Intimations of Insanity

After the outbreak of hostilities in Hanoi in December 1946 and Commander Jean Valluy's initial string of victories, the Indochina War settled into a three-year stalemate, with Vo Nguyen Giap content to rely on quick strikes and the French unable to mount a major offensive. During that period the Viet Minh's four-part strategic scheme to demoralize and undermine their foe gradually took shape.

Their first objective was to secure regions that were critical sources of food, manpower, minerals, and other resources, either by blocking access routes or by isolating enemy posts and harassing them to the point where they become too costly and burdensome to retain. (Buttinger, p. 738)

In larger zones where the French were firmly ensconced, guerillas and regular army detachments blew up bridges, barricaded roads, ambushed patrols and convoys, assassinated collaborators, and destroyed numerous watchtowers and stations set up for defense and communication. Masters of the night, they reclaimed hundreds of farms and villages and their inhabitants. (Buttinger, p. 739)

That was the foundation of the third -- and most remarkable -- achievement: the political, economic, and military organization and mobilization, openly and clandestinely, of millions of people. The Viet Minh had no choice if they were to survive a war at the outset of which they lacked food, medicine, agricultural tools, shoes, clothing, and a transportation system they had themselves decimated. (Buttinger, pp. 765-766, 770)

Their leaders were talented, energetic, devoted, and innovative. They disseminated their spoken and printed propaganda to every corner of the country. When necessary, they devised new methods of indoctrination to supplement traditional ones. To be sure they were Communists, but they were also authentic nationalists, and their ideology was grounded in the purposes for which their movement was conceived: national liberation and a progressive democratic state. (Buttinger, pp. 764-765)

Fourth, the Viet Minh bought time to enlarge their forces. By the spring of 1950, their regular army had grown to 120,000 men, with another 130,000 equally divided between regional and guerilla-militia units. The Chinese Communists had reached the Vietnam border in 1949, and could now provide automatic weapons, mortars, howitzers, ammunition, uniforms, trucks, and advisers. Viet Minh detachments were sent to China's Yunnan province for training in the use of explosives. While the French still maintained overall superiority, Giap was now capable for the first time of going toe to toe with his adversary. (Logevall, p. 241, 243)

The French, now under the command of Marcel Carpentier, were desperate to hold the line of forts in northern Tonkin which General Valluy had seized in 1947. Gateway to Communist sanctuaries in China, they were perched precariously on Route Coloniale 4, which twisted for one hundred fifty miles through ravines and high passes along the border from Cao Bang in the north to Lang Son in the south. By eliminating them, Giap could open up supply routes to China. (Karnow, p. 184)

On September 18, 1950, after a two-day engagement, five Viet Minh battalions took the centrally-located Dong Khe post, cutting off Cao Bang. Three weeks later fifteen battalions ambushed a combined French column of Cao Bang evacuees and their putative rescuers who had been dispatched from Lang Son; only six hundred soldiers out of six thousand escaped death or capture. One thousand machine guns, eight thousand rifles, and four hundred fifty trucks were claimed by the Viet Minh, followed by even larger stocks when Carpentier ordered Lang Son abandoned on October 18. (Logevall, pp. 256-250)

Scholar and author Bernard Fall called the calamity France's worst colonial defeat since the fall of Quebec to the British in 1759. Giap celebrated by getting drunk for the first time in his life. (Karnow, p. 185; Logevall, p. 250)

Despite the pleas of Radical Party spokesperson Pierre Mendes-France -- he called the war an exercise in futility, one that was exacting a huge toll in blood and treasure -- there was no talk of surrender in Paris's Hall of Power. The government's credibility was on the line. Disengagement short of victory would insult the memory of all the Frenchmen who had died defending the cause, a common argument that would be repeated often in the years ahead. It would simply be necessary to try harder, to perform better -- and to do so under fresh leadership in Hanoi. Commander Carpentier was recalled -- as was High Commissioner Leon Pignon; their replacement was a legendary figure grandiose enough to fill both roles. (Logevall, pp. 253, 255)

Jean de Lattre de Tassigny was a bona fide war hero. He had been wounded five times in Word War I, had escaped a Vichy prison camp in World War II with the help of his son Bernard, who had smuggled him a saw and a ten-yard length of rope, and in 1944-5 had led the French Army on its triumphant march from Provence to the Danube. At the time of his appointment he was in command of the Western Union (precursor to NATO) ground forces -- in effect, Western Europe's top general. (Logevall, pp. 261-263)

Often compared to Douglas MacArthur in appearance and temperament, de Lattre was vain, charming, eloquent, and magnetic -- the type of person who dominates any room he enters. So infused, however, was his egocentricity with pride, self-esteem, and the crude enjoyment of authority that some have termed it megalomania, pointing to his volcanic outbursts of anger toward subordinates, his constant humiliation of colleagues, and his unflinching demand that every acquaintance accord him the respect due his superior status. His soldiers' response to his pomposity was to nickname him le roi Jean (King Jean). (Buttinger, 755-756; Logevall, p. 255)

De Lattre inspired confidence by his mere presence. With an exhausting energy, he shuttled across the Red River Delta in a small spotter plane, evoking cheers from the assembled troops, weeding out the incompetent and lackadaisical, promising there would be no retreat until the Communists were vanquished. He organized striking groups, mobile headquarters with attached battalions that could move quickly to confront the Viet Minh and to relieve besieged outposts. He ordered the construction of a chain of twenty-two hundred concrete pillboxes -- the de Lattre line -- enclosing Hanoi and Haiphong. (Logevall, pp. 266-267; Fall, p. 176)

Giap regarded de Lattre's prominent reputation as a compliment to himself and his troops. "The French are sending against the People's Army a foe worthy of its steel," he proclaimed, as he set his sights on the rich rice paddies of the Red River Delta. (Logevall, p. 268)

His three attacks -- in January, March, and May of 1951 -- came tantalizingly close to success, but ultimately they all failed, with ruinous losses on both sides; Giap left ten thousand dead and an equal number wounded or captured on the battlefields. Displaying extraordinary courage, de Lattre flew twice to Vinh Yen, site of the first encounter, to direct the mobilization of all available resources, the transfer of reinforcements from Cochinchina, and a fierce aerial bombardment that would be the heaviest of the war. (Logevall, pp. 269-272)

In each case the French were outnumbered. The deciding factors were the predominance of American-made aircraft and artillery and the deployment of a devastating new weapon, described by one Viet Minh officer as "hell in the form of large egg-shaped containers [dropped from planes] . . . Immense sheets of flames, exceeding over hundreds of meters, it seems, strike terror in the tanks of my soldiers. This is napalm, the fire that falls from the skies." (Logevall, pp. 270-271)

Giap had been outclassed, had shown his inexperience as a general. Neither he nor his staff understood how to maneuver large units or handle them in combat. "The general counteroffensive is called off," he ordered. "Our troops who had shown their superiority as guerillas shall not now seek massive battle." (Logevall, pp. 272-273)

De Lattre himself could not escape tragedy. His twenty-three-year-old son, a lieutenant commanding a Vietnamese company, was killed by a mortar explosion on the bank of the Day River near Nam Dinh. Bernard de Lattre had been the youngest soldier in World War II to be decorated with the Medaille militaire. His father's appointment, he had written upon hearing of it, would bring "fresh blood and new machinery" to the war effort and meant that "we could save everything." (Logevall, pp. 260-261, 274)

Five months later, at the suggestion of Governor Thomas Dewey of New York, who had visited Saigon in July and been captivated by the general, de Lattre disembarked under the shadow of the Statue of Liberty. He had come to make the case personally that France deserved greater material and political support from the United States in her crusade against the Viet Minh -- and international communism. (Logevall, pp. 281-282)

At every stop during his two-week stay, he framed the conflict in Cold War terms. Just as United Nations forces were challenging the Communist world dictatorship in Korea, so the French were fighting it in Indochina. These were two fronts on the same battlefield. But in Indochina France stood alone; and while America had provided essential assistance, more must come, in the form of larger and prompter arms deliveries. (Logevall, p. 282)

On September 21, 1951, speaking at the Pentagon, de Lattre warned Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett and the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "If I lose Indochina, Asia is lost . . . India would burn like a match, and there would be no hindrance to the march of Communism through Suez and Africa. The Muslim world would be engulfed, and Europe itself would be outflanked." (Logevall, p. 283)

While much of American officialdom probably agreed with The Washington Post when it opined, "The great problem in increased military is to avoid the appearance of propping up colonialism," they never wavered in their conviction that France needed -- and Cold War imperatives demanded -- their full support. In the subsequent four months, 130,000 tons of equipment were shipped to Indochina. (Logevall, pp. 283-284)

Returning to Indochina, de Lattre presided over one final victory: the seizure on November 14, 1951, of Hoa Binh, an important river and road junction in the mountains west of the Red River Delta. Two months later he was dead from cancer. While his military sagacity and dazzling leadership probably averted disaster in 1951, politically, as he confided to General Valluy on his deathbed, he never completely understood Indochina. Ultimately, his credibility as a vocal affirmant of Vietnamese nationalism was undermined by his unyielding insistence on total popular loyalty to the French Union. (Logevall, pp. 288-290)

Despite growing public dissatisfaction with what had been labeled la sale guerre, the dirty war, Prime Minister Rene Plevin won approval by a wide margin for an appropriation that was approaching one-sixth of the nation's entire budget. Lauding the army for its persistent valor, he predicted that eighteen months hence France would secure a negotiated settlement from a position of strength. (Logevall, pp. 313-314)

The new man for the job was Raoul Salan -- elegant, courteous, and competent, although, according to de Gaulle, "there was something slippery and inscrutable" about him. He had served extensively in Indochina, which, alongside his love of the country's artifacts and customs, including the smoking of opium, had earned him the sobriquets Le Chinois and Le Mandarin. (Logevall, p. 320)

Salan had mixed success in 1952. Early on he was pressured into relinquishing Hoa Binh. Then in October he lost the garrisons along the key Nghia Lo ridge line between the Red and Black Rivers. The following month his offensive into the Tai Highlands northwest of Hanoi, Operation Lorraine involving 30,000 soldiers, failed miserably, costing him twelve hundred casualties. He delivered some retribution later in the month when Giap once again made the mistake of offering a set-piece battle at the Black River stronghold of Na San and was badly repulsed. (Logevall, pp. 323-329)

It was a reminder that all was not good for Ho Chi Minh. Food and manpower shortages weighed heavily on his ranks' morale and fighting capacity. The Vietnamese National Army -- organized alongside the French to lend legitimacy to the Bao Dai government -- was gaining effectiveness in the field. The French still controlled the Red River Delta and were more solidly anchored in the Saigon area than they had been earlier in the year. Their efforts at pacification -- winning the hearts and minds of the local peasantry -- were showing signs of progress in the south. And a new administration was ascending to power in the United States. (Logevall, pp. 331-333)

Although President Eisenhower did not publicly employ the domino metaphor until April 1954, he left no doubt as to how he viewed Indochina in his remarks before a National Governors' Conference in August 1953. "If Indochina goes," he warned his audience, "several things happen right away. The Malaysian peninsula, with its valuable tin and tungsten, would become indefensible, and India would be outflanked. Indonesia with all its riches would likely be lost too . . . So you see, somewhere along the line, this must be blocked. It must be blocked now. That is what the French are doing." (Logevall, p. 365)

For Secretary of State, Eisenhower tapped the severe, self-important, sanctimonious, and bombastic John Foster Dulles. Many Europeans shuddered at Dulles's virulent anti-Communism, and feared he might so antagonize the Soviets that their continent would be consumed in a nuclear holocaust. Bolstering French colonialism was not pleasant, Dulles conceded, but "necessary as a practical matter . . . because the theoretically practical solution [an independent, non-Communist Vietnam] is not possible for many reasons." (Logevall, pp. 337-340)

The President and his Secretary had their worst fears realized when in April 1953 General Giap drove into Laos, skirted French fortifications in the Plain of Jars, and reached the outskirts of the royal capital, Luang Prabang. It was not a campaign of conquest, however. Once his goals of extending the French line of defense and establishing food depots for future use were attained, he pulled back across the border. (Logevall, p. 345)

The elusiveness of a quarry who could slip through pincers of armor and infantry just before their closure was illustrated in the frustrating outcome of  "Operation Camargue." In July 1953 the French High Command decided to clean up the "Street Without Joy," a stretch of Road One along the central Annan coast where their convoys were plagued by shellfire and ambushes. During a thirty-six-hour assault, two amphibious forces, three overland groupings, and one airborne unit -- fifteen regiments in all, including artillery -- overran four key villages and sealed off the main area of resistance, only to find that they had caught nothing. Even their preponderance in numbers of ten to one was insufficient when the enemy enjoyed an intimate knowledge of the terrain, the benefit of defensive organization, the sympathy of the population, and an edge in combat intelligence. (Fall, pp. 144-145, 168, 171)

