On the last day of the year, Navarre confessed to U.S. ambassador Donald Heath that Dien Bien Phu might be overrun despite his best efforts. The Viet Minh, he told the American, now might have the means to move 105mm cannons up on the heights overlooking the approach to the valley. The following day Navarre informed Paris that, “faced with the arrival of new possibilities which very serious intelligence has been announcing for two weeks … I can no longer—if these materials truly exist in such numbers and above all if the adversary succeeds in putting them to use—guarantee success with any
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