The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  Marindelle’s love for Jeanine had, on the contrary, gathered fresh strength, for he now identified his wife with everything that was best in him: his endurance, his courage, his refusal to give up and die.

  It was on the morning of the fifteenth day, as they were floating down the Bright River, that they caught sight of the Duong-Tho post, its square crenellated tower and forecourt of earth and planks.

  “We’ve made it, we’re on French-held territory,” said Leroy, who had once been garrisoned there for six months.

  “It’s Duong-Tho,” said Marindelle. “We’ve come down much lower than we thought. Three more days and we should have reached Hanoi. We should merely have had to jump off the raft to go straight to the Normandie for a drink. It’s one of those strokes of luck you read about in the papers.”

  They summoned up enough strength to land, but had to lie stretched out in the grass for over half an hour before being able to move their cramped limbs.

  “Where’s the French flag?” Marindelle asked with sudden anxiety.

  In the grey light, under the leaden sky, he could see nothing unfurled on the tower.

  “They haven’t raised the colours yet,” said Orsini. “The garrison troops are colonials and you know what they’re like, not exactly gluttons for work. They’re sitting pretty down here, so close to Hanoi; there are no Viets around.”

  “Let’s go,” said Leroy. “There’s a path leading up to the post round at the back. We’d better take it, they might have laid some mines.”

  Duong-Tho had just been evacuated and the three prisoners were greeted at the entrance to the post by some bo-dois. There were a dozen of them picking through the rubbish left behind by the French, turning over the empty tins and wooden and cardboard cases with their bayonets.

  The officers had not enough strength left to double back on their tracks. They sank down against the walls of the forecourt and fell fast asleep. They were much too tired to feel either anger or disappointment.

  Some time later, as the sun was beginning to sink behind the river, an officer came and woke them up. He made a note of their names and rank and had them tied up to one another without brutality.

  In the morning they were released from their fetters. Orders had arrived during the night to treat them well. They were given the same rations as the soldiers, were allowed to rest, and on the following day they set off under escort on their way back to Camp One.

  They ambled along for three weeks; the Viets were soon on good terms with them and seemed to be in no hurry to get back to the camp. They turned a blind eye on the tou-bis’ pilfering and shared the fruits of their plunder with them.

  The prisoners reached Camp One after dark and were promptly locked up in the cells. Next morning Marindelle was sent for. The Voice wanted to have a word with him before taking disciplinary action.

  In spite of his cynicism, Marindelle came away from the interview somewhat chastened. The Voice with his fine mask of gold had gently reprimanded him, as a scoutmaster might his favourite cub. He had spoken with disarming naïveté:

  “Why didn’t you come and see me before trying to escape, Marindelle? I shouldn’t have dissuaded you. You haven’t grasped the point of our tuition. Before attempting anything, you should first approach your superiors, for what may strike you as a happy decision may in fact have an adverse effect on the Party of Peace. Furthermore, you have set your comrades a bad example, even though you acted in good faith.

  “I shall therefore ask you and your two comrades to make a thorough self-examination, and I think I shall then be able to adopt a lenient attitude. You’ve still got a lot to learn, Marindelle, but the sincerity of your feelings has always given me grounds for hope.”

  The three lieutenants had made their self-examination. Even so Orsini and Leroy were confined to the cells for a week before being pardoned, whereas Marindelle, after a few days, was restored to his position of group leader.

  For a long time no one in the camp could talk of anything else but this extraordinary act of mercy, which could not be completely accounted for by Marindelle’s letter. There was even a suggestion that the Voice harboured an unnatural passion for the lieutenant, and Ménard insinuated that Marindelle had denounced his comrades. This hypothesis was absurd and without foundation but nevertheless gained a certain credence.

  Boisfeuras asked Marindelle what had prompted the Voice to act as he had done.

