Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys (37 page)
Read Amazing Tales for Making Men Out of Boys Online
Authors: Neil Oliver
Mehmet would later parade a head upon a lance, saying it was that of the fallen emperor. No confirmed trace of the remains of Constantine XI—Constantine Palaiologos, in Christ true Emperor and Autocrat of the Romans—was ever seen again.
As had been promised weeks before—and as the custom of medieval armies dictated—the city was plundered and its population of 50,000 taken as slaves. At the great Church of St. Sophia, work was got under way almost immediately to turn it away from Christ and toward Allah. Hardly a building survived the onrushing wave of the Muslim soldiers.
In time, Mehmet would rebuild the place—seemingly intent on making it a city of wonders once more. Muslim observers would
be stunned at the result—a place neither entirely of Islam nor of Christianity, but one man’s attempt to recreate something he had never seen.
In the wider world, it was the image of the murderous, marauding Turk that was fixed. A Christian empire had been erased and one of Islam completed. The future of a world split between the two had begun.
The greatest defenses can be overcome. Ancient fortresses can be made to yield and to give up their secrets. But luck is always part of the story, good and bad. The most careful preparations might not cover every last detail. The bravest and most ruthless execution of well-laid plans may not be enough to carry the day—without luck. In the end it so often comes down to a pass left unguarded, a door unbolted.
While mindful of the fact that his fate—and that of his companions—could never be entirely in their own hands in such a dangerous and unpredictable place, Scott set great store by studious attention to every last detail of his plans. He was determined to address in advance as many of the likely challenges as possible—and to do so, he developed an open mind about new technologies.
For one thing, his past experiences in the Antarctic had turned him against the use of animals. Squeamish about their harsh treatment in cruel conditions from the first, nothing he had seen during the
Discovery
expedition of 1901–4 had made him change his mind. He knew dogs were used routinely in Scandinavia and throughout the Arctic Circle, but nothing he had seen for himself persuaded him to rely on anything with four legs. He knew, too, that Shackleton had taken ponies with
him aboard the
Nimrod
and that most of them had had to be slaughtered on the ice as they were overcome by the conditions one by one. Scott never hardened his heart enough to see dogs and horses as beasts of burden, and when they suffered, he suffered with them. He had brought ponies and sled dogs aboard the
Terra Nova
almost because convention seemed to demand their presence on the ice. But he was a man with an eye to the future and to progress and he had another technique in mind for hauling equipment.
He had learned about experimental motor tractors being developed by an English engineer. Most interesting from Scott’s point of view was their use of a basic “caterpillar track,” a steel band that enabled them to climb and drag themselves over obstacles in a way that wheeled vehicles could not. In 1908 he had sent
Discovery
veteran Engineer Lieutenant Reginald Skelton to the French Alps to carry out tests on the prototype. By the time Scott was making definite plans for the
Terra Nova
expedition he was open to the possibility that the tractors might make all the difference, pulling huge loads over the worst terrain without the need to cause suffering to either man or beast. This was the future.
On arrival in Cape Evans, three motor tractors were among the first pieces of equipment to be unloaded from the ship. The first two were put to work at once and quickly showed their potential by pulling tons of material across the ice toward the camp. But a portent of disaster—and of the danger of discarding the lessons of old wisdom in favor of new—came when the third and largest of the machines was being unloaded and moved into position. While a team of men prepared to man-haul it away from the ship prior to putting it to work with the other two, the ice cracked and gave way beneath it. Before anyone had time to react, it sank in 100 fathoms of water. Writing about the event in his journal, Scott described the loss as a “disaster.”
The rest of the unloading and early preparations went off without
incident, however, and he eventually shrugged off the initial shock of the loss. He was sure of his men and sure of his plans. They would overcome the challenge posed by the Antarctic and achieve the last great victory of the age. In a letter to Joseph Kinsey, the expedition’s fixer back in Lyttelton, New Zealand, Scott wrote: “They are a fine lot all round. I could not wish for better.”
A new hut was erected as the base of operations—50 feet long by 25 feet wide by 9 feet high. Inside it was subdivided into two—a wardroom for the officers and scientists and a mess deck for the men. Scott would object even to the use of the word “hut” to describe the structure, since in his opinion it was the finest building yet constructed in the polar regions. There was a linoleum floor inside and the roof was covered in waterproof rubber. The double-thickness walls were insulated with bags of seaweed and sacks of volcanic sand were used as draught-excluders. The interior was lit by acetylene gas and there was a fully working stove and cooking range. The scientists’ workspace was equipped with all the latest kit to enable them do their work as thoroughly as if they were at home. As far as Scott was concerned, their expedition would stand as a landmark, the arrival of civilization in a primitive world.
But in another letter to Kinsey, Scott revealed that the loss of the tractor had preyed on his mind. It also seemed he had the first inkling that new technology alone might not be enough.
The loss of one of our motor sledges was a bad blow, as the other two have proved themselves efficient by dragging big loads of stores on shore, but, even so, as I watch them working here I feel rather than know that I was right not to place serious reliance on these machines…
While Scott and his team scurried around like black ants on that landscape, the Antarctic waited. The home team was ready as well.
The time had come. It was Saturday March 13, 1954, and the preparations were complete. In position all around the high ground of the slopes surrounding the massive bowl-shaped valley were tens of thousands of soldiers. Hundreds of heavy artillery pieces—which had been dragged laboriously up steep mountain tracks the enemy believed impassable—were primed and ready for action, overlooking the valley floor. Food supplies, medicines, ammunition and the rest of the paraphernalia required for a siege had been brought into this most remote of locations on foot and on bicycle by uncounted hordes of men, women and children—willing and unwilling alike. It had been a mobilization of people-power the like of which the world has seldom seen. The last of the civilians had been evacuated from the area and all who remained now were warriors.