While public opinion in France may have been signalling the government to adopt a less belligerent policy in Indochina -- a poll commissioned by Le Monde found that two-third's of voters favored a unilateral withdrawal or a negotiated armistice -- the United States was now the heavyweight in the ring; nothing less than much improved military performance would keep the materials and weapons flowing. President Eisenhower expressed his dismay with Salan's lethargy, and called for a "forceful and inspirational leader" in the mold of de Lattre. (Logevall, p. 346)

A veteran of both world wars but a newcomer to Indochina, Henri Navarre would bring an "absence of prejudice" to the theater, so rationalized the Paris brain trust. Beneath his cold and effete demeanor there reputedly lodged a brilliant analytical mind. Navarre sought to project an air of authority at all times, and exuded confidence from the start. "We will give back to our troops the aggressiveness they have sometimes lacked," he declared. If the Associated States apply themselves, "victory is certain." (Logevall, pp. 354-355)

With the assistance of General John "Iron Mike" O'Daniel -- a gruff, cigar-chomping American officer full of his own rhetorical bluster -- the Navarre Plan was birthed. Small operations and raids would commence immediately, followed by a large-scale attack. Static units behind the lines would be consolidated into groupes mobiles. The Vietnamese National Army would be trained and equipped at an accelerated pace and given additional responsibilities in the field. A mole d'amarrage, or mooring point, would be established, from which the French and their native auxiliaries could penetrate the Viet Minh's rear areas. A final offensive in 1955 would destroy the enemy's masse de maneuvre and compel him to sue for peace. (Logevall, p. 356; Karnow, p. 190)

A Time Magazine cover story on Navarre in September 1953 praised the "quiet but steely, cultured but tough" general's conception of his role, and applauded his immediate successes. The soldiers "who must fight this dirty war," wrote the reporter, are imbued with "a new spirit and optimism."  He quoted one who would coin another memorable phrase: "A year ago none of us could see victory . . . Now we can see it clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel." (Logevall, p. 365)

Of two American visitors to Vietnam that fall -- both of whom would play prominent roles in its future -- one would agree with Time's assessment and one would not. Freshman Senator Mike Mansfield of Montana returned brimming with enthusiasm for Navarre. "There are indications that the stalemate in Indochina may be coming to an end," he related to Congress. "The months ahead could witness the beginning of a series of significant military engagements." (Logevall, p. 369)

Vice-President Richard Nixon, however, told the National Security Council that the administration should not count on the Navarre Plan. The Communists had a sense of history, they had determination and skill, and they believed time was on their side, he said. Nevertheless, in spite of the gamble, he urged continuing military aid to the French. (Logevall, pp. 376-377)

Thus the stage was set for one of the most decisive battles of the twentieth century.

The village of Dien Bien Phu lay nestled in a heart-shaped basin in northwest Vietnam ten miles from the Laotian border. At the junction of three routes, it was not only geographically the key to region but inhabited by an ethnic tribe, the Tai, who were fierce Communist resisters and a source of the opium used by the French (and the Viet Minh, if it fell into their hands) to finance their activities. (Logevall, pp. 381-383)

The Viet Minh had occupied Dien Bien Phu during their foray into Laos, but Navarre's plan was to expel them and establish it as a hedgehog, also known as an air-ground base or airhead, a fortified camp accessible only by air lodged in the path of the enemy in order to interdict his flow of supplies and reinforcements. Navarre believed this strategy would lure Viet Minh main force units into a set-piece battle where French superior artillery and aircraft firepower would give him a sizable advantage. (Logevall, p. 383)

Despite the objections of his two principal subordinates, Tonkin overseer Rene Cogny and airborne commander Jean Gilles, who were convinced Giap could easily skirt Dien Bien Phu and that it would be too difficult to supply adequately by air, on November 23, 1953, twenty-two hundred paratroopers dropped into the valley and took possession. (Filippelli)

"For us," wrote General Giap, "the parachutage presented a fundamentally favorable opportunity." As he assessed it, the French were in a "completely isolated position," solely dependent on airlifts, while the Viet Minh, entrenched in the mountains dominating the site, would be able to draw food and ammunition from the rear. Consequently, he decided "to wipe out the whole enemy force at Dien Bien Phu." (Filippelli; Karnow, pp. 190-191)

The task would be monumental. Just to get to the battle zone, each soldier had to march three hundred miles in ten days carrying a rifle, bullet magazines, hand grenades, a blanket, a mosquito net, a change of clothes, and a bag of rice which would be refilled at a depot along the way. Over a rudimentary road system stretching five hundred miles a herd of trucks would transport the three hundred tons of ammunition and 4200 tons of rice required to sustain 43,000 troops and 14,000 porters. (Karnow, p. 191; Logevall, p. 394)

By the end of January 1954, Giap had surrounded Dien Bien Phu, and was ready to spring his trap. (Filippelli)

The man designated to defend the garrison was fifty-one-year-old cavalry colonel, Christian de la Croix de Caistre. Dashing, aristocratic, "irresistible to women, and riddled with gambling debts, he had been a champion horseman, daredevil pilot, and courageous commando." Informed by his staff that their skirmishers were encountering stiff resistance, he immediately set to work constructing nine strongpoints in the valley, supposedly named after former mistresses. Three housed the bulk of his artillery -- Gabrielle and Beatrice to the north, Isabelle to the south -- and were situated so as to provide cover for the hub of his defenses. Tactically, however, his engineers erred; Giap would move against the northernmost bases first, and Isabelle was too distant to serve its purpose. (Logevall, p. 406; Karnow, p. 195)

With his Chinese adviser Wei Guoqing encouraging him to be aggressive, Giap made plans to storm the fortress on January 25. For ten frantic days, supplies were hauled over the mountains via shuttle trucks loaded and unloaded at eight checkpoints, teams of porters carrying shoulder poles and bamboo rigs, and specially equipped bicycles that could transport two hundred kilograms. Heavy guns, including cumbersome but deadly 105mm howitzers, were manhandled into place, much to the amazement of the onlookers, whose aircraft continually rained bombs on roads and bridges. (Logevall, pp. 413-417)

The French command knew of the impending attack, and waited with nervous anxiety all through the twenty-fifth. It never came. At the last minute Giap called it off, concerned that his foe was much stronger than he had initially calculated, that his artillerymen would not be able to execute coordinated calibration, and that his units were not accustomed to fighting on such an expansive battlefield during the daylight hours and for periods longer than twenty-four hours. It was the correct decision, he wrote afterward, in accordance with "the fundamental principle of the conduct of revolutionary war: strike to win; strike only when success is certain; if is not, then don't strike." (Logevall, pp. 423-424)

Giap's adversaries misread his procrastination. De Caistre reasoned that Giap had avoided conflict because he feared he would not prevail. One-armed artillery commander Charles Piroth refused to plant his guns in trenches where his crew would be sheltered, preferring open emplacements that facilitated fire from all angles. "Iron Mike" O'Daniel affirmed that the base "could withstand any kind of attack the Viet Minh are capable of launching." In Saigon, General Navarre told U. S. Ambassador David Heath that he would be disappointed if no battle developed at Dien Bien Phu because it would prevent him from inflicting a major defeat on the enemy. (Logevall, pp. 443-444)

Giap pushed his men hard for the next seven weeks, intent on building overwhelming supremacy. Stocks of ammunition and supplies were brought in. Huge effort was expended installing the 105mm howitzers in casements sunk in the forward slope of the hills overlooking the basin so the gunners could fire "down the tube" at their targets. Commando raids on French airfields in the Red River Delta destroyed two dozen planes and hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel. A vast trench and tunnel system slowly snaked its way toward the compound "like the tentacles of some determined devilfish." (Logevall, pp. 447-448)

On the afternoon of March 13, Giap switched from siege to surge. Softened up by an artillery barrage, Beatrice fell by midnight, her commander and his entire staff killed when their bunker suffered a direct hit. Gabrielle held on for thirty-six more hours against two entire regiments but succumbed when a relief column was ambushed. When the Tai soldiers defending Anne-Marie began to drift away into the jungle, de Caistre ordered it abandoned, opening a hole in his line and shrinking his zone for receiving parachuted supplies and reinforcements. On March 30, after a heavy bombardment, portions of the central strongpoints Dominique and Eliane were overrun by Viet Minh infantry. (Filippelli)

"I am completely dishonored," Colonel Piroth muttered to a fellow officer. "I have guaranteed de Caistre that the enemy artillery couldn't touch us -- but now we're going to lose the battle." He slipped away to his dugout, lay down on his cot, pulled out the safety pin on a grenade with his teeth, and blew himself to bits. (Logevall, p. 450)

On the verge of disaster, the French appealed to the United States for some level of direct intervention. Flying to Washington, French Chief of Staff Paul Ely obtained from his counterpart, Admiral Arthur Radford, an endorsement for Operation Vulture, which entailed massive night raids against the Dien Bien Phu perimeter by a squadron of B-29 bombers based in the Philippines. When the plan was scotched by Army Chief of Staff Matthew Ridgeway, who had no faith in air strikes, President Eisenhower declined to act without Congressional approval. (Karnow, pp. 196-197)

On April 3, eight Congressional power brokers, including Senate minority leader Lyndon Johnson, met with Radford, Secretary of State Dulles, and four other administration officials. After hearing Johnson assert, "We want no more Koreas with the United States furnishing ninety percent of the manpower," the lawmakers unanimously rejected any escalated involvement without the participation of their foremost ally, Great Britain. (Logevall, pp. 467-469)

Dulles met a cold shoulder in London. Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden dismissed his attempt to compare the present situation to Hitler's occupation of the Rhineland, doubted whether air strikes would do any good, and was not convinced that a Communist Indochina portended a similar doom for its neighboring countries. Prime Minister Winston Churchill told his Cabinet and Chiefs of Staff that the mission under consideration would not salvage France and could take the world to the brink of war. (Logevall, pp. 486-502, 505)

Meanwhile the ring of steel around Dien Bien Phu was tightening; having absorbed significant losses both in men and ammunition, Giap reverted to his siege tactics, pushing his assault trenches ever closer to the French fortifications. Conditions worsened considerably on March 30 when the monsoon rains descended, turning the ground into knee-deep liquid mud and making supply and reinforcement drops increasingly difficult. The hospital was overfull; the wounded were strewn in every available space awaiting care, many with missing or gangrened limbs and infested with maggots. French combat strength had dwindled to 2400 from 11,000 at the start of the battle plus four battalions parachuted in afterward; probably half the difference were deserters. (Logevall, pp. 510-512)

At five o'clock on the afternoon of May 1, more than one hundred Viet Minh field guns opened fire over the whole remaining area of the camp. Bunkers and soggy trenches caved in under the barrage, burying many soldiers alive. When the shooting slackened, the eastern hill positions of Eliane and Dominique were indefensible against the onslaught of three full divisions. Three nights later de Castrie and his staff listened helplessly as eighty legionnaires and Moroccan riflemen at strongpoint Huguette gallantly fended off three thousand attackers for several hours before being silenced. (Logevall, pp. 524-525)

On May 7 time ran out for the stricken defenders, whose resistance had contracted to strongpoint Isabelle in the south (which would fall last, around midnight) and General de Caistre's command center at Eliane. In the early afternoon, hearing reports of a possible breakout, Giap ordered a general advance and the shutdown of any escape route to the south. Around six o'clock a special Viet Minh detachment entered de Caistre's headquarters, where they found him impeccably dressed and wearing his red spahi cap. They took him prisoner and hoisted their own flag over the rooftop. The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was over. (Logevall, pp. 532-534)

Thirty-five hundred multinational soldiers -- French, Vietnamese, Moroccan, Algerian, Legionnaires -- died or went missing during the fifty-five-day ordeal. Another six thousand perished during a brutal four-hundred-fifty mile trek to Viet Minh prison camps or during their three-month incarceration, a total death rate of sixty percent of those who had been sent to, in Bernard Fall's words, "hell in a very small place." The Viet Minh's mass assaults had been equally devastating -- ten thousand killed, fifteen thousand wounded, twenty-five percent of those who saw action. (Logevall, pp. 542-543)

Henri Navarre had grievously miscalculated. In seeking a confrontation in the arena of his own choosing, he never foresaw that Giap could rapidly assemble a force five times larger than his own; that Giap could deploy enough artillery in the hills surrounding Dien Bien Phu to impair, much less demolish, his defenses; that Giap's emplacements could be protected by camouflage and anti-aircraft guns; that Giap's howitzers and abysmal weather conditions would restrict supply flights and parachute drops behind his lines; that porter service would keep ammunition flowing steadily to his besiegers; and that his tanks would be virtually useless in the tangled brush and flood waters that covered the valley floor. (Karnow, p. 194; Buttinger, p. 802)

"Vo Nguyen Giap had accomplished the unprecedented . . . For the first time in the annals of colonial warfare, Asian troops had defeated a European army in fixed battle." (Logevall, p. 534)

On May 8, 1954, the day after the surrender of Dien Bien Phu, delegations from nine countries -- France, Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, Bao Dai's State of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -- gathered around a horseshoe-shaped table at the old League of Nations building in Geneva, Switzerland, to determine the fate of Indochina.

