by Eric Meyer
He shook his head in disbelief.
“Comrade Stalin saved a whole nation from defeat at the hands of your leader, Hitler. He was one of the greatest men who ever lived.”
I was intrigued to hear him defending Stalin. Giap was an educated man, very, very clever. He knew very well how evil Stalin had been, and certainly the equal of Hitler in bloodletting. Or did he?
I wondered just how much he did know, and how much was just the party line that he fed to poor peasants. The peasants who hoped that following the communists would give them freedom, land, food, a job, all the things that made people’s lives bearable the world over. All of the things that once they gained power the communists turned their backs on.
I told him what I’d seen in Russia, of Stalin’s NKVD and commissars ordering civilians to walk over minefields to clear the way for their troops. Of women and children shot for fleeing embattled cities, even when as civilians they were just trying to save their lives when Stalin had failed them. Of the Gulags, of the ‘Stalin Terror’ purges of the late 1930’s.
“Well, of course, some things are necessary. Revolution is a messy business, and sometimes it is necessary to lose a few lives in the process of building a new and great nation.” Giap said.
“Women, children, the old and sick, the wounded and disabled?” I said, appalled.
“Of course. They’re all part of the revolution, and no one has the right to stand idly by while someone fights for their freedom.”
“Freedom?” I laughed. “The people of Russia are anything but free. They’re just inmates in Stalin’s great prison camp. Or do you mean freedom for the members of the Politburo, for people like yourself?”
He looked angry, but I knew I’d hit a nerve. Giap was not used to arguing against someone who had seen the outside world, and had seen what communism had done to an entire nation, enslaved it, turning whole countries into police states.
“Before Stalin,” he retorted angrily, “the Russian peasant was just a slave of the landowner. Most spent their entire lives in total, abject poverty, fighting each day to just get enough to eat.”
I nodded. “You’re right. The Russian Tsars, the aristocracy, treated them like chattels, slaves to buy and sell, to spend their entire lives working for the benefit of the rich. But the communists were not the answer. They gave the peasants a few benefits, and some were able to get enough to eat, somewhere to live. Many did not, you know about the famines, the mass killings, and the forced emigrations? Sure, Russia was a hell for the peasants before the communists, but it’s still a hell. I know you won’t believe it, but I can assure you that many of them greeted the German armies with garlands of flowers when we invaded. They were happy to accept anything that would remove them from the enslavement of communism.”
“So why did they fight so hard to beat the Germans?” he asked.
“They fought for a lot of reasons, and because they were ordered to and threatened with being shot if they didn’t. And Hitler stupidly decreed that they should be treated as ‘untermensch’, sub-humans, so that they quickly learned to hate us. If we’d treated the Russians as allies, instead of killing and enslaving them, we could have beaten Stalin in a month.”
He was thoughtful after that. Obviously, he was already aware of the worst of Stalin’s excesses, and his murderous rule over the Soviet Union after the death of Lenin. But somehow, I thought he was still trying to fit this new knowledge of the war into his scheming, into his political philosophy, so that he could twist it to his advantage.
I left him then and went back to join the others. Corporal Dubois and Private Laurent were guarding Giap, and with orders to kill him if he made any attempt to escape. Helene was waiting for me.
“You’ve been talking to Giap?” she asked me.
“That’s right,” I replied.
“Did you get anything out of him?”
I suddenly realised she thought I’d been interrogating him, and probably torturing him. Women!
“I gagged him and then sliced all his fingers off, the way the Gestapo showed me. One at a time!”
Her eyes widened.
“My God, that is terrible, you’re, a …” she tried to think of the worst thing possible. “You’re an animal. You disgust me.”
I smiled and couldn’t resist laughing.
“What are you laughing about?” she asked.
Then realisation hit her.
“You’re pulling my leg! Jurgen, you swine,” she began laughing too. “I didn’t believe you, you know.”
“I’m not too sure about that,” I grinned. “For one moment, I thought you were about to have my men arrest me for war crimes.”
“I still might,” she pouted. “What are you going to do about him? Giap, I mean. How can you get him back to Hanoi when most of the Viet Minh are scouring the country for him?”
“I don’t know, Helene. You’re right. Getting him back would be impossible. At the start of the mission, we were getting help from the Navy. The plan was that they would send a helicopter to take him away, and we were to head for the coast and pick up a ride on a Naval destroyer.”
“So why can’t you do that?”
“Politics, my dear. Certain people wouldn’t allow it, and who knows what pressures were brought to bear? But the end result was that we were left on our own.”
“So what will you do with him?”
I didn’t answer.
We sat for a while longer, just enjoying each other’s company. Then we turned in to get a night’s sleep, away from the festering flies and insects of the swamp. I checked the sentry roster and lay down, promptly falling asleep. I woke quickly, grabbing for my pistol, but a finger was pushed against my lips.
“Schh,” Helene said.
She was crouched over me with a blanket wrapped around her. She crawled under my own blanket and pulled her own off. She was naked. I felt myself becoming aroused at the unusual and totally unexpected prospect of having a beautiful, naked young woman in bed with me in the midst of the Indochinese jungle, and with Ho Chi Minh’s hordes hunting us down like dogs. She kissed me, a long, lingering, passionate kiss that sent a tingle through my whole body.
