Butchery of the Mountain Man

by William W. Johnstone

“Your name?”

  John debated over whether or not to give him his right name, then decided that he may as well.

  “John Jackson.”

  “Your name is Jean Jourdain,” the noncommissioned officer said.

  “John Jackson,” John said, speaking his name a bit louder, thinking perhaps the sergeant hadn’t heard him.

  “Non. Here, we will give you a new name. Your new name is Jean Jourdain.”

  The noncommissioned officer pointed to a door. “Wait in that room with the others.”

  When John stepped into the other room he saw at least thirty more men, and he heard conversations being carried on in several languages.

  “Deutsch, Belge, Norsk, Español, English?” someone asked.

  “American.”

  “Oh, very good,” the man answered in English. “I am Hans Frey. I am Swiss, but I speak English. We can talk as we wait.”

  “Is that your real name, or the name you were given?”

  “It is the name that was given me by the noncommissioned officer when I reported, so now it is my real name.”

  “I was given a new name as well, but if we are to be friends, I prefer to use my real name. It is John Jackson.”

  “Yes, I think we will be friends,” Hans said.

  “It will be good to have someone to talk to.”

  “John, I have read of the terrible war in America,” Hans said. “Were you in the war?”

  “Yes.”

  “And yet you come to join the French Foreign Legion? You know, do you not, that the crazy French are in wars all over the world? They are in Mexico, and in Africa, and in Asia. And who do they send to fight their wars? They send the Foreign Legion.”

  “Yes, so I have heard.”

  “Have you a choice?” Hans asked.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I have no choice. I killed a man,” Hans said. He held up his finger. “Mind you, I am not sorry that I killed this man, for if ever a man needed to be killed, it was Max Botta. He was a most despicable person, who by his fraud and deceit, ruined the life of a good man. My father took his own life because of Max Botta.”

  “Yes, I can see how you would want to avenge that.”

  “You can see that because you are my friend. But I fear that the law may not see things my way, so I left Switzerland, and where could I go but the Foreign Legion? Look around you,” Hans invited. “What do you see, besides murderers, thieves, adulterers, men who have much reason to leave their homeland and no reason to stay?”

  “I see.”

  For the next hour John and Hans, and an Englishman, carried on but one of many conversations, the drone of voices filling the room.

  The Englishman was Desmond Winthrop. Winthrop had been indiscreet enough to impregnate the daughter of the mayor of his town, and not wanting to get married, had left the country.

  All during their conversation Sergeant Major Dubois, the noncommissioned officer who had welcomed them to the building in the first place, would periodically call out a name.

  “Jean Jourdain?”

  There was no answer.

  “Jean Jourdain?” Sergeant Major Dubois said again, and this time he stared directly at John. That was when John remembered that he was Jean Jourdain.

  “I’m here,” John replied, holding up his hand.

  “Come, you must speak with the capitaine,” he said.

  Capitaine Pierre Beajou had a very large moustache, but no beard. He was wearing a dark blue uniform with brass buttons, and he was looking a piece of paper as John came in. Automatically, John saluted.

  “Have a seat, Monsieur Jourdain,” Capitaine Beajou said. “I see by the papers you filled out that you are a capitaine in the American army.”

  “Yes.”

  “For the North, or the South?”

  “For the North.”

  “That is most unusual, monsieur. We have many men who were officers for the South, leaving because their army is no more, their country is no more. We do not have so many from the army of the North. You will, no doubt, be serving with many of these men. Will you be disturbed by that?”

  “No.”

  “That is good. You do understand, do you not, Monsieur Jourdain, that even though you were an officer in the American army, that you cannot be an officer here? Only Frenchmen who have gone to school at Saint-Cyr—that is like your West Point—can be officers.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “You were in the war, but in your war, gentlemen were fighting gentlemen. Here, the ones you fight are not gentlemen. You are likely to get your throat cut by some Arab or Tonkin. Or, maybe you’ll just be wounded. In that case, the women will make sausage out of you.

  “And if that doesn’t happen you’ll have to deal with fever, sunstroke, bad water, and bad food. All in all, it is a bad business.

  “And who will you be serving with? Deserters, thieves, murderers, scallywags who have run out on their families, or who have squandered their wealth.

  “Why are you here? A petticoat, is it? Were you deceived by a faithless sweetheart?”

  John thought of Lucy Manning.

  “I have my reasons,” he replied.

  “Yes, don’t you all,” Capitaine Beajou said. He made a dismissive motion with his hand.

  “Go away, Monsieur Jourdain. Leave while you still can. Have a good dinner tonight at the Moulin Rouge. Watch the pretty girls, enjoy some wine, and think about this.

  “Tomorrow, we will swear in the new recruits. If you come tomorrow, you will be sworn in with the others. If you do not come tomorrow, you are still free to go, and that, my friend, would be the wisest thing for you to do.”

  When the recruiting office opened for business the next morning, John was there. Hans and Desmond were there was well, as were all the others he had seen the day before.

  The oath of enlistment was issued in French, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Italian, and English. Then, when all were sworn in, all the new recruits shouted: “Vive la France. Vive la Liberté. Vive la Légion Étrangère!”

