Tsing-Boum

by Nicolas Freeling

  Van der Valk watched the hands, holding a piece of paper flat upon the morocco blotter and sketching upon it with a pencil. The sketch faced Van der Valk sitting across the desk, so that the hands demonstrated upside-down, which gave them no trouble. He could see these hands working on a small sailing boat with the same rapid deftness, disregarding a scratched palm or a crushed nail, sometimes maladroit from lack of practice, but never hesitant. The hands would unpin and throw a grenade with the same automatic ease with which they uncapped the gold fountain pen.

  ‘On the thirteenth of March, Beatrice was attacked with a violence and rapidity that stunned us all – yes, even us back in the central sector. The Legion, and it was the Third Thirteenth, was blitzed flat where it stood in a couple of hours, and our artillery was quite helpless. From that very first attack Dien Bien Phu never recovered. It broke Piroth, the artillery commander. It broke many …

  ‘And on Gabrielle they stood watching this. It broke them, and can one blame them? When they saw the Legion submerged like so much sand they just ran. The officers stood where they were and died too, most of them, where they were. Now follow closely.

  ‘No counter-attack was mounted on Beatrice; we were all dizzy with the shock and the bombardment. But one was launched on Gabrielle, a vital place to the camp defence. It was mounted by paratroop formations, and was a failure. The troops had just jumped in, they were tired and demoralised – the same troops performed prodigies later but that day, for several complex reasons, the attack petered out. Gabrielle should and could have been retaken – and never was. When Botella, commanding the Fifth BPVN – para regiment – regrouped his men he was so angry and humiliated that he threw half of them out, on the spot. “I’ve no use for you,” he yelled. “Go to hell or the Viets – I’ve no use for you.”’ The general bit on the stem of his pipe. ‘ “Don’t let me see you again” were his words. Now Laforêt was commanding a company there. Was he there to hear his commander’s words? We don’t know. Some groups had trailed behind. Some had gone on but lay down on the slope under the Viet fire. Some perhaps had already run. What we know is that the ones Botella threw out joined up with fugitives from Anne-Marie and Dominique, the other two northern posts which fell later, and hid in the caves.’

  ‘Caves?’

  ‘Yes – Dominique was the only post that had some quite high ground, and it went down to the Nam Youm in a fairly abrupt slope. It was sand, and had been tunnelled by the river bank for stores and engineering materials. They hid in these holes – between us and the Viet.’

  ‘The Rats of the Nam Youm.’

  ‘Yes. They could not escape. They spent the siege there, living on what they could find. They came out at night to steal parachuted supplies. They trafficked in food and medicine – medals – whisky … They lived the way deserters always live, despised and neglected by both sides. We left them to fend for themselves.’

  The general’s voice had gained in warmth and was faintly throaty. Even now, thought Van der Valk, the tale has power to move him, nearly twenty years after. The pipe puffed; there was a slight hand movement as though to say ‘Pass the bottle’.

  ‘Langlais once considered turning the guns on them, but where would have been the point? Waste of ammunition – we could not even feel contempt, though they trafficked in what we held dear. We did not know that among them there might be a parachute officer.’

  ‘But did no one wonder what could have happened to Laforêt?’

  ‘You must recall the shock and chaos of those first two days. The unbelievable happened – Beatrice fell. The next day, with what seemed the same astounding ease, Gabrielle fell. They did not all run – they fought and fought well. De Mecquenem, the commander, was wounded and captured in his own command post. But the world was collapsing about our ears. Gaucher, commanding the Third Thirteenth, was hit by a shell right in the underground command post of the central subsector. Our artillery was impotent – the next night Colonel Piroth killed himself in his dugout with a grenade rather than live with the consequences of his failure. The Thai troops on Anne-Marie watched the fight on Gabrielle and melted quietly away into the hills. It wasn’t their war. We – we were struggling to reorganize ourselves, trying to close ranks, trying to hang on, gritting our teeth Langlais took over from Gaucher as commander of the reserves at a second’s notice. A day later he found himself superseding – unofficially – Castries himself. Can you be surprised that his first counter-offensive was ill organized and insufficiently thought out? These things need a time – however short – of cold unhurried arranging, and he didn’t have it.