In his command post Ho Chi Minh, President of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, was surrounded by his staff. They watched him closely now as he prepared to speak. Legend has it that he slowly removed his helmet and turned it upside down. Placing it on the table in front of him, he paused briefly and then put one clenched fist inside it.
“The French…are here,” he said quietly, without looking up.
Next he ran one index finger slowly around the rim, this time raising his eyes to meet the gaze of his men, each in turn, as he did so.
“And we…are here.” He allowed himself to smile at this, and his men smiled back at him.
The coming fight, he told them, would be like the attack of a tiger upon a trapped elephant. Again and again from the darkness of the forest the tiger would reach out to slash and cut at the limbs and belly of its much more powerful, but immobile prey. Slowly, slowly, the elephant would bleed to death.
A defining moment—perhaps
the
defining moment—in the history of Southeast Asia was rising above the horizon like the sunrise of a new day. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was about to begin.
The French had been dominant in Vietnam since 1883. The country had originally emerged as an independent nation in ad 939, when its erstwhile Chinese masters decided to withdraw from the place. Apart from a short period in the 1400s when the Chinese returned to their old haunt, it was self-governing for around 900 years. At first it called itself Dai Co Vet—the Great Viet State—or sometimes the much older name of Annam. In 1802, it took on the name Vietnam for the first time.
During the 1600s French Roman Catholic missionaries had arrived to begin converting thousands of the population. They fell foul of the Vietnamese authorities, however, and for the next two centuries were subjected to periodic persecution and oppression. From 1858 onward the French sent soldiers into the country. Officially they were there to protect the missionaries, but in reality it was the start of colonization. France had plans for an Asian empire. By 1883 they had forced their will over the whole country, compelling Vietnam’s rulers to sign a treaty splitting it into three parts—which became known collectively as French Indochina.
The German conquest of France at the start of World War II enabled Japan, Germany’s ally, to take control of the territory for a while. But their eventual defeat in 1945 opened the door to a new name and a new ideology. Ho Chi Minh had been in China, but returned to his homeland at the head of the Viet Minh—the Revolutionary League for the Independence of Vietnam. Emperor Bao Dai, who had been humiliated by the Japanese occupation of his country, stepped aside to make way for the new man.
British and Chinese troops had entered Vietnam following the Japanese surrender, however, and were soon joined by the French,
eager to reassert their control. Ho Chi Minh and his followers refused to accept this reoccupation and the so-called Vietnam War began in 1946. Two years later, France had established a Nationalist Government led by Bao Dai.
Gradually, and with a depressing momentum, the nations of the West lined up to support the Nationalists. The Communist states, predictably enough and following the steps of a now familiar dance, made clear their backing for Ho Chi Minh and his Democratic opposition.
Two opposing governments then began fighting for control of Vietnam—eventually prompting the world’s great powers to schedule a peace conference for April 1954, in Geneva, Switzerland, to decide the fate of the country and to try to end their own cold war in Asia. Due to attend were representatives of the State of Vietnam, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Kampuchea (now Cambodia), Laos, China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States of America.
In the meantime, both combatants in the war decided a last spectacular victory was required to ensure an upper hand at the peace talks. France believed it had come up with the right place and the right plan.
Time was running out for the colonists. They’d been fighting in Vietnam off and on since 1946, but if anyone had the upper hand it was the Communists under Ho Chi Minh and his gifted military commander—the teacher-turned-soldier General Vo Nguyen Giap. The French commander in Indochina, General Henri Navarre, had inherited a demoralized army that no longer had any clear objectives beyond its own survival. The Communist forces had waged a successful guerrilla campaign, roamed freely throughout the countryside of the north and enjoyed the support of the Soviet Union and her allies. It was Navarre’s job to try to regain some kind of initiative before it was too late.
As 1953 drew to a close, Navarre and his advisers identified the village of Dien Bien Phu, in a remote corner of north-west Vietnam near the borders with Laos and China, as the place for one last roll of the dice. Located toward the rear of their enemy’s territory, it promised a double opportunity—to disrupt Ho Chi Minh’s supply lines into the neighboring French protectorate of Laos and to lure his massed forces into an all-or-nothing pitched battle. If France could create an attractive enough target, the thinking went, the Communists would have to attack it. Provided that target was strong enough, it would be the springboard for destroying whatever force was sent against it.
The 10-mile-long valley floor would, Navarre hoped, be turned into a killing field from which the Communists would never escape. If it proved successful, Navarre would be able to use Dien Bien Phu as the blueprint for dealing with the Communist insurgency in the rest of the country.
It sounded simple if you said it quickly enough—but in reality the plan posed enormous logistical problems and challenges for the French. First of all they had to get a large fighting force into the area. Given the location of Dien Bien Phu, and the nature of the surrounding countryside, the only way to move men into the area quickly was by air. The Japanese had effectively started the job for the French by building an airstrip there during World War II. The river valley was flat and wide and therefore presented an ideal location for an air-supplied base—and by March 1954 the French presence had grown to almost 16,000 men, almost all of whom had either been flown or parachuted in. They were French regulars, including members of the elite parachute regiments; French Foreign Legionnaires; veterans of fighting in Algeria and Morocco; and Vietnamese soldiers loyal to France and the Nationalist Government of Bao Dai.