  And after shouting it in French, each new recruit repeated it in his own language. “Long live France. Long live Liberty. Long live the Foreign Legion!”

  [Part of the defining characteristic of the legion is its rule of anonymity, which says that all legionnaires must give up their civil identity upon enlisting. With their old identities set aside, recruits join the legion under a declared identity—a new name that they use during their first year of service. At the end of the first year a legionnaire may reclaim his old name through a process known as “military regularization of the situation,” in which fresh identity papers are obtained from the person’s home country. Alternatively, a legionnaire can choose to spend his entire career under his declared identity, and many do.—ED.]

  French Indochina—October 1867

  On the 30th of October, at 1:00 A.M., John was with the 3rd Company of the Foreign Legion, consisting of sixty-two soldiers plus three officers, en route to Bien Hoa. At 7:00 A.M., after a fifteen-mile march, they stopped for a breakfast of bread and coffee. Soon after, the Black Flag force of Liu Yongfu was sighted. He was leading a cavalry battalion of over six hundred men, which meant that the 3rd Company was outnumbered by a ratio of ten to one.

  Capitaine Beajou ordered the company to take up a square formation, and, though retreating, he rebuffed several cavalry charges, inflicting heavy losses on the Annamese army by use of accurate long-range fire.

  Looking for a place that would provide a better defensive position, Capitaine Beajou moved his troops to a nearby ngôi nhà trang trai, a farmhouse protected by a stone wall that was three feet high. His plan was to keep the Black Flag forces occupied until relieved by Capitaine Ernest Doudart de Lagrée. While his legionnaires prepared to defend the farm, Liu Yongfu demanded that Beajou and his soldiers surrender, noting the numeric superiority of the Black Flag Army.

  Beajou replied: “We have munitions. We will not surrender.” He then swore a fight to the
death, an oath which was seconded by the men who were with him.

  John could not help but think back to Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg. There too, he had the protection of a stone fence. But there, he had at least ten thousand men deployed along Cemetery Ridge. Here, there were but sixty-five of them, against six hundred.

  The legionnaires put up a spirited defense, but the situation was growing critical. They had lost their pack mules during the retreat, so they were without food or water, and quickly their supply of ammunition reached the critical point as they had only such rounds as they were carrying on their person.

  The two lieutenants were killed early in the fight, then at midday, Capitaine Beajou was shot in the chest and died. Now under the command of Sergeant Major Dubois, the legionnaires continued to keep up a spirited fight, despite the overwhelming odds against them.

  By five o’clock that afternoon, only twelve of the legionnaires remained, with not an officer or a noncommissioned officer among them. John assumed command and the others readily followed him. They continued to fight until their ammunition was nearly exhausted.

  After repulsing the last charge, only three men remained: John, Hans Frey, the Swiss, and Desmond Winthrop, the Englishman.

  The Vietnamese had pulled back after the last assault and were now approximately one hundred yards away, on the other side of a rice paddy.

  “You both know that when they come the next time, it will be the end, don’t you?” John asked.

  “Yes, I know, and I have already made my peace with God,” Desmond said. “But I do hope to kill at least three more of the buggers before they get me.”

  “I figured I would die at the hands of some jealous husband, never thought I would die in some stinking rice paddy,” Hans said. “What about you, Jean? Are you ready to die?”

  “I’m already dead,” John replied. “I was killed at Gettysburg, and I’ve been on borrowed time ever since. So, what the hell?”

  “I think our little yellow friends are getting ready to come again,” Desmond said.

  “Yeah, it looks like it,” John said. “All right let’s . . . wait! Listen! Do you hear that?”

  The three men could hear the sound of a bugle, coming from behind them.

  “Quickly,” John said. “Let’s get a few of these bodies up against the wall, put their rifles out, maybe they’ll think relief has already come.”

  The soldiers of the Black Flag attacked again, but this time John, Hans, and Desmond had pulled back to the other side of the house. Each of the three had found a place to hide, and they picked off Liu Yongfu’s attackers from concealment. The positions of Hans and Desmond were found, and both were killed. John fired his last round, then fitted his bayonet to his rifle and waited for the final attack.

  It was at that moment that the relief element of the legionnaires arrived on the scene, twelve hundred strong. They swept through the compound, and over the walls, shooting down the Vietnamese where they could, capturing five, and chasing the rest from the field.

  When General de Lattre arrived he saw John sitting on the stone fence, surrounded by the dead officers and men of his company. John stood, and saluted the general.

  “Were you with Capitaine Beajou?” General de Lattre asked.

  “I was, sir,” John replied.

  “How many of you remain?” the general asked.

  “I believe I am the only survivor,” John replied.

  General de Lattre put his hand on John’s shoulder. “I am sorry that I did not arrive in time to save your comrades.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Cholon—November 1867

  The five captured Black Flag soldiers were tried and condemned. They walked to their death without tremor or hesitation. They were chatting together, and chuckling, as if they were going to some sort of social event, instead of their own execution. They threw curious glances at those who were gathered to watch them die, the witnesses not there by choice, but by command.

