by Eric Meyer
“I am not a spy, Commissar, I am a pilot. This is not a war zone, it is the Republic of South Vietnam and I am not American, I am German.” His eyes shot up. “German! Where have you come from? From the North, yes?”
I looked at him steadily. “Yes,” I replied.
“So, you’re the ones we were told might be coming this way. You illegally entered The People’s Republic of North Vietnam and helped convicted war criminals to escape. You!”
His voice was harsh and withering, but his eyes gleamed with satisfaction. “My orders are to apprehend you and sentence you all to death. Have you anything to say?” he asked.
“Do you mean about the fairness of communist justice?” I said. He didn’t understand my sarcasm. “Very well, comrades,” he shouted, “prepare to execute the prisoners.”
He looked at me again, obviously waiting for signs of terror, the fear that would sate his bullying lusts. I ignored him and looked at his men, lining up in some semblance of a firing party.
“You men, get into line,” he barked at us. “Fuck you,” I replied.
His eyes bulged with rage and astonishment that his victim has dared to insult him. He stepped forward and his hand swung across to punch me in the face but I was ready for him and I grabbed him and twisted around so that he was between me and his men. It was the signal for Abe to open fire, we had other arrangements if I couldn’t grab their leader, but this was the best chance. As the startled Viets swung their weapons up to point at me, too confused and frightened to fire in case they hit the Commissar, Woltz fired his first silenced shot. It was an amazing pieced of shooting, the soft sounds went unnoticed in the jungle, especially when the Viets started shouting for orders, their frightened voices echoing along the track. But it made no difference, it was as if they had been hit by some deadly gas, they had no idea where it was coming from. One by one they dropped where they stood, twelve dead Viets until there was only one, Commissar Trong. As I relieved him of his pistol, he started to shake violently with shock and terror, as is the way with bullies all over the world.
“How...?” was all he could gasp. He went even paler when Abe stood up, almost like a ghost, covered in jungle greenery so that it was like a jungle spirit that suddenly sprung up where nothing had been before. A jungle spirit with a hot, silenced sniper rifle. I ignored him.
“We’d better destroy those mortars, I don’t want the Viets coming to retrieve them and using them again. Get any weapons and ammunition you need from the dead bodies, then smash or destroy anything we can’t carry. Commissar,” I turned to the shocked Viet, “how far is it to the Special Forces base at Khe Sanh?”
“I, I, I, can’t give information, it is...” He stopped when I screwed the pistol barrel, his pistol barrel, into his balls.
“Commissar, you’ve seen what happened to your men. If you want to join them, that’s fine with me. If you prefer to come with us as a prisoner, I need to know how far it is to the Khe Sanh Special Forces base.” It only took another couple of minutes of coaxing. His world had been destroyed and like all bullies, when his power had evaporated so had all his strength and bluster.
“It is approximately three kilometres,” he said abruptly, “the track forks one kilometre further south, you take the right fork. The Special Forces base and airfield will be visible to you almost straight away.” That made sense, a clear field of fire and a flat base of operations on which to position a remote airstrip. I gestured to Jack Bond.
“Tie his hands, would you, Sergeant. We’ll hand him over when we get there.” Bond nodded and rummaged in his pack for some electrical cable to secure the Commissar. I looked around at the remnants of the short action. It was sickening, the twelve Viets lay close to each other, reminding me almost of old photographs of the First World War, when men were mown down in lines as they left the trenches. I also recalled the Duke of Wellington’s famous quote after Waterloo, ‘Next to a battle lost, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won’. Sad indeed.
The Americans were shredded heaps of flesh after the mortar hits, unknown to us and unnamed. We would need to collect their tags and I asked Abe Woltz to do the job. Beckerman’s body lay where it had fallen and I asked Paul Schuster and Joe Russo to take his tags and bury him. The Viets we left where they were, their own people would be along to deal with them soon enough, they usually came. I remembered battles from the Indochina War when we would leave a battlefield with a hundred or more Viet casualties, the following morning they would invariably have disappeared. It wasn’t altruism, they merely hated to let anyone know that the invincible communist fighters had suffered so badly, it was bad for morale.
We advanced along the track, forked to the right and before long we were walking towards the barbed wire fence that marked the boundary of Khe Sahn Special Forces camp. I thought of the idiotic French policy of small, armed outposts, and how each had slowly fallen to the Viet Minh forces, finally ending with the disastrous defeat at Dien Bien Phu. How long would it be before this camp was finally abandoned I wondered, and how many bloody battles would be fought until that day dawned?
Half an hour later we went into the radio shack. The operator had AFN radio tuned in, it was playing ‘Hey! Baby’, the Bruce Channel smash hit. The operator turned it down and shortly I was on the radio to Tan Son Nhat, talking to Johann. Ritter von Schacht was almost sober, which was a miracle, and they were already fuelling and pre-flighting the C-47 to fly out and pick us up. We could expect their arrival within four hours, maybe five.
