Devil's Guard

by George R. Elford

  "It's not a dream but a bloody nightmare," Karl growled, as Kwang went on.

  "The Great Proletarian Revolution has already liberated the oppressed people in one third of the world, yet the colonialist officer is saying it is a lie."

  "Let us talk about one thing at a time, the Soviet Union, for instance," Schulze suggested, "Otherwise these good people here might become confused, Commissar Kwang. I know that you prefer to talk in a confusing manner—that is an important component of the brainwashing tactic. Have you ever been in the Soviet Union, Commissar Kwang?"

  "Yes!" Kwang hissed. "I have been there and I saw what the great revolution has done for the people."

  "What people?" Schulze asked bluntly.

  "For the poor people, of course," said Kwang. "We are not interested in the welfare of the rich."

  "What happened to the rich people in Russia?"

  "Their wealth was taken from them and they were made to work for a living," propagandist Kly interposed. Kwang nodded in assent.

  "Like hell!" Schulze erupted. "Their lives were taken from them and the few survivors were sent to work, not for a living, but in labor camps without pay. Stalin murdered ten million people, if that is what you call great revolution, Tovarich Kly."

  "Who needs rich parasites?" Kly shrugged. "The people don't need them."

  "Propagandist Kly . . . the Viet Minh are murdering every rich person in this country. I hope you don't want to say that in Russia it has not been so."

  "I've already said that we don't need rich people."

  "At least you admit that Communism thrives on murder!" Schulze snapped. "But even primitive people know that nothing can be achieved by murder and robbery— what the Viet Minh is doing."

  "The Viet Minh is not the Communist party," Kwang remarked with a smile. "The Viet Minh is the striking fist of all the patriots who want freedom and independence."

  "Who are the leaders of the Viet Minh?" Erich asked sharply. "Who are the commanders, the commissars, the propagandists? Are you not a Communist, Kwang?"

  "It is only natural that the most experienced revolutionaries should lead a national liberation movement."

  "Call it by its name, Tovarich Kwang. Don't say revolutionary when you want to say Communist. We know that you are trying hard to hoodwink the world by calling your Communist Party the People's Party, Revolutionary Party, Workers Party, and the devil knows what else. Why do you need a disguise? Honest people don't need to hide."

  "One day the colonialists will be expelled. Then the people may choose freely what society they wish to build for themselves."

  "Merde!" Schulze exclaimed. "Can you name one liberated country where the Communists have not seized all power over life and death and have not exterminated all the opposition?'

  "Drop the high-flown polemics, Erich!" Eisner warned. "You aren't talking to a panel of professors." He rose and spoke to the villagers. "Commissar Kwang, who is from China, is talking to you about the Soviet Union, trying to explain to the people here what is good for them. The colonialist officer here," he pointed at Schulze, "is trying to tell you that whatever Kwang may say, when the Communist party wins power, the Communists kill everybody who disobeys their orders or desires something else. As you can see, neither Kwang nor Kly has anything to say against it, so it must be true."

  "That is what you say and what your newspapers write," Kwang said sarcastically. "But we are your prisoners and in no position to argue with you."

  "Is anyone holding a knife at your throat, Commissar Kwang?" Karl cut in. "Are you being beaten or tortured? If not, then speak up, tovarich first class. Convince us that your cause is a just cause. We might discard our weapons right here and join the Lao Dong."

  "This is Erich's party, Karl. Let him enjoy it," Riedl remarked.

  "Tell us just one thing your great revolution has so far achieved, apart from drowning the people in their own blood," Schulze continued. "Has your Ho Chi Minh improved the lives of the proletariat in this country? Have these people in this village, Kwang, received anything from your movement? Have you dug a well? An irrigation canal? Have you built as much as a public school? No, Tovarich Commissar. You have only destroyed those which were here before."

  "We have no time to bring about social changes or to build anything. We are obliged to fight. When peace comes, we will start building. But if you want to see what Communism can build, you should go to the Soviet Union and see it there."

  Schulze waved an arm to the crowd. "These people here have no money to visit the Soviet Union and enjoy the benefits of Communism there. They want to enjoy life here!" And as Xuey translated his words, soft laughter echoed from the crowd for the first time; only quiet laughter but it was laughter and I knew that Erich had scored a small point.