American diplomacy throughout the proceedings was wholly inconsistent. John Foster Dulles fretted at having to appear on the same stage as the Chinese Communists. Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell sought to embolden the French by promising military intervention should the Communists make unreasonable demands, then demurred when Australia and New Zealand refused to be a party to such acts. Yet he and Dulles still urged the French to resist any compromises even as the other players were drifting toward partition as the preferred solution. Wanting to avoid both "another Korea" and any hint of "appeasement" of the Communists, Eisenhower and Dulles contemplated pulling out of the conference altogether. (Logevall, pp. 551, 569-575)

After initially taking a hard line, Viet Minh representative Pham Van Dong turned surprisingly conciliatory. In a speech on May 25, he indicated that partition might be acceptable as a temporary measure; each side would have complete administrative and economic control over its portion and would withdraw its forces from the other zone -- precursors to ultimate reunification through free elections. Since that proposal foretold the death knell of the Bao Dai regime, French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault predictably opposed it. (Logevall, p. 566)

Two developments broke the deadlock. On June 17, Pierre Mendes-France, who had been denouncing the Indochina War for years, replaced Joseph Laniel as French Prime Minister. Ascending the rostrum of the National Assembly, he made a startling announcement: "If in four weeks I have not obtained a ceasefire, I will resign." (Karnow, p. 201)

At that point Zhou Enlai stepped in to take charge of the talks for the Communists; he would for the first time display the subtlety and toughness that would make him one of the most brilliant diplomats of the century. Even if it meant undercutting the Viet Minh, his own country's objectives were his priority: to prevent American intervention in Indochina; to curb Viet Minh ambitions in Laos and Cambodia; and to demonstrate an attitude of moderation toward India, Burma, Indonesia, and other non-aligned nations in Asia. (Karnow, pp. 200-201)

On June 23, Zhou flew to Bern, Switzerland, for a secret meeting with Mendes-France. The next day, in Paris, after consulting with his four principal advisers, Mendes-France did what his predecessors Bidault and Laniel had always refused to do: He formally agreed to the temporary division of Vietnam as a means of bringing the long and bloody Indochina War to an end. (Logevall, pp. 584-586)

Several obstacles remained to be overcome. Zhou persuaded Pham Van Dong to rescind his conditions that the Pathet Lao and Free Khmer movements supported by the Viet Minh in Laos and Cambodia be accorded legal status and be allowed to retain their occupied areas. He recruited Soviet Minister Vyacheslav Molotov to coerce Pham into accepting the seventeenth parallel (rather than the thirteenth) as the line of demarcation between North and South and into extending the time period for elections from six months to twenty-four months after the ceasefire. (Karnow, pp. 202-204)

Agreement was reached a midnight on July 20, exactly at Mendes-France's self-imposed deadline. The only documents signed were those ending the military hostilities in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The accord between France and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam was not a political settlement. It provided for the partition of Vietnam pending a nationwide election to be held in 1956 and the removal of each side's army from the other territory. (Karnow, p. 204)

The United States (and Bao Dai's State of Vietnam) did not join the seven other conferees in orally and formally endorsing the declaration of understandings. Bedell Smith did promise that the United States would "refrain from the threat or the use of force to disturb them" and would "continue to seek to achieve unity through free elections." (Logevall, p. 606)

Those elections were never held. Instead the United States embarked on the policy that would lead it into a deadly and tragic quagmire: preserving and protecting a regime as corrupt and ruthless as the Communist one it was designed to thwart.

If insanity can be defined half in jest as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, surely the misadventures of the French in Indochina -- which cost them 110,000 lives and three billion dollars -- were intimations of insanity.

REFERENCES

Buttinger, Joseph. Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled; Volume II: Vietnam at War. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1967.

Fall, Bernard. Street Without Joy. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Telegraph Press, 1965.

Filippelli, R. Parallel Narratives: Vietnam Notebook: First Indochina War, Dien Bien Phu (1953-1954).

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: The Viking Press, 1983.

Logevall, Fredrik. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2013.

Before Vietnam

Forty years after the last United States combat forces evacuated South Vietnam the legacy of a war that was never formally declared -- whether it was a valid venture or a misguided endeavor -- remains shrouded in controversy. The ongoing debate is fueled by two overriding questions: What motivated America's initial intervention and its persistence in the face of mounting frustration? And could different strategies -- a full-fledged commitment, a massive attack against the North -- have produced a more desirable outcome?

To answer the second question first, Henry Kissinger calculated during his secret negotiations with the North Vietnamese that only the threat of total annihilation would convince them to compromise -- a course of action that neither Lyndon Johnson nor Richard Nixon was prepared to endorse. In fact, the enemy was so fanatically dedicated to a unified Vietnam under their control that they were willing to accept limitless casualties to attain their objective. Discounting the lives of tens of thousand of human beings, Commander Vo Nguyen Giap spoke of fighting fifteen, twenty, fifty years if necessary. The final toll of Communist military and civilian deaths reached one million (The South lost another 750,000.) -- a body count victory for the Americans of almost twenty to one. (Karnow, pp. 19-20)

Complexities swirl around the first question -- although two reasons for U. S. involvement were clearly articulated by its chief executives during its early stages. Echoing Henry Luce's characterization of America (in his famous essay "The American Century") as "the powerhouse of the ideals of Freedom and Justice," Harry Truman intoned, "The world looks to us for leadership." John Kennedy promised to "pay any price, bear any burden, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." Lyndon Johnson professed a goal of  bringing "peace and hope to all the world." (Karnow, p. 14)

A less cosmic justification but one just as compelling was the investiture of Vietnam as the last bastion of democracy against the relentless advance of the Red Terror. Coining an analogy that would reverberate through future administrations and become the rallying cry for a covey of stubborn hawks, President Eisenhower warned that all her sisters in Southeast Asia would topple like dominoes should Vietnam fall to the Communists. (Karnow, p. 14)

Considering their grievous past, it was understandable that Ho Chi Minh and his comrades would see the war in a different light -- not as one of conquest or ideology but rather as the continuation of two thousand years of resistance to Chinese and French domination. (Karnow, p. 17)

Because before Vietnam there was Indochina, and before the Vietnam War there was the French Indochina War.

French missionaries and traders had made their presence known in Cochinchina (South Vietnam) as early as the mid-seventeenth century, and both formalized it in 1664. Religious leaders created the Society of Foreign Missions to promote Christianity, and businessmen established the East India Company to foster trade. In 1799 a French priest turned politician, Pigneau de Behaine, helped the deposed Nguyen Anh reclaim his throne after a thirty-year hiatus and reestablish the dynasty that was to last until 1954. (Karnow, pp. 60-63)

In 1848 Nguyen's grandson, Tu Doc, instigated a campaign of persecution against the Vietnamese Catholics, and provoked Napoleon III into dispatching a pair of punitive expeditions in 1858 and 1861. The first failed, but as a result of the second Tu Doc surrendered to France the three provinces adjacent to Saigon and granted her the right to forbid any future cession of territory to another power. Twelve years later, in order to recover Tonkin (North Vietnam) from the two filibusters, Jean Dupuis and Francis Garnier, who had seized it without authorization, he relinquished Cochinchina unconditionally to the French. (Karnow, p. 76, 82)

Liberally interpreted, the treaty signed by Tu Doc permitted French intervention in Tonkin to quell disorders. In 1883, when Black Flag pirates and other bandits menaced French subjects in Hanoi and trade along the Red River, two companies of troops occupied the area while a fleet opened fire on the city of Hue, site of the imperial palace. The casualties were so severe that a chief mandarin emerged personally under a flag of truce to negotiate. In the wake of Tu Doc's untimely death, his putative successor, Hiep Hoa, was coerced into accepting extremely harsh terms: The French would regulate Vietnam's commerce, collect its customs duties, assure its defense, conduct its foreign relations, and install administrators and garrisons to enforce its jurisdiction. (Karnow, pp. 84-85)

Divided into three zones -- Tonkin, Annam, and Cochinchina -- Vietnam in name ceased to exist. It had become an outright French possession. (Karnow, p. 85)

In extending their control over the country, the French could have pursued a policy of "association," as the British did in India, governing indirectly through native institutions. Instead, they chose direct rule, which meant the deployment of the same number of officials as the British (five thousand) to manage an Indochina population one-tenth the size of India's three hundred million. (Karnow, p. 113)

The French were never able to delegate authority to indigenous persons. When local chiefs abandoned their posts, they were replaced with French officers, Vietnamese collaborators, or Catholics who were too detached from the populace to govern effectively. In the provinces, to collect taxes and mobilize labor, the French relied on village bosses who used their positions to embezzle funds and oppress peasants. They implemented a penal code that disrupted traditional practices, such as the prerogative of a father or respected dignitary to adjudicate disputes. Their efforts to reform the educational system -- like replacing Chinese ideographs with a romanized alphabet -- failed because young Vietnamese resisted colonial contamination. (Karnow, pp. 113-115)

France's biggest impact on Indochina was economic. Under the direction of Governor-General Paul Doumer, a former minister of finance who had been exiled from Paris in 1897 by his conservative friends for having the audacity to introduce the income tax, exploitation was perfected. He dissolved the powerless emperor's last vestige of sovereignty, the Council of Mandarins. He funneled customs duties and direct taxes into his central treasury. He created official monopolies for alcohol, salt, and opium, increasing production and consumption of the latter such that it eventually accounted for one-third of his administration's income. He dispossessed peasants of their small farms and encouraged the lucrative export of rice at the possible cost of food shortages. He backed French consortiums that owned coal mines and rubber plantations where virtually indentured labor suffered from disease and appalling working conditions. (Karnow, pp. 116-118)

When the discontented dared to protest, they would be "pacified" or suppressed, often by "acts of incredible brutality." (Karnow, p. 88)

Thus it was on December 29, 1920, in the city of Tours, that a slender, intense, thirty-year-old Asian known as Nguyen Ai Quoc rose to address the Congress of the French Socialist Party:

"It is impossible for me in just a few minutes to demonstrate to you all the atrocities committed in Indochina by the bandits of capitalism. There are more prisons than schools . . . Freedom of the press and opinion does not exist for us, nor does the freedom to unite or associate. We don't have the right to emigrate or travel abroad. We live in the blackest ignorance because we don't have the freedom of instruction. In Indochina they do their best to intoxicate us with opium and brutalize us with alcohol. They kill many thousands of [Vietnamese] . . . to defend interests that are not theirs." (Logevall, p. 12)

He had left his homeland five years earlier -- to explore the world, to study Western Civilization, perhaps, as a comrade said, to learn from it how to fight against it. He ported at Bombay, Oran, Le Havre, Boston, and San Francisco; he worked in Brooklyn, admired Manhattan skyscrapers, and was impressed by the legal rights granted to Chinese immigrants; he lingered in London, polishing his skills as a pastry chef and his fluency in English and fraternizing with anti-colonial nationalists. (Karnow, pp. 119-120)

He read Lenin's "Theses on the National and Colonial Questions," was enlightened by its analysis of the linkage between capitalism and imperialism and its viable blueprint for national liberation, and summarily rejected Socialism as flawed and embraced Communism. (Logevall, pp. 13-14)

After churning out his own political diatribes for three years, Nguyen concluded that the French Communists were too Eurocentric and moved to Moscow, where his expertise in Asian affairs brought him to the attention of Soviet leaders. In 1925 they sent him to Canton to found the first Marxist organization in Indochina, the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League. Although it would soon collapse in the aftermath of Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal and slaughter of his Communist associates, Nguyen's students would always remember him for the Confucian virtues he preached: thrift, prudence, modesty, and generosity. (Logevall, p. 17)

