Belching eighty-foot flames, Pfirstenhammer's group advanced on the river, burning the bewildered escapees as they went. Riedl took possession of the howitzers along with discarded crates and bags which littered the trail. The detachment caught on the bridge had been wiped out. Our six sharpshooters were busy picking off the swimmers and the few men who had managed to reach the far bank. On our side of the river, the enemy rout was complete. On the far side, Sergeant Krebitz and Gruppe Drei fared not so well. After the initial surprise the Viet Minh commander had managed to gather his battered company and they now began to fight back. The sharp staccato of the enemy MG's could be heard distinctly. Soon a dozen or more Viet Minh machine guns were chattering above the rapidly increasing volume of rifle fire.
Suddenly I realized that there must have been considerably more enemy troops on the far side of the river than Krebitz had previously observed. Since Krebitz had only about forty men with him, I began to worry for their safety. My fears seemed justified when a few minutes later mortar shells began to explode on and around the hill which Krebitz occupied. We later learned that a full Viet Minh battalion was only a mile from the river when the shooting started. Rushing forward, they joined the battle and the sudden reinforcement was now threatening to swamp Krebitz.
I called him on the wireless. "Tell Krebitz that he should have his eyes examined," Schulze yelled. "He sees a platoon where there is a whole goddamned brigade."
"Krebitz! How are things over there?"
"Shitty!" he replied flatly. "Is the way to the river free, Hans?"
"For the moment at least. Evacuate immediately and cross the river if you can manage it. Dammit, Rudolf— we cannot afford to lose you."
"Thanks for your concern about me, Hans."
"I am concerned about Gruppe Drei, you idiot!"
"Just have a few clean underpants ready for us," he cracked, "we might need them."
"We are giving you cover. Move out!"
I sent a message to Eisner to advance on the bridge and provide covering fire for Gruppe Drei. My gunners concentrated on the narrow strip of shrubbery that stretched between Krebitz and the Viet Minh MG's. The mortar fire was intense, and shells began to burst around our own positions. Five of them exploded below the hill but others were creeping upward, seeking our machine guns. We were heading for a major battle with a large enemy force, probably two battalions, and our immediate future did not seem too bright.
I watched Krebitz and his men as they came dashing from cover to cover between the shrubs. Bullets threw dust and dirt all around them. Every one of our weapons was now covering Gruppe Drei but even so, a couple of the men fell, never to rise again.
"They already got four of them!" Schulze yelled and swore. The next instant I heard a swift "whoooz" and we ducked instinctively. Three mortar shells screamed in and exploded in rapid succession. Whoever was directing the enemy mortars must have been an expert, for shells now began to fall everywhere; on the hill, in the river, along the trail. I saw that Eisner's company was getting its fair share, too.
"They are firing from over there!" Schulze yelled, pointing at a wooded hill about a mile from us on the far side of the river. Focusing my field glasses, I could just make out a group of Viet Minh working a dozen mortars. We managed to pin down the enemy MG's and riflemen while Krebitz was crossing the river. They couldn't use the coverless bridge, so Gruppe Drei had to wade and swim for the shrubby sanctuary on our side. None of our machine guns could effectively reach the enemy mortars, though some of Erich's gunners tried to jam them by firing at extreme angles.
"It's a waste of slugs," I told him. "At sixteen hundred yards they will only scratch the place where they hit."
"Never mind," Schulze replied. "We still have a faint chance of getting some of them in the eye."
I had to refrain from using our mortars. We had to preserve the limited amount of shells we had, for valuable targets such as Viet Minh camps, ammunition depots, and the like. To use them in an open battle only to silence a couple of enemy mortars and kill a dozen men would have been "extravagant," a luxury that we couldn't afford. The enemy could shell us at leisure. Only Pfirstenhammer's group appeared to be spared by the mortars, so, I decided after all, to send the girls to him.
"Say, Hans!" Schulze turned to me suddenly. "Shouldn't we ask Karl if he has any shells for those howitzers?"
