Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  The French frequently faced the SKS, a Soviet semi-automatic carbine chambered for the 7.62 round, designed in 1945 by Sergei Simonov. The SKS had a conventional carbine layout, with a wooden stock and no pistol grip. Most versions were fitted with an integral folding bayonet which hinged down from the end of the barrel, and some versions were even equipped with a grenade launching attachment. Another product of Russian and Chinese generosity, the SKS was cheap, easy to strip and maintain in jungle conditions, and an effective killer in the short range exchanges of gunfire that were so common in the jungle.

  “Retreat, fall back, men. We need to form a tighter perimeter,” Avril shouted.

  His paras, veterans of the war in Indochina, slowly edged back, firing desperately to give themselves time to form a stronger defence. Avril sighted a small hill, more of a hillock, about a hundred metres behind them.

  “Run, men, run, we need to get on that hill. Follow me!”

  They ran, a stumbling, scrambling desperate flight. Some fell, hit by Viet Minh fire.

  “Don’t stop for the wounded. There’s no time, just run!” Avril shouted, urging them on.

  He turned to fire a burst into the oncoming Vietnamese and saw two of them fall. Then he turned, legs pumping as he ran up the hill, urging his men, “Run, we’re nearly there, run!”

  A bullet tore into the sleeve of his shirt, a near miss. He felt another clip his right boot, and then flatten itself into a nearby rock. But he was there, leaping over the rocks that lay scattered at the top of the hill, and flung himself flat on the ground. His men jumped down nearby and began to fire on the pursuing enemy. He switched magazines and fired short bursts into the Viet Minh who were hurtling towards them. Three more paras went down. The rest were sheltering behind the rocks, pouring an increasing amount of fire at the Viet Minh. The Vietnamese guerrillas began to falter as they saw their comrades falling all around them. They turned and ran back, and still more of their numbers fell as they took cover behind the trees and rocks surrounding the hill.

  Avril drew breath and shouted at his men to cease fire. The occasional shot came up at them from the Viet Minh, but none were well aimed.

  “Save your ammunition, men.” he called. “They’ll be back soon, and we’ll need every bullet. Sergeant Hassiba,” his second in command, now that Balmain was dead.

  “We need a count of the ammunition, and find out what we have left. It’ll be a long time before headquarters knows we’re stuck here, and until then, we need to make the supplies last.”

  Sergeant Karim Hassiba was Algerian and a veteran of the colonial infantry. He’d seen service in the Second World War as a green private soldier, fighting with the Free French forces through Nazi Germany. He doubled away to check the remaining ordnance. Avril then gave orders to another Algerian, Corporal Wahid Farouk, to tally their remaining food and water. They could be there for a long stay.

  The men slumped down, lighting cigarettes and taking hasty gulps of water from their water bottles. He hoped it was only water, but it was hardly the time to check. He got out his binoculars and scanned the wooded ground around the bottom of the hill. The Viet Minh were there and hiding, but occasionally they moved from cover to cover. They were all around, and so breaking out from this hill was going to be hard and bloody.

  “Private Laroche, get on the radio and contact headquarters, and let me know when you get through.” He stood and watched the radioman warming up the radio, and then went to do the rounds of his position. It was grim. A total of sixty-seven men left from the original one hundred and thirty that set out on this mission. Nearly half were dead or missing. Ammunition was less than forty rounds per man, and a total of eleven hand grenades with food and water for twenty-four hours at most. He went back to the radioman.

  “Laroche, have you got through yet?”

  “Sir, the radio is broken, completely broken.”

  He showed Avril a hole torn out of the metal in the case where an enemy bullet had gone through the equipment, wrecking it beyond repair.

  “See what you can do Laroche. Keep trying to fix it.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the radioman looked doubtful. “I’ll do what I can.”

  Avril called Sergeant Hassiba to discuss their options. He valued the tough Algerian’s opinion; gathered in more than a dozen tight spots. Algerians and Moroccans formed the backbone of the French colonial units, and many of them made exceptional soldiers, brave and resourceful. Good to have in a situation like this.

