MARCH 1975
THE FALL OF THE CENTRAL HIGHLANDS

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the March 1975 offensive, also known as the General Offensive, the 1975 Spring Uprising, or Campaign 275. The last campaign of the Vietnam War, the March 1975 offensive led to the evacuation and fall of the Central Highlands and was the precursor to the fall of Saigon. The evacuation of the Central Highlands was one of the most disastrous of the Indochina wars, along with the evacuation of Cao Bang in October 1950.

The Central Highlands stretches between the South China Sea and the Mekong Basin, through central Vietnam, southern Laos, and eastern Cambodia. Barely a century ago, these heights appeared as a succession of plateaus covered with thorny scrub, primary forests, and swamps, with volcanoes overlooked by vast peaks carved from rushing rivers. In ancient times, the high plateau was held by the Proto-Indochinese, Austronesians of the peninsula or Austroasiatic peoples. It was inhabited by around 40 groups of forest peasants who lived in fear of guardian deities and at the mercy of monsoons, clan conflicts, or quarrels.
 

From 1960 onwards, the Americans set up two programs: the Mountain Scout (or Commando Program) and the Village Defense Program. The Mountain Scout mission was similar to that of the Groupement de Commandos Mixtes Aéroportés (GCMA), the French counter-maquis: To create a clandestine army trained in American special forces camps at Ea Ana, Lac Tien, An Lac, An Khe, and other locations. The Village Defense Program fortified villages within a provincial network, where Green Berets trained the Proto-Indochinese in defense techniques and guerrilla warfare. Classic fortifications such as booby-trapped pits, rows of sharpened stakes, and bamboo palisades were upgraded with forts, blockhouses, barbed-wire belts, and minefields.

These maneuvers stemmed from the belief that “who holds the Central Highlands, holds South Vietnam” and the fact that the Highlands’ entire western edge ran alongside Laotian and Cambodian exits from the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The high plateau was of major strategic significance, classified as II Corps sector, and its regional capitals of Ban Me Thuot, Pleiku, and Kontum became the headquarters of important American and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) bases. Major battles were fought here, including the Ia Drang, one of the first; A Shau, Khe Sanh, and Lam Son 719; and operations Arc Light, Niagara, Rolling Thunder, Igloo White and Commando Hunt. In 1972, the North Vietnamese army launched a large-scale offensive that was eventually broken by massive B-52 support.

In early January 1975, the North Vietnamese army captured Phuoc Long province (now Binh Phuoc). Then, between March 10 and 18, it seized Ban Me Thuot, a key town in the Central Highlands. At dawn on March 10, National Liberation Front (NLF) forces – a which included the prestigious 320 and 316 Divisions, veterans of the RC 4 battle – launched an assault on the town, code-named “Lotus Flower Blossom.” The battle began with shelling and sapper attacks, followed by a frontal assault. The town and its surroundings fell quickly, sounding the death knell for other towns on the plateau, notably Pleiku and Kontum, and creating panic.

President Thieu decided to evacuate the II Corps to gather his troops along the coast in Phu Yen province, from where he intended to launch a major offensive to retake Ban Me Thuot. The staff advised the president to choose Route 7 B (the Song Ba valley) as the evacuation route, avoiding RN 14, 19 and 21, which was cut off by guerrillas and ripe for ambush. The route along the Song Ba was intended to surprise the NVA by evacuating II Corps forces via this rundown, little-traveled track through the land of the King of Fire Jarai (Ayunpa).

At dawn on March 15, General Pham Van Phu, head of the II Corps, announced to his subordinates that the high plateau would be evacuated the following day. Engineering troops were to precede the 60,000 members of the ARVN’s 23rd Ranger Division, elements of the VNAF, and 250,000 civilians living in Pleiku and Kontum. On the evening of the 15th, VNAF C-123s, Hueys and Air America C-46s evacuated headquarters, senior provincial officials, and sensitive individuals, causing panic among the civilians. One of the greatest debacles of the Vietnam War had begun.

Fred Anderson, a former Air America pilot, recalls: “I’ll never forget the sight of the National as we left Pleiku. It was a compact mass in motion. People were taking everything they could from their homes. And you knew that thousands were dying on the way... At the start of the Pleiku evacuation, all the fire we came under was from our South Vietnamese allies. People had no self-control, they ran away and thought of nothing else. In this total anarchy, man was reduced to a beast.” (Christopher Robbins, Air America).

