The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  When Glatigny took command of the battalion, Mansard had not thought much of him. In the eyes of the ex-machinist he was nothing but a high-class gent from G.H.Q. Saigon. Now, with clumsy tact, the N.C.O. tried to make him see that he regarded him as being on his side and that he was proud his captain had not bowed his head before the little apes.

  He rolled over towards Mansard and his shoulder brushed the sergeant’s. Thinking he was cold, Mansard pressed up against him.

  2

  CAPTAIN ESCLAVIER’S SELF-EXAMINATION

  Stretched out in the paddy-field, where the mud mingled with the flattened stubble, the ten men huddled close together. Every so often they dozed off, woke up with a start in the damp night, then sank back again into their nightmares.

  Esclavier held on to Lieutenant Lescure by his webbing belt. Lescure was raving; he might have got up and started walking straight ahead, giving that yell of his: “They’re attacking, they’re attacking! Send over some chickens . . . some ducks!”* He would not have obeyed the Vietminh sentry who told him to stop and would have got himself shot.

  Lescure was quite calm at the moment; every so often he gave a little whimper, like a puppy.

  In the depths of the darkness a Jeep could be heard slithering along the muddy track, its engine labouring, racing and fading in jerks. It sounded rather like a fly in a closed room knocking against the window-panes. The engine stopped, but Esclavier who had woken up waited hopefully for the familiar noise to start up again.

  “Di-di, di-di, mau-len.”

  The sentry’s words of command were accompanied by a few mild and “lenient” blows with the butt of his rifle, which set the shapeless mass of prisoners in motion.

  But a voice now addressed them in French:

  “On your feet! Get up! You’ve got to come and push a Jeep of the Viet-Nam People’s Army.”

  The tone was patient, certain of being obeyed. The words were distinct, the pronunciation surprisingly and at the same time disturbingly perfect. Lacombe struggled to his feet with a sigh and the rest followed suit. Esclavier knew that Lacombe would always be the first to display obedience and eagerness, that he would turn the other flabby, baby-pink cheek to curry favour with the guards. He would be the model prisoner to the point of turning stool-pigeon. He would flatter the Viets to earn a few privileges, but above all because they were now on top and because he always obeyed the stronger side. To excuse his attitude in the eyes of his comrades, he would try to make them believe that he was hoodwinking the gaolers and exploiting them for the common good.

  Esclavier had known this type of man only too well in Mathausen camp. All the inmates there had had their individuality steeped in a bath of quicklime, and all that remained was the bare essentials. Those simplified creatures could then be put into one of three categories: the slaves, the wild ones and what Esclavier with a certain amount of scorn called “the fine souls.” Esclavier had been a wild one because he was anxious to survive. Lacombe’s true character was that of a slave, a “boy” who would not even steal from his master, who would never make a bid for freedom. But he wore the uniform of a French Army captain and he had to be taught how to behave even if it killed him.

  A slim figure wearing a fibre helmet towered over Esclavier and the voice, which by dint of being so precise sounded disembodied, made itself heard again:

  “Aren’t you going to help your comrades push the Jeep?”

  “No,” Esclavier replied.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Captain Philippe Esclavier, of the French Army. What’s yours?”

  “I’m an officer of the People’s Army. Why do you refuse to carry out my orders?”

  It was not so much a reproach as the statement of an inexplicable fact. With the painstaking care of a conscientious but circumscribed schoolmaster the Vietminh officer was trying to understand the attitude of the big child lying at his feet. Yet the method had been drummed into him in the training schools of Communist China. First of all he had to analyse, then explain and finally convince. This method was infallible; it was part and parcel of the huge perfect whole which Communism represents. It had succeeded with all the prisoners of Cao-Bang. The Viet bent over Esclavier and with a touch of condescension explained:

  “President Ho-Chi-Minh has given orders for the People’s Army of Viet-Nam to apply a policy of leniency towards all prisoners led astray by the imperialist capitalists . . .”

  Lescure made as if to wake up and Esclavier took a firmer grip on his belt. The lieutenant did not realize, and perhaps never would, that the French Army had been defeated at Dien-Bien-Phu; if he woke up suddenly he would be capable of strangling the Vietminh.

  The can-bo went on:

  “You have been treated well, you will continue to be, but it’s your duty to obey the orders of the Vietnamese people.”

  In curt, ringing tones, imbued with violence, anger and irony, and seething with revolt, Esclavier replied for all to hear:

  “We have been living in the Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam for only a few hours but we are already in a position to appreciate your policy of leniency. Instead of killing us off decently, you’re letting us die from exhaustion and cold. And on top of this, you demand that we should be full of gratitude for good old President Ho and the People’s Army of Viet-Nam.”

  “He’ll get us all killed, the silly bastard,” Lacombe reflected. “It was hard enough persuading him to surrender, and now he’s starting all over again. But all I ask is to understand this popular republic of theirs. That’s the only line to take, now that it’s all over and we can’t do a thing about it.”

  Esclavier did not stop there. This time, fortunately, he spoke for himself:

  “I refuse to push the Jeep. You can look upon that as my personal choice. I would rather be killed on the spot than die by slow degrees, demean myself and perhaps become corrupted in your narrow universe. So please be good enough to give the orders to finish me off straightaway.”