“Don’t say anything, please, Jurgen. Just love me,” she whispered.
So I did. I caressed her body, kissed her all over, felt the warm, smooth curves, her delicious breasts, smelled the overpowering scent of woman on her, exaggerated by the long, hot day we had spent fleeing from the Viets. I felt between her legs, where she was already wet, and her body arching up inviting me to join her. I pulled down my trousers I always slept in when in the field, and already my organ was rock hard, ready to enter her. She pulled me towards her, and we made passionate love. Not only the hot sex of two souls thousands of miles from home and desperate for the warmth of human contact, but the most basic and primeval form of human contact. But I felt more, and I was sure that she did too. The sex was wonderful, although conducted in as muted and discrete a fashion as possible. The last thing we needed was for the whole camp to know that we had become lovers. I fell asleep again and was roughly awakened by the sentry. She had already gone back to her own bedroll.
It wasn’t quite dawn. The whole camp was coming to. I quickly pulled on my jacket and equipment, picked up my submachine gun and went to find Giap. Helene noticed my going, and I could tell by the way she looked, the fear and sadness in her eyes; she understood that her lover of the night before was about to become an executioner. I ignored her and approached Giap, still fastened to a tree out of sight of the camp and guarded by two of the men. I told them to leave and then spoke to Giap. He knew what was coming but, as far as I could tell, was not afraid.
“So, Sergeant. You have come to kill me?”
“Wouldn’t you, Giap, if you were in my place?”
“Probably, if it was necessary, yes, I would kill you. Or me, as it happens,” he acknowledged.
I got out my knife, a sharpened combat knife. For the first time, he showed fear but quickly
got himself under control. I reached behind him and cut his bonds, freeing his arms.
“I am releasing you, Comrade Giap, unharmed. You can go back to your people.”
He was stunned.
“Why?”
“Why not?” I said to him. “I’m a soldier, not an assassin. If the High Command wants you dead, they can come and do it themselves.”
“The SS were famous for killing their prisoners, were they not?” he said, perplexed.
“Some were, yes, but most of us didn’t kill prisoners. We didn’t treat them well either, but we weren’t murderers. We were German soldiers, and the best in the world, my friend, no more, no less. Now, get going before I change my mind.”
I gave him a bottle of water.
“That will have to be enough, I’m afraid.”
“So what was it all for, Sergeant? Why did you come on the mission in the first place?”
“I honestly don’t know,” I said, surprising myself in the realisation that I really didn’t know. “Perhaps it was like climbing a mountain, because it was there. Perhaps at the time it seemed the right thing to do.”
“Very well, Sergeant. It is ironic, is it not, that if you had arrived two days later, we would have taken you?”
I raised my eyebrows. “You think so?”
“Of course,” he smiled, “we were preparing a suitable welcome for you…” he trailed off.
“You were saying?” I said curtly.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Now I will leave.”
He held out his hand. “Until we meet again, Sergeant.”
I shook his hand. “If I meet you in battle, I’ll kill you.”
He smiled. “No doubt. I don’t suppose you would consider joining me? I could offer you a senior command.”
“Change sides? Absolutely not.”
He shrugged. “Then I wish you a safe journey back. Goodbye, Sergeant.”
He set out on the path back to Cao Bang, walking calmly away from me, a man who knew where his fate would lead him. I wondered what he’d meant by preparing a welcome for us. It seemed we had a traitor in Hanoi, and that was something to be investigated. I turned and went back to the men, who erupted when I told them what I’d done.
“Jurgen, for God’s sake, all this effort, for nothing. Why the hell did you do it?”
Karl-Heinz Vogelmann glared at me, his face red with anger. The rest of them were no happier. It was time to explain the tactical realities.
“Look men, here is the situation. As long as we had Giap, there would be upwards of ten thousand hostile Viet Minh hunting us down. There are twelve of us, and we still have a hundred and fifty kilometres to travel to get back to Hanoi. We’re in the middle of Viet held territory, so our only hope is to call off the hunt. How long do you think we would last with that many Viet Minh soldiers hunting us? Let alone the civilians, who would have been alerted to keep watch. Our own High Command has told us that they will not send in air support, or any other support, for fear of upsetting the Americans. Giap will be back with his people within hours, and you know how communications work in the jungle, that means the heat will be off. It was a simple choice, keep Giap, and we were looking at fighting off thousands of Viet Minh, an impossibility. There is no question we all would have died. I had to release him to give us a chance of getting back to Hanoi.”
“There was another choice, Jurgen.”
“Really,” I replied to Vogelmann, still red faced and angry. “What was that?”
“Kill him, finish the bastard off!”
I nodded.
“That was an option, of course, but two problems there, Karl-Heinz. Firstly, how would that take off the pressure of the Viet Minh searching for him, and eventually getting into a firefight with us that we couldn’t win?”
He was silent.
“The second problem is this. Who was going to kill him, who is the executioner, you, Karl-Heinz? Is that what you’re fighting for, to execute a brave man who has only ever done his duty? You want us to turn into an Einsatzgruppe?”
