by Barry Sadler
The C-119 continued climbing until the designated altitude was reached. The pilot checked his magnet, and they left the flight path, heading out over the straits between their present position and the lesser islands of Quemoy.
One stop at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, for fuel, and they'd move on to their target area. Casey told the men that it was okay to unfasten their seatbelts. They did so, and both moved immediately to their chutes, reclined, and went to sleep.
Good idea, he thought. I'll try that myself after I smoke this butt and think a bit. Best not to think too much, though. Ah, piss on it! I smoke too much anyway. He put the unlit cigarette back in the pack and joined his men.
Relaxing as best he could on the small canvas seats that ran along the side of the plane, Casey closed his eyes, listening to the engines. His head bounced as they hit some turbulence, snapping his eyes back open for a second. Then they closed again.
This was all very familiar, a plane carrying him to a place where men in their right mind would never think of going. The first time he had gone in a C-119, it was known as French Indochina and covered all of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Now he was going back. It seemed he was always going back somewhere.
He shifted his butt over to ease the growing numbness in it and sighed deeply, letting the air out slowly. He was letting his mind go back into the hellhole of Dien Bien Phu.
He would always have a bitter taste in his mouth about that too many good men lost for no purpose. It all came to him riding on the hum of the engines. He had been with the BEP, the ler Battalion etranger de parachutistes, brought in with the 8e Parachutistes de Choc (8 BPC) to add their strength to the other legion battalions, the 1st and 3rd of the 13e Demi-Brigade and the 2e regiment estranger, all containing strong German contingents. The legion had been the only refuge for many of them after the fall of Germany, and the French needed professional soldiers to rebuild their empire.
He had enlisted while Berlin was still smoldering and had taken the name Casey Romain, as it was time to put Carl Langer behind him. The enlistment officer for the etranger didn't care what name you signed up under as long as you knew how to fight, and once he had a close look at his new volunteer, there had been no doubt about his capabilities. The new name would also apply to the new citizenship papers he would receive when he had finished his enlistment, and papers were vital.
When they hit the ground, he knew they were in trouble. One look at the mountains around them and only one road by which to bring supplies, lying where it would be no problem to be cut off either by ambush or shell fire. He began to wish that he had deserted while still in Algeria.
It didn't take long for the shit to start, and for the next fifty five days, he'd never know a full night's sleep.
There were five major strong points around Dien Bien Phu – Anne-Marie, Claudine, Dominique, Eliane, and Hugunette. Two hundred yards north of Anne-Marie stood an isolated strong point on a small height, Gabrielle, and one thousand five hundred yards north east of Dominique on the northern approach of Rd. 41 stood Beatrice. Six thousand yards south of Claudine, protecting the airstrip and southern approaches, was Isabelle. Isabelle, a pretty name for a place where so much dying would occur. It was there that he stayed for most of his time, leaving the barbed wire surrounding their bunkers only for brief spoiling patrols or to reopen the road to Dien Bien Phu when the Viets cut it, which occurred frequently.
Casey had been in enough battles to know that the place was a trap. Dien Bien Phu's position covered an area eleven miles long and three wide, on ground that had been stripped. They'd had to tear down the native villages for lumber to cover their shelters and to shore up the sides of the bunker walls. On either side of them rose jagged hills two thousand feet higher than Dien Bien Phu's position. There was no way to prevent the Vietminh from taking up placements on them and setting artillery where it could fire down the throats of the defenders, even though Colonel Piroth, who commanded the artillery at Dien Bien Phu had made the boast that the Vietminh wouldn't get their artillery through to here. If they did get there, the colonel would smash them. Even if they managed to keep on shooting, they would be unable to supply their pieces with enough ammunition to do any real harm. He based his faith in the general staff's belief that the Vietminh was not capable of bringing up enough guns to do any damage. It was just too difficult an operation in this kind of terrain, and partly on the strength of his own force, which consisted of two groups, with twelve 105 howitzers each and a strong battery of four 155 mm guns with more range and power than anything the Vietminh were known to possess. All this, along with three heavy mortar companies and four quad fifties, those deadly four barreled 50 caliber heavy machine guns.
Casey knew Piroth was wrong from the start. He had long known the Asian capability for doing things the Occidental mind thought impossible. The Vietminh broke down their artillery into pieces and hand carried them through the jungle, hacking their way up to the top of the ridges, a hack breaking job that no modern Western general would have dared to ask his men to attempt. The Vietminh didn't question Giap's orders, and they hauled up forty eight 105s of the same type as the French, which came in handy later, when air drops missed Dien Bien Phu and landed in Vietminh lines, supplying them with several days' worth of ammunition. Along with the 105s were forty eight 75-mms, forty eight 120-mm mortars, many 75-mm recoilless rifles, and around forty heavy anti-aircraft guns. With these, the Viets controlled access to and from the valley.
On March 13, Giap gave his orders, and the first salvos began to fall on the outlying strong points to the north of the airstrip; Anne Marie, Beatrice, and Gabrielle. After them the airfield was pounded, cratering the runway to make it nearly impossible to land a plane safely and to destroy most of the Bearcat fighters on the ground. Which they did! Only three out of eleven managed to get airborne; the rest burned on the runway.
