THEN TOO, IT MATTERED THAT GIAP HAD COME UP AGAINST A FORMIDABLE opposing commander. With each successive victory in early 1951 de Lattre's prestige rose. His expressions of vanity and his explosions of anger at underlings did not cease-he fired one stenographer with the words, "You don't know how to dress, Miss, and your hair is dirty"-and in the officer corps murmurings could be heard about the "reckless prima donna" who led them.25 But de Lattre showed again that he was a man of action and courage who feared nobody, and even those who disliked him took their hats off to him. Some journalists likened his Vinh Yen victory to the miracle of the Marne in 1914. Admittedly, he hadn't gained one inch of new territory, but without him, many were convinced, Hanoi would have fallen to the Viet Minh. To the colons in both Hanoi and Saigon, he was the hero they had long sought; to the politicians and much of the press in Paris, he was the general who might yet save French Indochina. He was Le Roi Jean.

He was also the proud father. In early May, he had personally decorated Bernard with the Croix de Guerre, and he never hesitated to wax lyrical before reporters and others about the young man's exploits in the field. In one such session, with a Belgian journalist on May 30, in the midst of the fighting in Ninh Binh, the general discussed the battlefield situation and referred with particular pride to the role being played by Bernard, who was leading a platoon of Vietnamese troops. The interview was nearing its end when an assistant burst into the room, his face ashen. De Lattre took one look at him and, before the aide could open his mouth, exclaimed: "Bernard is dead!"26

It was true. Bernard had been killed earlier that day, on the banks of the Day River near Nam Dinh. His company had been ordered to hold a rocky hillock, and during the night Bernard had taken up a position on the summit, along with a Vietnamese corporal and a French lieutenant named Mercier. Sometime after one o'clock, the corporal was wounded in a small-arms firefight, and soon thereafter Viet Minh troops could be seen advancing in the plain below. At about three o'clock, mortar shells began to fall near the rock; one found its mark, mortally wounding Mercier and instantly killing Bernard. The wounded corporal helped carry the bodies to a cave at the foot of the rock, then returned to his post to continue the fight.27

De Lattre was shattered. To his wife, then in Paris, he telegraphed: "Forgive me for not having been able to protect him." A few days later he flew back to France with the casket containing his only son. A funeral followed at the Chapel Saint-Louis, at the Invalides, and at the request of Madame de Lattre, the service also honored all Frenchmen who had fallen in Indochina. The next day Bernard was buried at his father's birthplace, Mouilleron-en-Pareds.

In time, the devastating effect of the son's death on the general's outlook would become clear for all to see. Initially, though, he masked his despair, stressing at every opportunity that both his Christian faith and his faith in the importance of France's mission in Indochina were undiminished. Bernard had given his life for the most noble of causes, he insisted-perhaps, some thought, a bit too insistently.

Upon his return from France, he threw himself into his tasks with even more energy than before, driving his aides to exhaustion. (There were subtle hints too that his own physical stamina was suffering-a sign, perhaps, that the cancer that would claim his life was already at work within. He still toiled deep into the night, but his vigor slackened in the later hours.) Dissatisfied with the pace of construction of the De Lattre Line, he committed more manpower to the task. Concerned about the level of Viet Minh infiltration inside the delta, he ordered stepped-up efforts aimed at "cleaning" the interior. These "nettoyage" sweeps achieved considerable success but did not attain the full effect because of the absence of any civil organization capable of taking control of "cleansed" areas. De Lattre blamed Bao Dai's government, headed by Prime Minister Tran Van Huu, for this absence, for not doing enough to build up an effective administrative structure, and for failing to arouse broad popular support. He demanded the immediate firing of ministers he considered ineffectual; Huu, widely regarded as among the most pro-French of officials, resisted.28

The old Franco-Vietnamese political problems had in fact not gone away. From his very first speech in Vietnam, on December 19, and at all points thereafter, de Lattre had stressed that Vietnam was free and that his mission was merely to help it protect that freedom. Imperial control was no more. As he told Huu and other Vietnamese ministers during a tour of the Vinh Yen battlefield in mid-April: "Some of you may look upon these blockhouses as the outward sign of the permanence of the French occupation. On the contrary, Mr. Prime Minister, they are the ramparts behind which the independence of Vietnam will be built up."29 Huu was skeptical, as were others in his entourage. For them, as for a great many non-Communist Vietnamese that spring, France still showed scant signs of granting Vietnam anything that looked like real independence. The French had ceded control of the treasury and the customs service to the Bao Dai administration, but the high commissioner's office plainly exercised ultimate control on key issues, not least those pertaining to the war effort. His dictatorial methods also had begun to grate. Many Vietnamese accordingly still took a wait-and-see attitude-not least Bao Dai himself, who spent much of the first half of the year on the French Riviera, polishing his tennis game. For his part, Huu, a competent administrator who lacked charisma, had little following among the people and seemed largely unperturbed by the fact.