  “Sergeant, I think reinforcements could take more time than we have left to us.”

  “Yes, I think so too. We need to get out of this trap, Sir, before we’re completely out of food and ammunition.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “Whichever way we go, we’ll have to fight through the Viets. Wait until night, and then break through.”

  Avril checked his watch. It was almost two thirty in the afternoon.

  “Not enough ammunition to hold them off and wait that long, Sergeant. We need to go soon, before they attack and run us out of ammunition.”

  “Then, we…” Hassiba stopped.

  They could see the Viets were massing at the bottom of the hill, and they didn’t seem unduly concerned that the French might open fire. Clearly, their commander was no fool, and he knew the French troops would be dangerously low on ammunition.

  “You’d better get the men ready, Sergeant. They’ll be attacking soon.”

  “And then?” Hassiba asked. “If we fight off this attack? What then?”

  “We’ll fight them, Sergeant, and as soon as possible, we’ll try to break out.”

  “Fight them with what, Sir?”

  Avril sighed. The Algerian was right. Their ammunition was almost exhausted. After that, there would be nothing left but surrender, and the prospect of showing the white flag to these ugly Asian monkeys was not pleasant. The Viets were known for their brutality to captured French troops; often using them for bayonet practice and gruesome games of torture and execution.

  “Tell the men single shots only, and no automatic fire. They need to make every shot count. As soon as we beat them back, we’ll try and get out. Make sure the men are ready to move, the second I give the order.”

  “Yes, Sir.” Hassiba saluted and ran off to pass the orders to the men.

  They waited. Some chain smoked, the Catholics amongst them fingering rosary beads, and the Muslims reading small, worn looking copies of the Koran. Avril watched the Viets milling around. The officers and commissars shouted orders, getting the men into position, and firing them up with stirring party rhetoric.

  One man giving orders stood out from the rag-taggle band of guerrillas. He was dressed in what appeared to be a soiled cream linen safari suit, an incongruity in the jungle war. He wore an old fedora hat with a red bandana wrapped around its brim. He carried no pack, just a pistol in one hand. Next to him a soldier carried a loudhailer. The man in the suit gave an order, and the soldier passed him a microphone attached to the loudhailer. There were a series of clicks and buzzes, and then his voice came clearly up to them in fluent French.

  “Men, soldiers who are fighting for the French colonialists! This is not your war! France has enslaved your own countries, Morocco, Algeria, and here in Vietnam too. They are keeping you in chains to exploit you. My name is Commissar Colonel Min, and I speak for the People’s Revolutionary Army, the Viet Minh.”

  The Viet Minh, the League for the Independence of Vietnam, was a national independence movement founded in South China on May 19th, 1941. The Viet Minh initially formed to seek independence for Vietnam from the French Empire. When the Japanese occupation began, the Viet Minh opposed Japan with support from the United States and the Republic of China. After the Second World War, the Viet Minh opposed the re-occupation of Vietnam by France and continued a campaign of armed resistance. They were short on modern military knowledge and created a military school in Tinh Quang Ngai in 1946.

  More than four hundred Vietnamese were trained by
Japanese soldiers, becoming the hard core of a new military movement fighting for the liberation of Indochina from the French. French General Jean-Etienne Valluy quickly pushed the Viet Minh out of Hanoi when his infantry, supported by armoured units, re-took Hanoi fighting small battles against isolated Viet Minh groups. The French encircled the Viet Minh base, Viet Bac, in 1947, but failed to defeat the Viet Minh forces and had to retreat soon after. The newly Communist People's Republic of China gave the Viet Minh both sheltered bases and heavy weapons with which to fight the French. With the additional weapons, the Viet Minh were able to take control over many rural areas of the country. Soon after that, they began to advance towards the French occupied areas.

  “We…” His voice tailed off as a screech of static, followed by the piercing howl of feedback, sliced through his words. There were more clicks and static, and he continued.

  “We invite you to lay down your arms. Your officers are just lackeys of the French government. Come to us. We will provide you with money and passage home.”

