by Eric Meyer
“There’s debris scattered halfway along the tarmac, it covers the whole width of the runway, we can’t avoid it. We’ll shred our tyres if we try and go over it.”
“Could you clear it by hand?” I asked him.
As I said it, another mortar shell struck the grass strip, hurling up earth mixed in with a hail of metal fragments.
He looked thoughtful. “It’ll only take a few minutes, but I’ll be out there without any cover.”
“It’s the only way, Paul. I’ll taxi up there and try to take the Viets’ minds off you while you’re doing it.”
He nodded and I opened the throttles, released the brakes and began taxiing towards the debris. Then I swung the aircraft off the tarmac onto the grass strip, if any mortar shells landed the soft earth would absorb the worst of the blast and resultant shrapnel. I slowed to let him jump down to the tarmac, and then I opened the throttles and headed towards the Viet Cong, who by now were moving steadily across the airfield, putting the aircraft between them and Paul.
They’d lost interest in us for a few moments but when they heard and then saw the aircraft taxiing towards them at speed they transferred their fire towards us. I felt the impact of bullets striking the fuselage, ducked as a round went straight through the windscreen leaving it shattered, a gaping hole in the front of the cockpit. Then I swung the aircraft right around and began heading back, there was no percentage in being killed by charging them head on with an unarmed plane. Paul had finished clearing the debris and I slowed to let him jump aboard, then throttled up to once again head back to our start position at the end of the tarmac. He came into the cockpit and sat down.
“Verdammt, Jurgen, I thought you were doing the Charge of the Light Brigade there,” he laughed.
“That’s a thought,” I grunted as I swung off the grass and onto the runway, then turned a full circle to get ready to take off. We looked at each other. Paul grinned. “Let’s go for it, Jurgen. We need to get out of here fast.”
I throttled up both engines to full, let off the brakes and we surged forward. A volley of machine gun fire ripped over the roof of the cabin, I stared ahead and could make out the shape of a medium machine gun manned by two men, set up on the side of the runway. Their intention was obvious, to destroy our aircraft. I turned to Schuster. “The M2s in the locker on the bulkhead, they’re loaded and ready to fire. They’ve thoughtfully provided us with a firing port, perhaps now would be a good time to use one of them.”
“Good idea, at least I can try to spoil their aim.”
I hoped he’d do more than that. Paul Schuster was a veteran of the Russian Front and the French Indochina War here in Vietnam. Even now he was as muscular, tough and hard as I could ever remember him, almost six feet tall with cropped blonde hair and piercing clear blue eyes that were as sharp as the day his unit crossed the border into Poland.
He’d survived innumerable firefights and one of the skills that had helped him survive was the ability to shoot accurately, especially when under enemy fire. He got up, took down the rifle and expertly checked the clip. He quickly grabbed three spare clips that were in a bag hanging next to the gun, and then pushed it through the cockpit window. We were getting near the Viet machine gun position and a burst of fire hit us, this time going low, I guessed they were aiming for the tyres but instead they hit the belly of the aircraft. God only knew what damage they were doing but if we survived this there’d be plenty of time to repair it.
We were still seconds away from reaching take off speed, Paul still hadn’t fired and I could clearly see the faces of the machine gunners. Again the starboard engine faltered, I leaned forward to work the throttle to try and encourage the engine to run smoothly again and steered to port to correct the swing as the port engine tried to push us off the tarmac, at the same time another burst of fire hit the aircraft. This time their aim was slightly better, a burst hit the cockpit, putting holes in the metal skin and punching through into the cabin behind. Their aim was getting better as we got nearer, I didn’t think we’d survive another one. Then the starboard engine picked up and I corrected our course once again. Paul still hadn’t fired and I called out to him, “What’s going on out there?”
“Two seconds, Jurgen, I’m almost on them.”
I held us on course and kept my eye on our speed, and then three things happened at once. His M2 fired, a long burst that emptied the clip, the two machine gunners were flung to the ground as the hail of fire smashed into them and I reached take-off speed, hauled on the column and we were airborne. We were heavily loaded and I retracted the wheels immediately and kept the aircraft in a long, slow ascent, refusing to sacrifice speed for height. We barely cleared the trees as we flew over the jungle a half mile from the airport, but it was the only way. Too steep a take-off meant we would have been a high, slow moving target, a sitting duck for any enemy guns that decided to take an interest in us. But no more enemy fire hit us and we were airborne.
Paul removed his assault rifle from the window and went aft to find something to block the shattered window. Once we reached cruising altitude it would be a problem with the icy slipstream blasting into the cockpit. He came back with an old army blanket and stuffed it in the hole, the airflow hitting us from the outside stopped and he sat down in the co-pilot’s seat.
“Good shooting,” I smiled at him.
“Good enough,” he grunted. “I thought I’d really have time for just one clip so I had to be sure. There wouldn’t have been enough time reload, it all happened so fast. If I’d needed to change clips it may have been a different story.”
He looked across at the top of my seat and his eyes widened. “Jurgen, that last burst, did you lean forward as they fired?”
I said I had.
“Behind your head there’s a bullet hole right through the seat, exactly where your head is.”
“I had to adjust the starboard engine, it was faltering again.”
“It’s just as well.”
