by Robin Moore
Scharne needed no more encouragement. In a travesty of the foreign conception of an American soldier confronted with a beautiful girl, he uprooted his chair and swung it down beside Mlle. Lefevre, placing himself between her and Huyot. I moved my chair to the other side of the table.
“You are in Saigon on leave?” Huyot asked Scharne in French. “Or perhaps you are stationed here permanently.”
“I have an office in Saigon but my real work is out in the field.” Scharne’s heavy American accent caused a fleeting smile to cross Mlle. Lefevre’s lips.
“But you must do very interesting work,” she said, trying to draw him out.
Both the girl and Huyot professed tremendous interest in the work Americans were doing in Vietnam. Huyot even went so far as to say, “We couldn’t win over here, but perhaps you Americans will be successful where we failed.”
“We are not fighting, Huyot,” Scharne said quickly. “We are merely advising the Vietnamese in their fight. This isn’t an American war.”
“It is an American war,” Huyot stated positively. And then, with sincerity and a trace of bitterness: “We could have won our war here instead of losing it in 1954. But our generals and colonels were all conventional soldiers, unsuited to this war in Vietnam. Our St. Cyr War Academy leaders refused to accept this war as different from what they were taught. They knew little of guerrilla tactics and had no concept of how the jungle fighter thinks. So two hundred thousand Frenchmen were killed and wounded by the time we finally lost Dien Bien Phu. I fought out here. I know.”
Denise reached a sun-gold arm across the table and took Huyot’s hand in hers. “Henri, please don’t upset yourself.” She turned to Scharne. “Henri’s family were among the first to settle in Vietnam. They own one of the largest rubber estates in the country, which Henri runs until he can get somewhere near what it’s worth. We must sell control of all our interests to the Vietnamese, you know.”
Scharne nodded sympathetically, but Henri could not forgo a final outburst. “I said the Americans could win.” He laughed derisively. “Oui, but you are making our mistakes all over again in some ways. And to cap the climax you do not even have control of the fighting troops.” Huyot winked. “Your straight-leg colonels and generals will be your downfall here too.”
Scharne was genuinely impressed. Here he was hearing his own words come back at him from the man whose death he planned to contrive.
“You know something about us, Huyot, I see.” Scharne’s French was becoming revealingly fluent and accentless, and I worried that he might give himself away. “You even know our term for the conventional soldiers who do not jump from airplanes.”
“I was a paratrooper,” Huyot said proudly. “My battalion was among the last to try and relieve Dien Bien Phu, but it was too late. Our conventional Paris generals had already lost the war and officers like me were disgusted with an army that refused to let men who knew fighting in Vietnam have any influence on our operations.”
Scharne seemed immersed in this discussion with his enemy. “If the legs had their way they’d get Special Forces out of Vietnam entirely.”
“Mistrust of the different, the unorthodox, is universal in military thinking,” Huyot commented bleakly.
The Frenchman insisted on buying us another round of drinks; he and Scharne appeared on the way to establishing a mutual basis of understanding.
“Where is your plantation?” Scharne asked.
“The big rubber plantation is in Tay Ninh province.”
“Henri’s family have many properties in Vietnam,” Denise added.
Huyot smiled fondly at the girl. “She has come all the way out here from France to live and marry. She loves the country and the properties so much I sometimes wonder if it is me or the estates that she is marrying.”
Scharne and I had both noticed the large diamond shimmering on the appropriate finger. “Vietnam is beautiful,” I said. “I’ve never seen such varied scenery and climate in the tropics before.”
“Oh, I pray we can always live here,” Denise said enthusiastically. The glad expression clouded a moment as she caught Huyot’s eye. “We will be able to stay, Henri? Always? And visit France every other year?”
Her fiancé laughed mirthlessly. “But of course, my dear. I’m sure the Viets will give me a job on one of the plantations when they finally take all our property. We could always hire out as a couple. The Viets are getting so disgustingly rich stealing from the Americans they can afford French servants now.”
Denise shook her head slightly and subsided back in her chair. Huyot turned to Scharne. “Enough of our problems. I am interested in how you Americans propose to train the Viets to win this war. Didn’t I hear you say you’re training the Vietnamese Rangers?”
“I’m up at Duc Phung supervising training,” Scharne acknowledged. “We’re turning out some good classes. I’d put my Rangers, assuming good leadership, against the best the Viet Cong have to offer.”
Casually Huyot reached for his drink. “Have you observed your students in actual combat?”
“Every few weeks we take the graduating class on an exercise against what we hope will be an inferior number of Communists. Unfortunately, two weeks ago we suffered serious losses, and one American killed, another wounded.” Scharne’s accent was poor again, I was relieved to see, as he eased back into his role.
“You ran into something bigger than you expected?” Huyot prodded.
“We sure did. I had 300 men out, the best officers in the camp commanding. We started out to track down what we thought was a company of VC and found we were up against a battalion. We Americans tried to help the Vietnamese officers direct their men, but our advice didn’t get through and the VC had surprisingly good leadership.” Scharne shook his head. “I can’t understand it. The VC were shooting low, they deployed themselves around us like a veteran battle group. Intelligence gave us no warning of a hard-core battalion in the area.”