This was the beginning of the end. For a week, the Vietminh pounded everything in the valley. Soon, Death Volunteers began to hurl themselves at the wire surrounding the fortifications. Hurling their bodies onto the wire, they would set off explosives taped to themselves in an attempt to blast open a path through which their comrades could attack.
Beatrice was targeted for special attention and saturated by mind and will breaking heavy fire and constant ground assaults. It was manned by a unit Casey knew well, the 3/13 Demi Brigade, de l'etrange, a wholly European force of seven hundred fifty nine tough veterans from every side of World War II who now fought side by side against the common enemy.
Suicide squads blasted openings in the defenses and infantry poured through as the Viet guns zeroed in on the French artillery batteries in the center of the camp, knocking out two of the 105s and killing most of their Senegalese crews, taking out the command bunker and wiping out the commander of Beatrice and his staff in one burst of flame and smoke. The three companies remaining were left to fight on their own. By nine thirty, two of them had gone off the air. The third managed to continue sending signals asking for assistance until just after midnight and then went silent. By two A.M., the last rifle and machine gun fire had died out. Beatrice had fallen.
Colonel Piroth apologized for underestimating his opponent by holding a grenade against his stomach and pulling the pin. From them on, each of the other strong points received its full share of the same treatment that had been given to Beatrice. Fifty five days and nights of constant shelling and ground attacks took casualties, along with the rains that soaked everything and made the sandy walls of bunkers collapse, sometimes burying alive wounded men who didn't have the strength to get out under their own power. Reinforcements came in only to be swallowed up. There wasn't enough ammunition or medical supplies to handle half their number. Attack and counterattack, a strong point would fall only to be retaken an hour later. But inch by inch, man by man, the Vietminh gradually gained control, though not without cost to themselves. Over ten thousand died in the process, and over two thousand were taken prisoner and forced
into labor gangs, to clear away debris and rebuild shattered fortifications and bunkers.
By the last part of April, nearly everyone knew they had no chance; but still they hung on in the hope that help would come. There were rumors that the Americans were going to supply enough planes to keep them reinforced and supplied and that a rescue column was on the way. Neither thing happened. Only the rains came, which in the months of March to August, average five feet. Tired men went to sleep and drowned in the bottoms of their bunkers or shell holes. Uniforms rotted on their backs, and feet swelled until they looked like fat, bloated, white maggots from which the hides were peeling off. They were losing fifty to a hundred men a day, and rations were cut in half.
The Viets taught the defenders something about digging. Trenches by the dozen crept closer to the defenders. Every day, some would go underground, trying to pass beneath the wire. Some of these were intercepted by the French sappers, who would dig until they intercepted the enemy. Strange hand to hand fights, with shovels and knives, took place under the soggy earth where the two groups of moles met to fight blindly as their comrades overhead fought with machine guns and flamethrowers.
All the outposts fell or were cut off from the main base, each left to its own devices. Casey could hear them on the radio giving each other encouragement, but one by one the radios went silent as their operators were killed or taken prisoner.
On April 13, Castries wanted to attempt a breakout, but his commanders convinced him that it would be a massacre. He gave in and ordered that at five thirty the garrison would cease firing. Giap would be informed by radio. Until the last moment, the paras and legionaries fired off their remaining ammo and destroyed what was left of their serviceable equipment. They would leave nothing for their conquerors. At least they could salvage that much of their pride. Several bands tried for breakouts on their own, most of them to be captured or killed. At five thirty, the Viets came out of the riverbanks of the Nam Yum River in thousands to swarm over the camp. A special squad went in to Castries' bunker to take him and his staff prisoner. From Isabelle, Casey could see the French tricolor go down and the flag of the Vietminh rise. Only Isabelle still resisted. LaLande, its commander, refused to give up, never, not while he still had men who could fight.
That night, his men, who were too badly wounded to come with them, gave covering fire to keep the Vietminh occupied. Those who could walk slipped out of the camp and down the bed of the Nam Yum and into the jungle wall. Casey was with them. Of the hundreds who tried to escape, only seventy made it back to French held terrain. Most were from LaLande's group. While the victorious Vietminh made their own death march for the ten thousand prisoners they had acquired, Casey and the escapees were sent to Saigon for decorations. France needed some heroes.
It was over, and the French had lost. The Vietminh were given the whole of Tonkin. Cochin China and Annam were granted independence, soon to absorbed by the new masters, and Cambodia and Laos were demilitarized. Casey stayed in Hanoi until the prisoners of war were exchanged and loaded on troop ships, taking the Corps d'expdditionnaire away from Dien Bien Phu's defeat in the east to where another war of liberation was taking place among the colonies of France back to Algeria.
A stomach twisting lurch of the plane as it hit a large air pocket stopped his reverie. Casey leaned back, shook his head to get rid of the past, lit up a smoke, took three deep drags, and butted it on the sole of his boot. Finally he let his eyes close, the lids were heavy and gritty.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They slept, tossing fitfully as the C-119 droned on through the night across the dark waters of the ocean, heading for the South China Sea.