The deep factional splits and regional and tactical differences among a plethora of nationalist parties, the swift eradication of the most prominent one, the VNQDD, after it tried to foment an uprising by Vietnamese in the French army, and the woes of economic depression presented a golden opportunity for Nguyen. In June 1929, in Hong Kong, he prevailed upon several leaders to close ranks around a new organization: the Indochinese Communist Party; its program called for independence and a proletarian government. (Karnow, pp. 124-125)

Arrested as an agitator, he escaped a prison hospital -- even persuading an employee to declare him dead -- and resumed his wanderlust. Traveling aboard cramped freighters along Asian, African, and Mediterranean coasts, rolling slowly through the countryside in squalid compartments of the Trans-Siberian Railway, trekking for five days across the mountains of Central China to the Communist stronghold of Yenan, he left a trail of legends behind him. A French Communist agent who worked with him recalled: "He was taut and quivering, with only one thought in his head, his country, Vietnam." (Karnow, pp. 125-126)

In early 1941, in the wake of the Japanese tidal wave that surged across Southeast Asia and crushed the French in Vietnam, Nguyen slipped over the border from Southern China, his first return in thirty years. The time had come, he told five colleagues gathered around a bamboo table in a chilly mountain cave, to form a broad front "of patriots of all ages and all types, peasants, workers, merchants, and soldiers" to fight both the French colonialists and the Japanese occupiers. Although led by Communists, the emphasis of the Viet Nam Doc Lop Dong Minh, the Vietnam Independence League, would be national liberation. (Karnow, pp. 126-127)

Borrowing from the new movement, Nguyen Ai Quoc changed his name one last time. Henceforth he would be known to history as Ho Chi Minh, Bringer of Light. (Karnow, p. 127)

On the morning of September 2, 1945, Ho Chi Minh ascended a wooden platform in Hanoi's Ba Dinh Square, gazed into the faces of thousands who had journeyed from afar to see this man of mythical stature, and uttered a phrase whose origin was unknown to most of them: "We hold the truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." (Karnow, p. 135)

Emperor Bao Dai having abdicated, Ho proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Vietnam; its reign as the only civil government in the country was short-lived -- only twenty days.

Ho was invoking not only the words of Thomas Jefferson but also the sentiments of the American president who had led the allies to victory over the Germans and Japanese; by the time of Pearl Harbor Franklin Roosevelt had become a committed anti-colonialist. In March 1941 he told the White House Correspondents' Association: "We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood." Six months later, in drafting the Atlantic Charter, he included a clause respecting "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live." As for Indochina, in 1943 he declared to his son Elliott that he would work "with all my might and main" against any plan "to further France's imperialistic ambitions." (Logevall, pp. 46, 48; Karnow, p. 136)

Thus it was not surprising that Ho and his comrades looked to the world's sole superpower as their savior, "the shining giant whose commitment to freedom was real, who would end forever colonial control." (Logevall, pp. 98-99)

But Franklin Roosevelt was dead in 1945 and no longer a factor in their destiny. In the interests of building a stable and friendly France atop the ruins of a war-ravaged Europe and of maintaining positive relations with her government, the Truman Administration chose to defer to Charles de Gaulle on the subject of Indochina. Its silent concurrence spoke volumes when, during his triumphant tour of the U. S., de Gaulle asserted to a group of reporters: "The position of the French on Indochina is very simple: France means to recover its sovereignty over Indochina." (Logevall, pp. 103-104)

One young American on the scene was astute enough to perceive where such pronouncements were headed. The son of a congressman, already by the age of twenty-eight Peter Dewey had worked as a foreign correspondent, authored two books, fought in the Polish Army, and parachuted into occupied France to conduct espionage and assist guerillas. Head of an OSS contingent which had been sent to Saigon to find allied POW's and gather intelligence, he soon ran afoul of British Major General Douglas Gracey, whose purported mission was to disarm the Japanese. (Logevall, p. 116)

But Gracey was an unreconstructed colonialist who saw himself as a French standardbearer. He instituted martial law, evicted from the Governor-General's Palace the legitimately installed Viet Minh Provisional Government, closed down the Vietnamese press, and released and rearmed more than a thousand excitable French soldiers; they promptly set about terrorizing any Vietnamese they encountered. The Viet Minh retaliated -- mobilizing a massive general strike, storming the local jail to liberate their own imprisoned, and attacking and massacring scores of French and Eurasian civilians in the Cite Herault section of the town. Thus was ignited on September 23, 1945, a conflagration would rage for thirty years. (Logevall, pp. 113-115)

Dewey disapproved of Gracey's French bias while Gracey suspected Dewey of conniving with the Viet Minh and ordered him to leave the country. On the way to the airport Dewey swerved to avoid a barricade, saw three Vietnamese standing at a roadside ditch, and unleashed a string of curses in French. They opened fire and killed him, the first American casualty of the Vietnam War. In his final dispatch before his departure, Dewey wrote, "Cochinchina is burning. The French and British are finished here and we [the United States] ought to clear out of Southeast Asia." (Logevall, pp. 116-117)

On October 5, 1945, General Jacques Philippe Leclerc debarked in Indochina. Charged with reimposing French rule, he swiftly cracked a Viet Minh blockade around Saigon and drove through the Mekong delta and up into the highlands. Within five months, he announced victory in the south, but his claim was illusory. The French, like the Americans later, could conquer territory, but they could not hold it. "If we departed, believing the region pacified, the Viet Minh would arrive on our heels," wrote an historian serving with Leclerc. "There was only one possible defense, to multiply our posts, fortify them, arm and train the villagers . . . What was required was not thirty-five thousand troops but a hundred thousand." (Karnow, pp. 150-151)

Leclerc was a quick study. Telling aides that "one does not kill ideas with bullets," he soon realized that a military solution was impossible and that the best he could do was lay the groundwork for a political resolution -- for which the moment was actually propitious. (Logevall, p. 119)

While Ho Chi Minh's influence in the north was largely uncontested and his popularity widespread -- he had abolished onerous taxes, left landowners unmolested, and courted the middle class -- all was not benign. A horde of Chinese Nationalists -- who had been delegated at Potsdam the task of rounding up the Japanese -- roved the countryside, plundered villages and homesteads, and provided aid and comfort to his principal rival, a resurgent VNQDD. The Soviet and French Communists had shown little interest in his cause. The economy was in shambles, and his treasury lacked the funds to supply his burgeoning army with weapons and ammunition. (Logevall. pp. 125-128)

Ho indicated his receptivity to an accommodation in a series of conversations with de Gaulle's representative in Tonkin, Jean Saintenay. As their mutual respect deepened, the two men argued strenuously for months -- particularly over the fate of Cochinchina -- until Leclerc's flotilla of gunboats steamed into the Haiphong harbor and forced the issue. Under the terms of the "Preliminary Convention" signed on March 6, 1946, France recognized the Democratic Republic of Vietnam as a "free state" within the French Union; twenty-five thousand French troops were allowed to enter the North (and stay for five years), replacing the Chinese whose departure had also been negotiated; and whether Cochinchina would end up under French or Viet Minh dominion would be determined by plebiscite at some future date. (Logevall, pp. 128-135)

If some militants condemned the accord as a sellout, at least Ho had extracted one painful thorn from his side. "If the Chinese stay now, they will never go," he told his critics. "I prefer to eat French shit for five years than eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life." (Karnow, p. 153)

Western observers during this period portrayed Ho as both conciliatory and determined. American intelligence officer George Wickes wrote, "He strikes you as above the run of ordinary mortals . . . Perhaps it is the spirit that great patriots are supposed to have. Surely he has that -- long struggling has left him mild and resigned, still sustaining some small idealism and hope [that war can be avoided]. But I think it is particularly his kindliness, his simplicity, his down-to-earthness." A British diplomat reported, "There is no doubt in my mind that he is prepared to go to any lengths to attain his object." (Logevall, pp. 134-135)

On May 31, Ho left for France, where he would spend the next four months trying to resolve the Cochinchina dilemma. Saintenay described the resulting Modus Vivendi, or "interim understanding" as "pathetic"; Ho got far less than he had hoped for, and the French retained their economic stranglehold on the North. Once again, the difficult political questions were postponed indefinitely. (Logevall, p. 144)

While in Paris, Ho urged an American journalist, David Schoenbrun, to help rally public opinion in support of peace and Vietnamese independence. Schoenbrun replied that Americans did not think Communism was compatible with freedom. "If the men you call Communists are the only men who lead the fight for independence," said Ho, "then Vietnam will be Communist. But independence is the motivating force, not Communism." (Logevall, p. 143)

Schoenbrun marveled at the man's self-assurance when he asked how Ho expected to wage war against the French with no army and no modern weapons. "It would not be hopeless," said Ho. "It would be hard, desperate, but we could win . . . The spirit of man is more powerful than his own machines." (Logevall, p. 143)

Viet Minh theoretician Truong Chinh similarly elucidated the fundamental tenet of revolutionary war in his 1947 book La Resistance Vaincra (The Resistance to Win): "[There are] those who have a tendency only to rely on military action . . . They tend to believe that everything can be settled by armed force; they do not apply political mobilization, are unwilling to give explanations and to convince people . . . fighting spiritedly, they neglect political work; they do not . . . act in such a way that the army and the people can wholeheartedly help one another." (Fall, pp. 372-373)

The intransigence of the French was personified in their High Commissioner for Indochina, Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu. A former monk, d'Argenlieu was aloof, arrogant, autocratic, and too intellectually obtuse to see the world in any terms other than black and white, good versus evil. On June 1, 1946, without consulting his superiors in Paris, he proclaimed an autonomous "Republic of Cochinchina," a clear violation of the March 6 Accords. (Logevall, pp. 124, 137)

With Ho Chi Minh on the other side of the globe, leadership of the DRV devolved upon his principal lieutenant, the precocious Vo Nguyen Giap -- lawyer, historian, author, and now military commander at the age of thirty-five. Giap was at Ho's side when he founded the Viet Minh in May 1941, presided over the creation of the National Liberation Army in December 1944, and headed the interior ministry in Ho's first government. A self-taught logistician, strategist, and organizer, Giap possessed the steely determination that enabled him to take on and defeat two Western powers, accomplishments no less remarkable than those of Wellington, Grant, and Lee. The crucible was forged in December 1946. (Logevall, pp. 147-149)

On November 22, following an altercation between a French patrol boat and Viet Minh troops in the harbor of Haiphong, General Jean Etienne Valluy -- who had replaced Leclerc -- ordered his local subordinate "by every possible means to take complete control of Haiphong and force the Vietnamese government and army into submission." (Logevall, pp. 156-157)

During the next two days, a prolonged aerial and naval bombardment -- which had been sanctioned by French Prime Minister Georges Bidault -- reduced the Chinese and Vietnamese quarters to rubble, killing over a thousand civilians. On December 19, two days after Valluy himself had landed in Haiphong and announced, "If those gooks want a fight, they'll get it," Viet Minh militia sabotaged the Hanoi municipal power plant, and broke into French homes to murder and abduct their occupants. Giap called for a universal uprising, sent reinforcements into the city, and assured his partisans that though "the resistance will be long and arduous, our cause is just and we will surely triumph." His units held Hanoi for two months, giving his government enough time to reconstitute itself in a mountain stronghold. (Karnow, pp. 156-157; Logevall, p. 163)

If the Viet Minh fired the first shots in Hanoi on December 19, 1946, the French must bear primary responsibility for precipitating the conflict. Fifteen months earlier, with British complicity, they had ousted by force a Vietnamese administration in Saigon after a national government had proclaimed independence. According to d'Argenlieu, who seemed determined to provoke the Viet Minh into full-scale hostilities, France would never "relinquish her hold on Indochina." Bidault opposed not only negotiations with the Viet Minh but the granting of independence to any Vietnamese regime. During Ho Chi Minh's sojourn in Paris Charles de Gaulle affirmed that France must remain "united with the territories she has opened to civilization," lest she forfeit her great power status. (Logevall, pp. 163-165; Buttinger, p. 670)

Nineteen forty-seven was a year of strategic defense for the Viet Minh. Too weak to pursue open, large-scale engagements, General Giap ceded the major towns and lines of communication in Tonkin and Annan, and was content to harass an enemy hampered by primitive road networks and a populace harboring a deep anti-French animus. (Logevall, pp. 170-173)

