7. THE MAN-HAO INCIDENT
The village elder had refused to accommodate the Communist agitators; now he lay in his own doorway with a shattered skull. A frail little woman had tried to prevent the terrorists from recruiting her son. She too was dead among the smoldering ruins of what had been her house. The son, his hand still clutching the ax with which he had tried to rescue his mother, lay in a ditch filled with filth. In a small bamboo hut we discovered seven bodies; father, mother, grandfather, and four children—everybody stabbed, cut open, beaten to death, including the smallest of the victims, a baby in her crib. A girl, slim and pretty, lay across a low fence over which she was trying to flee when the bullet struck her. Her hand still clutched a broken doll and her lips were blue with death. Nearby a scraggy mongrel whined at the corpse of a man.
Along a low palisade we found the naked corpses of eleven Legionnaires. Their flesh was beaten into a swollen bluish pulp devoid of all human semblance and mutilated beyond description. They were all Germans, our veteran comrades for many years. Receiving the village elder's urgent request for evacuation, I had sent them forward to reassure the terrified people. Having refused to cooperate with the Viet Minh, the inhabitants had expelled the guerrilla agitators and had beaten one of them up in the heat of an argument. They had not done it because they were pro-French or hated Communists but for the simple reason that the war had so far avoided their hamlet and they had desired to preserve peace in their dwellings.
The Viet Minh revenge had been swift and ferocious. The Communists, who can exist only where terror prevails, decided to give a lasting example of what happens to the enemies of Father Ho's "soldiers," the guerrillas. The small platoon could not stem the human tide that descended on the community. It had been crushed by the sheer weight of enemy flesh.
We recovered ample evidence of their desperate last stand. The piles of spent shells around the palisade told us the whole sad story. There were no enemy corpses in evidence. When not pursued immediately, the terrorists would always carry away their dead to bury them secretly near their homes or in the hills. From the blood-soiled ground where they had fallen we computed the possible number of enemy casualties: one hundred and six altogether.
Walther Grobauer from Munich, Adolf Greilinger from Kiel, Kurt Heinzl, a veteran of the battle for Leningrad, Hans Aigner, Erich Stumme, Erich Windischmann from Berlin, Rupert Winkler, Max Hartmann, Hans Weber, the one-time panzer driver of the Afrika Korps, Friedrich Zimmermann and Alois Krupka, the two veterans of the last great battle on the Vistula. They had fought Communism for over a decade and had come a long way to fight it again and die. They will be forgotten heroes.
The survivors of the community, about sixty families, were leaving the village that could no longer offer them either food or shelter, let alone security—weeping, sagging people who had lost everything and everyone in a brief fury of hatred that had obliterated their past, present, and future. We stood in silent sympathy as our three tanks took positions at the foot of the hills. Our convoy of thirty American trucks looked strangely new and powerful as they loomed over the collapsed, blackened huts —a bit of the present dominating the ancient, the Stone Age. Yet all that those people had ever wanted was to be left alone to live their Stone-Age lives and never encounter anything "civilized." To them civilization meant tanks, machine guns, warplanes, death! But the entire world of "civilized" nations with all their humanitarian institutions and their United Nations could not fulfill the modest desire of these simple people: to be left alone, not to be bothered, not to be given anything except peace.
The civilized world is very generous. It provides even for those who neither sought nor wanted to receive its gifts.
Wherever we turned, corpses sprawled on the ground for acres around; here one, there in groups of five or more. Those who had escaped the massacre were trying to gather what was left of their possessions, pushing and pulling at the burned debris, still in a state of semi-stupor. Men, women, and children wailed over their dead or just stood petrified, gazing at the corpses in silent perplexity.
In and around a small Buddhist temple the survivors gathered. Erich and Helmut were busy opening tin cans to distribute corned beef, condensed milk, rice, and drinking water. The wells of the village could not be used. The terrorists had dumped corpses into them. Behind the temple, Eisner set up a first-aid station to care for the wounded. Some of the people had been hurt badly and for them Sergeant Zeisl, our chief medic, could do little beyond easing their pain with morphine. Others, only slightly injured, sat sullenly on the ground, holding a hand or a dirty rag over their wounds, waiting their turn.
Around eleven o'clock the sun was blazing furiously. Perspiration could not evaporate in the ninety percent humidity. We were all soaking wet and a great stink enveloped the crowd around the ambulance. The air was pregnant with the scent of sweat, blood, and human filth. From the ruins little groups of people dragged forward. Fathers pushed carts, the women hauled them with ropes. The children and old people rode in the carts, some wailing, others just staring with vacant eyes.
I was thinking of the villages which we had had to destroy in the past It was always the civilians who suffered, whichever side they adhered to. Even if they wanted to take no sides and remain out of trouble, the war struck them down. If they refused to accommodate the Viet Minh, the terrorists liquidated them without mercy. If they went "Red," the Foreign Legion exterminated them directly or indirectly. The people were trapped between the cogwheels of a murder mechanism which turned inexorably, churning up and crushing everyone it caught. It was easy to say, "C'est la guerre." We were not any better than the Viet Minh and we knew it. But we did want to fight a clean war and we were not the ones who started the atrocities.
