by Eric Meyer
“No,” I replied quietly. “I am not.”
“Very well. We’re understood. You have more than three weeks before the mission begins, so use it to thoroughly acquaint your men with every aspect of the mission. I will have the orders sent to you later today. You’ll also have every map and piece of intelligence we have delivered to you with the orders. Take a look at it, and report back to me by the end of the day. And Jurgen,” he added.
“Sir?”
“I want you and your men confined to the barracks until you leave for the mission.”
I started to protest, but he held up his hand.
“Jurgen, it’s no good. That comes from the very highest authority.”
“You mean General de Lattre?” I asked him.
“I mean the President, Vincent Auriol, President of France. He’s taken a personal interest in this affair, and it is at his insistence that security must be totally watertight.”
“Yes, Sir.” We exchanged salutes, and I left to tell the men.
The news was an instant success, and they let out a great cheer. At last we were being let loose to do what we did best. A hard-hitting strike force, partisan hunters, elite troops to hit the enemy where they least expected it. Those were our roles in the SS, and that was our new assignment.
The news about being confined to base didn’t go down so well.
“You cannot be serious,” Karl-Heinz said incredulously.
“I’m afraid so. Orders from the top, the very top!”
We’d been fighting the Viet Minh incursion all night. I had a drink with the men, and while we were swapping our stories of the night’s activities, the messenger brought in a despatch. I opened the slip and read through it. The men watched me intently as I looked up.
“They’re sending us all the maps and reports we need later this morning. We’ll assemble here at two after we’ve had some lunch. We can make final decisions about the mission and choices on the men we’ll take with us. A maximum of twelve, so think carefully. They’re all good men, but we’ll want the best of the best, the experts. I’ll see you all later.”
As I left the canteen, I noticed Mai St Martin and Thien van Hoc sat at a side table talking animatedly, Vogelmann and von Kessler’s girlfriends. I cursed for not noticing them before, and they should not have been present while we were talking about our future mission. I resolved to speak to the two men later.
I left them enjoying a celebratory drink, found my bed and within minutes was asleep. By half midday I was being shaken awake by a corporal from Intelligence, with a satchel of maps and debriefing reports. I reluctantly got up, dressed and then spread everything out on the floor, checking the maps. It could be done, yes, but even with the massive support we were being given, it was still a huge risk. We’d all taken risks before, and we hadn’t signed on in the SS or the Legion to carry out desk jobs. Taking risks was our trade. I knew, however, that this was more than just a risk. It was striking a blow against the very foundations of a rebel government, and itself supported by the huge resources of both China and Russia.
We could do it, if all went well. But that was the burning question. If!
* * * * *
CHAPTER FIVE
We spent the following week preparing for the mission. Each day I took the men out into the jungle for hours of hard, physical endurance training. Petrov managed to blow up several ancient trees, bringing down what had taken probably five hundred years to grow in just a few seconds, but it was good practice for the real thing. Armand set up a variety of targets and practiced his sharpshooting, accurately putting round after round into the bull’s eye. I made the others run fully laden along the jungle trails, forcing the pace until they literally fell over gasping for breath. In the evenings, our muscles reminded us of the agony we’d gone through that day. We pored over maps and plans of the operational area, fine-tuning every detail of the mission until we could recite it in our sleep.
Finally, we were ready to go. I had stuck to the idea of a twelve-man unit, enough to hit hard, but not so many as to invite discovery by the Viets. Seven of us were former Waffen-SS, and that was no coincidence. The experience of the Eastern Front had been won in blood, and no amount of training could substitute for the real hell of those dark times. To survive the Eastern Front, you had to become a unique survivor, staying alive in the midst of fierce firefights against overwhelming odds, when you were under attack from thousands of savage Russians anxious to wipe out every German from the face of the earth. You had to possess a rare mix of skills. Those were the kind of skills we would need to come back from this mission alive.