"The howitzers!" In my excitement I had completely forgotten about the guns. It took only seconds to get Karl on the set. "Karl!" I called him excitedly. "We are having trouble with the mortars. Our MG's can't reach them. . .."
"I gather that ... do you want me to use the howitzers?"
"Have you got shells?"
"Some.. . ." Karl was obviously amusing himself.
"Then get moving, Karl. If the Viets keep firing at the rate they are blasting away at us now—"
"All right, all right . . . you can tell your sob story later, Hans," he cut in with a chuckle. "The guns are ready. I was about to call you myself. Just give me the elevations."
"I am sending the girls over to you."
"Nice of you, Hans. Start talking!"
With Schulze observing the enemy positions, I began to radio the trajectories. The first salvo was a hundred yards short. The second and third volley struck home, blasting men and mortars.
"How was it?" Karl asked; firing over a patch of woods he could not possibly observe the explosions.
"You are hitting them squarely, Karl. Keep firing!"
The rest was only routine.
The Viet Minh mortars ceased firing. The enemy commander thought it prudent to change location. While they were moving, Karl pumped a dozen shells into the shrubbery where the guerrilla machine gunners were deployed. Shortly afterwards the mortars fired again, though only a couple of rounds, and stopped before we could seek them out with the howitzers. Their shells scattered about the hill, blasting a few trees, chipping the rocks, a long way off target. Nevertheless, reports on casualties began to flow. Gruppe Drei reported eleven dead. More had been wounded by shell fragments. I ordered Krebitz to carry the wounded over to Karl's section where the nurses could safely attend to them. I was calling Eisner when a salvo of around twenty mortar rounds screamed in and plastered the foothills where Bernard was deploying in the shrubbery. The moment the shells exploded, I felt a grip at my throat. The wireless cut out. Schulze dropped his field glasses and buried his face in his hands.
"Eisner has had it!" Corporal Altreiter cried.
I rushed to the radio set.
"Adler . . . Adler calling Stella . . . Adler report in ... report in. . . ." Altreiter kept calling, then lowered his earphones and shook his head.
"There's no reply."
I dispatched two men to look for survivors.
Moments later we spotted two large enemy detachments moving toward the river with the obvious intention of crossing above and below our positions and probably delivering a two-pronged attack at dusk. Since a third enemy unit was still occupying the shrubbery and woods on the far side of the river, I realized that we had grossly underestimated the strength of the enemy. Schulze thought that there was at least a Viet Minh brigade in the vicinity of the river. More and more mortars came into play and we learned that the six howitzers which we had captured were not the only ones the enemy possessed. Soon our howitzers were engaged in a vicious duel with four similar guns on the opposite bills. I began to dislike the situation.
One of our machine gunners called from the ridge overlooking the river. Rushing over to him, we saw a macabre drama on the enemy-occupied bank. Pursued by a group of terrorists, a comrade from Gruppe Drei was staggering toward the river. The trooper was obviously injured. He must have lain unconscious in the shrubbery for some time only to come to with enemy troops surging all around. The Viet Minh did not fire. They wanted the man alive.
Reaching the water, the trooper fell. He rose and waded a few more steps. An instant later the guerrillas swarmed over him. We could do nothing to save him. The
terrorists were dragging him back toward the woods.
I ordered three machine guns to open fire on the struggling group. A young trooper at the nearest gun closed his eyes, swallowed hard, then grabbed the fire lever. He knew only too well what would be waiting for our comrade in the hands of the Viet Minh.
The group was caught in the murderous crossfire of the three MG's. In a few seconds it was all over. For our wounded comrade it was indeed a mercy killing. The Viet Minh would have skinned him alive. It had happened before.
The troopers whom I had sent to look for Eisner returned. They looked pale and shaken, trying to catch their breath. "Eisner is dead," one of them reported. "Sixteen others received direct hits. . . . Nothing's left of them but bits of flesh and clothes."
"Sergeant Zeisl and nurse Thi are tending the wounded," the second trooper added. "Nine men were hit, some of them badly."