  Avril turned to look at his men. They were listening with avid fascination to the Commissar’s words, but he was not unduly worried. They had seen the Viets’ treatment of prisoners too often to be tempted into taking up the offer to surrender. Better to die quickly in battle than to suffer a long lingering death, hacked to shreds with your balls stuffed into your mouth.

  “Private Chevaux,” Avril called, “come over here. Do you think you could take him at this distance?”

  Chevaux had advertised in the French military newspaper Caravelle for this posting, a system at that time unique to France.

  ‘Private, Infantry Regt., sharpshooter, Saigon. Seeks exchange Mobile Group North Vietnam. Reply PO Box 269, Caravelle’.

  The reply had come quickly from an overweight, over-aged private who was happy to swap the rough and tumble of service in a mobile group operating close to the Central Highland, for a more peaceful end to his service career in the backwater of Saigon. Chevaux seized the chance to practice his first love, long range sniping. He had become a valued and deadly member of the Second Parachute Battalion, part of the Elite Mobile Two.

  Chevaux ran over to him, clutching his rifle. He was the Paras’ champion sharpshooter, and a crack shot with the modified Springfield rifle he carried.

  The M1903 Springfield, or more formally the United States Rifle, Calibre .30, Model 1903, was an American magazine-fed, 5-shot, bolt-action service rifle used primarily during the first half of the twentieth century. It was officially adopted as a United States military bolt-action rifle in 1905 and saw service in World War I. It was officially replaced, as the standard infantry rifle, by the faster firing, semi-automatic eight round M1 Garand in 1937.

  However, the M1903 Springfield remained in service as a standard issue infantry rifle during World War II, since the U.S. entered the war without sufficient M1 rifles to arm all troops. It also remained in service as a sniper rifle during World War II, the Korean War and even in the early stages of the Vietnam War.

  The 1903 rifle included a rear sight leaf that could be used to adjust for elevation. When the leaf was flat, the battle sight appeared on top. This sight was set for 546 yards and was not adjustable. When the leaf was raised, it could be adjusted to a maximum extreme range of 2,875 yards. The rear sight could also be adjusted for windage. The 1903A3 rear sight was an aperture sight adjustable both for elevation and windage.

  Chevaux used a custom rifle sight that had been machined for him by the base armourer, a keen shooter and precision engineer. His skill with the weapon was legendary.

  He looked down at the man with the loudhailer.

  “I think so, Lieutenant.”

  “Do it, Private. Show him the French brand of propaganda.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Chevaux, a half French half Vietnamese native of Saigon, lay down behind a low mound of earth and settled his rifle in a ‘V’ formed by two pieces of stone. He checked the wind, picking up a leaf from the ground and throwing it up in the air to check speed and direction. The other men watched, fascinated. It was a long shot, and impossible for most men, but Chevaux was not most men. His shooting sometimes seemed to be more inspired by magic than technique.

  Four hundred metres away, Min rambled on.

  “For those of you who wish merely to go home, we will provide first class flights back to your home country. You will receive a reward of five thousand dollars each to help you on your journey. All you need do is…”

  “I’m ready,” Chevaux said quietly.

  “Do him,” Avril said.

  “To shoot your officers and…”

  ‘Crack!’ The bullet flew unerringly to its target. Min spun around, and the loudhailer crescendoed with furious, whining feedback, and then was shut off. The Viets milled around him, and two soldiers rushed across with a stretcher and loaded him onto it, carrying him off into the jungle. The rest of the guerrillas could be seen angrily gesturing up to the hilltop.

  “A shoulder wound, I’m afraid,” Chevaux apologised.

  “But it shut him up, Private Chevaux. Well done, a magnificent shot. I owe you a bottle of Scotch when we get back to Hanoi.”

  The soldiers nearby looked at their lieutenant glumly. There were more angry shouts and commands from below. The Viet Minh were anxious to avenge the wounding of their Commissar. The odds against the French were formidable. No one needed to say, ‘if we get back to Hanoi’.

  “They’re coming, Sir,” shouted a soldier.