Thousands of Vietnamese and ethnic minorities evacuated Kontum, joining those fleeing from Pleiku. The horde rushed along the RN 14 south, then the Ayunpa gap and the 7 B. Engineering GMCs preceded hundreds of machines overloaded with civilians and ARVN members stripped of their uniforms. The group, drowned in the dust of the late dry season, comprised pedestrians and a motley assortment of vehicles: Lambrettas, Vespas, Dodge buses, as well as buffaloes and horses pulling crowded carts.

Panic once again set in when those fleeing learned that destroyed bridges were preventing any progress to the south-east of Ayunpa. On the morning of March 17, chaos reigned supreme as the column was overtaken by North Vietnamese forces and shelled; fighting broke out and lasted until the March 19. South Vietnamese military units broke up, vehicles were abandoned, and soldiers deserted, while rain and difficult terrain made movement even slower. In two days, what should have been a strategic withdrawal turned into a chaotic exodus, the roads littered with corpses, destroyed vehicles, and exhausted civilians. By the March 20, the column and the ARVN forces had been wiped out, and few were able to reach Phu Yen. Just 20,000 of the 60,000 retreating soldiers made it back to the coast, and 60,000 of the 180,000 civilians who had tried to find shelter made it through.

This debacle had a devastating psychological effect on the entire South Vietnamese army. The impression that all was lost spread not only among the soldiers, but also among the political leaders in Saigon. Human and material losses were immense, with thousands of soldiers captured or killed and civilians and minorities abandoned. Taking advantage of this confusion, Communist forces advanced rapidly to the south. In less than two weeks, the North Vietnamese army secured the Central Highlands and opened the way to strategic coastal positions. The towns and bases of Quy Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, Cam Ranh, Phan Rang and Phan Thiet were taken quickly without any real resistance. One month later, Saigon fell


CAPTIONS

- Banner: Bui Quang Anh. On the Truong Son Trail.
- Bubble 1: The column on route 7 B.
- Bubble 2: The column on route 7 B.

 

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French artist Victor Tardieu came to Indochina from Lyon with the intention of staying for a few months. He would eventually become a major contributor to the renaissance of Vietnamese art alongside Nam Son, with whom he co-founders of the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de l’Indochine – an institution that would take on a true artistic vocation and become the focal point for training in modern Vietnamese art concerned with preserving Asian tradition.

Tardieu began training at the École des Beaux-arts de Lyon in 1887 before joining the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1890, he moved to the École des Beaux-arts de Paris on the initiative of Léon Bonnat, who became his teacher and mentor. He worked in the studios of Bonnat and Albert Maignan until 1894 and also collaborated with Félix Gaudin, the French glass painter and mosaicist, for whom he produced a plethora of stained-glass cartoons.

In 1902, Tardieu married harpist Caroline Luigini, daughter of composer and conductor Alexandre Luigini. They had a son, the future writer Jean Tardieu. That same year, the elder Tardieu exhibited an imposing oil on canvas titled Le Travail at the Salon de la Société des Artistes Français, where he won first prize and a scholarship that enabled him to travel around Europe until 1904, painting the ports of Genoa, London, and Liverpool. The human bustle of these commercial centers captivated the artist, who saw them as a continuation of the observations he had made in his native Rhône region. While in Genoa, Tardieu painted The Dockers, a work that particularly illustrates the creative cycle dealing with the life of workers and laborers. The painting captures labor in Europe’s major cities in all its truth and realistic power, with Tardieu’s solid classical training and admiration for Michelangelo clearly evident. This work previews the monumental treatment of the great Western and Oriental figures he would later produce.

From 1909 to 1911, Tardieu painted the ceiling of the salle des fêtes in Les Lilas. In 1914, he left this happy world to volunteer for the First World War, where he worked as an orderly in a field hospital near Dunkirk and continued to draw. Demobilized in 1918, the artist returned to his family cocoon, disrupted by years of absence. Commissions were limited and he struggled to make ends meet, despite his work on the ceiling of Montrouge town hall, Les âges de la vie. In 1920, Tardieu’s life changed when he met Albert Sarraut, former Governor General of Indochina and Minister for the Colonies, who was a great art lover and collector. That year, Tardieu was awarded the Prix de l'Indochine, a French colonial art prize instituted in 1910 and awarded annually that offered a scholarship and free travel to Indochina. In exchange, the painter was required to exhibit his paintings in the colony and provide a selection of his works to the committees of the Société Coloniale des Artistes Français, which would choose one and donate it to a local public institution.