The rate of the enemy fire was still on the increase. Defying our machine guns, more and more guerrillas deployed on the far side of the river, but no crossing was yet attempted. Karl must have silenced some of the Viet Minh howitzers but a few shells were still coming in to blast the trail and the hillside. Seven more of our comrades were killed. The mortars sent salvo after salvo. I could see projectiles bursting around the small patch of shrubbery where Karl had deployed. He was already moving the howitzers to a safer place.
All of a sudden Erich swore and rushed to the wireless.
"What's the matter?" I yelled after him.
"The girls!" he shouted and for a moment my breath failed me. "Look at them!" Schulze waved in the general direction of Karl's position. The next instant he was calling Pfirstenhammer.
Grabbing my field glasses I scanned the trail along the woods and understood Erich's consternation. I spotted Suoi and Noy kneeling beside a wounded comrade, ducking whenever a shell screamed overhead. Mortar shells exploded all around them.
"Karl!" I heard Schulze shout, "get the girls out of there and be quick about it."
"They are with a badly wounded man, Erich."
"I don't care if they are with Jesus Christ. . . . Get them out of there."
"I'm sorry, Erich," I heard Karl replying. "I have to attend to the guns. We have a battle going here, if you haven't noticed it."
"Karl, if anything happens to Suoi. . .."
"I love Noy as much as you love Suoi, Erich."
I was much too preoccupied to listen to the rest of their conversation. I had to improvise a plan for tackling the situation and I had to do it very quickly. It was evident that as soon as darkness fell the enemy would cross the river. It was also very likely that they could wipe us out before sunrise through a series of human-wave assaults. I decided to call for reinforcements and aerial support.
"Hans, let me go over to the girls," Schulze spoke with a miserable look on his face.
Still preoccupied with my own thoughts I replied mechanically, "Go!" I knew be would be of little use to me if I refused.
Unable to do anything but sit tight, I sent word to our widely dispersed troops to ease up on the ammunition. The machine guns were gradually phased out, but the riflemen went on firing at individual targets when the target was clear enough to give a fair chance of scoring. Since we were self-supporting and independent from supplies and reinforcements, prolonged engagements with the enemy could cause us serious setbacks. We simply could not afford to fire off ammo at a rate of two to three thousand rounds per minute.
Our lower rate of fire only increased the guerrilla endeavors. One Viet Minh company crept right up to the river and made preparations for an early assault across the bridge. Our sharpshooters were picking off the boldest ones as fast as they could fire, reload, and fire again, yet the fearful toll did not seem to lessen the guerrillas' determination. They were pressing closer and closer to the possible crossing places.
In the nick of time two squadrons of fighter bombers dived out of the clouds. The moment the planes appeared, the enemy ceased firing on us and sprang for cover. The planes began to hammer away at the guerrillas, scores of whom had no time to reach the woods. Cannon shells, fragmentation bombs, rockets, and napalm rained from above. It was a great spectacle to watch— and needless to say, a welcome spectacle. Taking the mike, I settled down at the radio to send corrections to the squadron leader.
"How long has it been going on?" he asked me from somewhere above.
"Since morning!" I informed him.
He whistled. "You're lucky to be alive, man—you stepped into a real anthill. They are swarming all over the place."
"It's your game now, squadron leader. Make the best of it."
Again the planes screamed in over the treetops. The Viet Minh advance parties were plastered with steel and fire; explosions rumbled along the riverside and thick, oily smoke rose where the napalm bombs had been at work. The squadron leader came back on the line.
"They say you have enlisted a couple of cuties in your outfit just to keep up spirit," he called.
"We need lots of spirit," I replied. "There's no five-o'clock tea in the jungle, squadron leader."
"Just clear the trail of those guns. When the party is over we might decide to land, cher ami."
"At the rate you are moving you'd burrow a tunnel through the hill."
I heard him chuckle. "Roger . . . Roger. . . . There is a whole bunch of them down below ready for the frying pan."
"Tres bien, Charles, Roger, zdro-cent-dix-sept— z£ro-huit."
"Attaquez!"