  Marindelle gave several reasons: first of all his boy-scout naïveté. Secondly, his incredible vanity as a Communist intellectual convinced of being in possession of the one and only Truth; finally, a certain nostalgic friendliness towards Westerners among whom he had been brought up and whose culture he had assimilated.

  Marindelle knew nothing about Commander Ducoroy’s youth camps or the boy with the sturdy calves and close-cropped hair who had been the Prince of one of those camps.

  • • •

  For a week Lacombe was a lifeless mass who had to be fed by his comrades. He showed no more interest in life and refused to move from his bunk and go down to the river to wash.

  He became mildly delirious. He imagined he was living in a huge grocery, filled with tins of every shape and size, barrels of oil, sacks of rice and flour, cases of biscuits, macaroni and sugar.

  He went over his stock again and again, for people kept stealing from it. Sometimes it was Glatigny or Boisfeuras, at other times Esclavier, Merle or Pinières.

  The Voice gently pointed out that his accounts did not balance. He would then start all over again:

  Three thousand tins of peas; two thousand of string beans; two hundred boned hams, ten barrels of oil . . . there was a barrel of oil missing.

  Esclavier came and leant on the counter and sniggered stupidly.

  Then everything started to swim before his eyes. The doctor who was sent for shrugged his shoulders. There was nothing to be done. There was no physical ailment he could diagnose, but something had gone wrong. He advised the services of a priest.

  One morning Lacombe stopped counting his tins. He was buried in a little clearing on the side of the mountain above Camp One. For a few weeks his grave was marked with a bamboo cross, then it was swallowed up in the jungle.

  There were several other officers in the camp who gave up the ghost like this—mostly those who had shown the greatest endurance during the march and had afterwards heaved a profound sigh of relief as they dropped on to their bunks in Camp One.

  Esclavier and Glatigny had one mosquito net between them and shared the same blanket which they spread out at night on the bamboo slats of the floor. One night Esclavier, who normally slept like a top, twisted and turned in a fever. After the evening downpour the temperature had dropped abruptly; he started shivering. Glatigny wrapped him up in the blanket with all the tenderness and affection he now felt for this hardened condottiere.

  Reveille sounded shortly before dawn. A Viet would hammer on a large bamboo hanging from a branch, slowly at first, then with progressively increasing speed as the sound gradually diminished. This was the great rhythm of Asia, the rhythm of feasts and pagodas, of funerals and births, of the chase and of war. From the distant monasteries of Tibet to vermilion-hued Peking, from the narrow valleys of the Thai countryside to the kampongs of Malaya, all life was geared to the clash of gong and wooden rattle.

  The prisoners assembled in teams outside their huts to draw their “breakfast soup,” a meagre ration of rice recooked in slightly salted water. They gobbled it up, standing in the fresh invigorating light of dawn before reporting on the parade ground for the daily fatigues.

  “Shall I bring up your soup?” asked Glatigny who was worried by his comrade’s immobility.

  Esclavier lay hunched up under the blanket, bathed in sweat. He muttered weakly:

  “No, you can have my share.”

  This looked serious. No one could afford to miss a meal. R
efusing rice was the first symptom of the capitulation which in a few days had brought Lacombe to the little clearing tucked away in the jungle.

  “None of that now; you’re going to eat up like the rest of us.”

  Glatigny unhooked the two wooden ladles hanging on the partition above their bed-space and held them for a few seconds over the flames in the hearth to sterilize them. In addition to the bugs and the mosquitoes, rats swarmed through the huts all night in search of the smallest grain of rice. Famished and mangy, they were carriers of a deadly germ, the spirochete; in humans this germ caused a burning fever which reduced the body to a state of mummification. French hospitals had perfected a rigorous and costly treatment and this alone was capable of saving the patients. They were kept alive by intravenous injections of a serum in all four limbs, which enabled them to survive during the ten days it took for the spirochete to develop and die.

  In Camp One this treatment was not available and disinfection by fire was the only form of prevention against this illness which was almost always lethal.