Most importantly, the report from MACV about Helene was positive, she was showing signs of responding and had regained consciousness. I thanked all the Gods for the news, it made everything worth it. We walked out of the radio shack and while we waited, the Special Forces made us welcome and treated us to a meal of C rations. It was delicious. At last, I thought, we were going home. How many men had died to get us here, to effect the rescue of the two Americans? Probably hundreds, we would never know. And there were of course questions to ask when we reached Saigon, the answers would be very interesting.
*****
‘The ARVN soldiers themselves are good fighters, but they are very underpaid, and poorly led. Their morale is poor, and this brings about the biggest problem in the Army AWOLS [soldiers absent without leave] and deserters. The Government just doesn’t look after their soldiers well enough to keep them happy. All soldiers’ housing is terrible, dependents are not thought of in the least - they have no provisions for getting pay home when the husband is off on a big operation, maybe for over a month. Next - poor leadership. The commanders of the Army units are usually inexperienced, and only worried about staying alive, and getting a soft job back in Saigon somewhere. The high level commanders are more worried about political things than military considerations. District chiefs are the same way - they usually plan and go out on as few operations as possible, mostly worried about keeping the province chief happy from a political viewpoint. Nobody is really sure who to support - maybe tomorrow there will be another coup and the guy they supported will be thrown out. It’s all highly confusing, but one thing is sure - it really hurts the military effort.
Captain James B Lincoln, American Advisor to ARVN
“William, what’s the word from the Palace? These problems with the ARVN are not getting any better, have you been able to talk to the President?” Harkins looked across at Colby, the Chief of Station and someone who generally claimed to have influence with Diem through the President’s brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Since 1960 the communist insurgency had been growing substantially, yet Diem and his cronies seemed to regard it as a uniquely American problem while they concentrated their efforts on controlling the country’s very unhappy Buddhist majority.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work in that direction, General. The Strategic Hamlets Program is doing well and after that last disaster at Ap Bac the ARVN are working hard to regain their reputation.”
“Christ, what reputation? They damned well need to do somethin
g, Bill. Jesus, what a mess that was.”
“It wasn’t all ARVN, General, there were some of our own guys there too,” Colby retorted sharply. Harkins looked at him keenly. “What are you saying, that our boys can’t fight?”
Colby sighed. “No, General, not at all. Our soldiers are amongst the finest in the world, well equipped and motivated. No, what I’m saying is politics, a question of where we’re headed with this. Who is leading the army, what are their objectives, stopping the communists or the Buddhists?” Harkins interrupted.
“Christ, I hope you’re not suggesting we take on the Buddhist population of South Vietnam too, Bill?”
Colby laughed. “No, I’m not. But why are we really here? I recall Eisenhower’s famous quote, ‘Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences.’ Is that what these people are to us, just a bunch of dominoes or are they valuable allies? We need to streamline the army leadership, to help them establish good government and infrastructure and protect them from the communists.”
“Is that right?” Harkins sneered. “I thought MACV was here to fight and more importantly win a war. Am I correct, the M part of the title of my command does stand for military?”
“Well, yes, of course,” Colby said hastily, “but…”
“So forget the dominoes, forget the cosy fireside chats with your friends in the Presidential Palace, I need more cooperation from the ARVN, you must make it your number one priority.”
Harkins sat back. He rarely raised his voice, but the smooth Ivy League man seemed determined to make the simplest of matters more complicated than they needed to be.
“General, I think you overestimate my influence with the Palace,” Colby continued warily.
“Even the influence of the Palace over the ARVN is not necessarily as, er, straightforward as we would hope.” Harkins brought his mind to sharp focus.
“What have you heard? That sounds ominous, is there any chance of a coup?” he asked.
The CIA man hesitated. “I’d be lying to you if I said no chance at all, there has been talk. But overall, I’m hopeful that things will stabilise along lines that are mutually beneficial to all of us.”
What the fuck did that mean, Harkins thought?
“Have you debriefed your men, the two guys that were rescued from the North?”
Colby nodded. “Yes, we have General. Sadly, they were caught before they achieved anything useful to us, so it was something of a wasted effort.”
Did he mean mounting the mission, or bringing back the two Americans? Again, Harkins wondered what went on in that Machiavellian mind. Almost certainly nothing that wasn’t to the direct benefit of William E Colby.
“And the rescue party, the two Germans and the Special Forces guys?” Harkins continued.
“Well, we’ve had a report that they may have crossed the DMZ, but we’re not certain.”
Harkins finally lost his cool. “Colby, listen to me. You’re not sure about anything, are you? About the politics and intentions of the government, the ARVN, even our own people. Could I ask you to come better prepared to our next meeting, or do I need to arrange for someone who can be better prepared?”
The two men looked at each other, both swallowing the anger that they each felt at the other’s perceived inadequacies. Finally Colby looked away, intimidated by the iron resolve of the soldier.
“I’ll do as you ask, General, I’ll get my people on it right away.”
Harkins nodded, stood up and stalked out of the room, startling his two aides who were waiting outside the door, and stomped towards the exit.
* * * * *
Chapter Nine
Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.