We only retaliated in kind. We could do nothing else. The French tried to remain humane and their troops were dying like flies. We had no desire to die in Indochina. We knew that if anything could ever induce the Communists to recognize military conventions or even the fundamental principles of human law, it would be only their own terror. That might convince them that- they had better fight a man's war instead of a war of the wolves. The Viet Minh had to suffer immensely before they would do as much as recognize a Red Cross emblem. The Communists understand no language other than the cries of agony, to which they are accustomed. Kindness and sympathy or a humane approach will only make them suspicious. They know the world hates them, and that they can exist only by the force of arms, blackmail, fire, rebellion, destruction, death! We were resolved to make their lives a long cry of agony.
Still there was a slight difference between our opposing groups. We did feel remorse whereas they felt none. We could shed tears over a single fallen comrade. The Viet Minh were throwing away men the way we discarded cigarette butts. For us, spreading terror was the sole means of survival. The Viet Minh killed and mutilated for the sheer pleasure of seeing suffering and shedding blood.
I watched Schulze and Riedl as they distributed food, smiled and joked to cheer up the apathetic children. I recalled some past events when those very hands, my hands included, had gunned down similar children at another place without batting an eye. It was all so senseless, like a schizophrenic vision that would haunt us forever.
It was difficult to stay within reason when one beheld the abused corpse of a comrade for whom, the enemy thought, death alone had not been enough punishment. Nothing except our own survival could justify what we did and no sublime Communist slogans about "liberation" and "independence" could ever justify the ruthless genocide committed by the patriots of Ho Chi Minh. But in the end they will get the worst of the deal. Because one day we will depart. The assassins of the Viet Minh will have to stay to face their victims again and again, bracing against those who seek revenge. And there will be tens of thousands of people who will, one day, seek revenge; fathers, sons, or even mothers whose loved ones had been murdered by the "liberators." People can always be subdued by terror but nothing can make people forget. Neither the bayonets nor the secret police.
Corporal Altreiter and a platoon gathered the sad remains of our comrades. We buried them in a common grave over which Schulze planted a crude wooden cross which bore no names, only the short notice:
"Eleven comrades. Deutschland—Russland—Nord Afrika—Indochina" and the date. We will always remember their names. Others won't care who they were anyway.
The killers had to be punished but there was no need for us to hurry. The village lay only eight miles from the Chinese border and the assassins were low on ammunition; they wouldn't stay in the vicinity. Most of the victims had been stabbed or clubbed to death. The terrorist unit was on its way home to a base near Man-hao, China. They must have already crossed the border. The survivors insisted that there were many Chinese "officers" with the Viet Minh. The village had been attacked by at least three hundred guerrillas.
"I think this is Ming Chen-po's handiwork," Eisner remarked and I agreed. The people spoke of a "one-armed Chinese" who seemed to be in command of the terrorist group. Ming was known to have lost an arm to the Japanese artillery in 1939, and I had seen some of the hamlets overrun by the troops of this one-time bandit and now People's Commissar.
It was a known fact that Chinese "experts" and even militiamen were actively engaged in terrorist ventures within French Indochina. I had sent several reports to Hanoi drawing attention to their activities in the border provinces but the High Command could do little to retaliate. "Kill as many of them as possible," said Colonel Houssong, "but take no Chinese prisoners. Mao couldn't care less about losing a million volunteers in Indochina but if we displayed a single Chinese prisoner, he would be pushed into saying something to the world. And Mao would never admit that he was guilty of armed intrusion into French territory. He would demand the release of a Chinese officer whom the French had kidnapped from Chinese territory (where he was probably engaged in the peaceful activity of planting potatoes in the garden behind the guardhouse)." The Communists are superb liars. They are quite capable of delivering a fat lie so convincingly, or at least vehemently, that even their victim will later apologize for having erred.
Ming had a base across the frontier and was wary enough never to venture too deep into Indochina. We suspected that the terrorists had established a base, a sort of advance command post, somewhere within a fifty-mile radius of Man-hao. The Chinese advisers remained there, while the native Viet Minh embarked on more distant missions. Whenever the Legion pursued them, they quickly retreated into their sanctuary where no French troops could follow them. Ming was an old quarry of ours. Twice in seven months we had been compelled to abandon pursuit because of the border.
Now I felt it was time to get even with the terrorists of Ming, wherever they might be. I decided to demolish their home base some twenty-odd miles inside China. Should we succeed we could keep our mouths shut and enjoy being rid of Ming. Should we lose, none of us would give a damn what Hanoi or Peking might say or do. With a bullet in the head one has no worries. Both Hanoi and Peking were far away. Our enemy was temptingly close.
I turned the thought over and over in my mind, checked our stores, the maps, and found the idea feasible. The battalion had refrained from crossing the frontier before. The enemy would not suspect us now. I summoned my companions and motioned them to sit down around a table in the ambulance tent.
"What's up, Hans?" Schulze queried. "Anything wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong," Eisner spoke before I could answer. "I think we are going to leave here soon." He jerked a thumb toward the Chinese frontier. "That way!"
I nodded and announced without preliminaries, "We are going to blast the camp of Ming Chen-po!"
Pfirstenhammer gaped. "At Man-hao?"
"That's right."
Riedl whistled and Karl pursed his lips in a grin. Schulze began to rub his scalp. "Well?" I asked them. "What do you think of it?"
