Devil's Guard

by George R. Elford

  The editors chuckled. "With Adolf Hitler in command?" someone asked, obviously amusing himself. It did not bother us. The newspapermen wanted to hear our opinion, -and we gave them what they wanted.

  "For all his shortcomings, no one could accuse Hitler of cowardice, something we may seldom say of the present leaders of the so-called Free World," I said coolly. "Hitler would never take insults, slaps in the face, or political nonsense; not from the equally powerful, let alone moral, economic, and military midgets like the Viet Minh."

  My words wiped the amusement from their faces. I went on: "I know that anyone may kick a dead lion but do you really think that Ho Chi Minh could have played his Viet Minh games with Hitler for five years?"

  "Yes, we have heard of some of your, er, accomplishments," an editor remarked. "How are you doing now?"

  "We are only a single battalion, monsieur. We cannot perform miracles; but I think the world knows only too well what the German Army was able to accomplish, if only for a couple of years, alone against the world. I don't think the Viet Minh would have frustrated the Wehrmacht."

  "Suppose you were given command in Indochina and had your German divisions. Would it solve the local problems?"

  "The local problems are very complex," I replied. "To solve them, one should mobilize top politicians and economists, not army divisions. But if I had a free hand, the Viet Minh would not last for six months. That I guarantee you."

  "Are you not overconfident?" a voice from the group asked.

  "There is no situation which a superior power cannot solve by appropriate means."

  "And what do you mean by appropriate means?"

  "The most rigorous measures if necessary. We met guerrillas before in Russia. When they gave us too much trouble within a specific area, we carted off the entire male population to Germany. Two days later there was no terrorist movement in the district. There is always a last solution."

  "Including extermination camps with gas chambers?"

  "If you came here only to wisecrack, gentlemen, we might as well discontinue. You requested me to state facts and present my own unadulterated views—which is precisely what I am endeavoring to do."

  "Please go on—we meant no offense," an elderly editor said apologetically. "Your determination is fascinating."

  "Historical facts cannot be altered, nor can they be whitewashed," I went on. "We Germans can be very joyful and happy people around a table drinking beer, or in a bowling alley, or in our homes, but when it comes to fighting all our feelings become subjugated to our will to conquer. We were taught to be concerned with results only. The means by which we achieve victory are not important to us. Had we been here, instead of the French, we might have turned Indochina into a country of women and children only, but the Viet Minh would have been liquidated a long time ago."

  "Would you care telling us—not being a Frenchman yourself, and this also applies to your companions—why are you so concerned about Indochina and about the outcome of this war in general?"

  "This liberation movement is not just a local phenomenon but the beginning of a prolonged struggle which one may rightly call a struggle for survival. The Viet Minh is only a single division of a brutal international force that has many other divisions ready for starting similar wars in any part of the world. This is not a local affair and it should worry every civilized nation of the world."

  "You don't consider Russia civilized?" a newsman asked.

  'The Russian standard of civilization exposed itself wonderfully when the Red army occupied the former Axis partners, Rumania, Hungary, and the part of Germany which is now the Soviet Zone, in 1945...."

  "How about China? China can claim a four-thousand-year-old civilization."

  "That may be, gentlemen . . . but today, China is nothing more than a Red dunghill, and Communism can turn the angel of mercy into an angel exterminator. I believe that we are all aware of that."

  "Was Nazism any better?" a voice interposed.

  "Suit yourself, monsieur," I replied, ignoring the challenge. "If you came here to discuss Nazism we should switch subjects."

  "Let us keep to our proper subject," the editor in front of me suggested, then glanced into his notebook and added: "Do you believe that world opinion would have permitted you to employ—let us be frank now—such typically Nazi methods as the deportation of the male population?"

  "As far as we are concerned, gentlemen, we are fighting against a deadly enemy and not against public opinion. The United Nations is only one of your postwar jokes. A club of senile old men who are trying to play the role of the strict schoolmaster toward nations with a population of ten million souls. To scold anything bigger than that, your United Nations is as impotent as the League of Nations was when it endeavored to censure Mussolini for his aggression against Abyssinia."