The frustrations mounted for a French Corps confounded by the Viet Minh's "elusiveness, their capacity for surprise . . . and the impossibility of telling friend from foe. It was a war without fronts, where the enemy was everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Time and again units would move into a target area in force, only to find no one there." If they pulled out, the natives would return as quickly as they had left. If they stayed, they found themselves isolated, detached from their supply base, and unavailable for major combat elsewhere. (Logevall, pp. 177-178)

In May 1947 a French scholar and war veteran named Paul Mus journeyed sixty miles from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh's jungle  headquarters in Thai Nguyen. Mus was the emissary of d'Argenlieu's successor, High Commissioner Emile Bollaert, who had been charged by the moderate Socialists now in power in Paris with reopening talks with the Viet Minh. (Logevall, pp. 189-190)

A fervent imperialist for the first forty years of his life, Mus had been disillusioned by an intimate exposure to its injustices and to the irrepressible patriotism and nationalism sweeping the land. Duly presenting his conditions for a ceasefire -- the Viet Minh must lay down their arms, allow French troops freedom of movement inside their zone of control, and hand over deserters from the Foreign Legion -- he could only utter a weak "No" when Ho Chi Minh posed the question: "Would you accept these terms if you were in my place?" He left the meeting convinced that the French had already lost the battle for the hearts and minds of a humble peasantry who, when the sun set, mutated into a race of warriors. (Logevall, pp. 192-193)

Nevertheless, as 1947 progressed, senior French strategists pondered a tantalizing question. "What if you could win the people's allegiance away from the Viet Minh?" What if you could persuade non-Communists to coalesce around a leader who was less inimical to French aims, who might curry favor with the United States, who could garner greater support for the war effort in the French Assembly? Once in place, such an alternative to Ho Chi Minh would transform the colonial struggle into a civil war with a virtuous France fighting on the side of the Vietnamese against the Red Menace and serving as America's surrogate in the region to stanch the spread of Communism. (Logevall, pp. 197-199)

One name stood out: Bao Dai, the portly, thirty-four-year-old former emperor who had abdicated in 1945 and was currently living in Hong Kong. He was an ideal candidate -- not only because he possessed considerable influence among the Vietnamese but also because, at least in the eyes of his presumptive masters, he was weak, malleable, and prone to excessive gambling, womanizing, and self-indulgence. (Logevall, p. 199)

Bao Dai may have been a hedonist but he was no fool. He insisted to the stream of messengers and collaborators sent to lure him back to the throne that the French must first accede to Vietnam's independence and unity. Finally succumbing to their importunities, he put his signature on two agreements, one on December 7, 1947, the other on June 8, 1948 -- and promptly repudiated both as so hedged with qualifications and contingencies as to render them meaningless. (Karnow, pp. 173-174)

Two developments in early 1949 brought Bao Dai once more to the negotiating table: the looming victory of Mao Zedong's Chinese Communists -- who could strengthen Ho Chi Minh -- and the Viet Minh's own military successes, which had enabled them to extend their reach over one-half the population and amass an army of 250,000. (Logevall, pp. 207-210)

Thus, on March 8, Vietnam's figurehead emperor Bao Dai and France's figurehead president Vincent Auriol concluded by an exchange of letters the Elysee Accords, so named for the grand palace in Paris where the ceremony took place. (Logevall, p. 211)

The French reconfirmed Vietnam's independence and, going beyond mere promises, outlined measures to incorporate Cochinchina in a cohesive Vietnamese state. But France still retained control over the country's defense, foreign relations, and finances. "What they call a Bao Dai solution," admitted the discomfited signatory himself soon afterward, "turns out to be a just a French solution." (Karnow, p. 175)

And one the latter would deploy almost before the ink was dry in pursuit of what had been their principal objective all along: securing American material and diplomatic backing. (Logevall, p. 212)

The time was ripe for the consummation of this lengthy courtship. Appointed Secretary of State by President Truman in January 1949, the haughty Dean Acheson could rightly claim to have been "Present at the Creation" of America's global hegemony -- as well as its long and arduous commitment to Vietnam. A staunch anti-Communist, he was often brusquely impatient with and wary of nationalist leaders. On the other hand, he couldn't entirely rid himself of the notion that Bao Dai was a weak leader with no chance of winning over the broad populace and of the suspicion that France's professed liberalism was merely a new guise for furthering her colonial ambitions. (Logevall. pp. 217-219)

Ultimately, Acheson landed on the side of the conservatives, convinced by arguments like the one offered by his new consul general in Saigon, George Abbott: "Our support will not insure Bao Dai's success but the lack of it will probably make certain his failure." (Logevall, p. 220)

Some viewed the situation through a lens of greater magnification, like Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk, who told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 1950: "This is a civil war that has been captured by the [Soviet] Politburo, and, besides, has been turned into a tool of the Politburo. So it isn't a civil war in the usual sense. It is part of an international war." (Karnow, p. 179)

And like researchers in the National Security Council, who wrote in June 1949: "If Southeast Asia is also swept by Communism, we shall have suffered a major political rout the repercussions of which will be felt throughout the rest of the world, especially in the Middle East and then in a critically exposed Australia." (Logevall, p. 222)

The tipping point came in January 1950 when first the People's Republic of China and then the Soviet Union announced formal recognition of Ho Chi Minh's government. Three weeks later Dean Acheson followed suit for Bao Dai and his fellow puppets in Laos and Cambodia. As neither security, democracy, nor independence could exist in any area where Soviet imperialism reigned, he declared, the United States would extend economic and military aid to France and her allied governments in Indochina. (Logevall, p. 229)

Washington's chieftains decided that continued French domination of Indochina was a lesser evil than another Communist victory in Asia. In justification they concocted the cliches that would be regurgitated ten years later when they stepped into the vacuum created by the French departure: that the Vietnamese were a "free people" resisting "subversion by armed minorities or by outside pressure"; and that the fall of Indochina would lead to a Communist takeover of all Southeast Asia. (Buttinger, p. 810)

Not all of Acheson's colleagues concurred. Charlton Ogburn, head of the Southeast Division, excoriated Bao Dai as "a figure deserving of the ridicule and contempt with which he is regarded by the Vietnamese." (Karnow, p. 177)

Another expert, Raymond B. Fosdick, emphasized that the regime was doomed and foretold the future with stunning prescience: "This shabby business . . . probably represents an improvement over the brutal colonialism of earlier years, but it is now too late in the history of the world to settle for the price of this cheap substitute . . . Whether the French like it or not, independence is coming to Indochina. Why therefore do we tie ourselves to the tail of their battered kite?" (Karnow, p. 178)

Nevertheless the die was cast. The great powers were coming to Vietnam. (Logevall, p. 213)

REFERENCES

Buttinger, Joseph. Vietnam: A Dragon Embattled; Volume II: Vietnam at War. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc., 1967.

Fall, Bernard. Street Without Joy. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: The Telegraph Press, 1965.

Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: The Viking Press, 1983.

Logevall, Fredrik. Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2013.

Captivated in Catalonia

This one is a business trip, and since someone has to do it -- attend the semi-annual meeting of the insurance captive, Generations Group, of which Schewel Furniture is a member-owner -- it might as well be your scribe, accompanied of course by the lovely JSG, who can produce a carry-on, backpack, and passport faster than a flight attendant can say "Welcome aboard."

Incorporated to provide workers' compensation, general liability, and vehicle collision coverage for Schewel and its twenty-nine similar-sized partner companies, the captive -- so-called because it is owned by, or captive to, the policyholders -- offers cost savings that a commercial carrier cannot match.

The underwriting gains from invested premiums are retained by the captive rather than by an independent insurer, and are thus available to be distributed to the owners. At around thirty percent, the administrative overhead of captives is about ten percentage points lower than that of independent insurers. The potential for the return of unused premium is a considerable incentive for the owners to reduce losses through the implementation of stringent risk management programs. Finally, if the captive is domiciled, or licensed, offshore -- like Generations Group, which is in the Cayman Islands -- its profits are subject to taxation only once, when they are passed through to the owner companies and not at the corporate level.

An additional if less tangible benefit is the opportunity to network with an eclectic assortment of entrepreneurs, whose enterprises run the gamut from residential and commercial construction, building material sales, real estate development, sanitary product distribution, and pickle manufacturing to golf caddie management, breakfast biscuit preparation, and competitive dog show superintending.

Offshore captives are required by law to meet outside the U. S. -- but not necessarily in their domicile -- and Generations Group usually alternates between Canada and the Caribbean, most recently Toronto and San Juan. Once every five years or so the meeting is held in conjunction with four other captives who share the same supra-management group, thereby creating the critical mass for an owners' conference at some exotic locale -- like the Hotel Arts Barcelona, where business is speedily dispensed with on Day One and the attendees can turn to more pleasurable and edifying pursuits.

Self-improvement is the order of Day Two, teed up by one of ten most inspirational people in the world, according to the Wall Street Journal, Chad Hymas, who was paralyzed from the neck down fifteen years ago when a two-thousand-pound bale of hay crushed his spine; until calamity struck he had been an ordinary elk farmer tending his herd and living the dream he had harbored since his youthful infatuation with those stately animals.

For two hours, before a spellbound audience, Chad maneuvers his wheelchair back and forth across the stage, occasionally pausing to peck at his laptop and summon a photo onto the two large screens that flank him as he weaves a narrative quilt of personal experiences that elucidate and amplify his precepts for "Leaving a Legacy"; it's a marvelous feat to behold, since his gnarled, twisted hands hang like dead fish.

Put your family first, always. To be a superior leader (or "guide"), support your associates in word and deed without being asked and when they least expect it. Act with urgency, or you won't act at all. Focus on what you have, not on what you have lost. Exalt and encourage others, because people remember how you make them feel, not what you say.

He begins with Father's Day. Propped up between his two teenage sons (lest he fall over), he savored breakfast in bed -- strawberry waffles topped with whipped cream and syrup -- and two simple but eloquent cards: a homemade one decorated with an elk from his ten-year-old (adopted) daughter, who scored her love for Dad on this special occasion at 101, compared to Mom's 100 (and Chad's own previous record high of 80); and a Wal-Mart gem from the boys proclaiming him the "Best Dad in the World," to which they appended the testimonial that "when they grow up, they want to be a guide just like him."

Chad points out an exemplary guide standing in the wings. He's one of the housekeeping staff, Mohammed, who exhibited outstanding leadership by seizing the moment and arranging a rooftop dinner for Chad with hotel management; we notice how Chad makes Mohammed feel like a hero by recognizing his effort in front of the entire assemblage.

Chad spent sixty-three days in the hospital after his accident. On the sixty-fourth his father and brother showed up, dressed him in camouflage, drove him out to their farm, deposited him near a watering hole, poured elk urine over his head (releasing a telltale scent), and let loose their mating calls. But the joke was on them. For five years afterward Chad was too depressed to go looking for elk again ("I just sat there," he says) -- until his father telephoned one more time. "We're packing your favorite lunch. We'll be building a campfire and talking about you. We're taking your two boys whether you come along or not." Which is when Chad realized he couldn't afford to waste any more time and snapped his favorite photo from a file of 60,000. It sits framed in glass in his office, is plastered on his luggage, and lights up his computer screen at his initial keystroke: his younger son all decked out in dirty camouflage, wranglers, and boots, poised to espy his first elk.

Chad has a ringside parking spot reserved for his wheelchair in his sons' high school basketball arena, and in spite of a whirlwind schedule, he has never missed a game. He came close a few years ago when at a company retreat in Greenland he got an unexpected call from the older one, Ace. "I'm starting my first varsity game tomorrow night" was the bittersweet message, since there was no way Chad could get home in less than thirty hours. He explained his predicament to the CEO, who could not alter the agenda but did accommodate him with a sudden, startling decision; he flew Chad by private plane to Toronto, where he caught a flight to Salt Lake City, landing in time to make the tip-off with twelve minutes to spare. When Ace saw his Dad, he gave him the "thumbs up" sign, then ran across the court and held up Chad's own thumbs, a tableau that became legendary in the school's annals.