In January 1921, aged around 50, Tardieu left Marseille without a wife and children and discovered a country that was to fascinate him. Arriving in Saigon on February 2 for a stay that would normally last six months, he began to explore part of the French Indochinese Union, which now included the protectorates of Annam, Tonkin, the colony of Cochinchina, and the protectorates of Cambodia and Laos. His journey took him as far as Hanoi, where he met French officials and young Vietnamese artists, including Nguyen Van Tho, known as Nam Son, who was a student like no other.

Seduced by the region, Tardieu decided to settle in Hanoi. His artistic talent was put to good use by the French administration, which was looking to restore and extend the buildings of the University of Indochina (or Hanoi University), originally founded in 1906 by Governor General Paul Beau, under the plans of Ernest Hébrard, the colony’s lead architect and town planner. On June 6, Governor General Maurice Long commissioned Tardieu to decorate the university’s new buildings. For the main auditorium, the centerpiece was a huge and ambitious mural entitled La Métropole, on the theme of France bringing the benefits of civilisation to its colony – a “terrible subject,” this socialist at heart later confided to his wife.

It took him six years to complete this work, which sang of the “civilising mission of the white man” and embodied the idea of progress achieved through science and education. The 77-sqm Unity Canvas features nearly 200 Oriental and Western figures representative of the society of the time, including Dr. Cognac, Albert Sarraut, Mr. Baudoin, the Auvergne native Varenne, and a number of mandarins. In the foreground are various French and native characters performing a succession of tasks for which the University prepares students: Veterinarians examining a steer, a chemist handling a test tube, doctors auscultating and administering an injection, magistrates and lawyers in discussion, and an agricultural inspector teaching a peasant how to use the modern plough, among others. To create his fresco, Victor Tardieu needed models, which not exist in Indochina at the time. Nam Son, an excellent draftsman and admirer of the Western technique of oil painting whom Tardieu had met in 1923, offered to take on this role. It was a collaboration that grew into a genuine friendship.

In parallel with this large-scale project and motivated by his Vietnamese friends, who were concerned about Chinese artistic influence and Western cultural domination, Tardieu and Nam Son decided to establish a School of Fine Arts dedicated exclusively to Vietnamese students. There, the classical fundamentals would be taught, including drawing, life studies, anatomy and perspective. After a trip to Paris to acquire the necessary equipment and recruit teachers, including the young painter Joseph Inguimberty, the Indochina School of Fine Arts was established on October 27, 1924, by decree of Governor General Martial Merlin.

The training offered, directed by Victor Tardieu (1924-1937) and then Évariste Jonchère (1938-1945), undoubtedly contributed to the emergence of modern Vietnamese art. The school’s curriculum and organisation followed the model of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, while incorporating in-depth instruction in traditional Annamese art. One thing led to another, and classes were added in lacquerware, silk painting, then architecture and finally applied arts. The teaching staff, which included Nam Son (who trained intensively at the Beaux-Arts and Arts Décoratifs schools in Paris), worked passionately to help “his students, who were much more gifted than most of us, to rediscover their own inspiration,” according to Tardieu.

The establishment of this new institution, while not without its pitfalls, was a veritable revolution at the time for the uniqueness of its educational model, and the unexpected growth proved to be particularly long-lasting. Numerous artists who helped birth an autonomous creative movement in Asia were trained there, including Le Pho, Le Thi Luu, Mai Trung Thu, To Ngoc Van (the future first Vietnamese director of the school who was killed fighting the French at Dien Bien Phu), Phan Chanh, Vu Cao Dam, Nguyen Gia Tri, and of course, Nam Son. The exhibitions, sales, and fairs organised by Tardieu in Hanoi, Saigon and Paris were resounding successes with the public. They further consolidated the celebrity of these artists, who had borrowed so much from the fruit of East-West acculturation.

In 2006, the fresco at the University of Indochina was redone by the painter Hoang Hung after disappearing following the postwar change of regime, which did not look kindly on the allegory of colonial power. Today, a privileged few can still visit the fresco of the great amphitheatre in what is now the University of Pharmacy and the College of Sciences of the Vietnam National University at 13-15 P. Lê Thánh Tông. 

CAPTIONS

- Banner: the mural fresco La Métropole.
- Bubble 1: Victor Tardieu.
- Bubble 2: The Dockers painting.