  "The people here will enjoy life after the liberation," Kwang blurted, now somewhat agitated.

  "Liberation," Schulze sneered. "How many countries has Stalin liberated lately? The British colonialists have just liberated India, as you probably know, you zealous deliverers of slaves. Why don't you go and ask the American workers if they would like to be liberated by Stalin? Afterwards you may also ask the Russian workers if they would want to be slaves in America? I fancy the outcome of your inquiry."

  "The Russian workers would spit in your face if you insulted them by asking such a filthy imperialist provocation," Kly hissed before Kwang could answer.

  "Sure!" Schulze chuckled. "That is exactly what they would do if you ask them on the Red Square, facing the Kremlin. You should take them to West Berlin and ask them there."

  My troops were roaring with laughter that now engulfed most of the spectators, including ourselves. The "dialogue" was gradually turning into a "hand-to-hand" combat between Erich and the agitators, but Schulze was holding his own quite actively. "I was in Russia, too, Commissar Kwang," Erich said quietly. "I went there as an enemy, but the people greeted me as these people here would greet Iord Buddha if he came walking down the road." He rose abruptly and faced the villagers with his eyes ablaze. "The agitators are telling you many beautiful lies about the Soviet Union, about China and about Communism. Now let me tell you what the Communists are truly doing in Russia. First they killed all the rich people and seized their property. When there were no more rich people to be robbed and murdered, or to be put into slave camps, Stalin began to exterminate the class enemies; they were not rich people but writers, doctors, engineers, schoolteachers—learned people. If they had property and money, they had worked for it for many years. But everyone who dared to disagree with Stalin was killed or put into prisons. When there were no more class enemies either, Stalin turned upon his own comrades, all old Communists. He killed his own army officers by the thousands. They condemn capitalism but the capitalists have never massacred anyone. Now they say that the capitalist owner of a shoe factory, for instance—let us call him, Ivan Ivanovich—produced only five hundred pairs of shoes every week; the Communist factory makes five thousand. But the shoes which Ivan Ivanovich made were good, shoes and the worker could wear them for two years. Ivan Ivanovich had to make good shoes, otherwise the people wouldn't buy them and he would go bankrupt. The state-owned factory has no such problems. If your Communist shoes crack open in four weeks, you should not even complain, for if you do, you accuse the State, the Communist Party, and so you are not a loyal citizen but an enemy agent. The Communists won't give you another pair of shoes but a pair of bullets in your head.

  "Now the Communists are promising you everything just to help them win the war. When the war is over, says the commissar, they will start building for you. Building maybe, but not schools and hospitals; they will build army barracks and jails. They might build factories too, but to make tanks not tractors. The hoe or the shovel they give you will break in a week. Only the weapons of the Red army will last. The Communists have always been good weapon makers, for the bayonet is the only foundation the Party can stand on. Without bayonets and machine guns neither Stalin nor Mao Tse-tung would sur
vive for a year. If you think that you are being oppressed by the French colonialists, Just wait until Ho Chi Minh becomes your master. You will find a policeman behind every hut in your village; brother will betray brother and the son will sell his father."

  Kwang was no longer smiling. He sat on the bench, chewing his underlip nervously. The villagers listened in utter silence; their faces betrayed no emotion—only alertness. Some of the elder men were listening so intently that their mouths hung open and their eyes appeared transfixed on Schulze. I was not sure if all that Erich said had reached the people, and if so, how deeply his words had penetrated into their simple minds. I was sure of only one thing, that never before had they witnessed someone challenging the Viet Minh platform openly, in front of people. They had never heard someone denouncing the holiest of the Communist prophets and everything they stood for. No one could ever call a Viet Minh leader a liar and live to tell his story. Besides, no French officer in Indochina had ever bothered to talk to les sauvages on equal terms, and certainly not about political or economic issues. The Communists were always permitted to rake in the benefits of their uncontested propaganda.

  Schulze challenged the commissar to take his place, if he had anything to say. "I have many things to say," replied Kwang, "provided that you will permit me to speak without interrupting every second sentence." He cleared his throat and stepped forward, and when Sergeant Krebitz offered him a cup of fresh water, Kwang accepted it with a slight bow, drank slowly, as though he was weighing his coming words before speaking them; then he returned the cup and spoke.