  ‘Can you blame Botella? Paratroops then as now have one mission and one only – not to fail. He was told to take Gabrielle – and he had failed.

  ‘It was thought Laforêt had been killed – or captured – in that chaos, who knew? He was posted missing. That he might have deserted occurred to no one – not for a second. What happened – can one tell? He may have seen his soldiers wavering around him – or melting away behind him. He may have been ashamed to face Botella. He may have found himself alone behind a stone, there on the slope. I do not wish now to condemn any more than I wish to forgive.’

  ‘And after? At the moment of the surrender?’

  The general shrugged.

  ‘He was on the left bank of the river. It would not have been impossible, on that last morning, to see that the camp was dying. He could have worked his way down to our line. When the Viet found him they thought nothing of it – other officers were alone in a trench full of dead and spent cartridges. We – when we finally caught up with him we naturally thought he had been taken prisoner two months before. He said he had escaped into the jungle, and had been hiding there for weeks before being recaptured. There was nothing at all intrinsically improbable.’ The voice had deadened and flattened; the general leaned back in his chair.

  ‘Do I bore you with my military reminiscences, Monsieur Van der Valk?’

  ‘But it is precisely these hours, these minutes, that were missing for me. Without them I could not hope ever to grasp what happened to Laforêt – and Esther Marx.’

  ‘Esther Marx!’ The tone was not sentimental, but it was indulgent. The same indulgence that had not recoiled before perjury, for Esther.

  ‘I remember her well, in Hanoi; a thin eager little thing, all nerve and muscle, afraid of nothing. We heard afterwards that she marched straight up to the general, in Hanoi, and begged for authorization to jump over the camp – with a bottle of whisky for us down the front of her blouse. Chewing gum. I think of her when I see that girl, the skier, with the very white teeth and the wild hair, what’s her name?’

  ‘Annie Famose.’

  ‘That’s her.’ The general looked wistful: a boy again … And Van der Valk was delighted – his own favourite skier.

  ‘You realize, plainly, that justice was not done towards Laforêt.’

  The general stopped contemplating his youth instantly, and suddenly reminded the onlooker of the little joke made over the coffee-cups in Clermont-Ferrand. The underdone steak and the live lion …

  ‘I care nothing for justice. I command to win. Anything that interferes with the solidarity of my men I hunt down, I extirpate. Justice does not exist. We talk about it – and who has ever seen it? In a Western film, and the pages of Victor Hugo.’

  ‘You have said, yourself, that the solidarity of the offensive had already broken down.’

  ‘The men were already tired and confused. Langlais has been blamed for not choosing another unit. You misunderstand. The formations that failed in front of Gabrielle, a few days after took part in a brilliant counter-attack in the west. Recaptured and held the Huguettes. Kept possession of Eliane to the very last day.

  ‘What caused the man to break? I have asked myself many times. The Viet artillery? – surely it did much to weaken and undermine us. You will tell me that other officers had nervous collapses beneath that shellfire, and I will answer that they were officers commanding printed forms.
Tell me that Castries himself, known as a man of bravery and dash, lost – or appeared to lose, which comes to the same – his will and capacity to react. Castries was an armoured commander, a man of the open country, and one of the worst mistakes made was to shut him up in that hole. We were thrown into that pisspot to leave our skins there – yes; Séguin-Pazzis, myself, cavalry men too. But Castries – he was there to become a general. Which – be it said in passing – he did. We were all raised a step in rank – some politician’s notion of inflating our morale. Rank! We wore no insignia; soldiers and officers shared the same life and the same death. Rank was something they had in Hanoi, in Saigon – or in Paris. To us everything merged in the knowledge that we were soldiers and that we were going to die. Did that mean nothing to Laforêt? He was as good an officer as we had. The type to gallop till he dropped. Gay, good-looking, vital – very like Pichelin – who died – retaking Dominique.