Apart from the former SS men, we had Private Armand, perhaps the most skilled sniper I’d ever encountered, and I had encountered many on the Eastern Front where the Russians made sniping almost a national pastime. Sergeant Petrov, the Ukrainian, was our unit demolitions expert. We also had with us Corporal Bruno Dubois, which was most definitely not his real name. He was a Muslim from Casablanca who had used his knife once too many times on business rivals in his native country. Probably as a result of his numerous smuggling operations, he was an expert with almost every weapon we possessed in the Legion armoury, as well as being a nasty fighter. There were also two other Arabs, Algerians, Privates Laurent and Renaud. Like Corporal Dubois, they were both vicious killers.
I felt as confident as I could be that we were going into this operation with the best possible chance of getting back out. None of my unit was French, a deliberate decision. I had no place for men who might hesitate for a second whilst considering French sensibilities. That also meant no officers, for all our officers were, of course, French. That suited me fine. I needed brutal killers, not latter day Napoleons.
Before we began, the mission almost ended. Our high command in Paris had received orders from the Americans, who seemed to know every move the French made in Indochina almost before it happened. For whatever reason, they expressly forbade the French Navy to carry troops bound on an assassination mission. Apparently, that kind of operation fell ‘outside of the US constitution’. The Americans were supplying us with large quantities of logistical support, everything from infantry rifles to fighter aircraft. In return, they tapped into virtually all the intelligence from our civilian and military agencies, building a future store of information for use in their own projected anti-communist operations.
It normally caused us few problems, but the Americans could be notoriously sensitive where certain matters were concerned. Our operation fell into this category. I suspected at the time that their policy was more of a ‘clean hands’ policy than any real difference of opinion. After all, they’d forbidden our unit being transported in French warships in the Gulf of Tonkin. There was no mention of other means of transport.
I spoke to Colonel Joffre about the problem.
“The thing is, Sergeant Hoffman, we have to be very careful now that the Americans are aware of what we’re doing. Frankly, General Lattre is considering calling the whole thing off.”
“That would be a shame, Sir, just because of a minor difficulty with transportation.”
He smiled. “The problems are anything but minor, I’m afraid. I sometimes think that politics will be the end of us here in Vietnam. Do you have any suggestions? An airdrop, perhaps?”
“No, Sir,” I replied. “Too noisy, and too many chances of things going wrong. We need to travel overland, avoiding the main routes. If necessary, we’ll walk all the way.”
“I see,” Joffre said thoughtfully. “You really want to do this, Jurgen, you want to nail that bastard Giap.”
“I’ve got nothing against him, personally, Sir,” I told him. “But I honestly believe we need to hit the enemy hard, where it hurts. Carry the fight to them. It could shorten the war, and certainly save a lot of French lives. Giap is their main military planner. Some say he’s a genius. I’m not too sure about that, but if we kill him, they could well think seriously about prolonging the war.”
“I agree. Supposin
g we mount a search and destroy mission to the north west of Hanoi? At some stage, your unit drops off and goes in a different direction. How would that be? Nothing on paper, of course.”
We both smiled.
As we loaded, I noticed Mai St Martin and Thien van Hoc watching again. They saw me look at them. Mai spoke quickly to Thien, and they walked away. I’d still not mentioned my worries about them to the men, but it would have to wait, it was too late now. When we got back, if we got back, I decided to talk it over with Joffre. We needed a serious look into the backgrounds of those ladies. Then I put it out of my mind as we left our Hanoi barracks, part of a larger, battalion-strength column.
A total of six hundred and fifty men, the whole of the Second Battalion, 13th Half Brigade, packed into a long line of trucks heading north west; the opposite direction from Cao Bang which lay to the north east near the Chinese border. Ten kilometres out from Hanoi, one lorry at the back of the column abruptly left the main highway and began to head north east. We were on the way!