De Lattre called them attentistes (literally, "those who wait," or fence sitters), the Vietnamese who refused to make the necessary effort. By the middle of the year, he used the term more and more often, against more and more people. Bitter, he said he had come to Vietnam to assist the Associated States (the euphemistic term now increasingly in use, referring to the pseudogovernments of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia) cement their already-granted independence within the French Union and to crush those who sought to impose a Communist system on a freedom-loving people. And what help did the Vietnamese provide? Precious little. They were not doing their share, were not all that interested in the struggle against Ho Chi Minh; they were even, he charged, stabbing him in the back. Huu's government was apathetic and weak, and middle-class Vietnamese-the very people who had the most stake in the outcome of the war-were not signing up for the army. Despite a desperate shortage of medics, for example, not a single doctor could be induced to sign up.30

It was his standard refrain in the summer months, and there's no doubt Bernard's death played a role in both the nature and frequency of his outbursts. Already in June, he began to assert that the Viet Minh attacks on the Day River-those that killed Bernard-were made possible by the treachery of the Catholic bishops at Phat Diem. He offered little evidence for the charge. More generally, de Lattre now declared that French officers and soldiers had sacrificed themselves needlessly to defend and protect a selfish and mistrustful Vietnamese people. "If this constant sacrificing of our youths' flower does not prove us sincere in our desire to give Vietnam independence," he asked, with scarcely disguised contempt, "what further is necessary to drive the point home?" In a "bona fide war," he would at least have the consolation that his son had died a heroic death. Instead, Bernard had been "offered up on behalf of an ungrateful people," who not only had failed to warn the French troops that there were Viet Minh in the vicinity, but had "booed and hissed 'vendus' ['sell-out'] at the Vietnamese soldiers accompanying them."31

Maybe the general deep down inside felt some personal responsibility for the death. Rumors circulated quietly that he himself had assigned his son to that particular battalion, in order to break up Bernard's affair with a Vietnamese woman who once had been a mistress of Emperor Bao Dai.32

To remind all and sundry of the sacrifices being made by the French Union for the defense of Vietnam, de Lattre ordered a series of commemorative services be held for his fallen son, at various points around the country. On July 5, for example, there was a solemn mass in St. Joseph's Cathedral in Hanoi. Reluctant Vietnamese ministers were compelled to fly to Tonkin-how could one decline such an invitation?-as were equally reluctant members of the diplomatic community, most of whom weren't informed of the event until eight o'clock the night before. Hasty arrangements were made, and the aircraft left Saigon at four-thirty A.M. in order to make it in time for the service. After everyone else in the cathedral had been seated, and following an imposing silence, the general made a dramatic entrance and took his place next to the bishop. A Trappist monk delivered an eloquent address built on the theme of Bernard as a symbol of France's contribution to the preservation of liberty.33

The next week de Lattre returned to the theme, this time at an awards ceremony at a school for privileged Vietnamese boys-none of whom, experience had taught him, could be expected to join the army. Prime Minister Huu was in attendance. De Lattre reminded the students that Frenchmen were dying on their behalf (he left out the fact that most of those dying were legionnaires and imperial troops) and said there could be no room in this struggle for attentistes-"those miserable persons who want independence without war." This was the war for Vietnam's future, he declared, and France would carry the fight only if Vietnamese elites joined with her. "Certain people pretend that Vietnam cannot be independent because it is part of the French Union. Not true! In our universe, and in our world of today, there can be no nations absolutely independent. There are only fruitful interdependencies and harmful dependencies.... Young men of Vietnam, to whom I feel as close as I do to the youth of my native land, the moment has come for you to defend your country."34

