The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  They would need a little of his help to get themselves started, and he would help them. He could afford to now, on jump pay, as a staff sergeant.

  There were officers watching him now.

  He saw a camera on a tripod, with a telephoto lens.

  Were they taking his picture because they didn’t see that many Green Berets? Or had they learned he was back?

  He looked at the East German tower for a long moment, his arms folded across his chest. Then he took his green beret off.

  “Get a good look!” he shouted in German, although he supposed they were too far away to hear him.

  He had an unpleasant thought. Colonel Felter’s radio had said Geoff and Ursula would try to call him tomorrow. That was today, that was now, and if he wasn’t there when they called, they would worry and call back, and they didn’t have the money to do that.

  Staff Sergeant Karl-Heinz Wagner of Special Forces put his green beret on his head. Then he put his thumb to his nose and wiggled the fingers so that the East German photographer would get an interesting picture.

  Then he went down the steps and got in the Opel Kapitan and told the driver to take him home.

  (Eight)

  An Lac Shi

  Kontum Province

  Republic of South Vietnam

  1615 Hours, 10 March 1962

  Captain Van Lee Duc, commanding officer of No. 9 Company, Fifty-third Regiment, had had the Blessed Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church under surveillance by his men for four days. Neither they nor he had entered the village, but had instead studied it from an observation post on the edge of the rice paddies, where the forest began.

  He had not yet had time to establish a relationship with the new mayor, and under the circumstances, not making his presence known until the time was right was clearly the way to handle the situation. Until the time was right, he could not rely on the villagers of An Lac Shi to keep their mouths shut.

  After the Americans had had the extraordinary good luck to come across his headquarters in the jungles, his headquarters had been reduced to seven men, and he had been unable to entice one villager to leave his farm and join the forces of national liberation.

  Both the forces of the puppet government in Saigon and the Americans in the green berets obviously believed that because they had eliminated the company they had done more damage than was the case. The Americans had started sending the Green Beret sergeant who was some kind of doctor back to An Lac Shi immediately after the firefight in the jungle. At first he had come with a protecting force—several other Americans in two jeeps, followed by three-quarter-ton trucks carrying puppet soldiers.

  Because Captain Van Lee Duck had neither the forces to attack a force that strong, and because it really would have accomplished little if he had the forces, this little convoy had not been attacked. The Americans and the Saigon puppets had obviously seen this as proof that the forces of national liberation no longer posed a threat.

  One day, just after the American had left, Captain Van Lee Duc had sent a sergeant to throw a torch onto the thatch roof of the Blessed Heart of Jesus Roman Catholic Church.

  The villagers would think one of two things: that the People’s Liberation Army had set the roof on fire, because the villagers had permitted the American soldier to use the church for his medical office; or that the American or the puppet soldiers had set it on fire carelessly. It didn’t matter what they thought. There was no longer a roof on the church building, and the pews had been burned, and it did not make for a very good medical office.

  After that, he had done nothing as he waited for replacements to come to him except watch.

  The first time he saw the Senegalese, he thought that the Catholic church had sent a replacement for Father Lo Patrick Sho. But the Senegalese turned out not to be a priest but a brother. He could not celebrate mass or hear confessions, which would have been a bad thing. All he was was a brother, and all he was doing in An Lac Shi was arranging to repair the roof of the Blessed Heart of Jesus Church and fix whatever other damage he could.

  Captain Van Lee Duc told himself he should have known the Senegalese was not a priest. For one thing, he had ridden into An Lac Shi on a bicycle. A priest would have at the very least a Vespa motor scooter. For another, he should have known that a Senegalese would not be a priest. The Senegalese were animals, recruited in Africa as cannon fodder for the French army. They did not have the brains to be priests.

  The Senegalese didn’t even speak Vietnamese, just French and whatever language those African savages spoke. He had with him an interpreter, a young Vietnamese, who, Captain Van Lee Duc learned, was from one of the Catholic orphanages and soon was to enter the seminary himself.

  But the Senegalese was determined, Captain Van Lee Duc had to admit that. He immediately went to work by himself. Stripping down to a pair of pants, he took down the burned rafters that had held up the roof and then sawed new ones from pieces of lumber the Americans sent him.

  He worked all day in the hot sun. Sometimes the young Vietnamese interpreter helped, but most of the time the Vietnamese went and begged money for materials from the villagers. He did not have much success, for the villagers could see no point in contributing to a new roof, since it would soon be burned down again.

  But the Senegalese didn’t quite fail. Slowly he managed to saw rafters from the huge timber the Americans gave him. One by one, the rafters went in place. He had trouble at first getting money for the thatching material, but then the American medical sergeant gave him money to buy the material and to pay the women of the village to prepare it.

  Captain Van Lee Duc knew that he could not permit the roof to be completed, and he thought the best way to handle this psychologically was to wait until it was almost completed, by which time the villagers would have their hopes high, and then burn it again.

  It would also be educational to kill the Senegalese and his interpreter, and Captain Van Lee Duc planned to do that. But then something fortuitous happened: The guard that accompanied the American medical sergeant diminished in size until, like water in the hot sun, it simply disappeared. The medical sergeant arrived once a week alone, unarmed, in his jeep, and set up his place of business in the walls of the church.

  Sometimes, when there was a long line of people waiting to take his medicine or have their teeth pulled, he even stayed overnight. Sometimes he did not.

  In the end Captain Van Lee Due decided that it would be better if he could kill the American at the same time he burned the church and killed the Senegalese brother and his interpreter. He would not let the fact that the American was not present keep him from burning the church just when the roof was about complete.

