Ninety-year-old French veteran William Schilardi surveys the landscape from the hill where he once fought after a steep climb up a muddy path through heavy rain in Vietnam's Dien Bien Phu.- 'The sobs, the cries' - Beatrice Hill -- each French strongpoint in Dien Bien Phu bore a female first name -- fell during the first hours of the Viet Minh assault on the mountain outpost in Vietnam's northwest, near the Laos border, launched on March 13, 1954.