It was a stirring message by a supremely talented orator. A standing ovation and raucous applause followed. But de Lattre knew that occasional speeches were not enough. That same month he prevailed upon Bao Dai and Huu to decree a "general mobilization" to conscript sixty thousand men for two months of training. This decree and de Lattre's continual pronouncements were not without effect-recruitment into the Vietnamese National Army continued to move upward through the summer and fall-but the fundamental problem remained: Altogether too many privileged Vietnamese were unwilling to fight and die for Bao Dai's government. Many sought to avoid military service completely; others pulled every available string to steer clear of combat duty. Only half the five hundred student-reserve officer candidates selected by the Ministry of Defense for the first increment of the mobilization ever reported for duty at the officer training centers in Thu Duc and Nam Dinh.35 Government bureaucrats too operated with what the French saw as a maddening diffidence and a tendency to focus their energies on political intrigue rather than on fighting the challenge posed by Ho Chi Minh's forces.

V

IF IN DE LATTRE'S VIEW THE VIETNAMESE WERE UNGRATEFUL, INSINCERE, and even treacherous, he had hardly better things to say about the Americans. The latter, indeed, in his mind were in good measure responsible for the attentisme problem. Repeatedly he criticized American journalists for questioning France's commitment to granting the Vietnamese full independence, and it irritated him that the Truman administration sought to administer its aid directly to the Vietnamese and not through the French. Still more annoying was the U.S. legation's constant trumpeting of American economic assistance, which made France seem "like a poor cousin in Viet eyes." De Lattre banned any mention of U.S. economic aid in the French-language newspapers in Vietnam, and he lashed out at the self-congratulatory pronouncements of the Economic Aid Mission (STEM), which he said was engaging in propaganda and political work in addition to producing economic reports. American representatives sought to undermine his authority, he charged, and to implant themselves in Vietnam in place of France. When an American embassy official protested that this was Communist propaganda, de Lattre replied that even Communists were sometimes right.36

Most upsetting of all to de Lattre and his staff were the activities of the U.S. Information Service (USIS), a State Department program charged with the conduct of public diplomacy-that is, propaganda. It outraged the French that so many Vietnamese were enrolling in the USIS's English-language classes, particularly when so few of them had adequate command of French. Was this one more sign that the United States sought to supplant France in Vietnam? French officials thought so. And why was it that the USIS's first translation effort was a history of the United States? "This seems either absurd or offensive to most French who have found that even literate Viets know little of [the] history of their own country and almost nothing of [the] history of France," remarked the acting French diplomatic counselor in Saigon. "To expect them to read American history seems [the] height of national egotism on [the] part of Americans."37

Secretary of State Dean Acheson scoffed at the French complaints. "If the Viets 'know nothing or little' of their own history or that of France, this is a problem for the Ministry of Education and incidentally one which should have been taken up long ago," the secretary of state commented acidly. It was not America's problem.38 De Lattre, however, was undaunted. At the opening of the USIS's new reading room on July 23, he took the opportunity to warn that there was no room in Vietnam for American political or cultural or economic competition. "Because of this ... simple fact-war-there can no longer be any struggle for influence any more than there can be rivalry of interests," he said.

There is only one struggle in Asia just as there is only one defense in Europe. Every action of the free peoples must combine in that struggle; and America's influence in Indochina is exercised within the framework of the efforts made against the common enemy. This necessary framework, without which there can be neither organization nor dynamic cohesion nor success, is at the present time furnished by the structure of the French Union. Nothing must weaken that structure, for if it should disappear there would arise-as all admit-a situation and a regime the first effects of which would be the elimination of every American influence as of every French influence.

As always, he sought also to connect the two Asian wars: "America and France are today giving the world examples of enterprises which are as magnanimous and disinterested as the principles and splendor of their cultures," he declared. "It is in a just war, at the head of the United Nations in Korea, that America has thrown the preponderant weight of her power. It is solely to honor her given word, to respect obligations inscribed in the constitution of the French Union, that France has undertaken in Indochina the defense of an area essential to the free world."