  ‘Did we fail him? … If only he had surrendered to the Viet! … He attacked us where we had no defence.’

  ‘Perhaps he believed in a Viet victory?’

  ‘Tcha!’ Bark of impatient amusement from the general at this naïveté. ‘Did anyone believe in a Viet victory? The Americans – do they believe in a Viet victory? Look at the incredible, bewildering number of stupidities that were committed, all the handicaps that were accepted, and then look at the course of the battle. As late as mid-April, after over a month of siege, after the airstrip was lost and no plane could land, after Beatrice, Gabrielle, Anne-Marie and Dominique had changed lovers – to use the phrase of the moment – even then the fight hung in the finest balance. The Viet was as ripe as we were – his best troops were cut to ribbons in the struggle for Eliane. They could no longer fight, and changed over to siege tactics – digging tunnels. Two fresh para battalions and we would have broken the ring. How could he have believed it? Later – afterwards – then, perhaps …’

  ‘Afterwards there were others.’

  ‘Yes. Few. Was it not even more important then, after, after the surrender, the march, the camps, to show our unity, our solidarity – our trust? The Viet tried everything to shake that loyalty. And succeeded – sometimes.’

  ‘And throughout that time nobody questioned Laforêt’s tale?’

  ‘He was determined to survive. Survive he did. He was thought bizarre. So were many others. Nobody queried his tale. Perhaps,’ the general laid both palms flat, upon the table, ‘perhaps we found that, afterwards, the crowning enormity.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Van der Walk realized that he was clutching a dead cigar butt as though it were something precious, and laid it reverently in the ashtray. The general’s pipe had long gone out, and had cooled enough to be refilled, which the fine hands were now doing. To look at them one might think that filling a pipe was the nearest they had got to manual labour for the last four generations, despite the sticking plaster there to prove the contrary. He had almost a feeling that the two dirty scraps of Elastoplast had been left deliberately, theatrically – a little symbol of the vulnerability – and invulnerability – of paratroops.

  What had he learned, from these so unreal-seeming fragments of military history? Why did the general give him so much time, and why was the general so talkative? Was it too crude and too simple to surmise a nagging guilt? No: yes: the man had settled his neuroses along with the rest of the army, and if he had been mixed up in anything dingy during the Algerian time he wouldn’t be in the job he now held. But the bare mention of the ominous name, name deeply etched and ineradicable, threw up traces of the now-forgotten ‘para mentality’, of the days between fifty-eight and sixty when they had walked slim and negligent in the leopard dress through the streets of Paris, balancing their hips ever so slightly, marked with the seal of ‘we are those who attack’.

  One had learned precious little – what one knew already, more or less. That the paratroops had come to regard themselves as set apart in an unhealthy and introspective way, that there had been a time when they held themselves openly above the law, that they had seen themselves as the saviours of the country, the nation, the Republic – and that to talk about Dien Bien Phu sent even a sophisticated cavalry staff-officer in a Paris bureau back into that walled-in world. He had had to let the man talk, if only to allow that memory of old tensions to unwind and dissipate itself. The general, he felt, had got himself back on the rails, and might now answer one or two simple questions without disappearing into the sweaty claustrophobic foxholes of Huguette and Eliane.

  ‘So nobody found out – until Esther did. That, at least, is the story that I have been told.’

  ‘Exactly. The first accusation came from her.’

  ‘And she heard it?’

  ‘Where but from the man himself?’

  ‘Painful …’

  ‘I imagine,’ glacial, ‘that he found it unbearable and confided it – in or out of bed – to the person he thought could neutralize this poison.’

  ‘And she betrayed him.’

  ‘Correction. He betrayed her.’

  ‘You think that’s why he killed her?’

  ‘It sounds as though that might be so.’

  Van der Valk was less sure. The military mind was fond of over-simplifications and dramatizing itself, but had Laforêt a military mind?

  ‘We don’t know for certain that he did kill her.’

  ‘That,’ said the general relighting his pipe, ‘is, thank God, not my problem.’

