Devil's Guard

by George R. Elford

  To increase the dramatic effect of such "colonialist carnages" the corpses of women and children who had died of diseases or natural causes would sometimes be put on display alongside the bodies of the dead guerrillas. We found evidence that the Viet Minh had exposed over two hundred corpses in a village that had been demolished by the Air Force. That particular "French monstrosity" had been widely publicized. In reality, for several days preceding the raid the village had been devoid of human presence, and all the bombers wrecked were the empty huts. The "innocent victims" had in fact been the victims of a typhus epidemic that decimated the population weeks before the air raid. Blinded by hatred and devoid of all human sentiment, the local Viet Minh commissar had ordered his men to exhume the corpses, sprinkle them with cattle blood, blow some of them to bits with grenades, dump them all over the devastated village, then credit two hundred "innocent victims" to the French. And since there had indeed been an officially recorded attack on the village (the close results of which could not be established) the reconnaissance and fighter-bomber crews were severely reprimanded, demoted, or relocated because of their "senseless slaughter of civilians."

  A few months after that infamy, Bernard Eisner and Pfirstenhammer captured the commissar responsible, who, after some tender persuasion, told us the true story and even signed a written statement. Needless to say, our evidence was never given any publicity and thus could not exonerate the condemned airmen. In our days only the French "crimes" received blaring headlines. The Viet Minh atrocities (far more numerous and excessive) were given a few back-page lines once in a while. But history repeats itself. Nowadays the American GI enjoys a similar treatment. The Communists cannot lose.

  Erich Schulze, Sergeant Krebitz, and I removed our boots and waded into the stagnant water, taking only Gruppe Drei. We may have caused the peasants a few sinister thoughts but we certainly delighted the local leeches which could suck a man dry as well as strangle him to death, according^ to Erich. The people now stopped working; they rose and observed our approach for a while, then began to press closer together.

  "Chieu hoi."

  Some of them returned our greeting. Others stood in sullen silence, the women a good ten yards behind the men. A good-looking lean fellow in his early thirties stepped forward, ran his tongue over his betel-stained lips, then spoke. "My name is Van Ho Tien and I can speak French," he announced casually. "My companions know no French." He paused for a moment, then added with a tinge of mockery in his voice, "What do you wish to know, officer?"

  "I haven't asked you any question, have I?" I answered jokingly and offered him a cigarette, which he accepted with a slight bow.

  "Oh, the army always wants to know something," he said. "Maybe you want to know if we've seen the Viet Minh lately, but we have not seen them for many weeks."

  "And that's the standard answer number one around here, isn't it?" Erich cut in with a broad grin on his face. "We saw nothing we heard nothing, we know nothing. You must be quite happy, they say God provides for the ignorant ones. Now come, come, Monsieur Van Ho Tien, when was the last time the Viet Minh visited your village?"

  "We are very few people and our village is unimportant to the Viet Minh."

  "Lucky for you," commented Erich. "Where is your village anyway?"

  Van Ho waved a casual hand toward the low hills a few miles distant. "There beyond, two hours' walk from here, officer." Then he quickly added, "But we have no road." This sudden addition of his sounded so funny that we all broke into laughter.

  "How are you coining and going then," Schulze chuckled, "thumbing rides on army copters?"

  "Oh, I didn't mean that," said Van Ho, "we have a few narrow trails."

  "Very precipitous and slippery at places, I presume," Riedl interposed. "Maybe even mined here and there?"

  "No!" Van Ho protested, taking Riedl's teasing remark in earnest. "We have no mines, no weapons—nothing we have." He appeared to dislike the direction our conversation had taken. "Our village is very tiny, very filthy, and very poor with many sick people in it. There is nothing to see." We laughed again and Van Ho's face reddened as he realized the childish quality of his remark.

  "Don't worry, Monsieur Van Ho Tien." Erich tapped him lightly on the shoulder. "We don't want to visit your village. It seems to be out of our way."