The hours passed rapidly. Van woke first as the hydraulics signaled the lowering of the landing gear. He woke Casey and George as the plane banked to the starboard and began her approach to Clark Field.
The three men quickly strapped themselves in as the aircraft lumbered toward the runway. She bounced down like a fat old duck landing uncontrollably on a rough lake. There was a screech as the pilot reversed his props and rumbled to a stop. Then they were off again, taxiing off the ramp to the fuel trucks standing by.
Quickly the ground crew hooked up the lines to refuel the plane, as military guards took up positions around the aircraft to keep away anyone who might show an interest in the plane and its cargo.
As soon as the umbilical cords were detached, the plane taxied straight back to the runway with a priority clearance to groan and wheeze as it lumbered back into the sky. It still had a long way to go before it discharged its cargo into the night sky.
Several more hours' flight over black waters of the South China Sea brought them to the south of Phu Quoc island. From there the plane eased into its final heading.
The C-119 changed attitude to come in low over the coast. Their ears popped with the change in pressure. The red night light in the interior of the plane gave everything a strange eerie cast. When the light came on they knew they were getting near the drop zone. The crew chief came back to them a few minutes later to say they had picked up the signal for their approach. It was time to get harnessed up.
The cargo master turned on the get ready light and opened the door to the outside. Casey hooked up his static line to the cable and stood in the open doorway watching the darkness race by him. Behind him, George and Van were ready to follow him out the door.
All at once, Casey felt the exhilaration he'd experienced in so many previous jumps and silently laughed at the awareness of how one always felt the need to piss after he'd harnessed up. It was no different now, but there was no time. They were fast coming up on the marker that Phang had set out for them: a burning arrow shaped array of oil lamps showing the direction of approach. Now they were over it.
He threw his body forward into the jump position and tumbled out. Casey felt himself being tossed like a small toy. The prop blast was deafening. One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand, then a quick upward jerk of his body, and all was silent. The silence was always a shock after the ear blasting roar of the engines. His hands moved quickly up to his lines, checking out the risers, an automatic movement of the experienced jumper. The touch told him that all was in order. The chute, billowing above him, looked too fragile to sustain his weight.
Behind him he could see Van and George dropping slowly. In the distance, the old cargo plane was visible only for a moment before going into a cloud and disappearing from sight. He adjusted himself and looked down. At night, depth perception was deceiving. Watch for the treeline, he remembered, and steered his chute closer to the clearing. The burning arrow had already fizzled, and only the light of a lone lantern showed the center of the field.
Casey drifted toward the light, seeing the tree line suddenly become a black shadow as the foliage blocked out the sky above him.
"This is it, son!" He braced himself for the impact, pulling his front risers down and releasing them. A snap! He hit the ground; the upward snap of the parachute helped to ease the fall. Casey quickly twisted his body into the parachute landing fall, or PLF, as they called it in school. Chin tucked, head down, knees together and lightly bent, toes down as he hit. Without thinking, he automatically went into his body roll, on the side of his calves, thighs, hips, and back and over.
His chute filled lightly, billowing with the ground wind as he rolled deftly to his feet and hit his quick release. Shadows grabbed his chute and collapsed it. An old and wrinkled hand grabbed his own and then helped him out of his gear.
"Welcome, my son! Welcome to Cambodia."
Casey put his arm around the old outlaw. "Phang, you'll never know how good you look to me, even if I can't see your ugly old face."
Looking over Phang's shoulder, he could just make out the forms of Van and George touching down, their chutes collapsing as Phang's men grabbed them, beating the silk to the ground and rolling them up. The two men quickly gathered their gear, gave the drop bags to the Kamserai, and joined Casey and Phang.
Ca
sey took out his compass and took a sighting. The radium lit dimly.
"All right, gentlemen, silent running till we're in the clear. This is no time to take chances."
Pointing in the direction he wished to head, a Kamserai took the point. Indian style, in single file, they melted into the jungle. Setting a rapid pace, they weaved their way in and out of the trees and brush, putting as many miles as possible between themselves and the drop zone.
After about an hour's march Casey called a halt and had the natives bury the three chutes in the brush. Resting for a moment, he could almost feel the physical weight of the jungle bearing down on him. It had a taste to it, a flavor that was hard to describe, something all its own that told you, "You don't really belong here. Beware."
Casey rested his back against a tree, watching the shadows of the others as they did the same. Most of them faced to the outside in case unexpected visitors might come by. Sitting there, breathing in the dank heaviness of the myriad trees and heavy undergrowth, he heard a familiar sound that ran chills up his back and instilled a primeval spot of fear in his gut. The long, rasping, coughing sound of a hunting tiger. Not a roar but a cough, deep and throaty, a cough that a man could hear for miles. God, what a sound, Casey thought. It made a man feel damned inadequate.
He pulled himself to his feet, snapping his fingers twice to get the others' attention, and motioned for them to move out. They had to make some distance.
Van moved up behind Casey as George moved out to the right flank. Casey wasn't worried about George getting lost in the bush. The little shit could hear an ant fart at fifty feet. He would be where he was needed.