Riedl shrugged. "I always wanted to see China."
"You won't be seeing much of it," Schulze chuckled, "but if we want to say good-night to Ming this is the time to say it. We don't have to walk far."
"That's right," Karl agreed as Eisner remarked, "Headquarters will be mad as hell."
"Who cares?" Schulze hitched his chair closer. "Let's have a look at the maps." He glanced at me. "I presume this is going to be a strictly private enterprise, Hans?"
"Naturally. We cannot request a permit to enter China and we can never admit having done so."
"How about Colonel Houssong?" Karl inquired. "I am sure he would love it. Provided, of course, that we return without leaving corpses behind . . . our own corpses."
Eisner thought the raid was within our "means," and Riedl said that for him it was alles Wursl. He suggested that with the Man-hao business done we might as well take the train to Peking and free the Republic. "After all, Mao has only about seven thousand divisions and of these only seven carry guns, the rest clubs," he said.
We quickly decided to leave our uniforms behind, along with identity tags and personal papers. Pfirstenhammer swore because we selected him to remain with the convoy and take care of the villagers. "We need a competent man to maintain the perimeter. I cannot leave the convoy to a corporal," I stated flatly. "Some of us will have to stay, Karl."
"How about Riedl?" Pfirstenhammer exclaimed indignantly. "He is just as competent as I am." He turned toward Riedl. "Aren't you, Helmut?"
"Why pick on me? I haven't got a sore leg. Besides I can shoot a lot better than you ever will."
"Let's bet on it," Karl exploded.
"Keep your shirts on, men!" I snapped. "This is not going to be a pleasure trip into the bordellos of Man-hao and I am still the one who decides who is to stay."
"Why not Eisner?" Karl argued. "He is old anyway."
"Who, me?" Bernard turned sharply and began to rise. "Would you care to prove it, Karl? How about stepping behind those trucks for a moment?"
"Sit down!" I pushed him back. "And now shut up, all of you. Karl, you still have a sore leg and we cannot expect you to walk the sixty miles there and back."
"I like your good heart, Hans," Pfirstenhammer growled but he sat down.
I estimated the expedition would last for about four days and that we could never enter China without a proper guide. We needed a map or diagram of the area so that we could make a rough plan. Fortunately smuggling was a common and respectable profession in the border villages because French wares fetched good prices in China. Eisner thought that it should not be difficult to find people who were familiar with the other side of the frontier. Calling for our interpreter, he left for the temple to talk to the survivors.
After a while Eisner returned with two men and a girl about twenty years of age. Although her high-necked smock was burned and soiled, I noticed immediately that she belonged to the "upper class" of the community.
"You may trust them," Eisner advised me in German. "Phu has just lost his wife and child, Cao's father and mother were gunned down, and the girl, her name is Suoi, lost her entire family of six. She is all alone now. She has been in Man-hao."
"And the men?"
"They know some trails across the frontier."
Before the war Suoi had attended a French missionary school at Lao Kay, and she spoke good French. She was a very pretty girl with long black hair which she wore in braids. Small but beautifully proportioned, she had almond eyes and a slightly upturned nose. Now her eyes were swollen but dry, for she could no longer cry. Looking at her as she sat staring at the table, still in a semi-stupor, she reminded me of Lin. How identical were their stories. Separated from one another only in time and space, they were victims of a common enemy. It pained me that we had to torment her with questions.
Her male companions were deeply shaken but in their eyes I could see nothing but murder. It has often astonished me how much suffering the Orientals can bear without breaking down. Pain which would have sent a white man raving mad they often withstood without a moan. It might have been their heritage of countless centuries. Death came often and unexpectedly into Oriental homes, even in times of peace.
"We shall go with you," Phu stated resolutely. "Will you give us weapons, so that we may kill?"
"We want to do nothing but kill . . . kill . . . kill every Viet Minh and every Chinaman," Cao added vehemently. "When a thousand enemy die, we will rest . . . but not before."
"You might kill, too," Schulze nodded. From his map case he took a sheet of paper and laid it on the table. "We are going to punish the terrorists who killed your people. They have a camp in China where they feel safe. You can help us to wipe them out, but first of all you must tell us everything you know about the land between the border and Man-hao."
Erich drew a line across the paper which followed roughly the contours of the border. "This is Lao Kay and here we have Ch'i-ma-pa." He put a few minute rings on the paper. "Here we have Muong . . . and the line here is the Song river . . . they call it Kiang in China." Working briskly he added more and more details, carefully adopting the approximate positions from the map. "This is Man-hao with the railway line to the north connecting Lao Kay and Meng-tzu." He glanced at the two men.
Phu nodded. "You draw well," he remarked with appreciation which Schulze acknowledged with a quick smile.
"Now tell me about every hill, road, path, creek, stream, ravine, settlement, or lonely hut that you know of between this village and Manhao. Try to recall the distances between them."
With the interpreter translating, Schulze began to question the men expertly, mapping details however small or insignificant. He interrupted the men every now and then to double-check miles, yards, or even paces between the various topographical objects, which he then marked on the map. Phu and Cao knew the frontier area well but they had never ventured as far as Man-hao. "There are Chinese militia posts here," Cao announced suddenly. He pointed at a spot on Erich's diagram.
"How many posts are there?"