  "You have, I believe, already completed your five years of service. You are staying on voluntarily. If you know that the Viet Minh cannot be defeated by conventional means, then why are you still fighting them?"

  "Why does man fight locusts?" I asked in return and drew a soft chuckle from the group. "We believe that the more terrorists we manage to kill here* the less our sons and grandsons will have to fight against in World War Three!"

  No one interrupted me, so I went on. "They say that Nazism was a grave menace to mankind. I see no point in contesting that belief. But would anyone tell me what the Western Allies accomplished in 1945? They liberated a number of captive nations from the Nazi yoke but only at the price of casting a dozen free nations into Soviet slavery. Was it such a wise deal? At least the German-occupied countries could look forward to the day of liberation. What can the people of the Soviet-occupied countries look forward to? Who will liberate them? Only death! In ten years' time the Communists will conquer more land than the Nazis ever controlled—and that with the benevolent assistance of the free democracies. In one respect the Communists are right to assert that the free democracies are governed by capitalists and that a capitalist never looks beyond the very next day. For him only the immediate profit matters, the distant consequence never. The free democracies will trade with the Reds, they will back down when pressed, compromise on every principal issue; they will feed the enemy and supply them with everything they need to conquer the world. This is precisely why the Third World War is inevitable."

  "What should we have done," a question came from the back row, "kept on fighting in 1945?"

  "There was a great chance in 1948 right after the Berlin blockade, monsieur. Berlin should have been evacuated. The so-called Free World had enough money and material to build another Berlin in the west and thus wrench a supreme lever of political and military blackmail from Stalin's hands. Industries and stockpiles should have been removed, public works and buildings blown up. Then Berlin should have been handed over to the Communists the way it was in May 1945. I agree that sentiments would have suffered but the German people have lost a great deal more than Berlin. Afterwards the Free World should have built its own Iron Curtain: a fortified line along the entire Red frontier with the world, as we know it, ending at the wall. No diplomatic contacts, no mail, no telephone, no trains or planes going through. Communism should have been totally and mercilessly isolated from the rest of mankind."

  "How about the Communists in the Western countries?" I was interrupted. "There are about two million of them in France alone!"

  "I would give them a free ticket to the far side of the wall, gentlemen, for, apart from their political aspirations, they are outright military and economic intelligence agents for Moscow. Should the Kremlin request their assistance, the French Communists for instance would never hesitate to map French targets for a Soviet missile attack against France. Besides, it is much too comfortable to be a Communist in a free country, earning good wages, driving a car, having the right to protest, to strike, to change jobs. The Communists should go where their loyalty belongs, the Soviet paradise."

  "But they are citizens. They have their constitutiona
l rights like anyone else."

  "You also have a sentence of death, already signed in the Kremlin," I replied coolly. "Only the day of the execution has not yet been fixed."

  My conclusion provoked a small revolution in the conference room.

  "I agree with him!" someone exclaimed.

  "Lunacy!" someone else yelled. "They should be disbanded!"—'They should receive every support."—"Shame upon France!"—"Shame upon those who are ready to sell France down the drain. . . ."

  "You are a ... fanatic!" one of the newsmen exclaimed, with a look of astonishment and hostility on his lean face.

  "I know that you wanted to say either 'Nazi fanatic,' or simply 'lunatic,* monsieur," I remarked with a smile and rose slowly. "Go ahead. We are Nazis if one has to be a Nazi to think in terms of years and not only in terms of days. And if one of us had not become a Nazi under Hitler, he would have turned into a Nazi right here in Indochina. You may also consider us crazy but that was exactly what the British thought of Rudolf Hess when he foretold what would happen if Germany lost the war: Soviet domination of Central Europe, Communist takeovers, rebellions, the dissolution of the British Empire. ... I can see that some of you are amused. Just wait a dozen more years, gentlemen, and you will no longer be smiling."

