Hell on Highway 19:
The Destruction of Groupement Mobile 100
By Arnold Blumberg
The Paris government’s strategy of creating a military situation that would allow for an end to the war in Indochina without a takeover of the country by the communists evaporated with the fall of the Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. With the loss of that bastion, over 11,000 elite French soldiers were taken captive, with another 5,000 dead or wounded. The disaster at Dien Bien Phu, together with the losses in men and treasure over the previous eight years, meant the French were finished in Southeast Asia and would be pulling out as quickly as possible.
Hoping to capitalize on their stunning success and gain as many concessions as possible from Paris, the communist Viet Minh ordered their forces to continue to engage the French military in order to inflict the maximum amount of casualties on them. That tactic of “fighting while negotiating” would keep the pressure on at the settlement talks being held in Geneva.
At the operational level, the fall of Dien Bien Phu brought on the withdrawal of all French forces from the Central Highlands of Vietnam. Among the units ordered to hurriedly evacuate from there was Groupement Mobile 100 (GM100 or Mobile Group 100), It was a mix of motorized infantry and artillery contingents that had been combating the Viet Minh near the town of An Khê for the past nine months.
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