"Two posts. One right along the road, the second farther up on a small hill." Schulze drew a wavy circle marking the hill. "What is the distance between the posts, Cao?"
"About five hundred yards."
"Is it on the left or on the right side of the road?"
"On the right side," Cao said without hesitation.
"I see," Erich nodded. "How high is the hill?"
"Not very high. Maybe four hundred feet."
"Is it forested?"
"No trees. The militia cut the trees. Otherwise they could not see the road and the railway line."
"There are trees," Phu interposed, "but only halfway up the hill."
Schulze shaded the hill accordingly. "Are there trees all around?"
"Yes," said Cao. "And there are two paths up to the guardhouse, one facing the road, the other one leading into the hills." He leaned closer to the diagram and drew a line with his finger. "This way the path runs."
"On the northern side?"
"Yes."
Schulze was very talented in drawing accurate maps of uncharted lands. Questioning the villagers on details, he proceeded from sector to sector. More than an hour went by before he finally announced, "I think it will do, Hans."
We had a diagram of the Chinese side of the border; every creek, path, ravine that the men could recall had been marked with numbers indicating the approximate distances, grade of elevation, and similar data. Eisner sent a trooper for tea and sandwiches.
"Eat something, Suoi. You must be very hungry," he said to the girl. She shook her head at the food but accepted the tea, then burst into tears once again. "We know it is difficult for you to talk now," Erich said softly, "but you must help us. You are the only one who knows Man-hao, where the guerrillas are hiding, Suoi. If we don't smite them now, they will return to murder more people."
Burying her face in her hands, she sobbed.
"Let her be!" Riedl exclaimed indignantly. "She is only a young girl trying to bear a terrible grief."
Karl swore between his teeth. "They didn't spare a soul in her family. She is alive only because she was visiting another family when the raiders came, and escaped into the jungle."
Schulze prepared another sheet of paper and waited patiently for Suoi to gather herself. Phu spoke to the girl quietly in her native tongue, and after a while she dried her eyes and announced that she was ready to help us. Erich drew her closer and ran a line across the center of the paper, explaining softly, "This is the river right across Man-hao. Can you recall how many bridges are there, Suoi?"
"Oui, monsieur. There are two bridges," she replied.
"In the center of the town or outside it?"
"One of them is in the center, at the marketplace. Near a small temple."
"So we have a square with a temple," Erich noted down, sketching rapidly. I was thinking of the excellent maps of the Chinese cities gathering dust in the reference section of our Troisieme Bureau.
"How long is the square, Suoi?" I heard Erich asking.
"It is not a very large square. Maybe a hundred paces across."
Schulze's pencil worked but he kept talking to hold the girl's attention. "And the bridge ... is it opposite the temple?"
Suoi shook her head. "No monsieur. It is on the right side."
"A stone bridge?"
"Oui," she nodded. "The other bridge is near the end of the road to Mengtzu," she added, placing her finger on the drawing. "Here, along the river is a market with many shops."
"Very good, Suoi." Erich paused for a short while, then glanced up. "Do you remember how many streets enter that square?"
Suoi was thinking. "I think five. Three streets run opposite the river, two others parallel with it, on both sides of the square. The right side road goes uphill to where the militia barracks are."
Schulze looked up sharply. We were on the right track. I nodded. "Go on, Erich. You seem to be doing fine."
"Now this is very important, Suoi," Erich went on. "Is it the only road to the barracks, or have you seen other roads too?"
"The other road goes to Meng-tzu," she said.
"I see. Now about those militia barracks. Have you ever been close to them?" Suoi shook her head. "No, monsieur. No one is allowed up there. The soldiers have barriers on the road."
"How far from the barracks?"
"At the bottom of the hill," she said. "With guardhouses."
"Is there a wall around the camp?" Eisner cut in. Suoi turned slightly and shook her head. "Only a wire fence."
"No trees?"
"No," she replied, "the hill is bare."
"We will take heavy MG's," Eisner remarked rather to himself.
Erich lifted his legs and swung around on his chair. Surveying the neighborhood briefly, he pointed at a nearby hill. "Is the barrack hill as high as this one, Suoi?"
The girl turned, observed the elevation briefly, then replied, "Not as high —and not as steep."
"More like the one over there?"
"Like that one!" Suoi exclaimed pointing toward a hill. "It is very similar to that one."
Erich questioned her about the hills near Man-hao and gradually his design began to fill with details. Adjoining the militia barracks, we thought, should be the Viet Minh compound. Unfortunately Suoi could not tell how many barracks were there or how large, information which would have enabled us to compute the number of troops the buildings could accommodate. She thought the barracks were of wood but she could not say for sure.
"We will have to send in a reconnaissance party before the attack," I said, satisfied with what we got on Erich's diagrams. "Their going will be a great deal easier now."
I had confidence in our chances. With the advantage of surprise on our side, we should be able to destroy some of the installations and deliver a crippling blow to the enemy manpower—if only for a few weeks. We were almost seven hundred strong, but I decided to take along only two hundred men. With the aid of Schulze's diagrams we prepared a rough plan, subject to adjustment later on, according to the reconnaissance findings: a two-pronged attack with Eisner and myself moving in from the east, while Schulze and Riedl would advance from the north. The raid would be timed for eleven P.M., late enough for the troops to be in bed yet still early enough for some important buildings to remain illuminated.