  I was perfectly aware that the ideas of a "Nazi extremist" must have sounded quite insane to a group of petty bourgeois newsmen who had probably never smelled gunpowder in their lives. Nevertheless they wanted the truth and that's what I gave them. We Germans can believe and follow only determined and powerful leaders. It has nothing to do with Nazism. It is our heritage of centuries. We would have followed Julius Caesar, Attila, Napoleon, or Washington with the same devotion we showed Adolf Hitler. But we think nothing of rich boys who gain a plush chair or a marshal's baton because their parents happen to have plenty of money.

  It was evident that the Free World was already looking toward America as the Lord Deliverer and Protector. Surely America is a great country, wealthy and very advanced. But so was the Roman Empire in its own time. Wealth is not a precondition of power and history tells that the richer a nation grows, the weaker it becomes. It was not a wealthier or a more advanced nation that destroyed the Roman Empire. It was the barbarians!

  Shortly after the interview we were out again for three weeks of hard trekking along a wide and well-maintained trail. Gia Xuey thought it was one of the principal Viet Minh routes to "Nambo"—southern Indochina. We crisscrossed some three hundred square miles of guerrilla territory, which Ho Chi Minh considered conquered and secured forever.

  We succeeded in wiping out that illusion. Within the first ten days my men destroyed two major Viet Minh bases, each of which accommodated two or three guerrilla "sections" (about one hundred men-constituted one "section" or company).

  Our task was relatively easy, because in the conquered areas the customary guerrilla vigilance appeared to be relaxed. With the nearest French garrison holed up at Luang Prabang, a hundred miles away, the Viet Minh could move and manage its affairs practically unhindered. In the liberated villages the enemy openly displayed the Viet Minh ensign, along with large propaganda posters and banners inscribed with slogans. Small groups of terrorists moved freely within the village and a pair of binoculars always revealed their presence. The loudspeakers, which some propagandists used for mass indoctrination, could be heard from miles away. In their jungle camps, too, the enemy had grown astonishingly careless. Across the wilderness their singing, chattering, and shouting served as "beams" on which our trailblazers could home. Masquerading as guerrillas, Xuey and Noy often infiltrated enemy-held localities and returned with important information. In fact, that little native nurse proved so effective in reconnaissance that I decided to assign her to Gruppe Drei—a great distinction. Noy was as resourceful as she was daring. She would casually stroll into a terrorist camp and hold a sentry's attention while Sergeant Krebitz and his men closed in on the unsuspecting enemy. With the sentries eliminated it was always easy to penetrate into the camp proper. We did it either at dawn or at dusk, invariably posing as guerrillas ourselves. The ruse always worked.

  Frantically the Viet Minh High Command was trying to 'suppress our activities in their vital staging areas, hitherto safe from French harassment. Giap concentrated over a thousand guerrillas in an all-out attempt to destroy us, but the more troops he concentrated, the less he could preserve the secrecy of their whereabouts. General Giap found us a hard nut to crack. We were too strong for Viet Minh units of company strength and could in fact easily outgun any guerrilla battalion. The enemy needed at least a brigade to tackle my headhunters. A brigade, however, cannot play hide-and-seek in the jungle. Units consisting of over three thousand men need ample supplies; besides they also make a great deal of noise. Whenever the enemy appeared to be concentrating several battalions in a particular area we either delivered a preemptive strike to grind them up piecemeal or we slipped quietly away towards safer hunting grounds.

  The loss of one guerrilla camp must have been particularly painful for the Viet Minh. In it we discovered twelve fully equipped workshops for servicing weapons, manufacturing mines, spear guns (the terrorists were still extensively using this brutal weapon), sandals, bombs. A printing shop and a dressing station were also among the camp facilities. Lathe benches, grinders, power drills and other machines were in the workshops. The power came from five small diesel generators placed in a long underground tunnel to deaden sound. Some of the machines weighed over a ton and had obviously come dismantled from one of the principal cities.