  "The colonialist officers are entertaining themselves with their own bourgeois propaganda, thinking that the Vietnamese people are deaf and blind, and cannot see beyond their hollow words, which contain much hatred, but not a spark of truth. This young man here," he pointed at Schulze, "who very likely came from a wealthy family and has never known poverty, is a member of the army which burns your villages and murders your brothers and sisters. He was probably tired of killing, at least for a few hours, so he conceived this mock trial of Communism, which he calls a free discussion. He may be thirty years old, yet nevertheless he tries to prove to us that he knows more than Lenin, Stalin, Comrade Mao, and Father Ho ever managed to learn. He has been in this country for only a few years, but he wants to guide your village elders; he wants to prove that Father Ho speaks empty words. He tries to ridicule the Soviet people whom we may thank for the greatest gift of mankind—our freedom from slavery. There are some facts which the colonialist officer seems to ignore. The Soviet people have achieved many things which are very difficult to dismiss with a barrage of empty words and wicked lies. He also tries to blame our Comrade Mao for not having built more in two years than the rich capitalist nations built in centuries. In twenty years time the Russian people had built a wonderful new nation but then the capitalists, the country of this officer here, Germany, invaded the Soviet Union and destroyed everything the people had built."

  Kwang spoke slowly and with dignity, carefully selecting his words. Schulze did not interrupt him. Kwang spoke for a long time, about the new towns and villages, about the schools, hospitals, roads, and industries which the Russians had built, and which the Chinese people were endeavoring to build now. He spoke of the "largest" power-generating system in the world, the Volga-Don canal, that was to bring electricity to the remotest villages. Obviously he could not recall many glorious deeds from Mao's China for he kept repeating that Russia did this and Russia did that, citing only Soviet examples. He spoke for the better part of an hour and I felt terribly bored. Then mercifully he concluded his polemic with the eloquent slogan: "The Soviet people, with Comrade Stalin to lead them, has accomplished the impossible."

  "It is true that Stalin accomplished the impossible," Schulze picked up where Kwang had left off. "Stalin moves mountains and builds an artificial sea as big as your country, the commissar said. But he forgot to mention that Stalin has six million slaves to work for him without pay. When Stalin needs a hundred thousand more workmen, he just gives the word to the Secret Police to increase the weekly output—or should we say input—and soon the enemies of the people are picking up the shovels. When Stalin tells the Russian worker: Ivan, from now on you will work twelve hours every day, Ivan will work twelve hours every day. If Stalin said the same thing to a worker in my country, or in any free country, he would be given a shovel and told, 'do it yourself, Josip.'"

  Another wave of laughter followed the translation. Schulze waited patiently for a while, then went on. "This is how Stalin is building the Soviet paradise and this is how Mao Tse-tung is going to build his own empire. The rich people, the exploiters, the slave drivers will no longer be called landlords, mandarins, moneylenders; they will be called party secretaries, commissars, district propagandists, and militiamen. But you people will be toiling harder than you are toiling now."

  He turned and walked up to the two propagandists. "When we began to talk, Commissar Kwang said that we were going to shoot him at the end. You should not believe us, he said. I am saying now that you are free to believe whatever you want and we are not going to shoot these Communist liars either. They aren't worth the cost of the bullets."

  He grabbed the prisoners by their arms and led them through the ring of people who silently moved aside. Reaching the road he gave them a gentle slap on the back and shoved them forward.

  "Go, Commissar Kwang and Propagandist Kly, Fool more people—for the more people you fool, the sooner will the people see you for what you are: cheats, arrogant liars, remorseless killers . . . traitors to your own country, traitors to mankind. You are guilty as sin but we are doing something you would never do to innocent people-—we let you go. You are free men. Go!"

  We departed shortly before sundown. What impression we left behind we never learned. But if we left an impression, I felt it was not an adverse one.

  Two months later the Viet Minh executed thirty people in that village.

  "The poor devils," Pfirstenhammer remarked, when we received the news of the massacre. "They must have remembered some of Erich's arguments and dared to repeat them openly."