  Holding a cai-bat heaped with rice in one hand, Glatigny knelt down beside his companion and raised his head with the other:

  “Come on, eat up.”

  Esclavier opened his feverish, bloodshot eyes.

  “I can’t swallow.”

  “Eat up, I tell you.”

  “Give me something to drink.”

  “Get this down first, then I’ll make you some tea. There’s nothing left to drink at the moment.”

  In “the country of water that kills” they first had to boil the liquid to which they added a few leaves of wild tea, guava or bitter orange.

  In spite of his reluctance, Glatigny forced his comrade to swallow his “breakfast soup.” Esclavier sank back exhausted and brought it all up in a series of shuddering retches.

  The others, having folded their blankets and mosquito nets and equipped themselves for the morning fatigues, climbed down the ladder and went off to the parade ground.

  “Marindelle,” Glatingy called out, “Esclavier’s ill. Tell the Voice I’m staying behind to look after him.”

  He cleaned the soiled blanket, washed the captain’s face and chest in cold water, then boiled some tea.

  Esclavier seemed a little easier now; his face betrayed enormous strain and in one night had assumed the translucid grey-brown complexion of “the veterans of Cao-Bang.” The fever appeared to have abated. He had managed to keep down two large bowls of tea.

  “I feel better now. There’s no need for you to stay.”

  Esclavier seemed ashamed of inflicting these nursing duties on his comrade. He knew how keen Glatigny was on his morning fatigue—a ten-mile walk, there and back, to fetch the rice from the depot. He called this “physical culture” and claimed it kept him in shape.

  But Glatigny refused to leave him:

  “I’m not going out this morning, I’m on barrack fatigue. I’m going to clean up and bring in the water and wood. You had a nice bout of malaria last night.”

  “My attacks are violent but short, I’ll be up and about tomorrow.”

  In the course of the morning, Captain Evrard, the medical officer on duty that day, came and saw Esclavier. He sounded his stomach, examined his throat, felt his pulse.

  “I’ve got malaria,” Esclavier insisted almost angrily.

  Glatigny followed Evrard outside and, when they were some distance away from the hut, questioned him:

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Fever,” said Evrard, “I can’t say more than that without being able to make an analysis. I’ll put him down for the régime,* but I don’t know if Prosper will accept him. Your team has a rather bad name, you know.”

  “Prosper,” an arrogant little Vietnamese who barely concealed his hatred for the whites, bore the pompous title of Camp Doctor. He had been an orderly of sorts at the Gia-Dinh hospital before joining the Vietminh two years earlier. Every morning he presided under this title at a medical inspection in the infirmary where the sick had to come and report in person.

  From the sixteen medical officer prisoners he had selected two assistants to whom he had at least conceded the title of male nurse. His assistants examined the patients, which he was incapable of doing himself, made their diagnosis and prescribed a treatment which they recorded in an exercise book. This was eventually submitted to Prosper who made the final decision, without even having seen the patients, according to standards that were utterly alien to medical practice.

  Beside Esclavier’s name was the note: “malaria, two tablets of nivaquine, three days’ régime.”

  Prosper screwed up his little monkey face. Esclavier and his team were classified as W.S.s (wily serpents). He crossed out “malaria” and wrote in: “fever, relieved of duty for forty-eight hours,” which meant that his team would draw only half a ration of rice for him.

  “Thank heavens the little rat doesn’t know Molière,” Evrard reflected, “otherwise he would have the whole lot bled so as to kill them off the more quickly.”

  For four days Esclavier’s temperature kept rising. He lay without moving under the blankets which his comrades piled on top of him. Glatigny, who never left his side, persuaded him to drink a little boiled water every two hours. More often than not he brought it up, and at night he was delirious.