  The battalion killed over a hundred guerrillas and captured thirty or forty of them in that camp. The majority of the casualties were irreplaceable specialists: machine tool operators, electricians, weapons makers, five engineers, six printers, two pharmacists, and two doctors.

  Among the prisoners were six Lao Dong functionaries, including a district secretary and a district Agitprop secretary.

  The camp was a marvel of guerrilla ingenuity. The overhead camouflage netting was covered with natural green that matched the surrounding flora. To keep the foliage fresh it had to be replaced every other day, and for that purpose the various sections of the netting could be lowered or raised. Where air reconnaissance observed only unbroken forests, in reality a spacious clearing spread for hundreds of yards, with permanent huts, living quarters, water tanks, mess halls, depots, and workshops.

  Strolling about the camp with Schulze I spotted Xuey, who was closely inspecting a section of ground where I saw piles of bamboo spokes neatly arranged under a tarpaulin sheet.

  "Anything wrong?" I tapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  He looked up and nodded. "Plenty wrong! There were French prisoners working here, sharpening stakes. Dead or alive they should be somewhere around."

  "Prisoners?" Schulze exclaimed incredulously. "We searched the whole camp, Xuey—"

  "Look at the footprints," Xuey said. He squatted on his heels and drew a finger around the contours of a bare print. "It was made by a very large foot. . . . No local people have feet as large as this one."

  A glance at the print was enough to convince me that Xuey was right. "But where on earth could they be?" Erich pondered.

  "Somewhere in the woods, maybe underground," Xuey suggested. "We should start looking for them or they may die."

  I called for Sergeant Krebitz and he came running. I told him of Xuey's discovery. "Get a hundred men and comb the neighborhood. Don't destroy anything, unless the place has been searched with the utmost care."

  The troops surveyed the entire area and combed the woods for five hundred yards but all in vain. There was a trail which Xuey and Krebitz went to investigate as far as a mile and a half, but it ended in a rocky depression among barren hills strewn with boulders and dead trees.

  The depression seemed to have several exits and it would have taken days to examine them all.

  The surveying parties found neither prisoners nor caves and tunnels where prisoners could have been
kept confined. I spoke once again with Xuey. "Are you sure that those prints were recent ones?" I asked him.

  He looked at me and asked in turn, "Have I ever erred in my judgment, Commander?"

  "Not that I know of, Xuey," I had to concede.

  He nodded contentedly. "I am not mistaken now!"

  "But where can they be? They aren't in the camp and if there was another place nearby, we ought to find a path leading to it."

  "I was looking for a path," Xuey said. "Sometimes they are very difficult to detect. Often the Viet Minh make no paths at all but use different routes between two bases every day, allowing the grass to recover. Such trails cannot be detected. Only the people who use them know their location."

  "What do you suggest we should do?"

  "Question the prisoners!" Xuey replied.

  There was nothing else I could do. If Xuey was right about the French prisoners, they had to be helped at once.

  "Sergeant Schenk!" I turned sharply. "Where are the captured guerrillas?"

  He swung the barrel of his submachine gun toward a long, thatched hut. "Over there, Commander!"

  "Bring them here!"

  Eisner and Riedl appeared. "What's going on?" Bernard inquired. I briefed him on the situation and his face darkened. "Then I am afraid they are dead," he remarked grimly. "If any French prisoners had been here, they must have heard us moving around. They would be screaming their heads off by now for help."

  "They might be underground."

  Sergeant Schenk returned with the prisoners and lined them up facing us. Without preliminaries, Sergeant Kre-bitz grabbed the district secretary by the shoulder.

  "Where are the French prisoners, ratface?" he sneered at the slim, pockmarked terrorist. "Open your goddamned mouth or I'll break every bone in your wretched carcass."