  ‘How cosy for you,’ acidly.

  ‘Do not misunderstand. If he killed her, and I accept it as likely that he did or I should not have received you, I am far from going off whistling happily to wash my hands.’

  ‘Dien Bien Phu was at fault.’

  ‘And who is to be blamed? Navarre given ridiculous instructions, Salan being cunning, the so-called government we had then – the Americans? – if they were responsible they’ve certainly paid for it, since. Cogny had to take the rap, of course. He was an artillery man – it was supposed that he should have known better.’

  ‘It all sounds so unreal.’

  ‘So it was. Think – the Americans – a hundred or more aviation sorties a day, to protect a post of six men and a corporal. Whereas then – ten thousand troops in that pot, thinking themselves very lucky if the aviation managed thirty.’

  ‘One last thing about this garrison – why paratroops? The Legion I understand: ponderous, powerful. And old-fashioned soldiers – stomachs, beards, hung around with grenades and canteens full of vino. But paratroops! Supposed to be mobile, sudden – no?’

  ‘Just so,’ tranquil, ‘but the longer one looks at it the sillier it becomes. The original idea was for an attacking base – Castries was to command manoeuvres – including armour! When it became apparent that this was in reality a besieged fort paratroops were still used – a mistake repeated in Algeria. It became commonplace to concede that the Legion and para regiments were the only really effective shock troops. They were held as the general reserve, and were too often wasted in little packets to block a hole. And lastly, of course, once the camp was sealed off the only reinforcements that could be given it were para units.’

  ‘Nobody noticed the stupidity of that – unless of course Laforêt did?’

  ‘Paratroop units carry out the instructions given. The sillier those are, the more important that there should be no failure.’

  ‘They failed – did not forgive themselves – but were happy to pitch on any scapegoats there might be going.’

  ‘The camp was held for two months under continuous attack – by roughly two and a half thousand effective troops, commanded by a lieutenant-colonel with no strategic training, aided by half a dozen officers later abused as the “mafia” – including in a minor role your humble servant.’

  ‘The same mafia condemned a junior officer guilty of a nervous collapse to a living death, perverting justice to do so.’

  ‘You are mistaken,’ with a sudden impressive dignity. ‘The mafia was in no
way responsible for that act. At the time he was my boy, under my command, and for what was done I take sole responsibility.’ As he spoke, Van der Valk had to admit, the general was formidable.

  ‘I seek to judge no man,’ said Van der Valk. ‘Neither you, mon général, nor Colonel Godard, nor Lieutenant Laforêt. No one, perhaps, will ever understand.’

  ‘What went on in their minds – perhaps not. And perhaps you are right to make the equation.’

  ‘Laforêt had the fatal gift of imagination.’

  ‘You seek to exculpate him – to whitewash him,’ snapped the general.

  ‘Nobody even tried to defend him.’ Van der Valk’s voice was heating in its turn. ‘What did you do – send him a pistol in a Christmas-wrapped box – as legend suggested some officers did to Navarre?’

  ‘What would you expect – that I go politely with my hat in my hand, inviting him to collect his gratuities and would he be so good as quietly to resign from the army? … In the camp, Langlais tore the beret off an officer he thought did not deserve to wear it. An officer of his own rank. The rule was universal. Nobody singled out Laforêt, as you appear to imply. History, Monsieur le Commissaire de Police, has forgotten those who did not enhance their reputation in battles. And we – I say we – do not submit ourselves to the judgement of a civilian – even a policeman.’

  ‘No,’ said Van der Valk lumbering to his feet, ‘and neither did General Christian Marie Ferdinand de la Croix de Castries, descendant of dukes and marshals, submit himself to the judgement of a Breton peasant. He just couldn’t help himself.’

  ‘Sit down, Commissaire,’ said the general gently. ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘And I beg your pardon. He was your boy, and you suffered for him.’

  ‘Esther Marx put a bullet in him. She was one of ours. It was her sorrow and bitter regret that she was not there with us.’