From his father Chad learned the importance of acting boldly when others choose to avoid or ignore an uncomfortable situation. He relates an incident from his own high school past about an intellectually disabled girl named Melanie who was subjected to constant teasing and denigration by him and his peers -- until the day his father brought pizza to the packed cafeteria, took a slice over to Melanie, touched her arm, and engaged her in conversation. Three thousand stunned witnesses had a change of heart, and voted Melanie an honorary cheerleader; soon she would manifest twirling skills warranting television coverage by four local stations. And years later Chad's son and a buddy would make him proud when they escorted two special education students to Homecoming.
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On July 11, 2003, Chad set out to push his wheelchair five hundred miles from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas. He made good progress for four days over relatively flat terrain before encountering a steep ascent that slowed him to a "turtle's pace" of two miles in fourteen hours. By Day Eight, traveling at night to compensate for asphalt temperature that had risen to 122 degrees, Chad was sick, exhausted, questioning the meaning of this tortuous exercise, and ready to give it up, although he was only eighty-seven miles from his goal, having counted off over four hundred green mile markers. "Sure, you can quit now," said his father, "but why don't you try counting those yellow stripes down the middle of the road, which can measure your success just as effectively as the mile markers?" And so he did, 1100, 1800, 3000 stripes, until he reached Apex Junction, where the State Police shut down the highway, enabling him to coast downhill and complete his eleven-day marathon. "The difficult takes time," says Chad. "But the impossible takes a little bit longer."

Slowing down the inexorable hands of Father Time may be a difficult task, but it is by no means impossible, says our next next speaker, Todd Whitthorne. A healthy lifestyle can compress the morbidity curve, adding six to nine years to life expectancy and postponing a decline in one's functional capacities by as many as twenty years. Each of us has a choice, or as Led Zeppelin intoned in "Stairway to Heaven": "Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run there's still time to change the road you're on." No less a sage than Leo Tolstoy offered similar words of encouragement a century-and-a-half earlier when he wrote: "The position we occupy is not as important as the direction we are moving."

Of the top ten causes of the global metric "Years Lived With Disability" -- back pain, depression, anemia, neck pain, diabetes, hearing loss, migraine headaches, pulmonary disease, anxiety, and musculoskeletal disorders -- except for anemia, the prevalence of each has increased since 1990, with diabetes leading the way, up 136 percent.

The percent of the U. S. population with diabetes stands at 9.3 (29 million people), but eighty-six million more are prediabetic (90 percent of whom don't know it) and are at a high risk for Type 2 diabetes without changes in their diet and activity level. In 2012 diabetes and its related complications accounted for $245 billion in medical costs and lost work and wages.

In the U. S. today, 35 percent of adults (and twenty percent of teenagers) are obese. They consume 42 percent more in health care dollars than adults who are at a healthy weight, racking up about $180 billion annually in preventable medical billings. In addition, obesity costs employers $4.3 billion in job absenteeism and $500 per worker in lost productivity per year. Worker Compensation claims run five times higher for obese employees than they do for the non-obese.

The twofold solution lies first in sensible nutrition, says Todd, whose repertoire of facts, statistics, sound bites, and gentle recommendations leaves us all regretting those sumptuous Hotel Arts Barcelona buffets. We should have skipped breakfast, saving ourselves four hundred calories. Were we reacting to genuine hunger (the body's need for sustenance) or merely satisfying our appetites, our mind's craving for gratuitous titillation of our palates? Why is Todd looking directly at me when he admonishes us to moderate our pace of ingestion, since our stomachs have no taste buds?

While it's easy (and flippant) to say, "If it comes from a plant, eat it; if it's made in a plant, throw it away," adherence to such maxims seems a lost cause when twenty percent of our calories are consumed in a car; when Arby's, Taco Bell, Burger King, and KFC dominate the roadway and television screen; when the Holiday Inn Express promotes Pancake Night; when Ph.D's earn accolades for concocting peanut butter and bacon shakes; and when fat, sugar, and salt are altering the biological circuitry of brains overdosing on french fries, ketchup, corn syrup, and other poisonous substitutes for vegetables and roast chicken.

Todd suggests enhancing one's diet daily with two supplements: 2000 IU's of Vitamin D, which can boost the immune system and prevent osteoporosis; and 1000 mg of Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil), which can lower risk for heart disease and stroke.

If Todd's second remedy, physical activity, won't produce meaningful weight loss -- one pound contains 3500 calories -- its virtues are indisputable. Aerobic exercise for the mind and body is the one sure way to make yourself healthier; the evidence is clear that it can significantly reduce or cure fatigue, snoring, heartburn, insomnia, depression, headaches, impotence, and anxiety. A fit fifty-something doubles his chance of living to age eighty-five.

Todd recommends 150 minutes a week of moderate exercise, including weight lifting, but says for those less committed the "Scientific 7-Minute Workout" can be as effective as endurance training. It consists of twelve extremely intensive activities employing only body weight, a chair, and a wall, each performed in rapid succession for thirty seconds followed by ten-second rest intervals: jumping jacks, wall-sit, push-up, abdominal crunch, step-up onto chair, squat, triceps dip on chair, plank, high knees running in place, push-up and rotation, and side plank.

As a fitness fanatic (but a problematic eater who can't cook and unless he's dining out subsists on processed food), I of course heartily endorse Todd's prescription for "Leaving the Campground Cleaner." But exercise is first an avocation and second a habit, which is why I am swift to extol its physical and psychological benefits, yet always careful to avoid a didactic tone. No matter the level of intensity, the regimen is too strenuous and the change in behavior too radical for any person to undertake unless he decides indeed that "the pain is worth the gain" and develops a passion as seductive and obsessive as playing golf or watching football. There's a reason 95 percent of Americans are too sedentary.

Stepping up next to reveal the shocking truth about the current drug epidemic is a tag team with an impressive resume. Coined by New York Magazine "the most famous narc in America," Bob Stutzman spent twenty-five years as a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, at one time had a $5 million contract on his head, was the subject of the Netflix film "Narco" for his role in hunting down Pablo Escobar, survived four gunshot wounds, and brought to justice the criminal who killed his best friend and partner. Judge Jodi Switalski is a former Detroit felony prosecutor (and Olympian volleyball star) who presides over a successful sobriety, drug, and domestic violence court.

Like a tenacious bulldog with a gravelly baritone, Bob's on a mission, launching a barrage of statistics so frightening it stretches the boundaries of credibility. One hundred twenty persons die every day from drug overdoses, over half of which are prescription drugs. Seventy-one percent of students describe their high schools as drug-infested. Attending college increases one's chance of becoming a drug or alcohol addict by a factor of three. Every day over sixteen hundred females are raped as a result of drug or alcohol use. While drug use is actually down slightly since 1992, the number of persons classified as dependent has doubled from nine million to eighteen million.

Twelve years and three months is now the average age at which young people begin their drug careers, compared to fifteen-and-a-half in the 1960's. It is not uncommon for fourth graders to take a drink or "try a joint" at the urging of a friend or sibling and then step up easily to "huffing" -- inhaling Pam spray or Sharpie felt tips -- and smoking the dangerous, hallucinatory plant Salvia, which can be picked up at Home Depot or ordered online.

Bob is not as favorably inclined to the legalization of marijuana as I am. For adults, he says, losing depth perception for forty-eight hours after a few puffs is no better or worse than the effect of alcohol. For kids, however, chronic use can be devastating, changing the cellular structure of their brains and shrinking their IQ's ten points.

LSD's back, says Bob, although in a more deadly variant, psylocybin, a compound occurring in a species of Central American mushrooms. Its "magical" trips can evoke terrifying thoughts, fears of insanity and death, and an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. Even worse are the recurring delusions or "flashbacks" experienced by users long after their ingesting the drug.

Opioids present different problems from those associated with older, conventional drugs. The most popular means of consumption is to "parachute," or swallow crushed pills, so that the chemicals hit the blood stream in eight seconds. The consequent "high" engenders feelings of warmth, safety, and well-being which one person likened to "being in my mother's arms." Unbeknownst to him, one's best friend can be addicted to opioids, just as a stoned Rush Limbaugh broadcast for three years to an unsuspecting public. In 2008 the most hit-upon internet photo was a body bag containing opioids' most famous victim: twenty-nine-year-old Heath Ledger, who couldn't separate himself from his "Joker" persona and succumbed to ambien, xanax, and oxycontin.

Bob hands off to Judge Jodi, who extracts from her robe her own portfolio of horror stories. K2 (synthetic marijuana) was the culprit in the case of Dickie, who, she says, "couldn't feel the pain" of slitting his throat, so he shot himself in the face. After vaping the designer drug flakka, Tucker beat his father to death with a baseball bat, shouting, "My brain is bleeding!" A woman who feared for her life because of her grandson's use of K2 killed him preemptively in self-defense. Painkillers are turning injured athletes like Page into addicts; Judge Jodi knew she was at risk, sentencing her to one day in jail for possession of paraphernalia, but couldn't save her from a subsequent prescription drug overdose.

The Judge passes the baton back to Bob, who wants to correct some common misconceptions. Contrary to what was depicted in the otherwise accurate television series "The Wire," eighty-six percent of drug addicts are white. Per capita, white adults use drugs at a 70 percent higher rate than blacks (for white high school students that number is 100 percent), although blacks are four times more likely to be arrested on a drug charge.

What might once have been considered safe havens offer no relief from this scourge. Drug use in suburban and rural areas is on par with that in big cities. It's eighteen percent higher in private schools than in public schools. Players in team sports have a higher rate of substance abuse than those in individual sports and non-participants (and football has the highest rate), thereby putting the lie to the frequently heard refrain, "My son doesn't have a problem; he plays ball." Medical and MBA degrees from the University of Pennsylvania couldn't prevent the self-inflicted death of John on his first day off after three weeks in residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital.

Bob does offer some advice for families on how to avoid being struck by such tragedy. Postpone as long as possible a child's exposure to and first use of a drug, because the younger the age when it happens, the more likely he or she will become an addict. Emphasize the evils of tobacco, which also is a predictor of progressing to harder substances. And sit down to dinner with children five to seven nights a week, and listen to, but don't judge, their best and worst adventures of the day.

"Where are all the pills coming from?" is almost a rhetorical question. Twenty percent of patients walk out of their physician's office with a prescription for opioids, usually for sixty doses. In 1992 six million scripts were written for opioids; in 2014 that figure had grown to 270 million. More often than we would like to believe, kids will check the medicine cabinet in their friends' homes; if they're wondering which pill will get them high, they've been directed by the internet to "take the one with the 'warning' label."

Well, after nearly four hours of lectures on the evils of gluttony and substance-induced euphoria, we're off to indulge ourselves in both in a rather incongruous sunset to our day of enlightenment. Our destination -- one hour by bus from Barcelona -- is the magnificent Cavas Cordoniu, a winery complex that includes vineyards, production facilities, restaurant, multi-level banquet hall, private residence, and storage cellar. Dating back to the sixteenth century, it's the oldest family business in Spain and worldwide the seventeenth-oldest as well as the second largest maker of bottle-fermented sparkling wine.

And it's delicious, whether of the white or rose variety, glasses of which overflow the twenty or so large tables bordering the spacious courtyard where our party of four hundred socializes, imbibes, samples the tasty seafood hors d'oeuvres, and admires the grounds and the view. We're about to head indoors when JSG points out a series of trams -- several carts linked together and pulled by a small tractor -- dropping off and picking up riders, then whizzing off on some mysterious tour which is drawing a crowd. It's like musical chairs, but we finally locate two seats and hop aboard.

We motor down several long ramps, interrupted by a hairpin switchback or two, before landing in the bowels of the property. It's chilly, dank, and gloomy, with barely enough light to make out on either side of us floor to ceiling storage racks, some empty, others filled with familiar dust-covered shapes. We're in Cordoniu's famous underground, Cava caves so to speak, nineteen miles of corridors housing forty million bottles of the bubbly, although I'm not sure the proprietors ever take inventory.

I'm reminded of the juvenile drinking ditty, "One hundred bottles of beer on the wall," and sure enough our guide pulls one down, not to pass around but to demonstrate the manufacturing process. After primary fermentation and blending, the wine is put in bottles with yeast and a small amount of sugar, stopped with a temporary cap, and stored horizontally. During secondary fermentation, which can last up to three years, carbon dioxide is trapped in the wine in solution. After aging, the bottles are gradually rotated to a downward vertical position so that the dead yeast or lees settles in the neck. A small portion of liquid is frozen, the plug of ice with the lees is removed, the wine is topped off with a dose of sugar (which varies according to the sweetness desired), and the bottle is recapped.

By the time we get back to the surface there are no seats left on the ground level of the banquet hall where the buffet is spread out. Health guru Todd would no doubt regard that as fortuitous: it not only requires us to engage in strenuous physical activity climbing the stairway, it also suppresses our calorie intake since, after one bulging plate of paella, pasta, and salad, a return trip hardly seems worth the effort. Later on we do make our way down to the dance floor, as I can't resist rockin' an' rollin' to a medley -- Waterloo, Dancing Queen, Take a Chance on Me -- popularized by my newest favorite singing group, the 1970's Swedish stars known as "ABBA."