Disputable claims, certainly, but hardly evidence of deep Franco-American discord. According to a British onlooker, however, the tension was palpable throughout the ceremony, from the moment early in his speech when de Lattre said: "Can I pay an equal tribute to United States civilization? I must confess that I have had little time to study it." U.S. minister Donald Heath, who in a series of recent speeches had spoken in praise of French culture, made a quick exit after the event. The short-statured American might not have shown up at all had he known de Lattre's private characterization of him: "ce sacre petit bonhomme d'un petit Consul" ("this bloody little chap who mistakes himself for a consul").39

No one was spared the general's vitriol, it seemed, not even his top deputies. In late July, de Lattre accused his second in command, General Raoul Salan, a seasoned officer with long experience in colonial intelligence work, of being secretly pro-Communist, and of playing poker and smoking opium. Salan admitted to taking opium on occasion to relieve stress but denied the other charges. No leftist poker aficionado he. In hushed tones, Salan told the British consul in Hanoi, A. G. Trevor-Wilson, that de Lattre had become extremely neurotic and sour, with hardly a good word for anyone.40

Was de Lattre's bitterness a passing phase? The question was topic A in the diplomatic community in Saigon that summer and among the journalists who gathered daily for drinks at the Continental Hotel's terrace bar-the regulars included Tillman Durdin of The New York Times and his wife, Peggy, a freelancer; Lucien Bodard of France-Soir; Robert Shaplen of The New Yorker; and Max Clos of the Associated Press. He was still grieving, some of them said; give him time. No, others insisted, this went beyond the loss of Bernard. De Lattre despaired at the size of the obstacles that still stood in the way of victory in the war, these analysts believed, notwithstanding his success against Giap's offensives earlier in the year. Paris was not delivering anywhere near the reinforcements he needed, and the VNA was not ready to make up the difference-and wouldn't be ready for a long time to come, if ever. U.S. aid, crucial to the enterprise, had been stepped up since the start of the year, which was good, but the Americans' penchant for sticking their noses into everything was less than helpful. In other words, went this line of argument, de Lattre had determined he could not get enough from the two players that mattered most to him: the Bao Dai administration and the U.S. government.

This interpretation of his mood seems correct. In support of it there is also this: The general's health was now in steep decline, the cancer cells advancing rapidly inside his body. Did he know he was gravely ill? It's hard to be sure-the formal diagnosis wouldn't come until October-but associates could see that all was not well. Surely his illness added to his frustrations, to his feelings of resentment, to his ill temper. Never a patient man, he now seemed intolerant of even minor delays and setbacks. Yet the old personal magnetism hadn't disappeared, at least not among those who saw him only intermittently or met him for the first time. For them, he could still radiate charm and sincerity. When Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York and the Republican presidential nominee in 1948, visited Saigon in July, he fell under the general's spell. "He is the most exciting personality I have met in many years," Dewey enthused afterward.41

So impressed was Dewey that he suggested de Lattre visit the United States personally to make the case for the vital importance of France's struggle. De Lattre had been entertaining the idea himself. The road to victory in the war, he was convinced, led through Washington, but the Truman team still needed to be convinced of the full importance of Vietnam in the world picture. He trusted no one else to make the case. In September, accordingly, he left Saigon for the American capital, stopping in France en route. British officials thought he looked tired and worn during a dinner in Paris on the fourth but were impressed by the case he laid out, by his passionate defense of French policy. Also impressed were two prominent Americans he saw in the French capital, General Dwight Eisenhower, who had succeeded him as Western Europe's top general and was now NATO commander, and Henry Cabot Lodge, Republican senator from Massachusetts. Both men accepted de Lattre's claim that France wasn't fighting a selfish colonial war but was defending one of the hinges of the allied front against the East. Both agreed that France deserved greater material and political support in the struggle.42

VI

HE ARRIVED BY SHIP, ENTERING NEW YORK HARBOR ON SEPTEMBER 13 aboard the stately ile de France. Resplendent in kepi and pigskin gloves, he posed for photos with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who were returning from location filming for The African Queen, in which Bogart starred with Katharine Hepburn. De Lattre then asked for a picture of himself with the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop. The massed photographers were quick to oblige, and de Lattre turned his chiseled profile to the lenses and gestured theatrically toward his country's copper gift to America. A fawning cover story in Henry Luce's virulently anti-Communist Time called the photo request a "deliberately significant gesture: the general had freedom-and mutual aid-very much in mind." For nine months, the magazine enthused, de Lattre "has been fighting one of freedom's bloodiest and most crucial battles," and he was now coming to the United States to get more aid for Indochina, "the rampart against the Communist surge toward Singapore and the Indies."43