Our first destination was Thai Nguyen; from where we intended to abandon the vehicle and head out along a series of little known game trails, pointing in the direction of Cao Bang. Like most of the north east of Indochina this area was in Viet Minh hands. We were very alert to the possibility of enemy ambush. The Viets tended to come out at night, avoiding the daylight as much as possible with the risk of French air strikes. Our plan was to travel the hundred kilometres to Thai Nguyen during daylight and as fast as possible. Several kilometres before the town, we would abandon the lorry and move into the jungle. Corporal Dubois was driving, his foot pressed hard on the accelerator pedal as if he was reliving his old smuggling days in the back streets of Casablanca.
Speed was necessary; this journey carried a high risk, and the faster he drove, the harder our vehicle would be to hit. Every man was watching carefully through the canvas canopy of the lorry. We were thirty kilometres from Thai Nguyen when we hit the first trouble.
We rounded a bend and came upon a group of twelve Viet Minh clustered around an upturned cart. Bullocks pulled the cart, and the two animals had been released and were grazing quietly at the side of the road. Ten of the Viets were unloading crates from the cart, and two more, presumably their officers, were standing nearby. They turned as we swept into sight, astonished at the presence of a French military lorry this far into communist held territory. We had only one chance and that was to eliminate them immediately. If only one escaped, they would begin hunting for us, which could end any chance of our mission succeeding. I had no need to give orders, and the ten troopers travelling in the back opened fire with an assortment of weapons. Von Kessler had brought along an old British Bren gun, and I heard the stutter of its short bursts first. Then I heard the rest of the unit’s weapons begin firing. It was an amazing assortment of ordnance. Bauer, Schuster and Vogelmann had their Soviet made PPShs. Corporal Dubois had an American Thompson gun, making him look like the gangster he had once been. The rest had infantry rifles, the most effective of which was Armand’s, each crack almost certainly finding its target. A Viet officer did his best to unsnap a grenade from his belt, but before he could even pull the pin to throw it at us, Armand hit him squarely in the chest, sending him spinning to the dust.
We were lucky that time, and within less than a minute, the dozen Viets were all down, not one had managed to get a shot off. We dismounted and searched the area. There were no more enemy troops to be found, and no evidence that there had been any others to escape and sound the alarm. I heard a shout from one of the men. It was Dubois. He was crouched near the enemy corpses.
“Sergeant, this one’s alive. He doesn’t look like a Viet to me.”
I hurried over. The man had taken at least two bullets to the stomach. He was bleeding badly, and his face screwed up in pain. He was babbling, but not in French, or anything that resembled one of the local dialects. But it sounded familiar.
“Have you checked his papers, Corporal?”
“Yes, Sir, every pocket. No documents, nothing.”
I smiled. True to his Arab roots, Bruno Dubois would not fail to check an enemy corpse for loot. Well, they wouldn’t need it anymore, so why not? Petrov wandered up, looking dispassionately at the wounded man who was obviously dying.
“He’s speaking Chinese, Jurgen.”
“Chinese! Are you sure?”
“Definitely. It’s a mangled dialect, but I’m certain. He looks Chinese, and one of the advisors that Mao is sending over to Indochina these days.”
“Shit.”
This mission had been hampered by politics even before it got off of the ground. First the American refusal to allow the Navy to transport us, and now we had a Chinese national, fallen victim to our gunfire. The implications were not good. Even though he was helping our enemy, there were no overt, declared hostilities with China. The Chinese victim of a Foreign Legion shooting would hand the communist press a real propaganda victory.
“Petrov, I want him to disappear,” I said to the Ukrainian. He smiled.
“Into little pieces, Jurgen?”
“Exactly.”
“I shall turn him into mouse droppings. That should make identification a problem for his Chinese friends.”
Petrov began to drag the body away into the trees. Ten minutes later he strolled out nonchalantly, and we heard a loud explosion. It was time to move. The Viets would most likely assume that their Chinese advisor had been taken prisoner. They could ask for him back, and Hanoi would say quite honestly that they hadn’t a clue what they were talking about. It was time to move on. We boarded the lorry, and Dubois revved the engine, put it into gear and let out the clutch, sending us surging forward. We were more alert than ever. The Viets clearly thought they could freely move around in this area, and there could well be more of them along this road.
