A1 Hill (also called Eliane 2 by French troops) is the site of themost famous battle of Dien Bien Phu campaign. The 32-metre-high hill,covering 82,000 sq.m. and located 500m west of the headquarters of theFrench during the Dien Bien Phu campaign, was the scene of the fiercestfighting between Vietnamese and French armies in 1954. A report by radioThe Voice of Vietnam.
With other eastern hills, A1 created asolid shield protecting the central sector of the entrenched camp ofDien Bien Phu, the bunker of General de Castries.
From A1, onecan have a panoramic view of Dien Bien city, other hills like D1, C2,C3, E1 and E2, the bunker of General de Castries, Muong Thanh airport,A1 field and A1 cemetery.
This base was considered an ironshield to defend the De Castries’ Command Headquarters. For the army ofVietnam, it was indeed the most difficult position to attack.
Over56 days and nights of the Dien Bien Phu campaign, the Vietnamese armyhad to spend 39 days and nights on this hill, with over 2,000 soldierssacrificing their lives, to eventually seize this position.
Today, there is a stone walkway leading to the top of the hill, fromwhich one can still see the trench of the French army next to a barbedfence covered with dead leaves.
Pham Ba Mieu, 84-year-oldveteran, still remembers the battle 60 years ago which his platooninvolved in the fight on A1 hill from beginning to end.
"Wefought day and night. Sometimes we had nothing to eat but we weredetermined to fight against the enemy. It was not easy for us to ignitethe explosive charge. It was hard to win every metre of land on A1 hill.We had to build a system of fortifications from Ta Leng to the hill. Wehad to fight to win. It was only after having destroyed two tanks thatwe could pave a way to destroy bunkers that were placed every 10metres,” Mieu said.
The top of the hill is now a museum in the open air retaining traces of the battle.
LoThi Sinh, a guide of Dien Bien Phu museum, introduced visitors to oneof the two tanks that the French army had used to make theircounterattack. It was shot by Luu Viet Huu’s bazookas Company 600 in theearly morning on April 1, 1954. Located next to the tank is the tomb offour soldiers who participated in the attack that year, she said.
To seize the hill, the army deployed an intelligent and audaciousinitiative. They dug tunnel in which they placed a ton of explosives toblow up the command bunker.
Twenty-five soldiers were given thetask of digging the tunnel. The more they advanced, the more they becamechoked due to oxygen fault. The following fanned the one before him.The excavated soil was placed in a bag and then shipped out to fortifythe trenches. After 15 days, the soldiers dug 47 metres of the tunnel.On May 6, at 20:30, they were ordered to blow up the tunnel. Theexplosion shook the hill, killing an enemy company and shook all thosewho were still holed up in bunkers.
"Seizing the opportunity,our troops stormed the hill. In all, they annihilated out 850 enemysoldiers, completely wiping out fouor well-trained combat battalions ofthe French colonialists,” Sinh said.
The tunnel that explodedonce was restored in 2004 measuring 18m in width and 13m in depth as anevidence of the glorious history of Vietnam.
A relief has been installed to mark the boundary of the two armies at the battle 60 years ago.
Thecommand bunker of the French army on A1 Hill is still there, blackenedby time. The 4,000 metres of outdoor trenching, barbed fences, 10 of 37bunkers of the French army and other remnants on the hill always tellthe story about the Dien Bien Phu campaign which poet To Huuimmortalised in this verse " 56 days and nights digging the mountain,sleeping in shelters, eating rice balls in the incessant rain nights "to create a golden page of Vietnam's history.-VNA