That was precisely the message de Lattre wanted to convey during his two-week stay. At every stop, he framed the Indochina struggle in Cold War terms, as a war against "Red colonialism." Just as United Nations forces were fighting the Communist world dictatorship in Korea, so French troops were fighting it in Indochina; these were two fronts in the same struggle. But in Indochina France fought alone. She had willingly assumed the burden of war in Indochina at a tremendous cost to her manpower and financial resources, and while America had provided essential assistance, more must come, in the form of larger and prompter arms deliveries. To assuage American concerns regarding France's ultimate plans, de Lattre insisted that his government had no colonial ambitions in Indochina but was doing everything possible to build up the strength and independence of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.44

The message went over well, in large part, both inside and outside the halls of power, but behind the scenes there were tensions. In Washington, where the general got the number one treatment-honor guard, military band, howitzer salute, receptions, dinners-President Truman told him he regarded the Indochina struggle as "the same fight for liberty" as the war in Korea and pledged full support for the French effort. Secretary of State Acheson offered his own assurances: "We shall do all that is possible for you." De Lattre sought clarification: Did this mean that Korea and Indochina would get equal billing in terms of U.S. expenditures? No, came the reply, Indochina's needs, while highly important, would be acted upon only after those in Korea had been fulfilled.45

At the Pentagon a few days later, de Lattre tried again. "If you lose Korea," he told Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Asia is not lost; but if I lose Indochina, Asia is lost." Tonkin was the key to Southeast Asia, and if Southeast Asia were lost, India would "burn like a match," and there'd be no hindrance to the march of Communism before Suez and Africa. The Muslim world would be engulfed, the Muslims of North Africa would fall in line, and Europe itself would be outflanked. Lovett praised de Lattre's exegesis and said he agreed the stakes in Vietnam were huge, but he added that "the United States has a primary obligation in other theaters, whereas your primary obligation is in your own theater." When de Lattre complained that he felt at times during his visit like a "beggar" and that "your spirit should lead you to send me [greater military aid] without my asking," Lovett said, "We all regard General de Lattre as a comrade in arms and will do everything possible for his theater within our capabilities." The general shot back: "Do not say my theater; it is our theater."46

And so it went, at each stop on the tour. In public, the charismatic Frenchman made a great impression, charming Americans with his heavily accented (but near-fluent) English and winning smiles when he tripped over an idiom. Always he cut a striking figure, whether praying at George Washington's tomb at Mount Vernon, or visiting the naval and military academies as well as Fort Benning and Langley Air Force Base, or laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, or attending a gala dinner in his honor hosted by Henry Luce at the Union Club in Manhattan. He won praise for his performance on NBC's Meet the Press, before an estimated viewing audience of twelve million, and for his address before the National Press Club, where again he pressed the theme that Indochina was the key to saving Asia from the Communist peril: "The loss of Southeast Asia would mean that Communism would have at its disposal essential strategic raw materials, that the Japanese economy would forever be unbalanced, and that the whole of Asia would be threatened." Hanoi was the key to victory, he continued, its importance comparable to Bastogne, where American armies fought off German encirclement in December 1944, and to Berlin, which the Soviets unsuccessfully blockaded some four years later.47

From Truman on down, senior U.S. officials publicly affirmed support for the war effort and pledged to speed up military deliveries. In private sessions, though, they refused to accept that Korea and Vietnam were one war, and they pressed the general for more proof that France was sincerely committed to full independence for Indochina, and for greater efforts to build up the Vietnamese fighting forces. The Washington Post spoke for much of American officialdom when it editorialized, in the middle of the French general's visit, that "the great problem in increased military aid is to avoid the appearance of propping up colonialism."48

Still, when de Lattre and his wife left New York by air shortly before midnight on September 25, bound for Paris, he took satisfaction in the results of the trip. As well he might. The Americans had unambiguously affirmed the critical importance of the fight against Ho Chi Minh and had pledged to bolster their military assistance and to deliver it with more dispatch. In Congress and in the press, and among the general public, awareness of the French war and of French military needs was now much greater than before. As a laudatory New York Times editorial put it, the Washington talks made two points plain: "First, we are in basic political agreement with the French. Second, our aid to the Associated States of Indochina will be stepped up. Both are vital."49