Barry M. Goldwater, 1962
The most welcome sight of all greeted us several hours later when we first heard the drone of the engines, then our C-47 came into view. Whoever was flying it was an expert, it could only be Ritter. It banked neatly and flared in for a landing on the tiny, rough airstrip. Johann would have needed at least one pass to line up correctly and even then would have bounced several times when he made contact with the ground. The aircraft stopped and
the side door slid open, framing Ritter von Schacht in the doorway. The piratical former Luftwaffe airman stood there, as ever his missing eye covered by the black patch that many of us had sometimes wondered whether it was assumed, but none would dare to ask him to remove it so that we could check. Johann appeared alongside him, pushed out a boarding ladder and the two men climbed down. I ran up and shook hands with Johann, and then Ritter literally hugged me, careful to keep his cigarette in its holder to one side.
“Jurgen, my friend, how are you?”
“How am I? You old bastard, we’ve been shot at and chased the length of Vietnam and you ask how am I?” Paul was embracing Johann, the relief we felt at getting back to our own people was beyond belief.
“Ritter, I’ve arranged for some fuel to be supplied to get us back, I’ll get them loading it straight away and we can take off again.”
“What? He looked dismayed. “Don’t I get a chance to look at the nightlife, I’ve never been here before, to Khe Sahn. I need to find a bar.”
“Time for that when we get back to Saigon, my friend, for the time being we just want to get out of here,” I laughed. He sighed heavily. “As you wish, my friend.”
A number of soldiers were rolling fuel drums across the flat ground towards us, Ritter went towards them and started bellowing at them to hurry up.
Within half an hour the aircraft had been refuelled and was ready to go. We climbed aboard, those of us left alive, the Special Forces, Abe Woltz, Joe Russo and Jack Bond. Then Paul Schuster and finally I shook hands with the base commander and closed the door. Ritter and Johann were already running up the engines and doing their final checks, less than a minute later and before I had a chance to strap in, the aircraft was rattling across the strip and took to the air. I went forward and checked that everything was good with Johann and Ritter, than I went aft and found a soft canvas tarpaulin that made a useful bed. I lay down and within seconds was fast asleep. The sound of the engine note altering woke me and I looked out of the cabin window to see the late afternoon landscape of Saigon appearing before me. I went forward to where Ritter was talking to the tower, in the background I could hear the sound of the radio playing ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’. I put on a spare headset and listened to the familiar cheery voice of Nguyen Cam Le manning the tower as usual at Tan Son Nhat.
“Hey guys, where have you popped up from, you been on a mission to the North, dropping a bomb on Ho Chi Minh’s bedroom?”
“Ritter laughed. “Ja, one day, my friend and we’ll take you with us. Do we have clearance to land?”
“You sure do, winds are north easterly, speed ten knots, visibility is clear to two thousand metres, patchy cloud at five thousand metres, and it’s a nice day here in Saigon. Come straight in, traffic is clear.”
Ritter turned to me. “He’s a good guy, that Nguyen Cam Le, hates the commies.”
“Does he?” I nodded. He looked at me curiously. “Have you got some kind of a problem with Le?” he asked. I shook my head. “I don’t know, maybe not. He seems friendly enough.”
He focussed on flying the aircraft as the strip at Tan Son Nhat came into view. Expertly he trimmed the aircraft for landing, throttling back, gear down, flaps down and a smooth bank into final approach. Soon we touched down, a feather light landing. Ritte
r taxied us across to our company hangar and we disembarked, grateful to be back on friendly territory again. Or was it friendly, I had my suspicions? We shut the aircraft down, secured the ground anchors and went inside to the office where I found a bottle of Jack Daniels. We all toasted our safe return, the three Special Forces soldiers, Jack Bond, Joe Russo and Abe Woltz. Paul and I poured each other a hefty shot, Johann poured a modest glass and Ritter grabbed the bottle and literally poured it down his throat. It was a moment to savour, yet I stopped them for a moment and proposed a toast to those who had not made it back, Cady and Beckerman.
Almost immediately the telephone rang, it was MACV Saigon. Johann answered it, and then handed the phone to Jack Bond. We couldn’t help but overhear his side of the conversation.
“Yes, Sir, we’re fine, Russo, Woltz and myself. No, Sir, Captain Cady was killed, Beckerman too. You want us now? Right, we’ll be ready. Mr Hoffman? Sure thing.”
He handed the phone to me. “It's MACV, they want you.” I picked up the phone.
“Hoffman here.” I heard a crisp, military voice at the other end.
“This is General Harkin’s office, Mr Hoffman, he wants you here right away. Could you come with the car we’re sending for the other men?”
I had a deep, sinking sensation in my stomach. For every waking moment over the past few days I had wondered about Helene, would she survive, would the baby survive? “Is it about my wife, Helene, has she taken a turn for the worse?”
There was a hesitation and I died a thousand deaths in that short space of time, I felt myself growing dizzy again, the room going dark. “Your wife, Sir? No, I’m not aware of that situation. The General wants to discuss your recent mission to the North.”
I let out the breath I was holding, it was to be a debriefing, for God’s sake, I had to know about Helene. “Who am I speaking to, soldier?”