  From below them the shouts became battle cries, “Tien-Le!”, ‘Forward!’ as the Viet Minh began a desperate charge up the hill. Rifle and machine gun fire whizzed all around the French troops. The Viet Minh were blazing away with rifles and submachine guns as they ran at the vastly outnumbered French position.

  “Single shots, men, single shots, and make them count. Take cover and open fire!”

  Avril checked around him. His lookouts at the rear were watching sharply for an enemy assault from behind. He ducked down and fired.

  The French poured a withering fire down on the attackers. Precise aimed shots sliced into the Vietnamese guerrillas, sending scores of them tumbling to the ground, killed or wounded. But there were too many. For every man that fell, another two took his place, charging forward yelling savagely and manically forcing their way forward to kill the hated French invaders. Avril heard a click as a nearby man ran out of ammunition, and his firing pin fell on an empty chamber.

  “Grenades, throw the grenades,” he shouted.

  Eleven soldiers stood, each holding one of their last precious grenades, pins pulled. They flung them into the advancing horde, but two of the grenade throwers were thrown back by Viet bullets. Explosions and screams added an unearthly harmony to the savage din of battle. Body parts spiralled into to the air and smoke billowed. The wounded screamed their last, but still they came.

  “Fix bayonets!” Avril shouted.

  His men snatched out the sharpened bayonets and clicked them to their rifles. The first of the Viet Minh hurtled over the lip of the hill and flung themselves on the French soldiers. Several men fired, and others skewered the Viets with the bayonets. The situation was desperate.

  “Form around me!” Avril shouted.

  The survivors rushed to gather around him in a tight, defensive circle. Bullets smacked sickeningly into flesh as the Viet Minh shot indiscriminately at the tightly packed group of French survivors. Then they charged into them. Avril holstered his pistol, snatched up a rifle and stabbed an oncoming guerrilla with the bayonet. The man screamed and went down, his guts spilling out onto the hilltop as the bayonet ripped his stomach apart.

  Avril got his pistol out and checked the chamber. Two bullets! He would need one for himself, rather than be taken alive and suffer the tortured hell the Viet Minh meted out to their French prisoners.

  Suddenly, there was a lull in the fighting. The Viet Minh paused, startled by something he couldn’t see. Avril was astonished. Why didn’t they
finish it? Then an eerie cry rang across the hilltop.

  “Deutschland!”

  A German cry, out of place in this French colony of Vietnam, and then more cries.

  “Vive la France, Allah Akbar!”

  The shouts became louder and overlapped each other, so that he couldn’t make out who was shouting what. Then a group of men charged across the top. They had come from the side of the hill away from the fighting. They were all shooting fast short, accurate bursts from the submachine guns they all carried. Mostly German MP40’s, he noted with bemusement. Quick sharp commands were spat out in a mixture of French and German, and two machine gun squads deployed on the hilltop. Instantly, the guns began firing more German weapons; the heavy, menacing, deep repetitive burst of the MG34’s flinging the Viet Minh attackers to the ground in a bloody, mangled ruin.

  They were legionnaires, he noted, French Foreign Legion. The Legion had a reputation in Vietnam as brave, hard fighting men. So much so, that they were often sent into the thickest part of the battle, and the most dangerous missions that chewed normal men up and spat them out.

  But these were in a different league from any legionnaires Avril had seen before. They moved and fought with precision, commands obeyed instantly, men rushed forward, fired and dropped to reload. Their comrades rushed up behind them giving covering fire; it was magnificent. They were no more than about a half company, perhaps fifty men.

  Hundreds of Viet Minh still milled around the hilltop, but they were already defeated. The new arrivals rushed at them, tearing into them with the machine-like precision that was awe-inspiring. The Viets turned and ran. Instantly, the Legion sergeant in charge barked an order. Eight men rushed forward and unslung their rifles as they ran. They reached the edge of the hilltop and began pouring their accurate rifle fire on the retreating men. Many fell. Some managed to reach the cover of the jungle and ran out of the deadly hail of rifle fire. Others crawled forward, wounded, trying to follow their comrades. One by one, they were dispatched by the riflemen, and silence descended on the hill.