No, what is interesting about Dien Bien Phu is that the soldiers had basically fortified a valley, and the Viet Minh were capable of shelling the site from the hills.
Now what kind of asshole builds a fort in a location where it's easily targetted by artillery?
I have the book at home, so now I am just writing from a vague memory of what I read (about 15 years ago).
Well, according to McCoy the French in Indochina recruited local hillpeople to hold the ground. These marquis troops were allied to the French as long as the French supplied markets to their primary products- opiates. So essentially the French had bought out the indigenous hill people in return from buying their drugs.
However the deal went sour. Not sure why, and the tribespeople went to the other side and gave the hills up to the Viet Minh who were able to put artillery on the hill and shell the crap out of the French.
That said, the CIA supposedly helped Nationalist Chinese troops escape south. While we know that most of the Nationalist/KMT troops went to Taiwan after the Chinese came to power, the KMY also slipped over the border into Burma's Shan Plateau.
The Shan Plateau is one of the most densily forested areas of the world with very little infrastructure and numerous ethnic groups. The CHinese came and the CIA used them to cause havoc in China, launching border strikes from Burma. Most of these groups stayed, married locals and got into the opium business. The Chinese, naturally, retaliated by supporting the Burmese Communist Party as an oppostion group within the Shan Plateau. Both armies, the Shan and the BCP have been engaged in both the drug trade and in opposition to the Burmese national government- a government of military dictators that have had little control over the Shan Plateau through most of it's history. From this region, drugs are trafficked over the border into Thailand, and finally streamed to markets in the US and Europe.
