Operation Camargue was one of the largest operations by the French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Vietnamese National Army in the First Indochina War. It took place from 28 July until 10 August 1953. French armored platoons, airborne units and troops delivered by landing craft to the coast of central Annam, modern-day Vietnam, attempted to sweep forces of the communist Viet Minh from the critical Route 1.
The first landings took place in the early morning on 28 July, and reached the first objectives, an inland canal, without major incident. A secondary phase of mopping-up operations began in a "labyrinth of tiny villages" where French armored forces suffered a series of ambushes. Reinforced by paratroopers, the French and their Vietnamese allies tightened a net around the defending Viet Minh, but delays in the movement of French forces left gaps through which most of the Viet Minh guerillas, and many of the arms caches the operation was expected to seize, escaped. For the French, this validated the claim that it was impossible to operate tight ensnaring operations in Vietnam's jungle, due to the slow movement of their troops, and a foreknowledge by the enemy, which was difficult to prevent. From then on, the French focused on creating strong fortified positions, against which Viet Minh General Giáp could pit his forces, culminating in Operation Castor and the Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
With the French forces withdrawn from the operation by the late summer of 1953, Viet Minh Regiment 95 re-infiltrated Route 1 and resumed ambushes of French convoys, retrieving weapons caches missed by the French forces. Regiment 95 occupied the area for the remainder of the First Indochina War and were still operating there as late as 1962 against the South Vietnamese Army during the Second Indochina, or Vietnam War.
Background
The First Indochina War had raged, as guerrilla warfare, since 19 December 1946. From 1949, it evolved into conventional warfare, due largely to aid from the communists of the People's Republic of China ("PRC") to the north. Subsequently, the French strategy of occupying small, poorly defended outposts throughout Indochina, particularly along the Vietnamese-Chinese border, started failing. Thanks to the terrain, popular support for August Revolution and support for decolonization from bordering China and the U.S.S.R., the Viet Minh had succeeded in turning a "clandestine guerrilla movement into a powerful conventional army", following asymmetric warfare theory laid by Mao Tse Tung, something which previously had never been encountered by the western colonial powers. In October 1952, fighting around the Red River Delta spread into the Thai Highlands, resulting in the Battle of Nà Sản, at which the Viet Minh were defeated. The French used the lessons learned at Nà Sản – strong ground bases, versatile air support, and a model based on the British Burma Campaign – as the basis for their new strategy. The Viet Minh, however, remained unbeatable in the highland regions of Vietnam, and the French "could not offset the fundamental disadvantages of a roadbound army facing a hill and forest army in a country which had few roads but a great many hills and forests".
In May 1953, General Henri Navarre arrived to take command of the French forces, replacing General Raoul Salan. Navarre spoke of a new offensive spirit in Indochina – based on strong, fast-moving forces – and the media quickly took Operation Camargue to be the "practical realization" of that.
Chinese and American backing
Following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Viet Minh established close ties with China. It enabled the Chinese to expand their area of influence into Indochina and the Viet Minh to receive much-needed Chinese equipment and strategic planning support. From mid-1950, PRC military advisers were seconded to the Viet Minh at battalion, regimental and divisional levels. The common border meant that "China became a 'sanctuary' where the Viet Minh could be trained and refitted". When the Korean War broke out, Indochina became "an important pawn in Cold War strategy". In December 1950, the United States, concerned about growing Chinese Communist influence, started providing military aid to the French, with a first payment of US$15 million.
In the spring of 1953, the Viet Minh launched campaigns in Laos and succeeded in linking up Laotian territorial gains with their bases in north-western Vietnam. Meanwhile, the winding down of the Korean War meant that China was able "to give much more attention to its southern neighbour". Similarly, the US "released from its heavy burden in the Korean conflict ... dramatically increased its military and financial support" to the French. By June 1953, the US "had sent: 1,224 tanks and combat vehicles; 120,792 rifles and machine guns; more than 200 million rifle and machine gun cartridges; more than five million artillery projectiles; 302 boats and 304 aircraft" (by end of the war, total US aid amounted to nearly four billion dollars).
Prelude to the battle
Route One, also known as Route Coloniale One (or RC1), had been the main north–south artery along the coastline of Vietnam since the outbreak of violence in 1949. Communications and convoys along these lines suffered from regular attacks by Viet Minh irregulars, despite efforts by the French during 1952 in Operation Sauterelle. The Viet Minh paramilitary forces around Route One originated mainly from a region of fortified villages dispersed along sand dunes and salt marshes between Hué to the south, and Quang Tri to the north. French forces had suffered from Viet Minh ambushes, an attack that the latter had become very proficient at throughout the war, most notably in the annihilation of Group Mobile 42 in 1950 and of GM 100 in 1954. The roads in Vietnam were almost all closed during the night and "abandoned to the enemy".
Between 1952 and 1954, 398 armored vehicles were destroyed, 84% of them from mines and booby traps. Typically, the Viet Minh ambushed convoys by obstructing the road with a fallen tree or pile of boulders, and then destroying the first and last vehicles of the halted convoy with remote mines. Caltrops, mines and the steep cliff faces naturally found at the road side aided in funneling the target convoy into a small area, where machine guns, mortars and recoilless rifles were trained. Viet Minh Regiment 95 repeatedly deployed these tactics, inflicting severe losses on the French forces passing along Route One, which led to its French nickname of la rue sans joie ("the Street Without Joy"). Regiment 95 was, along with regiments 18 and 101, part of the Viet Minh Division 325, commanded by Colonel Trần Quý Hai. The division was formed in 1951 from pre-existing units in Thừa Thiên just north of Route One, and became operational in the summer of 1952.