None the worse for all the revelry, we're up at 8:00 AM the next morning to catch a cab for a day-long excursion which JSG's careful research has determined is the most promising of a pot luck draw: to the medieval town of Girona and then to Figueres, site of the Salvador Dali Museum. Our tour bus departs at 8:30 from the terminal at the Placa de Catalunya, "a twenty-minute ride from here," says the hotel concierge, which leaves us plenty of time as we settle in behind our driver, another Mohammed, although he's altogether of a different sort from his namesake of yesterday. He's friendly enough, but somehow runs into three traffic jams while following a circuitous route through some parts of the city we'd rather not see right now before depositing us at our destination a frustrating five minutes too late.

Well, there's still tomorrow, we console ourselves with, and since we're not far from one of Barcelona's main attractions, it's simply a matter of switching Days Three and Four.

During our wandering through the area a few days ago we'd seen the provocative facade which eclipses its neighbors like a misplaced Disneyland castle: Antoni Gaudi's Casa Battlo. At this hour there's no waiting line for the wonders that lie behind it.

In 1904, by the time the fifty-four-year-old Gaudi was commissioned by wealthy industrialist Josep Battlo to renovate his newly-purchased home on the prominent Passeig de Gracia, his reputation as a master of Catalan Modernism and a creative genius was well-established. Incorporating elements of the Oriental and neo-Gothic movements that had influenced him in the years after his 1878 graduation from the Barcelona Architecture School, Gaudi took the lyricism, subjectivity, overt ornamentation, and plastic constructional language of Modernism in a direction that was totally original and beyond emulation.

Gaudi sought to express through architecture the organic shapes of nature he observed in his explorations of the nearby mountains of Montserrat and Pareis and the caves of Mallorca and Colibato. His studies led him to the consistent usage of ruled geometrical forms, which he identified in rushes, reeds, tree trunks, and the human skeleton. For example, the interior of La Sagrada Familia is envisioned as a forest, with tree-like pillars divided into branches supporting a series of intertwined hyperboloid vaults.

Gaudi was the first to apply to common architecture the catenary curve -- an engineering device formerly limited to suspension bridges -- thereby adding great strength to his structures.

Gaudi's internal conception of space enabled him to visualize his designs in three dimensions and dispense with traditional plans in favor of casts or intricate and innovative models. For the Church of Colonia Guell, on a scale of 1:10, he crafted the columns and arches he wanted to achieve by inverting the floor and suspending from it strings (which represented the catenaries) tied to bags of birdshot (which represented the weight-bearing points of the building).

Gaudi employed the same technique in planning the fantastical main facade of the Casa Battlo, sculpting plaster models that would prefigure its unusual curved shapes. Overlaid with stunning, colorful combinations of stone, glass, iron, and ceramics that vibrate in the sunlit interplay of light and shadow, it has been likened to the impressionist water lilies of Claude Monet.

The wave-like effect was created by removing sections of the original wall and then covering one-hundred-eighty square meters of surface area with trencadis, broken pieces of glass and ceramic work collected from various sources and applied with limestone mortar. Gaudi integrated the ground, main, and first floors into a single rostrum; composed of flowing lava-like sandstone, its five curved openings are sealed with colored windows crowned by stained glass medallions and divided by eight bone-like columns. The facade's nine balconies feature balustrades perched on shell-shaped platforms and fashioned from single pieces of wrought iron carved to resemble Venetian masks.

Passing through the wrought iron barred doors of the front entrance, we are each outfitted with an audio guide and a device which resembles a mini-ipad but is actually a looking glass into the past. When viewed through its magical lens, every room appears furnished and decorated just as it was one hundred years ago.

We enter the cave-like general vestibule, where a blending of materials efficiently channels traffic between levels: inlaid marble flooring, wood and iron apertures and banisters, stucco-clad curved ceilings, and alternating flat and volumetric rectangular tiles in grey, sky blue, and lapis emblazoning the lower walls.

On the main floor, a reception hallway leads through double doors of iron grill work and wood to the Battlo family apartment; we are in a grotto, where the walls seem to have been eroded by wind and rain and a turtle shell skylight enhances the marine ambiance. A chimney room which served as Battlo's office transitions us from the public to the private areas of the house; here the undulating walls are plastered with gold leaf mosaics that cleverly camouflage the mushroom-shaped hollowed-out fireplace.

Overlooking the Passeig de Gracia, the grand salon was organized to function both as living quarters and a hub of social activity. On either side of the central room, screen style doors of wood and translucent glass -- which provide privacy when closed -- fold back like an accordion to create a unique, enlarged space wherein the natural illumination admitted by the generously-sized windows is softened by their stained glass upper panes. The ceiling swirls into a vortex around a lamp as fiery and magnetic as the sun. Exquisite details abound: colorful glass discs set in the door transoms; whirlpool-shaped ventilation grooves cut out above the windows; twisting reliefs accenting columnar capitals, shafts, and bases; and ergonomic handles modeled by the architect.

In one darkened bedroom a replica of the casa sits upon a table. Imitating our fellow tourists, we aim our ipads toward it, and are treated to a personal five-minute sound and light show, during which the whole process of construction and renovation is depicted as if the building were a living organism that moves and mutates, as its various faces are washed away by spectral waterfalls.

The dining room is situated in the rear of the flat; again curved forms predominate, and the oceanic theme is emphasized by a ceiling from which large drops of water are extruded and by the weather-softened dual column which accentuates the door to the back patio. The latter runs the entire breadth of the building, and is paved with familiar kaleidoscopic trencadis and ceramics recovered from the original structure. Above it rises the rear facade, which is draped with fifty-two windows and five levels of serpentine railed terraces, all conveying energy and lightness to the ensemble.

Our eyeballs bulging, is it possible that even greater delights await us? Climbing a simple winding staircase, we emerge from one of the two stairwells that anchor either end of the gloriously-landscaped roof terrace; linked by a large glass and iron skylight, each is capped by an arrangement of eight twisting chimneys clad in delicately colored trencadis. Two smaller chimney sets stand watch on opposite sides of the terrace. Transcending architecture, these organic forms, silhouettes, and textures are rendered as artistic works of substantial merit.

Crowning the edifice is a striking undulating roof that on the Passeig de Gracia facade is covered with glazed tiles in shades of red, blue, and green. Along the edge of this surface runs a spine-like composition of tubular and helmet-shaped ceramic pieces in a series of dual color combinations. A trencadis cylindrical base supports a four-armed cross atop bulbous tower; when the latter was broken in transit, Gaudi demurred calling for a replacement as he considered the cracks to have considerable aesthetic value.

On our way down, we pause to admire one more marvel: the central patio well, which Gaudi completely renovated so that all areas would receive adequate light. Larger windows were installed in the lower interior rooms; smaller windows higher up. Wooden slat openings set below the fixed glass provide improved ventilation throughout the flats. Peering through these windows, we are overcome by a sensation of underwater immersion. Fifteen thousand tiles clad the inner walls, all placed diagonally and by color such that equal illumination is achieved throughout the atrium: whitish tone in the basement; light blue on the main floor; medium blue on the second floor; and dark blue on the fourth floor.

The exit leads past a display of -- appropriately -- furniture pieces, mainly chairs (which I believe are reproductions), specially designed for the house by Gaudi. Crafted from ash, a wood that is durable and flexible, their rounded forms blend perfectly with the architectonic spaces they were assigned to and anatomically adapt to the postures of the body. Strikingly original is a double bench, in which two corner seats share an armrest.

Whatever exorbitant budget Monsieur Battlo allocated to his new home, one can be certain it was exceeded. Precise in technique and demanding in workmanship, Gaudi never hesitated to make changes in midstream, regardless of cost and often without asking permission of his client.

There's plenty more of him in this city, yet it's mere seasoning to the main course. Wrapping around a corner few blocks away is the modernist apartment complex, La Pedrera.

Another building in motion, its greystone facade -- which is self-supporting, another Gaudi innovation -- rises from the street like a sinuous open quarry sculpted by wind and water; elaborate wrought iron balcony railings swirl like seaweed washed up on the shore.

Here the roof terrace is a three-dimensional maze where we meander up and down steps, through covered passageways, and around chimneys, statues, and silhouettes that remind us of medieval monks or knights, some in natural sandstone, others sheathed in trencadis and broken glass. In the attic below, spread out in a vast interior beneath two-hundred-seventy brick catenary arches, which eliminate the need for columns and partitions, is the Espai Gaudi, an exhibit depicting Gaudi's life and work, including many original drawings and models.

Objects on our map appear closer and less elevated than the reality. Our long, arduous uphill trek in search of Gaudi's imaginative Park Guell leads us to the cross at its highest point and a panoramic view of Barcelona and the bay. From there we amble along the main viaduct and down to the arcade where unusual slanting columns bear the weight of the road above it. Supporting natural stone birds' nests and pine trees create the illusion that the whole structure was carved out of the mountain itself.

By the time we land at the twin Hansel-and-Gretel gingerbread-style entrance pavilions around 2:00 PM, tickets to the monumental zone are sold out, leaving us breathlessly longing for its "don't miss" contents: a mosaic-encrusted salamander crawling among similarly accoutered walls and fountains; the Sala Hispotila, a forest of eighty-six Doric columns inspired by ancient Greece, some perpendicular, some leaning; and a tiled bench resembling a mythical sea serpent curving around the terrace above it.

Other than a cursory circumnavigation, I am resigned to missing Spain's biggest draw, La Sagrada Familia, described by one critic as the most extraordinary church building in the history of art. Its anticipated completion date is 2026, which would be the centenary of the death of Gaudi, who himself worked on the project intermittently for forty years. The late afternoon sun, shadows, and impenetrable crowd obscure the grandeur of the two finished facades: the Nativity Facade, an astonishing sculpted tapestry, replete with ornate figures and symbolic scenes from nature; and the more austere Passion Facade, intended to portray the sins of man and the suffering of Christ in bare stone and harsh straight lines. If the interior will forever remain even a greater mystery to me, JSG, having managed to explore it a few days ago while I was in business meetings, is now qualified to extol its magnificent appointments: unique columns that evolve from four sides to eight to sixteen to circular as they rise to the ceiling; comprehensive, abstract, raised ornamentation; elaborate curved balcony and stairway iron railings.

Following the deaths of his niece and his two closest friends, Gaudi took refuge in his work and his Catholic faith, and devoted the last ten years of his life to La Sagrada Familia. A lifelong bachelor -- he had been rebuffed thirty years earlier by his only romantic interest -- he turned increasingly reclusive, shunning the dandy attire, immaculate grooming, gourmet meals, social happenings, and expensive carriage rides of his youth in favor of frugality, slovenliness, and shabby clothing. On June 7, 1926, as he was on his way to the Saint Felip Neri Church for his daily prayer and confession, he was struck by a tram and knocked unconscious. No one assisted the disheveled old man who lacked identity papers. A police officer eventually transported him to the Santa Creu Hospital, but by the time the chaplain of La Sagrada Familia recognized him, even the most expert medical attention could not revive him. He died three days later.

For dinner that evening, JSG astutely plucks from a bevy of options, El Cangrejo Loco (The Mad Crab), located at the end of the Olimpic Port Pier, a pleasant ten-minute stroll from our hotel. Neither of our fresh seafood platters disappoints: monkfish, swordfish, sea bass for me, prawns, mussels, crayfish, squid for JSG, washed down with beer and sangria.

Having determined to leave nothing to chance or the schemes of taxi drivers, we set off on foot the next morning for the Placa de Catalunya with forty-five minutes to spare; we arrive ten minutes sooner than if we had been chauffeured there by the wily Mohammed.

The city of Girona lies at the base of the Pyrenees about sixty miles northeast of Barcelona. Although currently a vibrant modern community boasting remarkable art nouveau architecture and a picturesque waterfront lined with colorful shops and restaurants, its principal attraction is the medieval old town, which has its roots in the pre-Roman era.

Speaking with a heavy accent that requires close attention, our charming female guide leads us past cobblestone open squares and along narrow walled pathways, pointing out the major points of interest: a lioness guarding the gate, which all who pass by are supposed to kiss; the eighty-six steps rising to the Gothic cathedral of Santa Maria; remnants of fortifications built in the first century by the Romans and rebuilt thirteen hundred years later; the Arabic baths, dating from the twelfth century and the best preserved Romanesque complex in the country; and the Jewish ghetto, or Call.