Since we were to cross the railway line, Riedl suggested that we might as well blow a couple of holes in the tracks. But as far as I knew, there was no railway traffic between Meng-tzu and Lao Kay. Therefore I opposed the idea of wasting time on a line that was not in use. If we wanted to damage the Chinese communications the right place to do it was farther up between Man-hao and Meng-tzu, a fifteen-mile diversion which I dared not risk. The Chinese had considerable forces at Meng-tzu, barely fifty miles away from our intended place of attack. They could rush reinforcements to Man-hao within an hour— if not to the town itself, then to block our way of retreat farther north.
I decided to depart the same evening on a rarely used smuggler's trail which Phu and Cao had known since childhood. The trail was far removed from the regular patrol routes of the militia. Schulze and Eisner left to select weapons for the coming action: twenty machine guns, thirty light mortars with ten rounds each, twelve bazookas, and a dozen flamethrowers, which latter I consider the most effective weapon against guerrillas. We also packed grenades and demolition charges. For ammo, Eisner selected tracers, which were psychologically more effective than ordinary bullets. The glowing ribbons of tracers always panic the enemy. The more fireworks we displayed the greater their confusion.
Ordinary bullets deliver a sudden and invisible death; an instant before the fatal hit the enemy gunner still fires his weapon, and may cause casualties. With tracers it is different. "Death" can actually be seen as it creeps closer and closer and when the glowing ribbons of destruction begin to flicker overhead the enemy gunner will stop firing and will, instinctively, seek shelter. By cutting down the enemy's "time of activity," if only for seconds, one may save the lives of a few comrades. A small tactical point which, naturally, was never incorporated in the Legion's Les Principes de la Guerre.
The actual raid, I thought, should not last longer than fifteen minutes. "Do not get wounded," Eisner warned the troops. "Stay under cover and take no chances. You know the rules."
They knew them. We could not leave corpses behind to provide the Chinese with evidence. Casualties were to be destroyed with grenades and flamethrowers. A macabre arrangement but we had no choice.
The most important part of our venture was to find a safe place which was secluded enough to conceal two hundred men for a whole day. It was impossible to reach our destination in a single night and the enemy should not detect our presence prematurely. On the return leg of the trip we planned to march through, covering the entire distance in about fifteen hours. Phu recalled a cave on the Chinese side which, he insisted, was large enough to hold us during the hours of daylight. It was also close enough to Man-hao. By questioning Phu again, Schulze was able to pinpoint the approximate location of the cave and mark it on his diagram.
When dusk fell we changed into native pajamas. Eisner had some difficulty finding a pair of boots small enough to fit Suoi's little feet, but Erich solved the problem with additional padding. The trip was to be a tiresome one and her sandals would not have lasted long. She, too, had changed into man's clothes. I advised her to stay close to me all the time.
"I don't care if they kill me," she replied and her remark drew a sharp reproach from Schulze.
"You should not say such a thing, Suoi. We also have lost many people whom we loved. There is not a man among us who has not mourned someone."
"You have each other," she said quietly. "I am alone in the world with no place to go."
"You are not alone, Suoi," Erich answered. "You do have a family, a very large one. A whole battalion." He reached under her chin and tilted up her face gently. "Will you accept us to be your family?"
She smiled through tears. "If you don't expect me to cook for you. ..."
Looking at Schulze and Riedl as they flanked the girl, I saw Eisner was suppressing a grin and instantly I realized that my battalion had indeed "adopted" Suoi. If not the battalion, then at least Erich Schulze.
"What will you do with her, back in Hanoi?" I asked nonchalantly.
Erich shrugged. "Oh, hell, we will put her up somewhere. If every one of us gives her a hundred piasters every month, she can live like a princess."
"When we move out again, she can join us," Riedl added enthusiastically.
"Like hell she can! We have enough trouble without girls in the show."
"She is a clever girl, Hans. She speaks good French. We can always use a good interpreter," Erich argued.
"Do you want to see her killed?"
"We have been in business for a long time and we are still around. Not every bullet stings."
"No . . . only the one you bump into. How about that bullet they dug out of your ass?"
Eisner cut in. "I like the way you are discussing the girl's future.
Shouldn't you ask her?"
Schulze waved him down. "Later I will ask her."
We moved out at 9:30 P.M. with our footwear wrapped in cloth to deaden sound. Phu and Cao received their machine pistols and were leading the way with steady strides. We crossed the rugged frontier without difficulty. The men kept at arm's length. Our guides must have known the path indeed, for they marched without hesitation in what seemed to me utter darkness, giving an occasional warning on obstacles or steep descents. Gradually the clouds dispersed, allowing the half moon to shine dimly. Around two o'clock we were already three miles inside China and the going was still good. I held four brief pauses mainly for Suoi's benefit. The little native girl was following me bravely and without complaining. She accepted my hand whenever we hit an obstacle or held onto my belt when we had to climb.
"Say, Hans," Schulze turned to me during one of our short halts, "you aren't booking the girl for yourself, are you? I am kind of interested in her."
"I've noticed that already, Erich, but for the time being I prefer your concentrating on our expedition."