I sneaked a look at Huyot; there was no mistaking his smugness.
“After such a defeat you will of course give up such training exercises?”
“The Vietnamese officers in charge of the school are thinking of dropping them. Typical Vietnamese reaction to a defeat. I advised them to try it again and reluctantly they agreed to one more operation. The new class, unfortunately, is smaller than the last one and the quality of the men is somewhat inferior too. A little combat will stiffen them, though.”
“You’ll take them the same place?” Huyot asked, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “After the experience you had?”
Scharne gave a knowing smile. “I’ll take them somewhere and do it next week instead of the following one, which is our regular schedule as I’m sure the VC know. By the time we’re in the jungle a week from tomorrow it will be too late for the VC to pinpoint us.”
“That is very clever,” Huyot said.
“We’ll just flush out a few VC without taking any casualties. The worst thing that could happen to the whole Ranger training program would be another defeat. That would end subsequent field exercises against a real enemy—the most important part of the course.”
“It is hard to work with the Viet colonels and generals, no?”
“Usually. Sometimes I wonder why we bother at all. Let them find out what would happen without us.”
“Precisely,” Huyot replied. “Why do you Americans risk your lives twelve thousand miles from home for these people who steal most of what you give them and are afraid to fight for their own country?”
I was curious to hear how Fritz would respond to this near echo of his own words—now uttered by an adversary.
Scharne thought a few moments. “Two reasons, both you should be able to understand. First, I am a professional soldier and I take orders and do what I’m told. Second, I don’t want my children fighting the Communists at home.”
Huyot nodded. “Good answers.” He glanced at his watch and then at Denise. “My dear, we do not have much time if we are going to get ready.”
To Scharne, he said, “It was a pleasure to have met you, Major. I will be in Saigon most of this week. I hope I will see you again. I come to the club every day for lunch. I am fascinated to hear how you train the Viets. I tried to make paratroopers out of them during our war here. Perhaps we could trade experiences.”
“Your experience would be most valuable to me,” Scharne replied.
Huyot and Denise Lefevre stood up, Scharne and I stood also and shaking hands all around we bid them adieu.
“A most attractive couple,” Fritz said. “It is too bad—this whole mess of a situation here. I wonder if she will stay on in Vietnam if her fiancé is killed.”
2
The ensuing week was as depressing as I expected. I went out with the press corps to watch the familiar blue and white United States government jet come into Tan Son Nhut, Saigon’s international airport. The pattern never varied. A long flat-bed truck had been rolled up beside the honor guard lining the short walk from the bottom of the jet’s steps to the entrance of the VIP section of the airport. The truck was crowded with photographers.
We watched an impressive array of Washington officials disembark from the plane. “Must have been quite a junket,” one reporter remarked. The usual complement of intense newly important young men from various government agencies and departments brought up the end of the procession.
The speeches at the airport were identical to those we in Saigon had all heard before on such occasions, and then black limousines whirled the government toppers away. Correspondents looked at each other and shrugged, perspiring heavily in the heat outside the air-conditioned VIP lounge. I hopped a ride in one of the major newsmagazine cars and rode back into Saigon.
“No hard news is coming out of this visit,” a journalist who had been sent down from the Hong Kong bureau grumbled.
“Does it ever?” the Saigon man asked.
The next day a helicopter inspection trip of some of the government’s strategic hamlets and a recent battle site had been scheduled. I went out to Tan Son Nhut to see the official picnic party off. Two Special Forces officers, one the Area Specialist of the corps which the officials would visit that day, watched the proceedings.
“I can think of six priority missions in my corps for those choppers today,” the ASO said longingly, as they took off. “Do you think there’s any chance that the Secretary or someone he listens to will go out where we really have things tough? There are a hellofa lot of guys who could tell him the truth about what’s going on, and they’re hoping he’ll get to them.”
I handed the captain a press advisory. “Here’s part of his schedule. You figure out what he has time to do.”
“They’d better do something—the whole war has been called off while they’re in the country.”
In Saigon a general atmosphere of frenzy prevailed. Every staff officer seemed to have only two things in mind: Where and for whom the next briefing was being held, and whether they would have freshly starched fatigues in case of an unexpected briefing. Officers were begging, borrowing and otherwise acquiring crisp fatigues, changing two and three times a day as the searing heat and humidity reduced uniforms to soggy shapelessness. Hotel maids and valets grew rich constantly laundering and pressing fatigues.
Finally I could stand the Saigon merry-go-round no longer. I managed to hop a flight to the Ranger Training Center and spent a few days watching the training and getting outfitted to go on the operation scheduled to start Monday morning. Scharne made a desultory attempt to talk me out of going, but I knew he was pleased to have someone, particularly a writer who would respect classified information until the full story could be told, see his whole plan evolve.
On the preceding Tuesday Scharne had again met the cowboy at the Cercle Racquette. Over a few friendly drinks he divulged the date of the patrol and the fact that he was worried because this was the worst class he had trained to date. Huyot had questioned him casually about the operational area but Scharne told him this was secret information.