Three of the planes banked, came down over a patch of forest and rained napalm. At four o'clock the transport planes arrived. The Paratroops began to descend, twelve hundred of them. Air ambulances settled at the foot of the hill. Their arrival signaled that for once we could deliver our wounded comrades to a hospital.
The battle came to a sudden end. The Viet Minh ranks eddied and then fled. On the far side of the river the trail was covered with hundreds of shattered bikes, wagons, boxes, crates, bales—and corpses; in the woods a hundred fires burned and the Paras were busy shooting down the panicked oxen and water buffalo that milled along the riverside. Not even beasts could be spared, for they were the principal means of Viet Minh transports.
That evening we gave a last salute to sixty-five of our fallen comrades. Among them were Sergeant Schenk and Bernard Eisner.
16. THE LITTLE TRAITORS
I found the muffler-equipped machine guns which we used on so many occasions extremely effective, so long as no prolonged firing was necessary. With mufflers the barrels would quickly overheat. Another shortcoming was that mufflers blotted out the gunsights and tracers had to be used to zero in on the target. After several months of experimenting. Sergeant Krebitz discovered that fairly good silencers could be made from sections of hollow bamboo, padded with wet clay and wrapped in layers of cloth. The result was a clumsy contrajftion which nevertheless worked.
The soundless death coming from the "nowhere" always shattered the guerrilla morale. The initial shock and the ensuing panic usually prevented the enemy from executing necessary defensive measures. By the time their leaders decided what to do, it was too late for them to do anything but flee or perish. So whenever given a chance we killed in silence.
Scouting the Phu Loi mountains, Gruppe Drei spotted twelve terrorists as they were moving across a narrow footbridge suspended eighty feet above a deep gorge. Our sharpshooters went into action with their telescopic, silencer-equipped rifles. Within seconds the twelve Viet Minh were dead; their bodies fell into the abyss to be swept away by the swift current. The footpath leading to the bridge circled a cluster of rocks. Subsequent groups coming toward the crossing could not see the bridge and consequently were unaware of the fate of their comrades. Thinking that the group ahead of them had already crossed and entered the woods, the enemy detachments kept coming in groups of twelve at hundred-yard intervals. They were in turn shot off the bridge quietly but efficiently. Our sharpshooters exterminated three groups before one mortally wounded guerrilla ent
angled himself in the supporting ropes and remained hanging over the precipice in plain sight. Even then we managed to kill seven more Viet Minh who rushed forward to help what they thought was a comrade in distress. The rest of the enemy then dispersed among the rocks and we refrained from any further activity. The enemy could do nothing but watch our side of the gorge. Hours went by while the opposing parties waited in tense expectation; then we spotted a couple of guerrillas crawling toward the bridge. The sharpshooters allowed them to proceed until they showed their heads; alas, that was the last guerrilla endeavor to reach the bridge. Our sharpshooters were quite capable of hitting a man in the head from five hundred yards.
At another time we encountered a small Viet Minh detachment as it moved single file down a trail. Our sharpshooters went into action. They began by shooting the last man in the file. With a bullet in the brain, one does not make much noise. The rearmost terrorist dropped and those ahead of him marched on unaware of the mishap. A dozen terrorists could be liquidated before their comrades realized that they were under attack.
In such attacks the survivors would disperse and take cover, not knowing where to turn, where to shoot. The sudden realization that the jungle was no longer their ally, that it harbored an invisible adversary who killed in silence, the thought that they might be sitting in the center of a deadly trap, demoralized the enemy. In my opinion all troops engaged in antiguerrilla warfare should be issued rifle silencers. It was the kind of opposition the Viet Minh dreaded: the unknown, the unseen, the unheard death. One should remember that the majority of their troops were primitive men, naive and superstitious. When fighting against primitives, every psychological "trick" that one could think up should be exploited; the fact that the Viet Minh had discarded their spears and bows and, thanks to the benevolent Soviet supplies, now brandished rifles and automatic weapons did not cancel out the fact that they were still primitives. Except for a few of their higher leaders, the average intelligence and general mentality of the Viet Minh fighter was that of the Stone-Age man, educated only in the art of killing.
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