We met no more Viets before we stopped ten kilometres out from Thai Nguyen. It was as close to the enemy-held town as we dared to go. After we climbed down and unloaded our supplies, Dubois drove the vehicle hard into a dense area of jungle. Four of the troopers followed it in and hacked down foliage and vines, weaving them around the lorry that was barely visible anyway. By the time they’d finished, it was impossible to see where it had been driven in. With any luck, it would be several weeks, or even months, before it was discovered. Petrov clambered through the foliage with his pack of charges, and when he came back, he reported to me.
“The next Viet that goes near that lorry will be the last, Jurgen. I’ve packed enough explosives to blow them to kingdom come, and destroy the engine and gearbox at the same time. It’s all connected to trip wires, so if anyone has left anything behind, it would be best if they forgot about it.”
“Well done, Nikolai. Ok, men, lets move out,” I shouted.
We marched into the dense jungle, following a tiny game trail that was marked on one of our old maps. I was slightly worried. It was not as overgrown as it should have been, so I made certain we had two men at the point and two bringing up our rear, just in case. We made good time, and within three hours we had covered almost ten kilometres. Then we came upon the village.
Our point men, Armand and Renaud, came running back down the path.
“It’s a small village, Sergeant, about ten or twelve huts, maybe one and a half kilometres up the path. It looks as if it’s been taken over by a small Viet Minh unit. We can see eight of them altogether.”
“What state are they in? Do you think they heard us?”
“No, they’re sitting around listening to one of their people giving a speech, a commissar or an officer probably. No sign of any lookouts, so they’re probably not expecting any enemy in such a remote part of the country.”
“Very well, go back and keep an eye on them, but stay undercover. We’ll have to take them. There’s no other way past this village that I can see. It could take us days to cut through the jungle.”
They jogged back up the path while I gathered the men around me. I described the w
ay we would attack the village.
“The most important thing to remember is that our mission takes priority. That means no one is to escape and alert the enemy that we’re coming. The scrap we had back on the road will be written off to a mobile patrol, or even and air attack. But this is different because the trail leads in only one direction.”
I sent the machine gun crews to get in position on each flank of the village. The rest of us prepared with our submachine guns and grenades. We dumped our heavy packs behind a tree and moved off.
The Viet officer was still talking, but screaming would better describe his technique. Whether he was admonishing them for some failure, or whipping them up into a fury to go and fight the enemy, I couldn’t be sure. Neither did I care. I was here to kill him, not to listen to him. I looked around. Armand had climbed a tree and was waiting patiently with his rifle. I couldn’t see Renaud, but assumed he was similarly ready. Schuster told me that the machine gun crews had reported in ready. I waited for a few minutes, but no other Viets showed themselves, neither were there any civilians in sight. It was not unusual for the communists to kill all the villagers if they didn’t get instant obedience when they took over.
I took a final look around and cocked my submachine gun, a German MP38. I took aim at the group of men, but they were too far away for precision shooting, so I selected ‘auto’ with the selector and held the trigger down. Almost before the first couple of bullets had left the barrel, the others opened up. Within seconds, hundreds of rounds hammered into the enemy group, knocking them down into bloody ruin, not even realising what had hit them. This was the form of warfare we had practised so many times on the Eastern Front, and where we learned to never let an enemy escape to start shooting back at you from behind cover. Like the French here in Indochina, we were heavily outnumbered in Russia. We simply had to kill the enemy in large numbers before they could overwhelm us with their superior numbers and ordnance. The MG 42s buzzed from the flanks. Armand and Renault fired shot after shot into the group. In less than a minute, I shouted to cease fire. With our ears ringing, we walked carefully into the village to check the bodies. They were all dead, eight more sacrifices to the glory of Father Ho.