  They were ordered to stand five meters apart, and they did so, spitting out the red juice of the narcotic betel leaves they were chewing. Behind them, and not seen by the condemned men, the five executioners, all wearing black hoods and carrying wide-bladed swords, approached them. A French officer stood in front of the five men for a moment, then shouted, “Vive la France!”

  That was the signal, and at the shout all five executioners swung their blades at the same time. The severed heads of the prisoners bounced off the cobblestone square, as the headless bodies tumbled forward.

  Later that same afternoon, John was standing at a window in the headquarters building in Cholon, looking down at the Saigon River. A large boat was docked at a pier, an eye painted on the bow in order to allow the boat to see, and avoid, demons. A young man wearing a conical straw hat was squatted on the bow, working with fishing net.

  “Bun mae! Bun mae!” The haunting calls came from an old woman who was walking the cobblestone road alongside the river, calling out for customers to buy the hot, small baguettes of bread she was selling. A man, pushing a cart that contained a steaming cauldron of soup, was using a young boy to advertise his product, the young boy walking in front, beating sticks together in a precise rhythm that was the specific signature of this man’s soup.

  [This was probably very similar to the Annam soup now known as pho, though in fact pho did not become an Annam staple until 1907. It is very likely that the soup peddler Jackson refers to here was Chinese, as Cholon had already become a center for Chinese immigrants into Annam.—ED.]

  John watched as customers bought both the bread and the soup. It was nearly time for lunch and he wished he could be down there on the riverfront, buying the soup and bread, rather than standing here, awaiting his appointment with General de Lattre.

  What did de Lattre want? He had asked that question of Capitaine Ernest Doudart de Lagrée, his new commanding officer, but de Lagrée told him that he didn’t know.

  “I am but a capitaine. Generals do not consult with me.”

  “Private Jourdain,” a sergeant said. “General de Lattre will see you now.”

  John nodded, then stepped into the general’s office. De Lattre had piercing dark eyes, and a vandyke beard.

  “Private Jourdain reporting as ordered,” John said, saluting the general. The general made a casual return of the salute.

  “Private Jourdain, I am pleased to report that I am sending you back to Paris, where you will receive the Légion d’Honneur, the highest award that can be given to a member of the Foreign Legion.”

  “Why?” John asked.

  John’s response was totally unexpected, and the general looked up in surprise.

  “Why? You ask why? It is because of your heroic stance in the battle so recently fought.”

  “General, I wasn’t a hero, I was a survivor,” John said. “If anyone is to get the medal, it should be Capitaine Beajou, Sergeant Major Dubois, and the sixty-one others who died in the battle.”

  “Your hesitancy to accept the medal is commendable, Sergeant Jourdain.”

  “I’m a private, sir.”

  “You were a private. I have promoted you to sergeant. And, as I was saying, your hesitancy to accept the medal is commendable, but it is being awarded to you precisely because you are still alive. You will go back to Paris, be awarded the medal, be given two weeks of leave, then assigned as a recruiter to bring other young men into the legion.”

  “To come to Algeria, or Indochina to die gloriously?” John asked.

  “Yes, yes! You do understand!” General de Lattre said.

  What was obvious to John at that moment was that General de Lattre didn’t understand that John was being sarcastic.

  “You are happy to go to Paris, are you not?”

  “Yes, General. I am happy to go to Paris.”

  Old Main Building

  “And did John go to Paris?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “All of this happened before you and John Jackson ever met, didn’t it?”
>
  “Yes.”

  “I must confess that in my own research, this is new to me. I never knew that he had been a member of the French Foreign Legion. Also, I am curious. How is it that you can speak in great detail and with such authority about events that transpired before the two of you met?”

  Smoke chuckled. “Professor Armbruster, this is just a guess, mind you, but I would be willing to bet that you have never wintered in the mountains with just one other person.”

  Armbruster laughed. “You would win that bet,” he said.

  “Well, when there are just two of you, in a small twelve-by-twelve cabin, and you spend an entire winter together—sometimes snowed in for days at a time—all you can do is talk. There is very little about John’s life that I don’t know. And, though at the time I had very little history of my own to share, there was little of my life that John didn’t know.”

  “I wonder why John never told anyone else about his experience with the French Foreign Legion. There is, after all, a certain élan about that. You would think it would be something he would speak of with a degree of pride.”

  “It wasn’t a part of his life that he was particularly proud of,” Smoke said. “For one thing, he didn’t feel all that good about being part of a military establishment that was depriving a people of their freedom. And for another thing, he wasn’t proud of being a deserter.”

  “A deserter?”

  “Yes, the enlistment period for serving in the legion was five years. John served less than one year. When he returned to Paris to accept the Légion d’Honneur he was given a two-week leave. During that leave, he boarded a ship at Le Havre, bound for Southampton, England, and from there, took a ship back to the United States.”

  “All this you are telling me about John Jackson, the difficulty he was having in adjusting from the war, and his time with the Foreign Legion, was before you met him, wasn’t it?”