On Sunday evening Scharne outlined his plan to get the cowboy to me and the two replacement officers, Lieutenant Dant and Captain Paul, who had replaced Bellman. He would take 200 men, two companies, on this patrol.
“We’ll tell the Vietnamese officers to get their men out of camp and into the jungle before sunrise tomorrow morning,” Scharne was saying in the briefing room. “Paul, you and Dant let them do things their own way, which means they’ll be marching out of here long after daylight. Huyot’s spies will see exactly which way we’re going—due north. We’ve only got a couple of hundred student Rangers, so the VC will be overconfident. I figure they’ll let us march all day and hit us late tomorrow afternoon. What a deal this will look like to the cowboy! Killing three Americans and massacring the graduating class of the Ranger Training School.”
I regarded the map thoughtfully. “I must say, old man, that’s just the way it looks to me. Except that our French friend will be getting four Americans.”
On the acetate overlay Scharne drew a red line from the training camp north through the surrounding hills. “By 1400 hours we’ll be marching through this valley and by about 1530 we’ll be in this open plain surrounded by hills.”
He drew a red circle around the plain. “This would be the perfect place to hit us. There’s not a chance we could get back into the jungle and escape. We’d just have to fight it out in open terrain and the VC battalion would wipe us out to the last man. A terrible disaster for American advisers and Vietnamese Rangers. It would set the Ranger program back a year—in fact it would probably finish it.”
Scharne flashed me a wise look as I stared at the mournful story spelled out on the map. Taking up a blue pencil he continued. “However, it will be Huyot and his battalion that will be destroyed—just at the moment they see themselves making Viet Cong history.”
To the east and west of the red line demarking our next day’s line of march, Scharne drew four round circles in blue. “Each of these circles represents a full strike-force company from the two Special Forces camps in this province. Two companies will be to the east of us and two to the west. Each company is under the operational control of two American Special Forces sergeants. They are out there right now, and all day tomorrow they’ll be covering our flanks. They are the real guerrillas in this operation. The cowboy and his VC’s will never know they’re there until it’s too late.”
“We’re the bait for the trap,” I observed.
“Right. We’ll be in for some heavy fighting. When Huyot springs his attack, we’ll have to hold out until the strike-force companies can hit them from behind. The strikers will never be more than fifteen minutes away, actually they should be closer. We’ll be in radio communication with them all the time.”
“The last time I heard that, the radio batteries went dead,” I commented.
“I am personally going to watch fresh batteries put in the radios the last thing, before I go to bed,” Scharne retorted.
“Sounds like a good plan,” I acknowledged. “I hope we’ll be in position to see Huyot’s face when he’s hit by surprise just as he’s figuring to give us the coup de grâce.”
“I, too, want to see Monsieur Huyot out there,” Scharne said grimly.
I continued studying the map. Scharne’s plan looked lethal if the cowboy attacked us in the strength he was estimated to be carrying. Two companies of well-trained and heavily armed strikers five kilometers out on both flanks, one always abreast of us, the other always two clicks ahead, should certainly be able to zap any attacking battalion.
Scharne’s assumption also seemed valid that the cowboy would hit us in the big, open plain south of the large tea plantation that dominated the northern section of the fertile plain.
The main east-west road ran through the tea plantation and on into the province capital. The population of the capital was loyal to the government because a division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam kept the whole area safe from VC attack. Yet if less than
ten miles away near the main road two companies of the crack Vietnamese Rangers were slaughtered, a couple of hundred corpses left to rot where the populace and government officials of this important province could view the massacre, the damage to civilian and military morale would be incalculable.
“Very slick, Fritz,” I complimented him. “I see only one problem.”
“Oh?”
“Well, you’ve got two Special Forces camps involved, right?”
“Right. Captain De Grasso to the west on our left and Captain O’Malley on our right.”
“There must have been quite a planning operation. Special Forces is due to come under MAAG control any week now. Surely your friends at MAAG were consulted, as well as the province chief and the ARVN division commander. A lot of Vietnamese officers had to approve?”
A crafty smile crossed Scharne’s face. “Yes, I see what’s worrying you. I keep forgetting you’ve been around this war for a while. You are right, of course. I know personally of one Vietnamese captain in division headquarters who’s a VC sympathizer. There are others I’m sure. So this time we do things different,” he said. “We did not clear this operation with my colleagues at MAAG whose duty it would be to give the province chief and division four days to approve the operation.”
Scharne turned to the map. “No, this time we are very lucky. I don’t expect I’ll ever see such a combination of circumstances again. Special Forces has a bit more time before they lose their autonomy and set up the perfect leak to the VC and Monsieur Huyot.”
“You answered my question, Fritz. If the cowboy plays it anything like the way you figure, it should be an outstanding operation tomorrow.”
“He’ll hit us tomorrow. If not, the next day. My spies at the Cercle Racquette tell me he left Saigon right after he saw me Tuesday. Now why would a man, particularly a Frenchman, leave such a beautiful and undoubtedly passionate young woman as Denise except for an even greater passion?”
Scharne’s blue eyes snapped ominously. “Such as killing American advisers and wiping out my graduating class of Rangers.”