The sun was rising when we arrived at the cave. It was a quarter of the way up a precipitous cluster of rocks that towered a hundred feet over a gorge. A narrow path led to the opening. Only one man at a time could climb up. The place was entirely surrounded with densely forested hills. Phu reassured me that there were no people for miles around. The cave was large, at least three hundred feet deep and thirty feet high. Examining our hideout, Schulze expressed his surprise at the Viet Minh's failure to utilize that natural strongpoint so well suited for storing weapons. Cao, however, explained that when it rained, and especially during the monsoon, the cave filled with water and became useless.
"And apart from that," Eisner added, "you forget that we are in China proper where the Viet Minh have depots right along the road."
Farther inside, where the bottom appeared sloping inward, I saw a large pool of clear water. It solved our cooking problems. Everyone selected a relatively dry spot to stretch out and settle for a nap. The place was rather warm but a slight, persistent draft felt refreshing. With the cotton paddings from some ammo boxes Schulze improvised a comfortable cot for Suoi. She lay down and quickly fell asleep. I ordered Corporal Altreiter to post guards at the cave's entrance, then I, too, stretched out with a rucksack under my head. Sleep, however, evaded me for a long time and thoughts flooded my mind to keep me awake. I was thinking of the ruined village, the Viet Minh, the Foreign Legion with its vanishing gloire, the rising Chinese monolith in the north that should never have been permitted to be born, let alone to live and grow—the whole insane situation, with us killing hundreds of little yellow men here, trying to rescue other hundreds of the same stock somewhere else....
Thinking of America and England now fighting their own little war in Korea, I could have laughed, had not the fate of the entire civilized world been hitched inexorably to their shaky wagon. The two great pillars of democracy and freedom had been chivalrously allied to Stalin, whom they could have sent reeling back to Russia's prewar frontiers in 1945, when only the United States had the nuclear bomb and Russia was at the end of her endurance. A simple ultimatum would have sufficed to preserve Europe and maybe the world from Communism. There would be no People's Democracies now, no Red China, no Korean war, and no Viet Minh.
I could not regard the Viet Minh as other than sub-humans, whom one should squash without the slightest remorse. To me they were nothing but one of the loathsome heads of a many-headed dragon who might belch fire at any part of the world if not stopped. To be sure, there were the rare occasions when mutual sanity prevailed in Indochina. Fighting near Muong Sai, two French officers and thirty men were captured by the guerrillas under the command of a young Communist troublemaker, Bao Ky. Bao retained a certain degree of common sense. Having disarmed the prisoners he stripped them to their underwear and sent them away saying that he had neither place nor food for prisoners.
When five months later we had the pleasure of capturing Bao with twelve guerrillas, we likewise only stripped them (bare, of course, for they wore no underpants), decorated their bottoms with a painted Red star and sent them away unharmed. It was against our standing orders to set prisoners, especially guerrilla leaders, free, but to be frank we never cared much for certain orders coming from above and did as we considered right in a given circumstance. By releasing Bao and his men, I hoped to spread a bit of goodwill in the jungle. And when, capturing a Viet Minh camp, we discovered two wounded Legionnaires in a hut, bandaged and properly fed, I ordered food and medical treatment for the captive guerrillas, who were then transported to a prison camp instead of being lined up and bayoneted, our customary treatment for captive terrorists. Unfortunately such events were as rare as a white raven.
There were four classes of guerrilla leaders in Indochina. Those who had received indoctrination and training in China were the worst ones, and for whom no brutality seemed cruel enough. The bloodiest atrocities, murder, and mutilation we're not only tolerated but encouraged by them. They believed that military or ideological discipline should be maintained on pain of severe punishment: beating, mutilation, or death. Their method was as brutal as it was naive. The Chinese-educated commissar invariably tried to further the cause of Communism by denying the people the barest necessities of life, or by simply beating a "candidate" into submission. (I believed that our long-sought foe, Ming Chen-po, was a sadist; a mentally ill person who tortured in the most cruel fashion for the sheer pleasure of seeing blood and corpses. Ming was about fifty years old, a born marauder and a common bandit before he joined Mao's rugged army on the Long March north. He had fought the Japanese, then Chiang Kai-shek and afterwards the "class enemy" within China. To save ammunition and time, he is said to have executed two thousand Nationalist prisoners by dumping them bound and gagged onto the Yunnan railway line and running a locomotive over the lot. He called his "system" the cheapest and fastest way of decapitation.)
Guerrilla leaders coming from the Soviet school showed more common sense and were more sophisticated in their manners and methods. Few of them would resort to senseless terror to win popular support. While the Chinese type of revolutionary would move into a village and allow fifteen minutes for the population to choose between joining the party or receiving a bullet through the head, the Russian-educated commissar would talk to the people about their problems, give them brief lectures about the aims of the liberators, or even help the peasants with their work. They took great pains to depart, at least for the time being, as friends who would one day return. And even if the people did not become convinced followers of Lenin outright, they would not betray the guerrillas either.
Members of the third group had been educated either in French schools or in France proper. They seldom committed excesses and usually kept to a sort of military code of honor. But such leaders lived in a kind of Red limbo, for the hard-core Communists never trusted them enough to give them any significant role in the game. The French-educated rebel leaders seemed more interested in establishing a truly independent Indochina than a Communist slave state.