He looked way, embarrassed.
The Einsatzgruppen were our SS paramilitary death squads, and responsible for mass killings, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories in the countries overrun by the German armed forces. The Einsatzgruppen followed the German invasions of Poland, in September 1939, and later, of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Einsatzgruppen carried out operations ranging from the murder of a few people to those lasting over two or more days, such as the massacres at Babi Yar where 33,471 were killed in two days and Rumbula, where 25,000 died in two days.
The Einsatzgruppens were responsible for the murders of over a million people, and they were the first Nazi organisations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organised policy. Their activities sickened both Waffen-SS and regular army alike. Many of their members were recruited from occupied countries, Lithuania, the Ukraine and Latvia amongst others.
None of us had ever served in such a unit, but their methods were well known and despised by the rest of the army.
There was a visible relaxing of the tension as they realised that despite the impossible dilemma we had been in, we had not chosen to become outright murderers.
“Look, it was a good try, but I now realise that when the High Command refused any help, we were dead in the water. Maybe we shouldn’t have come, but it’s too late to worry about that now. Besides, the prisoners we released in that camp were worth the trip, as well as Helene and the villagers, so we’ve hit the Viets pretty hard. What we need to do is move away from this area. As soon as Giap is picked up, he’ll send them here to hunt for us. We’ll move south east, away from Hanoi, and cut back to the west when things have gone quiet.”
“How long do you estimate they’ll keep searching for us,” Bauer asked.
“I’d give them twelve hours maximum to locate Giap, Friedrich, and at least a couple of days before the search scales down, so we need to lay low for about three days. Let’s get going now. We’ll find somewhere to make camp and sit it out.”
“I’ll get them moving, then,” he replied.
He began giving orders, and the men picked up their weapons and packs ready to move out. Within minutes, we were once more picking our way through the jungle, but this time moving at a tangent from our original direction to throw off the enemy.
We travelled all day, twice stopping when we heard large numbers of Viet Minh troops moving nearby. It was obvious the search was still going on, as I expected. We would need to hide deep in the jungle to stay hidden. By the evening, we’d found the perfect place. Von Kessler had stopped to relieve himself, moving off the path to spare Helene’s blushes. He came back out grinning.
“Ok, you lot, I’ve found where can make camp. Come and take a look.”
We followed him through a narrow gap between two trees, almost invisible from the path. We found ourselves in a narrow tunnel, surrounded by thick foliage. This ran for three or four metres, opening up into a natural clearing with, of all things, a small stream running along one side.
“I’ve checked the water, and it’s fresh and clear, so no natives pissing in it upstream.”
“You’re right, Manfred. This will be perfect. We’ll make camp here for three days, and then we can get back on our return journey to Hanoi.”
I called over to Sergeant Schuster.
“Paul, take a couple of men and check the trail. Make sure that you cover our traces. It might be worth laying a false trail, about a kilometre or so past this place, in case the Viet trackers get onto us.”
“I’ll get right on it, Jurgen,” he said, calling to Nikolai Petrov and Private Armand.
Petrov, especially, was a master of disguise; a skill he’d perfected when laying his various charges and booby traps.
The rest of us threw off our packs, put down our weapons, and gratefully filled up our water bottles from the stream. The water was delicious, cold and clear, and there was inde
ed no sign of any ‘native piss’ in it. I posted sentries on the entrance to the clearing, and their orders were simple. Keep totally silent and report any movement nearby.
Then I went to find a good spot to rest. It had been a tense, hard day’s hike through the jungle, with the constant threat of Giap’s men hitting us with an ambush. Several of the men were covered in sores, and others had bites. I took off my jacket and shirt. My arms were covered in red blotches and jungle sores; a result of salt in my perspiration and bites from innumerable insects. Helene came up to me.
“Jurgen, that looks bad, allow me to fix you up.”
I waited gratefully while she delved into her pack and got out a tube of salve, which she began daubing over my skin. It was cool and soothing, even more so perhaps because of the beautiful young woman who was applying it. It was a very arousing experience. If she noticed the lump in my trousers, she tactfully avoided mentioning it. Finally, she applied some bandages to the worst affected places. It felt wonderful, and I thanked her.
“You’re welcome Jurgen, but I must leave you now. I need to check the other men. I’ll be back when I’ve finished.”
She moved off, and the men visibly brightened as she reached each of them and checked them over. It took her almost an hour to patch everyone up. She came back, and we shared some of the cold rations. There would be no more hot food until we got back into friendly territory. The smell of a fire would bring Viet Minh from miles around.
“Tell me, Jurgen,” she said, as we sat comfortably spooning down some sort of a stew out of tin cans. “Why didn’t you kill Giap?”
“I thought I made it clear. It wouldn’t have helped us. The Viets would have kept looking.”
“Would you have killed him, if they ordered you to?” she persisted.
“Those were my orders, in fact, to bring him back if possible, but to kill him if it wasn’t.”
“You disobeyed an order?” She was astonished.
“Of course. You thought I’d commit murder?”
“If you were ordered to, yes. I honestly thought you would. But I’m pleased you didn’t,” she added.