  I checked the location of Van Ho's village on Schulze's map, a very special one, which due to his meticulous recording of various significant landmarks revealed a great deal more information than the regular army maps. The village was marked on it all right, with the numbers 12/15 indicating the number of dwellings. But placed alongside the numbers a tiny red star caught my attention and I asked Erich about it.

  "I recorded the village from air reconnaissance of the area," he explained. "Here the star means that peculiar movements were observed in and about the hamlet which could be associated with guerrilla activities but not proven."

  "I see____"

  I wheeled back toward Van Ho and now asked him bluntly, "Are there any Viet Minh cadres in your village?"

  "Our village is very small," he repeated after what I thought was a slight hesitation. "Only fourteen dwellings with forty- men. The Viet Minh knows that we could be of little help to them and they leave us alone. We hope the French, too, will leave us alone."

  "And we hope we can oblige," Schulze retorted. "Believe me, the last thing on earth we care to see is a local village."

  Van Ho smiled. "We know that our villages are much too backward for you to enjoy. You live in big cities like Paris, Marseilles, or Lyons."

  "Or Berlin," commented Riedl.

  Van Ho seemed surprised. "Berlin is in Germany, so I have learned," he blurted out.

  "You learned it where?" Erich asked.

  I thought it was a most extraordinary encounter—a local ricepicker in the middle of nowhere knowing about Berlin. So after all the natives were not so savage as the French insisted they were.

  "When I was a child I attended the missionary school at Yen Bay," Van Ho explained. "The missionaries taught us many wisdoms, including geography." He paused for a second, then asked with some restraint, "Are you the Germans of the Foreign Legion?" His barely perceptible hesitation before saying "Germans" brought another grin to Erich's face.

  "I bet he wanted to say 'Nazis,'" he remarked in German and I saw that Van Ho looked up sharply when he heard that word. It must have been familiar to him. "Bien ser," Schulze answered. "We are the Germans, the Nazi wolves, the man-eaters, the angels of death, the unceasing fighters."

  "I haven't said that you are wolves and man-eaters," the man protested, showing fright for the first time.

  "Why not? That's what we are," Schulze teased him. "Have they not told you so?"

  "Who should have told us?"

  "The commissars."

  "We are not guerrillas," Van Ho protested vehemently.

  "I have not said you were."

  There was a pause and a sense of restlessness in the group. "May I ask you something?" Van Ho spoke finally.

  "Go ahead," I said.

  "Why are you fighting?" he asked.

  "Your people won't let us retire," Krebitz told him with a chuckle.

  "It is your own choosing, for this is not your war," Van Ho insisted.

  "Correct," Schulze agreed. "This is not our war. It is everyone's war—France's, England's, America's, and maybe even Sweden's or Japan's, but they have yet to realize it."

  Van Ho shook his head. "I do not understand your mentality. Truly I do not."

  "We are complicated people." said Krebitz. "No one seems to understand our problems."

  "Maybe you are very warlike," nodded Van Ho. "The SS-—" He cut off as soon as that word slipped out.

  "That's right!" Erich roared. "SS tradition, mon ami, sheer SS tradition. By the way where did you learn about the SS, Monsieur Van Ho Tien, also in the missionary school?"

  "I read some books about the war." "What did you read about the SS?" "They were much feared during
the war."

  "You are being very polite," Schulze chuckled. "You ought to have read a lot more about the SS than that." Then shouldering his submachine gun he added, "You are a clever man, Monsieur Van Ho Tien. I think you deserve a better job than picking rice—or," he concluded, stressing his words, "maybe you do have a better job and work in the paddies only part-time." He strolled over to the pile-supported shelter, lifted some bags casually, examined a few nearby baskets, then turned. "What do you think of the Viet Minh, Monsieur Van Ho?"

  "I feel neither love nor hatred for them. We live far away from the war and we are happy that it is so."