  “That’s done it,” Lacombe said to himself. “A couple of sentries will force him to his feet with their rifle-butts, drag him off to the nearest ravine and put a bullet through his head That will put an end to Captain Esclavier’s insolence.”

  But the can-bo did not lose his temper: he was beyond anger.

  “I’m an officer in the People’s Army of Viet-Nam. I have to see that President Ho’s orders are properly carried out. We are poor; we haven’t many medical facilities or clothing or rice. First of all we’ve got to provide our own combatants with supplies and ammunition. But you will be treated in the same way as the men of our people in spite of your crimes against humanity. President Ho has asked the people of Viet-Nam to forgive you because you have been led astray and I shall give orders to the soldiers guarding you . . .”

  This speech was so impersonal, so mechanical, that it suggested the voice of an old priest saying Mass. Lescure, who was once a choir-boy and had just woken up, responded quite naturally: “Amen.” Then he burst out into a long strident laugh which ended up in a sort of breathless panting.

  “My comrade has gone mad,” said Esclavier.

  The Vietminh had a primitive horror of madmen, of whom it is said that the mah-quis* have devoured their brain. The people’s democracy and the declarations of President Ho were of no more avail to him. The darkness was suddenly thronged with all the absurd phantoms of his childhood, with that seething populace that inhabits the waters, the earth and the heavens and never leaves man alone and in peace for an instant. The mah-quis slip through the mouths of children, they try to steal the souls of the dead.

  He was frightened but, so as not to show his fear, he said a few words to one of the sentries and went back to his Jeep. He switched on the engine; the prisoners all round him started to push. The wheels lifted out of the ditch, the engine started purring; all the mah-quis of darkness were exorcized forthwith by the reassuri
ng sound of the machine, that brutal music of Marxist society.

  “Di-di,” said the sentries, as they led the prisoners back, “now you can sleep.”

  • • •

  The mah-quis had devoured Lescure’s brain. During the week before the surrender the lieutenant had not stopped taking maxiton pills, which were included with the rations, and had eaten very little proper food. Lescure had a thin, lanky body, blotchy skin and lacklustre hair. There was nothing to qualify him for an army career. But he was the son of a colonel who had been killed on the Loire in 1940. One of his brothers had been executed by the Germans and another was condemned to a wheelchair ever since receiving a shell burst in the spinal column at Cassino.

  Unlike his father and two brothers, all robust military animals, Yves Lescure delighted in a mild form of anarchy. He was fond of music, the companionship of friends, old books with fine bindings. As a token of loyalty to the memory of his father, he had gone to Coetquidan School, and of those two years spent in the damp marshes of Brittany, among somewhat limited but efficient and disciplined creatures, he retained a depressing memory of an endless succession of practical jokes and inordinate physical effort. This had left him with the impression that he would never be equal to a task for which he had such little inclination.

  But to please the casualty of Cassino, to enable him to go on living in the war through the medium of himself, he had volunteered for Indo-China and, without any preliminary training, had dropped into Dien-Bien-Phu—a feat that his disabled brother would have longed to perform had he been able. Lieutenant Lescure had derived little pleasure from the experience.

  Esclavier had seen him come down on one of those wonderful evenings that occur just before the rainy season, looking like a bundle of bones in his uniform, having forgotten his personal weapon, and with an expression of utter bewilderment on his face.

  The heavy Vietminh mortars were pounding away at Véronique II and the clouds drifting low in the overcast sky were fringed with gold like gypsy shawls.

  He had reported to Esclavier: “Lieutenant Lescure, sir.”

  Dropping his haversack at his feet—a haversack containing books but no change of clothing—he had looked up at the sky:

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  Esclavier, who had no time for “day-dreamers,” had curtly replied:

  “Yes, very beautiful indeed. The parachute battalion holding this position, of which I am in command, was six hundred strong a fortnight ago; there are now ninety of us left. Out of twenty-four officers, only seven are still in a condition to fight.”

  Lescure had apologized at once.

  “I know I’m not a paratrooper, I haven’t much talent for this sort of warfare, I’m clumsy and inefficient, but I’ll try to do my best.”

  Lescure, who was scared stiff of not being able “to do his best” had taken to maxiton a few days later. He had taken part in every attack and counter-attack, more oblivious than courageous, living in a sort of secondary state of consciousness. One night he had gone off into no-man’s-land to rescue a sergeant-major who had been wounded in the legs.

  “Why did you do that?” the captain had asked him.

  “My brother would have done it, only he can’t any longer. By myself, I couldn’t even have attempted it.”

  “Your brother?”

  And Lescure had explained quite simply that it was not himself who was at Dien-Bien-Phu, but his brother Paul who was wheeled round Rennes in an invalid chair. His courage was Paul’s, but the clumsiness, the sunsets, the fear—those were all his own.

  Since then the captain had begun to keep an eye on him, as the N.C.O.s and privates in his company had already done for some time.