  One evening the old Tho, before smoking his water-pipe, came and squatted down by his head. He looked at the whites of his eyes, lifting the lid with a finger the colour of paddy-field mud, and drew back his lips to examine the gums. He cleared his throat and aimed a long jet of saliva with accuracy through a gap in the floorboards. Then he rejoined Boisfeuras by the fire.

  “Tiet!” he said, taking out his pipe, “tou-bi tiet.”

  Boisfeuras questioned him in Tho, but the old man merely shook his head and repeated: “Tiet.”

  “Tiet” meant “death” in Vietnamese. The old man made no further comment, he had no time to waste in gestures and words for a man whom he considered already tiet.

  Evrard called half a dozen times, bringing with him a different doctor each time. They discussed the case at the bedside of the patient whose skin, stretched over an emaciated frame, had gone a reddish-yellow colour. Glatigny or Marindelle walked back with them to hear their verdict.

  “He ought to go to hospital,” Evrard declared one morning, “he can’t last another week. But Prosper won’t hear of it. Yesterday his note in the book was: ‘dysentery, diet.’ He might just as well have written down ‘small-pox, aspirin’ . . . if small-pox were a disease which is tolerated by the puritan democratic republic. I’d like to strangle that filthy little politico who dares to assume the title of doctor but can’t even give an injection!”

  Marindelle persuaded Potin and the doctor to come with him to see the Voice about it. His dialectic, supported by Evrard’s technical arguments and Potin’s political guarantee, eventually extracted an agreement from the political commissar to move Esclavier to hospital.

  The hospital was two days’ march away and the patient had to be carried there on a stretcher. The whole team was given permission to join a fatigue party which was going to bring back some salt. Leroy and Orsini volunteered to go with them.

  Mahmoudi was worn out but decided to accompany them all the same.

  Boisfeuras believed in the old Tho’s diagnosis. Esclavier was tiet; there was nothing more to be done for him. But he preferred not to say so. Esclavier would end up being carried by his comrades: like a barbarian warrior, he would receive in homage their sweat and their endeavour.

  And that was something which could hardly fail to please the strange captain.

  8

  DIA THE MAGNIFICENT

  The Thu-Vat hospital was situated among wooded hills intersected by broad cultivated patches in the vicinity of the Bright River whose reddish waters were a churning mass of tree-trunks, drift
wood, carrion and tufts of grass. It was the biggest and best one in the People’s Army and consisted of over thirty Annamite huts built at ground level and scattered through the forest. They were connected to one another by paths of beaten earth shaded by huge trees, redwood saus, lims as hard as iron, silk-cotton trees with thick white trunks, and giant bang-langs which are used for making dug-out canoes.

  A tangle of creepers draped the hospital in a natural camouflage net which was impenetrable to observation from the air.

  From the straight white secondary road between Bac-Nhung and Chiem-Hoa, which bordered it on the east, there was nothing to betray its presence except for a few sentries posted at the near end of the paths which were hidden by thick clumps of bamboo.

  The group of prisoners carrying Esclavier reached the hospital late in the evening. Esclavier was still alive but delirious. His comrades were exhausted from their efforts. They had hurried all the way and their legs trembled while a Viet orderly, trying to impress them by wearing a gauze mask over his mouth, looked with disgust at the patient they had laid down at his feet.

  “Tiet,” he said. “You may as well take him away.”

  “He’s no more tiet than you are.”

  Dia appeared, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts, with his muscular ebony torso, his slim waist, his sprinter’s legs and his powerful bass voice booming like a drum.

  “What has he been treated for?” he asked Marindelle, as he bent over Esclavier.

  “Malaria.”

  “He’s got spirochetosis. My dear colleagues don’t know how to use their eyes, they need laboratories and analyses, radio equipment and neatly labelled bottles of medicine. But since all these are lacking, they just throw up their hands in despair. They’ve stopped being proper doctors. Real doctors should be like wizards who possess the secrets of life and death, of plants, poisons and sex . . . I, Dia, have a number of secrets . . . even for curing spirochetosis.”