Nothing was left to chance. “We had observed everything and made a minute study of the terrain several nights before the attack, using models too,” a Viet Minh officer later told a French interviewer. “Every evening, we came up and took the opportunity to cut barbed wire and remove mines. Our jumping-off point was moved up to only two hundred yards from the peaks of Béatrice, and to our surprise your artillery didn’t know where we were. Finally, some Tai deserters had given us a lot of information.”54