  For Véronique, as for all the other positions that were still holding out, the “cease-fire” had come into effect at seventeen-hundred hours. It was then Lescure had collapsed, yelling:

  “Quick, some ducks, some chickens! They’re attacking!”

  Esclavier had continued to keep an eye on him.

  • • •

  In the middle of the night they were woken up and had to abandon the half-light of the paddy-field for the pitch-black darkness of the forest. They followed a path through the jungle. Branches kept lashing their faces; the slimy earth slid from under their feet or else suddenly swelled into a hard mound against which they barked their shins. They had the impression they were going round and round in an endless circle.

  “Di-di, mau-len,” the sentries kept shouting.

  The darkness began to fade. They emerged at first light into the Muong-Phan basin.

  Esclavier recognized the figure of Boisfeuras outside the first hut. They had untied his hands; in a bamboo pipe he was smoking some thuoc-lao, a very strong tobacco which was cured in molasses. A sentry had given it to him after he had exchanged a joke or two with him in his own dialect.

  “Want some?” Boisfeuras asked in his rasping voice.

  Esclavier took a few puffs which were so harsh that they made him cough. Lescure started yelling his war-cry:

  “Some chickens, some ducks!”

  And he made a rush at a sentry to grab his weapon. Esclavier held him back just in time.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Boisfeuras asked.

  “He’s gone off his head.”

  “And you’re acting as his nurse?”

  “Sort of . . . Where are you quartered?”

  “In the hut with some of the others.”

  “I’ll join you.”

  Lescure had calmed down and Esclavier held him by the hand like a child.

  “I’ll bring Lescure with me. I can’t leave him on his own. During the last fortnight this choir-boy, this wet rag, has surpassed even himself. He has performed more acts of courage than the rest of us put together—and do you know why? To please a cripple who lives ten thousand miles away and won’t ever know a thing about it. Is that good enough for you?”

  “And it’s to save his skin that you didn’t try and escape?”

  “There’s nothing to stop me now; the others will take care of Lescure. We might have a go at it together. The jungle’s your home ground. I remember the lectures you gave us when we were due to be dropped into Laos during the Japanese occupation. You used to say: ‘The jungle is not for the strongest, but for the wiliest, the one with most stamina, the man who can keep his head.’ And we all knew you said this from personal experience. Have you got any plan in mind?”

  “I’ve all sorts of ideas, but I’m not going to try to escape, at least not yet . . .”

  “If I didn’t know you, I’d say you were afraid of it. But I’ve no doubt you’re thinking up some wildcat scheme or other in your complicated Chinaman’s brain!

  “I didn’t realize you were at Dien-Bien-Phu. What were you up to there? I thought you would never have anything to do with that sort of pitched battle.”

  “I had started something up north, on the border of Yunnan. Something that was liable to annoy the Chinese. It misfired . . . I withdrew to Dien-Bien-Phu on foot.”

  “The same sort of hare-brained wheeze as your pirate-junks in the Baie d’Along, in which you planned to go marauding up the coast of Hainan?”

  “This time it was something to do with leper-colonies.”

  Esclavier burst out laughing. He was glad to have run into Boisfeuras again, barefoot in the mud and surrounded by the bo-dois, but as completely at ease as he had been the year before on the rickety bridge of a heavy junk with purple sails, in charge of a band of pirates recruited from the remnants of the armies of Chiang-Kai-Shek.

  Another of his “hare-brained schemes” had been to arm the Chin and Naga headhunters of Burma and launch them against the rear of the Japanese Army. Boisfeuras who was then serving in the British Army had been one of the few survivors of this operation and had been awarded the D.S.O.

  Boisfeuras was
the man he needed to accompany him on his escape. He was full of resource, a good walker, used to the climate, and acquainted with the languages and customs of a good number of the tribes in the Haute Région.

  “Come on, let’s have a try at it together.”

  “No, Esclavier; I’m all for waiting. I’d advise you to as well.”

  “I can’t. I once spent two years in a concentration camp and in order to survive I was reduced to do certain things which horrify me every time I think of them. I swore I would never allow myself to be in a position where I would have to do them again.”

  Esclavier had squatted down at Boisfeuras’s feet and with a sliver of bamboo involuntarily began tracing some figures which were the mountains, others which were the rivers, and a long sinuous line running between the rivers and the mountains, which was his proposed escape route.

  No, he could not start being a prisoner all over again . . .

  • • •

  The first mission which Esclavier carried out as a cadet had occurred without a hitch. He retained a fond recollection of his parachute jump by night. It was in the month of June and he had had the impression of being buried alive among the tall grass and wild flowers, of sinking deep into the rich scented soil of France.

  There were three men waiting for him: Touraine peasants, who conducted him and his wireless operator to a big manor-house. There they settled them into a lumber-room above a barn.

  From this hide-out they could keep the main road under observation and instantly report the movements of the German convoys. Runners came in from the neighbourhood of Nantes with messages and information, which had to be encoded and transmitted. Neither Esclavier nor the wireless operator was allowed to leave the house but all the scents of spring were wafted into their attic.

  A merry servant girl, a little animal with lively gestures and rosy cheeks, brought them their meals, sometimes a bunch of flowers, and always some delicious fruit.