As she recounts several hundred years of Jewish history in about ten minutes, I'm wondering whether my fellow travelers are as intrigued as I am by the ancient mikvah, by the former residence of the thirteenth century Great Rabbi of Catalonia, Nahmanides (who was promptly identified by a local synagogue scholar as the town's most renowned citizen when I informed him of my visit), and by the woeful tale of the persecution and expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Afterward she turns us loose for just enough time to ferret out a couple of espressos and a bikini sandwich (so named, I speculate, either for its ham and cheese ingredients or its miniature dimensions).

We re-board our bus for another one hour ride north to the city of Figueres, birthplace of Salvador Dali but, more importantly, the site of the personal theatre-museum which he conceived in 1961 and continuously reconfigured until his death in 1989. The venture sprung from a request by the newly-appointed mayor that Dali donate a painting to the local Museum of Emporda; Dali flamboyantly replied that instead he would donate an entire museum, resurrecting the Municipal Theatre which had been destroyed by fire in 1939. Its remains, he said, would be highly suitable, "firstly, because I am an eminently theatrical painter; secondly, because the Theatre is opposite the church where I was baptized . . . and thirdly, because it was precisely in the vestibule room of the Theatre that I held my first painting exhibition."

Born in 1904, Dali studied in his home town until 1922, when he entered the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Accused of fomenting unrest, he was expelled in 1926, whereupon he moved to Paris, met Picasso and Miro, and embraced the surrealism that would earn him his greatest accolades. He developed and articulated a "Paranoic-Critical Method" for accessing the subconscious by which the artist cultivates a genuine delusion yet remains aware that his reason and control is suspended. During this period he produced one of his most recognizable works, The Persistence of Memory, employing for the first time his image of a soft, melting pocket watch, which suggests a relative conception of time rather than one rigid or predetermined.

In 1929 he became romantically involved with a Russian immigrant ten years his senior, Gala, who would become his wife (in 1934) and his lifelong muse, inspiration, and financial manager.

In 1936 Dali moved to Paris; before long, however, he fell out of favor with the French Surrealists, who could not tolerate his neutral politics (most of them were Communists), his branching into a more traditional style, and his increasing commercialization and opportunism. At the outbreak of World War II, he fled to the United States, where his extravagance and ubiquity would make him world famous. He applied his name and talents to a variety of art forms: designing jewelry, clothes, furniture, retail store window displays, and stage sets for plays and ballets; collaborating with photographers and film makers; and publishing an autobiography.

In 1948, implicitly accepting the Franco dictatorship, Dali returned to Spain; he would spend the next three decades experimenting in his painting with many novel processes and media, including optical illusion, negative space, visual punning, pointillism, holography, and foreshortening. His intensifying interest in science, religion, and mathematics prompted him to invent a technique he labeled "Nuclear Mysticism," in which he sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration.

A master at self-promotion, Dali emphasized his ostentatious, imposing persona with a long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, upturned waxed moustache, and the memorable comment: "Every morning upon awakening I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali."

Whether interpreted as spontaneous antics or calculated performances, his outrageous behavior knew no limits. He arrived for a lecture carrying a billiard cue, leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and wearing a diving suit and helmet in which he almost suffocated. While working on a window display, he became so incensed by unauthorized changes that he shoved a decorative bathtub through the plate glass. He autographed books lying in a bed wired to a machine that monitored his brain waves and blood pressure. He was known to avoid paying tabs at restaurants by drawing on the checks he wrote, assuming correctly that the proprietors would not cash such valuable pieces of art. He often spoke in a bizarre combination of French, Spanish, Catalan, and English. He frequently traveled with a pet ocelot, and appeared in public on a number of occasions -- the Dick Cavett Show, for example -- with an anteater.

The Figueres Theatre-Museum is more than a repository; it is the embodiment and culmination of the life and work of this eccentric genius.

Dali wanted the pilgrimage to his spiritual center -- his crypt lies beneath the museum stage and cupola -- to begin in the outdoor leisure space, the Placa Gala-Salvador Dali, where he would introduce his vision and concepts and illustrate the great passions of his career: Catalan thought; science; academic art; and innovative art.

In front of the main facade, the golden egg-shaped head of philosopher Francesc Pujols rests tilted on a hand in a pose recalling Rodin's The Thinker; a classical influence is implied by his toga-clothed body and the marble bust of a Roman patriarch. In the adjoining square, an apple ball suspended from a pendulum dangles from the grasp of a sculptured Homage to Newton. Nearby are three sculptural tributes to Ernest Meissonier, the artist most admired by Dali; one sits on tall pedestal of huge tires. Dali completed the setting with one of his own creations: a grinning cardboard monster head balanced atop an egg with doll figures for its pupils and teeth and a television set implanted in its forehead.

Eggs are everywhere; they are the artist's method of looking back into the womb, where prenatal gestation, the result of love, engenders hope for mankind.

On the top of the building and on the lower balcony are statues -- male and female -- holding loaves of bread, Dalinian crutches, and bulging hydrogen atoms; one wears a diving suit, signaling to visitors that they are about to be submerged in the depths of the unconscious.

We walk through the vestibule into the courtyard garden and are greeted by, according to Dali, the largest surrealist monument in the world, the Rainy Taxi, a Dionysian festival in which we are both witnesses and participants. A gorgeous 1930's Cadillac convertible -- which is both fossil and mobile machine -- grabs our attention; behind the cracked glass windows we see two plaster passengers and a chauffeur bathed in an eerie green light and intermittently doused by indoor showers. Astride the bonnet stands a full-figured Queen Esther. Behind the car rises another towering column of oversize tires supporting a marble bust of Francois Giradon, a black sculpture -- the Slave -- by Michelangelo, and a sailboat of Gala's resting on crutches. Simulated drops of water hang from the keel, and atop the mast is attached an umbrella, which opens with the donation of a coin, producing the aforementioned rain.

The surrounding walls are covered with a profusion of decorative elements: twenty-one gilded art deco mannequins, whose impassiveness contrasts with the carnival-like atmosphere; a chorus of angels in the form of washbasins, whose whiteness mirrors the purity of the soul; and a series of four grotesque monsters constructed of snails, shells, tree trunks, branches, rocks, and old stone, ecstatically contemplating the spectacle below them.

Ascending the ramps from the courtyard, we reach the impressive stage of the old Municipal Theatre and gaze upward at its capstone, the stunning geodesic cupola. Dali remarked on the occasion of the death of the architect, Perez Pinero, that he had built nothing "more glittering and personal than this roof," and that its transparency and reticular design gave it the the sensation of multiple structures, which "end up being synthesized into a glorious and everlasting light."

The murals on either side of us are suggestive of the Sistine Chapel. To our left two enormous hands -- one with the pointing finger of the Creator -- reach toward each other while holding a white sheet; to our right a muscular figure with a cube head is wringing out a dripping blue cloth like a rainmaker. Below him hangs Dali's brilliant photographic oil, Gala Nude Looking at the Sea, the first use of digital imaging in painting. The small-formatted face of Abraham Lincoln in the lower left is a clue that we are to step back eighteen meters in order to see his full portrait superimposed on the same canvas.

Straight ahead, blanketing the entire wall, is a composition Dali created for the ballet Labyrinth based on the myth of Theseus and Ariadne. Behind an enormous female bust with a hollow solar plexus -- Dali believed knowledge resided in empty spaces -- emerges a phantasmagoric landscape depicting the journey from the calm sea of birth to the jagged coast of death.

Two galleries on this level -- the red-velvet-upholstered Treasure Room and the Fishmongers' Crypt -- contain important works in a variety of themes: The Basket of Bread, a much-studied example of realism, which Dali construed as "the total enigma" and most satisfying to his imagination; Leda Atomica, conjoining elements of mythology and mathematics, all weightless, floating in air; Port Alguer, a view of Cadaques which contrasts an impressionist harbor with a structuralist urban montage; The Spectre of Sex Appeal, in which the boy Dali, dressed as a sailor, confronts the fantastical monster of sexuality amid the imposing landscape of his childhood, the rocky Cap de Creus; and Soft Self Portrait with Grilled Bacon, in which Dali's amorphous face rests on a pedestal beside a slice of bacon, a symbol of organic matter and daily breakfasts.

Both Sex Appeal and Self Portrait are supported by crutches, which represented for the artist death and resurrection.

A stairway brings us to the Mae West Room, wherein Dali has transformed the two-dimensional wash on newspaper Face of Mae West which may be Used as an Apartment into a three-dimensional "dream that can be used as a living room." We mount a few steps and peer through a reducing lens hanging from the belly of a giant camel at an arrangement of weird objects that have magically coalesced into two eyes (photographic enlargements of two pointillist paintings), a nose (a chimney with logs), a coiffure (a huge woven shawl), and a botox-infused pair of lips (a sumptuous armless sofa). Overhead is an upside down bath and in the reception area a Venus de Milo reproduction, to whose "external turgidity" Dali added drawers representing "the subconscious, guilt, mental perfection, faith, hope, charity, and surrealism."

The Palace of the Wind apartment (named after the ferocious Tramontana which blows over Figueres) includes a bedroom, a studio, and the central gallery, the last dominated by the magnificent ceiling painting of the same title. Their feet planted in space, from a foreshortened perspective Dali and Gala pour a shower of gold, both material and spiritual, over Figueres and the spectators. On the left side the couple sits on a quayside rail contemplating the boat on which they have sailed the voyage of life. On the right side appear familiar images: soft clocks, the wheel of knowledge (conceptualized by thirteenth century Catalan philosopher Raymond Llull), elephants with insects' wings, and the soft face of the great masturbator.

One room is devoted to Dali's obsession with stereoscopy -- a mechanical process for perceiving the third dimension -- and optical illusions. Both were two more tools he could employ in pursuit of his lifelong mission: to materialize the phantoms that haunt contemporary man; to give substance to his dreams, desires, fears, and anxieties.

Art appreciation overload is setting in, yet we've got at least a hundred more pieces to peruse. Among the most notable are: Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder, uniting the two things Dali loved the most, with the lamb chops offered in "expiatory sacrifice"; Poetry of America,  in which two American athletes of different races clash above a Coca-Cola bottle spilling black ink on a white sheet against a backdrop of an African skin; "Cuant Cau Cau" (When it falls, it falls), another tribute to Francesc Pujols, a Dutch still life transformed into soft clocks, protruding hooks, open table drawers, and strange animals; and The Allegory of Memory (by Dali's friend, Antoni Pitxot), in which the three powers of the soul -- memory, understanding, and will -- are depicted as voluptuous females composed of volumetric rock formations.

One amazing exhibit remains: the jewelry collection, housed in a separate wing of the Museum. Dali designed the pieces on paper, specifying the precise shapes, materials, and colors, and carefully supervised their manufacture in the New York studio of Argentinian gold/silversmith Carlos Alemany. They passed through a number of owners -- including the prestigious Owen Cheatham Foundation (Owen's brother Henry lived in Lynchburg, and apparently arranged a showing at the Fine Arts Center back in the '70's, an amateur historian friend reminded me) -- before being acquired in 1999 from a Japanese entity by the Dali Foundation for 5.5 million euros. Demonstrating his signature iconography, Dali combined gold, silver, platinum, and precious metals to fashion human hearts, lips, and eyes, plant and animal forms, religious and mythological symbols, and anthropomorphic shapes.

One of the most dazzling items is The Royal Heart, about which Dali wrote: "The rubies that beat [in the center] represent the queen, whose heart beats constantly for her people. The pure gold [encasing the center] symbolizes the people who shelter and protect their sovereign."

Sublimity yields to chaos and frustrations borne of weariness. Returned to Placa de Catalunya in Barcelona, we set off in search of dinner, diversion, and our hotel, and encounter a mass Saturday night celebration. Tracing a map route through narrow, twisting, unmarked alleys with poor light and poorer eyesight leads us into either dead ends or impassable squares so crammed with Catalans I suffer a panic attack. Every square foot of La Rambla -- all six pedestrian lanes running three-quarters of a mile -- is as congested as Times Square. Food pickings are slim and mostly inedible at La Boqueria (the City Market); despite my hunger I discard half of my packet of mystery fried seafood, then wash down the aftertaste with a cup of ruby red fruit punch. We confirm the value of free entertainment twice: first, by watching a dismal modern dance routine in which the performers' gymnastics are assisted by overhead cables; and second, by standing in line for one hour for admittance to a huge bulbous tent on the ceiling of which is projected a swirling hallucinogenic sound and light show, with apologies to Senors Gaudi and Dali.

Nevertheless, we are up the next morning rejuvenated and primed for further adventure. What better way to occupy the six hours before our scheduled airplane departure than continue the theme of art, architecture, and self-improvement and check out the Picasso Museum? Alas, it's sold out -- but something to look forward to on our next trip to this fabulous city.