  "It cannot be as idyllic as that. Your village is in the center of a very important Viet Minh-dominated province, isn't that so?"

  I realized that Erich was playing hide-and-seek with the man and began to wonder what might have awakened his suspicion.

  "How about your feelings for the French colonialists?" Schulze pressed on.

  "Do you want me to be frank with you, officer?" Van Ho asked with a sour smile.

  "Naturellement," Erich nodded. "We can take any amount of truth, however painful, and no one will start shooting."

  "We have lived here for centuries. The French came to our country only recently. We regard them as passing visitors who will depart one day like the Japanese departed."

  "But how about us Germans?" Schulze persisted.

  "We think you are capable of only one human feeling, officer, and that is hatred," Van Ho exhaled with defiance.

  "Well, aren't we being complimented?" Krebitz remarked. "What do you think we should learn in this bloody country? Love for our treacherous, slimy, poison-spitting, lying fellow human beings?"

  "Who told you that we can only hate?" Schulze went on, ignoring Rudolfs outburst

  "The books," Van Ho stated.

  "Printed in Moscow? Or in Peking?"

  "No, officer," Van Ho shook his head. "I can read neither Russian nor Chinese—only French. And the books which I read about you were all printed in France . . . the country you are fighting for. They call you murderous wolves yet you are serving them. Why?"

  "They pay well," Riedl cut in.

  "Are you fighting only for money?" Van Ho wondered. "Even the Viet Minh has more money than the French."

  "Bien ser," said Erich. "We know that lately Giap has a pile of American dollars to get rid of. Maybe you can arrange a better deal for us with the Viet Minh."

  "You will have to find the Viet Minh yourselves," the man evaded Erich's flimsy trap.

  "Monsieur Van Ho," Schulze said with quiet persuasion, "your village must have been visited by some Viet Minh commissars."

  "There is no village which the commissars have not visited, officer. They go everywhere. Some people listen to them, others won't."

  "I am willing to grant you that, but as far as your former remark goes, we do not hate your people. We hate only the Communists—and with good reason."

  "Our people are not Communists," Van Ho exclaimed. "The majority of them do not even know what the word stands for."

  "It is something you should tell to Ho Chi Minh. He does not seem to be aware of it." Erich turned his face toward me and added in German, "Hans, if this one here isn't a political commissar himself, I'll eat my gun—barrel, stock, ammo, and all. The crop in their baskets is dry. They haven't cut it today." Erich was always a keen observer.

  Van Ho spoke. "May we return to our work?" he said, obviously disturbed by our low-keyed conversation. Erich slowly turned toward him and asked, "Would you mind if we look around a bit before you leave?"

  "No, we won't mind. You will do that anyway. Whenever the army comes by our place we are submitted to searches and other indignities." He raised his arms to accommodate my troopers, who frisked him expertly. There was visible consternation among the women. "Are you going to search them, too?" Van Ho asked with barely concealed hostility.

  "Don't worry," Schulze said reassuringly, "no one is going to paw them. We have a couple of female assistants."

  He was about to send a trooper to fetch Suoi and the nurses when Krebitz stopped him. "Hell, why should they tromp all over the ponds, Erich? We should send the wenches to the road." '

  "You're right," Erich nodded. "That's what we should do."

  The peasants carried nothing suspicious, nothing forbidden. We combed through the area; examined the shelter, the bags, the baskets, the underpart of the platform, the roof—nothing incriminating was discovered.

  "What do you think of them?" I asked Xuey, who had kept silent during our entire dialogue with Van Ho Tien but was listening with eager interest in his narrow, dark eyes.

  "They belong to the local Viet Minh cell and they do have weapons," Xuey stated with firm conviction. "No people of their age would be picking rice—not in this province."

  "That's what I figured, Xuey."

  "We can't plug them on that evidence," Krebitz commented.

  "I guess we can't."

  "You may return to your work." I dismissed Van Ho and his companions. "And keep out of the war."

