The Twenty-five Year Century: A South Vietnamese General Remembers the Indochina War to the Fall of Saigon

Military Apprenticeship

28 2 military apprenticeship CANDIDATES TO THE FIRST CLASS of the School of Inter-Arms were required to have an equivalent of a secondary education, Level One. Tho and I were qualified to take the entrance examination, which was administered in Saigon and which we passed without difficulty. We also passed the physical examination and toward the end of June 1950, we were ordered to accompany a French military convoy to Dalat. This was the first time I had been out of the lowlands of the Western Region of South Viet Nam. I was struck by the diversity of the landscape of our country as our convoy, after leaving the lush, green rice paddy fields of Bien Hoa, passed the huge French-owned rubber and tea plantations and slowly threaded its way between dense tropical forests and gently rolling hills. Occasionally , we could see small Montagnards villages with thatch-roofed houses built on wooden stilts. I was amazed at the majesty of the chain of small mountains which formed what was called the Hauts Plateaux of Viet Nam. We saw these as our convoy passed the Lien Khang waterfalls and started to climb the steep and winding Prenn Pass, which led to the beautiful city of Dalat. Once we emerged from the pass to approach the southern suburb of the city, we felt invigorated by the pine-scented air of the Hauts Plateaux. From a distance, Dalat looked like a postcard of a French small mountain town with red-roofed gothic churches, stone-walled villas hidden behind tall pine trees, green valleys and romantic lakes. Further west, overlooking the city was the 2,167-meter-high, MILITARY APPRENTICESHIP 29 twin-peaked mountain of Lang-Bian. According to Montagnard mythology, in the La Ngu Thuong area where Mount Lang-Bian was located, lived two powerful tribes: Lat and Sre. The Lat tribe had a young chief named Lang. Lang fell in love with Bian, a daughter of the Sre tribe, but was prevented from marrying her because of the hostility between the two tribes. One day, Lang and Bian decided to climb to the top of the mountain and to sit there until they died. After their deaths, the members of both tribes decided to bury the two lovers at the site. To show their affection, the tribesmen brought stones to improve their tombs, which kept growing each passing day until they became the two peaks of Mount Lang-Bian. In 1916, the first hotel in Dalat was constructed near the central lake and was appropriately named Lang-Bian Palace Hotel. It was a wood structure built on piers with large verandas to conform to the local Montagnard style. When Dalat entered a new phase of development in 1922, the French architects who designed the expansion plan, in an effort to preserve the natural beauty of the city, ruled that no buildings could be constructed which would block the view of Mount Lang-Bian. Due to its breathtaking beauty and moderate climate, its variety of exotic flowers, an abundance of vegetables and fruits normally found only in European countries, Dalat quickly became an ideal resort city for the French and also for wealthy Vietnamese. If Saigon was called “the jewel of Asia,” Dalat, in the words of a French architect who participated in the original design of the city, was described as “a corner of France on the Asian Alps.” Dalat was also an important cultural center. In addition to the Lycée Yersin built in 1935, the Catholic order of Notre Dame created a lycée for girls, which it named Notre Dame de Lang-Bian. Later, the school changed its name to “Couvent des Oiseaux”; it was a prestigious school reserved for girls from wealthy French and Vietnamese families. These two schools also received students from Cambodia and Laos. The School of Inter-Arms was located on a small hill approximately five kilometers north of the city center, near the village of Chi Lang. It was bordered to the east by the Farraut Farm (the farm was owned by a Frenchman, Mr. Farraut, one of the first residents 30UUU THE TWENTY-FIVE YEAR CENTURY of Dalat) and a small lake with the romantic name of Lac des Soupirs (Lake of Laments). Immediately to the south was Hôpital Catroux (named after a French governor), a military hospital which tended mostly to French convalescing servicemen. To the north...