VII

EVEN BEFORE DE LATTRE'S VISIT, THE AID HAD BEEN SUBSTANTIAL. He had already received upward of a hundred U.S. fighter planes, fifty bombers and transports, and ground arms for thirty battalions, as well as artillery and naval craft. But other promised deliveries, including trucks and tanks, were months behind schedule. Only 444 of a scheduled 968 jeeps and 393 of 906 six-by-six trucks, for example, had been sent in fiscal year 1951. Lovett blamed the slow pace on production problems and a lack of expertise at some plants, but he and other officials also said the French themselves were partly responsible, chiefly because of their inadequate maintenance practices. Distribution of materiel already delivered was another problem: Armed convoys were forced to move slowly-whether by road or water-and were subject to frequent Viet Minh attacks. Nevertheless, Army Chief of Staff J. Lawton Collins pledged to de Lattre that U.S. deliveries would be stepped up, and they were: In the four months following his visit, the French received more than 130,000 tons of equipment, including 53 million rounds of ammunition, 8,000 general-purpose vehicles, 650 combat vehicles, 200 aircraft, 14,000 automatic weapons, and 3,500 radios.50

DE LATTRE AND A THOROUGHLY SMITTEN GENERAL LAWTON COLLINS IN HANOI ON OCTOBER 23, 1951. (photo credit 11.2)

Collins paid glowing tribute to the success of de Lattre's U.S. trip when he called on the general in Saigon a few weeks later. "You came like a crusader to present the cause for which you were fighting in Indo-China," the American gushed. "You pleaded with all your incomparable ardor and conviction. Few of your campaigns have created enthusiasm that is comparable to that which you raised by your visit to America. No one has ever shown, as you showed, in such simple language, all that is at stake in Indo-China, nor made clear the issues that are possible. To our people you have rendered a great service."51

That was one possible view of the Frenchman's mission and cause, but not the only one. Another American, who held a starkly different view, called on de Lattre in Saigon that autumn, a young Democratic congressman who in time would stand at the very apex of America's Vietnam decision making. This was John Fitzgerald Kennedy, whose visit to Indochina in mid-October-accompanied by his brother Robert and sister Patricia, during a tour of Asia and the Middle East-is described at the start of this book. JFK was taken aback by what he saw, it will be recalled-France was engaged in a major colonial war and was plainly losing. The United States, as France's principal ally in the effort, was guilty by association and risked being forced down the same path as the European colonialists. The French-supported Vietnamese government lacked broad popular support, Kennedy determined, and Ho Chi Minh would win any nationwide election.

It was a remarkable message coming from a man who hitherto had sounded every bit the Cold Warrior, blasting the Truman administration, for example, for allowing China to fall to Communism and bragging to constituents about his ties to the rabidly anti-Communist Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy. But it's clear that the Asian tour changed JFK's outlook. It convinced him that the United States must align herself with the emerging nations, and that Communism could never be defeated by relying solely or principally on force of arms. His Indochina experience led him to that conclusion, as did a dinner conversation in New Delhi with Jawaharlal Nehru, who called the French war an example of doomed colonialism and said Communism offered the masses "something to die for" whereas the West promised only the status quo. War would not stop Communism, Nehru warned him; it would only enhance it, "for the devastation of war breeds only more poverty and more want." Kennedy agreed, but he wondered if U.S. officials grasped these essential truths. Many of "our representatives abroad seem to be a breed of their own," he said a few weeks later, "moving mainly in their own limited circles not knowing too much of the people to whom they are accredited, unconscious of the fact that their role is not tennis and cocktails, but the interpretation to a foreign country of the meaning of American life and the interpretations to us of that country's aspirations and aims."52

Other Americans also held these twin convictions-that the United States was becoming too enmeshed in the war, and that the prospects were nevertheless bleak. At the CIA and at the State Department, numerous midlevel officials held them, as did some of Kennedy's colleagues on Capitol Hill. Indeed, a sizable number of informed Republican and Democratic lawmakers in this period saw the war as resulting primarily from France's determination to preserve her colonial empire; some spoke in language similar to that of JFK.53 For that matter, even Truman and Acheson themselves agreed on the need for French reforms "toward the natives" and on the danger to American interests of seeming to support colonial control. So did Heath in Saigon, and so did Ambassador David Bruce in Paris. But all four parted company with the Kennedy line in their conviction that the French military effort nevertheless needed America's full support. Cold War imperatives demanded it. Hence the tens of thousands of tons of U.S. military equipment that flowed in to Indochina-that is, to the French, not directly to the VNA-as 1951 turned into 1952.