By early summer 1953, thanks in part to the wind-down of hostilities in the Korean War, the French command had "sufficient reserves" at hand to begin clearing the Viet Minh back from Route One. They assembled 30 battalions, two armored regiments and two artillery regiments for one of the largest operations of the conflict. Called Operation Camargue, it was named for the sandy marshland to the west of Marseille, France. The difficult terrain was to prove the decisive factor and gave a major advantage to the one Viet Minh regiment tasked with defending Route One.
From a 100-meter (109 yd) deep beach of "hard sand" the French landing forces were to advance through a series of dunes. The dunes were up to 20 meters (22 yd) high and interspersed with precipices, ditches and a handful of small villages. Beyond this was an 800-meter (875 yd) belt of pagodas and temples, which war correspondent Bernard Fall described as having excellent defensive potential. Beyond these temples was Route One itself with a series of closely packed and fortified villages, including Tân An, Mỹ Thủy, Van Trinh and Lai-Ha. This network of villages and hedgerows made both ground and air surveillance difficult. Across from Route One the villages continued amid an area of quicksand, swamps and bogs, which would stop all but a few of the vehicles at the disposal of the French. Although there were roads, most were mined or damaged. Throughout the area, the civilian population remained and provided a further complication for the French high command.
French order of battle
... ten infantry regiments, two airborne battalions, the bulk of three armored regiments, one squadron of armored launches and one armored train, four artillery battalions, thirty-four transport aircraft, six reconnaissance aircraft and twenty-two fighter bombers, and about twelve Navy ships, including three LST's—this force was not inferior in size to some of those used in landing operations in World War II in the Pacific.
— Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy, 1961. p. 144.
The French divided their forces into four groupement mobiles ("mobile groups"): A through D. Group A consisted of Mobile Group 14, which contained 3rd Amphibious Group, 2nd Marine Commando, 2nd Battalion 1st Colonial Parachute Regiment, and 3rd Vietnamese Parachute Battalion. Operation Camargue was to be one of the final proving grounds for the use of French armour during the war. It was to land on the beach in line with the center of Route One. Meanwhile, Group B was to advance over land from the west of the north-east facing beach. This group consisted of Mobile Group Central Vietnam's 6th Moroccan Spahis, 2nd Amphibious Group, a tank platoon from 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment, and two infantry companies from the Quang-Tri military base. Group C was to advance from the south-west into the back of Van Trinh through the swamps, and consisted of the 9th Moroccan Tabor, 27th Vietnamese Infantry Battalion, 2nd Battalion of the 4th Moroccan Rifle Regiment, 1 Commando, a tank platoon of the Moroccan Colonials, an armoured patrol boat platoon, and an LCM platoon. Group D consisted of 3rd Battalion of the 3rd Algerian Rifles, the 7th Amphibious Group, and a commando group, and was to land at the south-east end of the beach, below Group A. These forces in total formed "two amphibious forces, three land-borne groupments and one airborne force" all of which was commanded by General Leblanc.
Securing Route One
French landing
On 27 July 1953, the French landing craft departed from their assembly points, and by 04:00 on the following had begun disembarking 160 amphibious landing craft belonging to Group A's 3rd Amphibious opposite the coastline. By 06:00, these vehicles had landed on the beach and proceeded to occupy sand ridges overlooking the dunes beyond. Proceeding into the dunes, the vehicles of 3rd Amphibious became stuck in the sand; in the meantime, other regular infantry elements of Group A were experiencing more difficulties in the sea, taking two extra hours to reach the beach. Thus unsupported, elements of 3rd Amphibious that either disembarked floundering vehicles or were pushed, managed to escape the dunes and advance between Tân An and Mỹ Thủy. The French amphibious vehicles were the World War II-era 29-C cargo carriers, nicknamed the "crab" or "crabe" and LVT 4 or 4As, known as "alligators". The latter were armed with two .30 caliber and two .50 caliber Browning machine guns and an M20 recoilless rifle. While the alligators were sufficiently armoured and well suited to the water, they struggled on land. In contrast, the crab had difficulty in water and its large size presented too great a target on land; however, it was lighter and more maneuverable, except in paddy fields where its suspension became clogged with vegetation.
While Group A's forward elements were breaching the dune barrier unopposed, two of Group B's battalions crossed the Van Trịnh Cănal. By 07:45, when they made visual contact with the crabs and alligators of Group A, they had succeeded in sealing off the northern escape route of Regiment 95. By 08:30, the 6th Moroccan Spahis also reached the canal, having had difficulty crossing the swamps on the landward side with their M24 Chaffee tanks. No French units, as yet, had made any major contact with the Viet Minh. A minor fire-fight had taken place on the southern edge of Group B's advance when an Algerian company exchanged fire with 20–30 Viet Minh and suffered the first French fatalities. Simultaneously, Group C had advanced into the center of the area of operation, and executed "the most complicated maneuver of the operation". This involved crossing Route One and sealing off the land side of the operational area, and was completed by 08:30.
Group D, finally, was tasked with advancing south from its landing point to close off an escape route that ran between the sea and an inland lagoon towards the city of Hué. Landing at 04:30, the group made quick progress through the beach and dunes, secured the small city of Thé Chi Dong and hit the north coast of the lagoon by 05:30, thereby sealing off that escape route with no enemy contact. The final act of sealing the noose was to move some of the French Navy vessels north to the Vietnamese villages of Ba-Lang and An-Hoi where any attempt by Regiment 95 to flee by sea would have taken place.