  He had been disappointed today when the line of people waiting to see the American medical sergeant had been much shorter than usual; by half past four, there was only a tubercular old woman and two mothers with diarrhea babies in line. The sergeant would be through with them by five o’clock, and then he would get back in his jeep and leave.

  At five o’clock Captain Van Lee Due decided that luck was going his way today. When the American got in his jeep to leave, he couldn’t make the engine start, not even after the Senegalese and his interpreter pushed it all over, trying to start it.

  The American was stupid, Captain Van Lee Due thought. He did not realize how much face he was losing by losing his temper in public and swearing and then actually kicking the jeep when he couldn’t get it to start.

  Now he could kill all three of them.

  Captain Van Lee Due sent his runner into the forest and told him to find the lieutenant and tell him that he would need five men. They were to come armed with AK-47 automatic rifles and bring with them one thermite hand grenade apiece. It was almost certain that he could fire the church with a cigarette lighter, but it was always good military practice to prepare for any eventuality.

  He toyed with the idea of putting the bodies of the Senegalese, the interpreter, and the American medical sergeant in the middle of
the church, one on top of the other, and then setting off a thermite grenade on top of them. The grenade would burn right through their bodies, and the smell would go all over the village.

  When the men came, the lieutenant was with them, and Captain Van Lee Duc was furious. He had not ordered him to come and he should not have come. He slapped his face three times to humiliate him in front of the others. Then he told him he was to stay where he could watch, but he was not allowed to participate in the operation.

  Captain Van Lee Duc waited until almost eleven P.M. by his wristwatch. He wanted to be sure the villagers as well as the Senegalese brother, the interpreter, and the American were asleep. There were two reasons for this: He wanted them to be terrified when the noise awakened them, and he did not want them—out of some idiotic obligation to their faith—to have time to run to the aid of the Senegalese brother.

  There were two doors to the Blessed Heart of Jesus Church, the main door in front and a side door. The side door was blocked with piles of thatching, which meant that there was only one door, which made the operation that much simpler.

  He made each man recite out loud what his role in the operation was to be. They would rush the door in pairs, opening fire as soon as they were inside, spraying the interior from side to side.

  If the Senegalese and the interpreter and the American had not been killed by the spraying fire from the AK-47s of the first pair, they would be killed by aimed fire from the second pair. There was still enough of a hole in the roof to provide sufficient light.

  Once the people inside were dead, Captain Van Lee Duc would enter the church and make sure that they were in fact dead. He would put their bodies together in the center of the aisle, light the thatch from inside, and then pull the pin on the thermite grenade sitting on the bodies.

  Within three minutes they would be back in the jungle at the edge of the rice paddy.

  Not even a dog barked as they made their way to the front door of the Blessed Heart of Jesus Church. They tried the door, and it was fastened from inside. Captain Van Lee Duc thought that was stupid. A sick old woman could force the lock by leaning on the door.

  He gave the hand signal, and the first two soldiers broke through the door, stepped through the vestibule, and sprayed the interior with short bursts from their AK-47s.

  Then the second pair of soldiers rushed inside. But they did not fire, and when Captain Van Lee Duc rushed in after them, angrily shouting at them to fire, they were looking at him in confusion. There was no one in the church.

  Captain Van Lee Duc looked up the roof just in time to see the first hand grenade drop into the church. He was so surprised that he just looked at it as it fell and then as it lay on the floor. He was looking at it when it went off.

  He felt himself being thrown up against the wall of the church; and then there was a brilliant fire at his shoulder and incredible pain. The thermite grenade he had in his shirt pocket had ignited.

  He screamed and rolled around on the ground.

  Something stopped him.

  He looked up and saw the Senegalese. The Senegalese, naked to the waist, was holding him still with a foot on his shoulder. He had a very large pistol in his hand, aimed at Captain Van Lee Duc’s face.

  The medical sergeant came over.

  “Let the motherfucker burn, Phil.”

  “I wish I could,” the Senegalese said. “I hope you under stand me, Captain,” he said. “This is for Tom Ellis.”

  That was the last thing Captain Van Lee Duc heard. The last thing he saw was a yellow-orange flash at the muzzle of a Colt Model 1917 .45-caliber ACP revolver that had previously seen service in the Marne, in War I; in North Africa, France, and Germany in War II; and most recently in Korea. The bullet struck him just above his nose and, because of hydrostatic action of the projectile upon brain tissue, created an exit hole about three inches in diameter at the rear of the skull.

  W. E. B. Griffin is the author of the bestselling Brotherhood of War, Corps, Badge of Honor, Men at War, Honor Bound, and Presidential Agent series. He has been invested into the orders of St. George of the U.S. Armor Association and St. Andrew of the U.S. Army Aviation Association; is a life member of the U.S. Special Operations Association; and is a member of Gaston-Lee Post 5660 of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, China Post #1 in Exile of the American Legion, and the Police Chiefs Association of Southeast Pennsylvania, South New Jersey, and Delaware. He has been named an honorary life member of the U.S. Army Otter & Caribou Association, the U.S. Army Special Forces Association, the U.S. Marine Corps Raider Association, and the USMC Combat Correspondents Association. Visit his website at www.webgriffin.com.

  *Temporary duty.

  *White phosphorus.

  *Travel by private automobile.

  *Auxiliary power unit, a trailer mounted gasoline engine electric power generator, necessary to start aircraft engines.

  * Rundfunk im Amerikanische Sektor, the American-backed German language radio station.

  * Judge Advocate General, the army’s legal staff.