  "The French must be very frightened in our country," he said, now vastly relieved.

  "Maybe they are," Riedl replied, shouldering his gun. "We aren't."

  "You should return home. Our people could take care of themselves."

  "Once we are gone your people won't have to bother. The Viet Minh will take care of everything," Krebitz said.

  "Why should that bother you, sergeant?"

  Rudolf shot a sharp glance at Van Ho. "What bothers me is that you seem to know my badges well enough but you keep addressing the others only as 'officer.* I wonder why is that so?"

  Van Ho declined to offer an explanation, and I decided it was time to proceed.

  "Sergeant Krebitz!" I called. "We are moving out." I winked at him and he winked back. "Assemble!"

  The villagers watched us leave, then they slowly dispersed and began to work as if nothing had happened. Our trial number one ended. Now came test number two.

  Balancing on the slippery logs that bridged the irrigation canals, we returned to the dirt road and marched off skirting the paddies. At a quiet command of Krebitz our sharpshooters dropped into the roadside shrubs; from the moisture-proof holsters emerged their precious rifles with their telescopic sights, silencers, and hair-trigger mechanism. The battalion moved on. Soon there was a good four hundred yards between us and the workers and my men began to wonder. Maybe we were wrong about the villagers. Even Xuey could err.

  Distance five hundred yards. Our advance guard was entering the woods.

  "A terre!" someone yelled. "Take cover!" From the paddies came the vicious clatter of a heavy machine gun. Yet the moment we took cover the shooting abruptly stopped. Focusing my field glasses I spotted half a dozen shapes scurrying across the ponds. Three of them staggered and fell, then a fourth one spun about and dropped out of sight. Our marksmen were still at work. The last of the fugitives collapsed only a few steps from the forest sanctuary on the far side of the paddies.

  Near the low platform which we had so carefully examined now stood a small boat with a mounted machine gun; two corpses sprawled on the platform and two more hung from the boat with head and shoulders submerged in the murky water.

  We backtracked on the road to meet our Abwehrkommando and by the time we arrived the men had already cleaned their weapons; the sensitive scopes were capped and the muzzles plugged with small rubber corks taken from empty medicine vials. When they saw me coming they rose but I motioned them back.

  "You made short work of them," I commented with a gesture toward the paddies.

  "Child's play," Corporal Walther replied, and the men acknowledged my appreciation with a smile. "There is nothing about Germans and silencers in Mao's library on guerrilla warfare, so what could the poor devils do?"

  "Carry on!"

  They sat back to enjoy their cigarettes; a peculiar bunch of men, as cool and indifferent as they were unerring. Their sole task being the killing, they
were utterly disinterested in the gory details and would seldom bother to pay a second glance at their victims. The postmortem undertakings were left for Sergeant Krebitz and his Gruppe Drei.

  Into the paddies again. The guerrillas lay where they had fallen. Now every one of them was armed with rifles and Mitras, including the women. A number of yellow watertight bags floating around the platform explained where the weapons had come from. They had been kept submerged in the bottom mire until the enemy thought the time was ripe for a sneak attack.

  "Poor all-too-clever Monsieur Van Ho Tien," Erich commented over the corpse of the little Indochinese. "You had known so much yet you knew so little." He turned toward me and added, "He could have been of great service to his country—somewhere else."

  I examined the corpses; head, face, and neck wounds and no misses. The machine gun, a Soviet Goriunov, was a clumsy weapon but accurate up to a thousand yards. It had fired only fifteen rounds before its crew died, and to appreciate the skill of our experts one should remember that to fire fifteen rounds had consumed only 1.4 seconds.

  How could the enemy produce the Goriunov (weighing nearly seventy pounds) while under constant surveillance remained an enigma. "We saw some brisk comings and goings with baskets and sacks between the shelter and the woods," Corporal Walther explained to me later on. "Then came the boat seemingly laden with empty baskets. All of a sudden there was the gun spitting fire and we blazed away."