  13. THOSE INNOCENT NONCOMBATANTS

  A group of villagers, some of them women, working in the paddies—a familiar spectacle as peaceful as it is picturesque. ... A painter of rural scenery would be overjoyed at the eye-catching sequence: the white-clad figures in the knee-deep, shimmering pond; the sun rising above the green jungle background; a pair of water buffalo squatting in the mire, only their horns and noses visible; a low wooden hut roofed with palm fronds and erected on piles to provide the workers with a shelter against a sudden downpour. It was a spectacle that we beheld almost daily during our dreary years in Indochina; a spectacle very tranquil—outwardly so—and ready to lull the inexperienced soldier into a false belief of security.

  It happened once at the beginning of our service that a similar group of unaggressive villagers had greeted our reconnaissance patrol in the most cordial manner and offered the troops fruits, cane sugar, and cooked rice with curried fish in exchange for salt and tobacco. After some friendly bargaining a deal was struck and the platoon invited to share a modest meal with the natives in their village. The platoon leader sergeant (a veteran of the Russian campaign but still a greenhorn in Indochina) gladly obliged.

  Twenty-two cheerful troopers entered the village—a skillfully camouflaged Viet Minh stronghold. Only six of them escaped the trap. The rest of the platoon had to stay behind, no longer as guests but as bullet-ridden corpses, among them the trusting sergeant.

  It happened to us once. Once!

  Afterwards, whenever we encountered a single peasant in a rural trail, we always considered him a potential Viet Minh observer. The alternative that he might be a genuine noncombatant came afterwards. We would check such an individual and if nothing incriminating was found on or about his person he would be allowed to proceed—with a couple of our marksmen trailing him secretly for at least a mile.

  Somet
imes the traveler would continue on his way as leisurely as before; sometimes the man would hurry up the moment he thought he was safely out of sight and rifle range—most likely to notify the nearest guerrilla cell. Speed meant urgency and for urgency we had but one interpretation: The Viet Minh must be informed of our presence in the neighborhood. If a man speeded up after our checking, then he would die.

  When we emerged from the woods the peasants showed no concern. They only glanced up, then went on with their work; their conical straw hats concealed whatever emotion their faces might have shown. No one could tell if they were friendly, neutral, or hostile, but we were not interested in their political sentiments—only in such material possessions as illegal firearms. We learned long ago not to bestow too much confidence on the natives. Boys of sixteen, sixty-year-old matrons, Buddhist monks, or French-nominated administrative officials we regarded with equal skepticism.

  Now I found nothing extraordinary about those villagers except the fact that all the men were in their prime. We would always pay particular attention to young men laboring in the fields in what was strictly Viet Minh-controlled territory, where most young men had been recruited by the guerrillas either as full-time or chance "freedom fighters"—depending on how hard-pressed the Viet Minh was for manpower in a particular area.

  Remaining out of sight, my troops deployed near the paddies to keep every individual covered by a dozen guns. It may seem excessive that heavily armed troops should bother with elaborate defensive measures while facing but a few unarmed peasants. But to those who are familiar with the implications of guerrilla warfare no precaution appears superfluous. It often happened that a group of "innocent noncombatants" had turned into well-armed terrorists the moment the troops slackened their vigilance.

  Numerical inferiority would deter the fanatical terrorists no more than the thought of certain death would deter the Japanese kamikaze. Properly indoctrinated Communists (and especially the primitive, illiterate ones) will do what the Party says. We found that the most wicked and dangerous guerrillas were the so-called "peasant-cum-guerrillas," including women and children from ten years up. We had had scores of engagements with such naive, untrained, and inexperienced "noncombatants," who would always win, even when licked and exterminated to the last man. When the Viet Minh was unable to claim any success by the force of arms, the commissars always secured at least a political victory. Their formula was a simple one. Had their peasant-cum-guerrillas managed to rout a French garrison, the Communist victory was widely publicized. But when the Legion squashed them somewhere, the fallen terrorists were stripped of military equipment, their corpses were rearranged (often with arms and legs bound with ropes), then photographed and displayed to friend and foe alike as the "innocent victims of a French massacre."