The fourth category consisted of leaders who rose from the local masses. They may have commanded a large band of terrorists but they never ventured far from their own villages. And there was also a fifth group of "freedom fighters" which consisted entirely of common marauders without any political aim. They fought only for spoils and were treated by the Legion accordingly.
After four hours of rest Altreiter, three men, and Phu departed on a reconnaissance mission to Man-hao, which I estimated lay about twelve miles towards the southwest. We spent the morning cleaning weapons, playing cards, or holding language courses. Riedl gave Suoi a small automatic pistol and taught her how to handle it. "Just in case," he remarked— although I had no intention of taking the girl into any skirmish with the enemy. Both Riedl and Schulze were obviously very fond of Suoi and were trying their best to comfort her.
Suoi told us the whole tragic story of the previous day's attack. Her father had been wealthy until the terrorists struck. He had owned five hundred acres of rice paddies, a giant estate by local standards and the reason why her family had become a primary target of the Red exterminators. They had wiped out all the other families of means. "They came to the village before but never killed people, only took a toll in grains and livestock which we gladly parted with for peace in return," Suoi explained. "Whenever they visited us my father gave them money to ransom our safety. My father would never consider leaving. 'Communism, like a bad disease, will pass,' he used to say. He believed that his money was buying medicine for that disease. But in the .past there were no Chinese among the guerrillas."
"How many Chinese were with them yesterday?" I asked.
"There must have been over twenty militiamen among the Viet Minh."
"Do your parents have relatives, Suoi?"
"My father's brothers are dead. My mother's brother lives in France. We received some letters from him but those were in the house. I don't even know his address."
"Don't worry, Suoi," Riedl said. "We will find him somehow."
Schulze nodded. "We sure as hell will."
"I have nothing left on earth, not even money to buy food or clothes," the girl whispered as her eyes filled. "What money my father kept at home the Chinese took away. He has much money in a Hanoi bank but I don't know which one or how to get it."
"Of course she has money!" Erich exclaimed in German. "Her father must have kept funds in reserve. He was a wealthy man."
Suoi could not tell us anything else. Whatever papers her father may have had relating to his finances and the family holdings must have been destroyed in the fire.
"A twisted, burned copper chest was all we found in the ruins," Eisner explained. "Even the corpses were burnt beyond recognition. Nothing as inflammable as paper could have escaped the holocaust."
"When we get back to Hanoi we will go from bank to bank until we find the right one," Schulze stated determinedly.
"I doubt if the bank will give her any money before a legal process establishes her as the rightful heir," Eisner commented. "Why, she cannot even prove who she is."
"Like hell she can't," Riedl exclaimed. "We can testify!"
"That might not be enough, Helmut."
"You leave the legalities to me," Schulze said firmly. "Once I get to the right counter she will receive what belongs to her if I have to blast the manager for it."
Knowing him, I had no doubt that Erich meant what he said. But blasting Viet Minh terrorists and blasting Hanoi bank managers were two different things.
"We will talk to the colonel about Suoi's inheritance," I suggested. "You remember Lin? Houssong won't refuse to help Suoi either. He might vouch for her or get the high brass to interpose."
"You take care of the colonel; I will take care of the bank," said Erich. "No red tape is going to deprive the girl of what is still hers."
"I will handle both the colonel and the bank manager, Erich," I said somewhat sharply.
"As you wish, Hans."
The reconnaissance party returned about four o'clock in the afternoon, soaking wet and muddy but bringing good intelligence. Corporal Altreiter had observed the military encampment for over two hours and had drawn a diagram of the area. There were twelve wooden barracks in the compound. Adjoining it, the Viet Minh camp had only tents. The barracks were each about sixty feet long, with eight windows on either side and exits at both ends. One of the buildings, probably the command post, had wireless aerials. Another barrack with more chimneys was obviously the kitchen and mess hall.
That left us with ten living quarters. Since the eight windows were most likely at the intervals between the bunk beds, a quick estimate established the number of bunks at either 30/32 single, or 60/64 double, giving a total number of troops as either 320 or 640. The tents could accommodate about 200 guerrillas.
The possible number of enemy troops in the camp ruled out a direct assault on the enclosure. Hand-to-hand combat was likely to develop and I dared not risk heavy casualties. The presence of fourteen heavy trucks in the compound was welcome news. According to Altreiter the vehicles had just arrived with supplies, most of them ammunition. He saw militiamen and guerrillas unloading the crates and piling them up alongside the barracks. The crates were covered only with tarpaulin sheets. This casual arrangement of storing explosives suggested one of two alternatives, either that the underground ammo depots were loaded to capacity or that the new supplies were to be moved again shortly, for all we knew maybe into Indochina. Either way it was a most fortunate coincidence. A few direct hits on the crates could dispatch the entire camp into the Great Beyond. On his sketch Corporal Altreiter had also marked a row of large drums which he believed contained diesel oil or gasoline. The drums were fairly close to the underground ammunition dumps that the reconnaissance party had detected as a number of earth mounds with ventilation chimneys.
The railway line which we were to cross and recross ran only three miles from the cave. Contrary to my belief, the line was still in use, Altreiter reported. The Chinese used it to ferry supplies to the various border posts facing Lao Kay. "There is a small steel bridge not very far off," he said. "Sentries are posted on the bridge itself."
