are supposed to be going on about boardgames and computer games on "The Miniatures Page"… I don't want to end up in "The Dawghouse!"

Duncan,
Rocolle is in French. I failed French "O" level at high school, something which didn't bother me much at 16 but which I've regretted ever since, but I can just about manage.Google Translate is a boon!Rocolle does have good maps.

Etranger,
Steady on old chap! But thank you kindly.

Cheers,
Bertie

The friends finally got together this past Tuesday and we finished our "test run" of Operation Castor. I've downloaded a few more pictures to my site which is linked earlier on this thread. The results were just about the same in terms of casualties. The small red/yellow caps you will see are used in my homegrown rules to reflect troops being pinned (figures can move but not shoot) or shaken (no movement or firing). It was a fun game. Our plan is to launch the actual campaign in about 2 weeks. Not quite in time for the anniversery of the end of the battle, but close enough!

Bertie thanks for the info on Rocolle. I too took French in my high school days (MANY years ago) and struggled mightily, but I may have to get ambitious. I love maps.

Interesting you have a pin result allowing movement but no firing, most systems reverse the penalties. Is this to simulate a specific feature of the battle?

TOAW is a larger scale game, at battalion and regimental scale, and looks like a computer boardgame, but scenarios can have hundreds of events and triggers.

Lovely photos.

Wonderful pics and terrain.
Cheers,
Bertie

My bad, the red cap refers to no movement but shooting allowed.So it halts their movement but they can defend themselves. My yellow cap then is the stp up in effect, in otherwords, a bit on the shaken side.