I decided to demolish the bridge and its guardhouse on the way back. Phu said that the adjoining hills were densely forested and offered ample cover. Except for Phu, whom we were resolved to carry if necessary, I wanted the reconnaissance party to remain in the cave. Weary as they were, the men insisted on making the trip for a second time. "We have earned our right to be present at the party, Commander," the troopers insisted. I consented. And since I no longer intended to storm the Chinese compound I decided to leave Suoi and half of the troops behind. Due to the successful reconnaissance it was unnecessary to take the girl along on the perilous journey.
We departed at dusk, a hundred men altogether, moving at good speed through the hills. Unencumbered by our close-combat weapons which we had left behind, we could move faster. Phu reassured me that except for the guardhouse near the bridge—which we were to bypass by two miles—there was not a soul around. But on arriving at the railway line we almost ran into four militiamen patrolling the tracks. Fortunately Phu spotted them in time and we were able to retreat a few hundred yards and then to proceed half a mile further west. Apart from this interlude our trip was without excitement.
By eleven o'clock we were deploying on the two hills that overlooked the militia barracks some five hundred yards to the south. No raiders could have hoped for an easier target. The windows of the command post were ablaze with lights and we could hear faintly the steady drone of an electric generator. The barracks and the tents were dark but a multitude of external lamps illuminated the entire camp. Beyond the hill the town of Man-hao was blanketed in darkness. Only the militia had the privilege of electricity. The population had to make do with their oil lamps.
Faithfully following the teachings of their great Mao, the Chinese kept a vigorous daily schedule in their army camps. At ten P.M. sharp, the troops had to be in their bunks: "Men who sleep well at night shall march better the next day," Mao said. For once, Mao was wrong. At least at Man-hao, where his militia would march nowhere the next day, except into oblivion.
At precisely 11:10 P.M. we opened fire on the camp with twenty fifty-caliber machine guns and thirty mortars. The rest of my men fired at individual targets with their rifles. The effect of our unexpected attack was instantaneous. Screaming lines of tracers tore across the valley, peppering the barracks, ripping the tents, blasting the parked trucks, mowing down men. Some shells of the first mortar salvo landed short but thereafter every projectile was on target. Instead of turning out the lights the bewildered militiamen turned on even those that had been out. Our riflemen shot through the lighted windows. Groups of yelling, screaming men ran up and down in the compound and fell under a hail of steel.
Two minutes after our first volley half a dozen mortar shells hit a pile of ammunition crates which exploded instantly with a blinding flash of fire. The blast demolished both the command post and the mess hall, along with the barracks immediately behind them. Seconds later the dumps began to blow up one after another, sending crazily zigzagging fireworks about the hill. The lights went out, but by then the hilltop shone like the rim of a volcano. I doubted if a single soul escaped the ensuing fire and multiple explosions.
The camp had turned into a sea of flames. The drums, containing diesel oil and gasoline, began to burn and burst. The oil leaked into the underground depots like java. The depots, too, began to explode, ripping hundred-foot-wide gaps into the hillside.
I ordered cease-fire. The troops assembled and we marched away. The job was done. The time was 11:23 P.M.
Reaching the railway line, Riedl went ahead with a small party. He found the eight guardsmen crowding atop the guardhouse. They were watching the fire lit skies, chattering excitedly. Helmut mowed them down with a single burst of his submachine gun, then tossed a couple of grenades into the writhing mob for good measure. The guardhouse and the bridge were demolished. Schulze proceeded to plant our remaining mines along the line and the adjoining footpath "to get a few of the bastards later on," as he put it. Our two Indochinese friends asked my permission to collect the weapons of the dead Chinese, saying that they could use the rifles later on, at home.
It was becoming light when we arrived at the cave where our comrades had been waiting tensely. "You have not missed a thing," Schulze consoled them. "A bunch of boy scouts could have blasted the camp with all the ammo crates scattered around. You just spared yourselves a long walk."
The company arrived at Suoi's village at dusk—dead tired but in very cheerful spirits. We had no way of knowing whether Ming had been among the Man-hao casualties but he was never again spotted in Indochina.
"There was a mighty blast in Man-hao," Colonel Houssong remarked two weeks later when I submitted to him my report on our recent activities. "The whole militia went up in smoke and the Chinese suffered nearly a thousand casualties, among them a corps commander from Yunnan."
"Well, isn't that something, mon colonel?" Schulze exclaimed with enthusiasm. "It's the first good news for months!" He turned toward me with pretended innocence. "Imagine, Hans ... we were only about thirty miles from the place."
"That's exactly what I was thinking," Colonel Houssong cut in, stressing his words.
"We didn't notice a thing, mon colonel," I said.
"I wonder."
"Mon colonel, everyone knows how careless the Chinese are. They probably stored ammunition crates in the open and lightning struck the dump. It has happened before."
"Lightning my foot!" he cut me short. "There has been no storm around there for weeks. A couple of eighty-caliber lightnings with fins maybe. I wonder if I should check your inventories on the ammo you received and what you brought back. Come on, Wagemueller, how did you pull it?"
I told him the whole story and he sent a report saying:
"Terrorist group of about two hundred men and a large quantity of ammunition destroyed 35 miles northwest of Lao Kay."
Needless to say, the General Staff would never bother to check that anyplace thirty-five miles northwest of Lao Kay was well within Red China!