I felt an icy sensation in my stomach. How many times in my turbulent life across the world’s battlefields had I come that close to death? More than a few.
“Paul, when we get back to Tan Son Nhat don’t tell my wife it was that hairy, will you.”
He grinned. “You’re more afraid of her than the Viet Cong.”
“Too right.”
We flew steadily south, the starboard engine didn’t give any more trouble, I tuned the radio into AFN, the American Forces Network station playing The Locomotion, sung by an American known as Little Eva. Not quite the cultured classical pieces I remembered from the many fine orchestras of my homeland, at least when I was last there more than twenty years ago. But this music was modern, young and alive, a world away from the doom laden arias of Hitler’s favourite, Richard Wagner. It was the music of optimism, besides, Adolf was dead, Wagner was dead and Little Eva was alive and singing her songs. Several hours later we were approaching our home airport. When I called for landing clearance the familiar voice of Nguyen Cam Le, the air traffic controller at Tan Son Nhat sounded in my headphones.
“SGN-SS1 this is Tan Son Nhat, you’re cleared for immediate landing, winds south easterly, speed ten knots and the sun is shining as usual on our beautiful city.”
I smiled at his cheery voice. “Thank you Le, I’ll buy you a beer when I see you.”
“You always say that, Herr Hoffman, I calculate you owe me at least twenty by now.”
“I’ll pay you when the war’s over, Le.”
“You mean after we’re all dead?” he chuckled. “Tan Son Nhat out.”
It was good to hear the familiar joking voice of the friendly Vietnamese in the control tower. We went straight down onto the tarmac and taxied over to our hangar where we supervised the unloading of our cargo. I left Paul to talk to our ground engineer Johann Drexler, another Waffen-SS and French Foreign Legion veteran, about repairing the damage to the C-47. Feeling battered and exhausted, as if I’d used up one of the few remaining lives left to me, I went
home.
My bungalow lay just outside the perimeter of Tan Son Nhat Airfield, its surface pockmarked with the patches that covered the shell holes from the mortar rounds that struck regularly. I often wondered if we should move further away from the danger zone, but our home was convenient to our hangar. Besides, was anywhere really safe here in Vietnam? I smiled as the tempting fragrances of Helene’s French cooking came out to meet me. In this ramshackle, broken, crazy dumpster of a country of Vietnam that we called home, I sometimes thought that without her none of it would be worth it. She rushed out to hug me, as passionate now as the day when we first decided that we were made for each other, flung together in a dank, jungle clearing whilst fleeing an avenging horde of Viet Minh savages. She was just as beautiful as she was then, more than ten years had passed but not one day slipped by without me counting my blessings for having met this girl. I hugged her to me and felt myself becoming erect, she could drive a man wild almost with a look, even now when she was in her mid-thirties. She felt me against her body and smiled.
“No, Jurgen, down boy, you’re a typical soldier, back from a mission there’s always one thing on your mind. Dinner first, my love, get yourself washed.”
Despite Helene’s charms, I felt distracted, we’d been having a few problems with the starboard engine on our C-47, the aircraft that was our main source of revenue. If the engine had failed completely on the last run we could have lost the aircraft to enemy action.
The Douglas C-47 Skytrain, also known as the Dakota, was built as a military transport aircraft developed from the DC-3 airliner. It had a reinforced fuselage floor and the addition of a large cargo door to allow for the loading and transport of quantities of military supplies. Used extensively by the Allies during World War II it had remained in front line operations through the 1950s. The Skytrain was at one time the standard transport aircraft of the US Army. Since they began to replace them with other, larger transport aircraft, many of them appeared on the surplus market, where we had picked up our own aircraft at a knock-down price.
The phone rang and I held Helene to me while I answered it. It was Drexler, he’d already taken a preliminary look at the starboard Wright Cyclone GR-1820 engine and suspected a faulty centrifugal supercharger. Paul Schuster was on his way into Saigon to buy a replacement unit that Johann understood from his contacts could be found in an engineer’s shop in the city. Probably stolen from the US military, I reflected, but that wasn’t my problem. I turned my attention back to Helene, kissed her again and detached myself to take a shower. Newly changed into clean cotton trousers and bush shirt, I went to check out my dinner, but in the lounge two guys were sitting waiting, sipping cold drinks, I hadn’t heard them come in.
“Jurgen, these two gentlemen have called to see you, I’ll leave you to it.”
I nodded my thanks, she was a soldier’s woman, and knew when my clients would require privacy. I looked at them, they were as different from each other as chalk from cheese, a soldier with the insignia of a lieutenant colonel and a civilian. The civilian’s clothes gave away his occupation as much as the soldier’s uniform gave away his own. The colonel was sitting almost to attention, alert and as ramrod straight as it was possible to be on our old couch. His name badge said Goldberg and I guessed his age at about forty. He could only be Special Forces, the unique units that the Americans had formed to come and train their South Vietnamese allies, and a glance at the green beret he was holding under his arm confirmed it.
Disliked by the army brass, the green beret had been adopted from the style worn by the British Special Forces group, the Royal Marine Commandos. The military hierarchy had initially banned its use, but on visiting Fort Bragg, President Kennedy asked General Yarborough to encourage all of the Special Forces to wear their green berets to attend the event. Kennedy delivered a speech whereby he made the green beret “a mark of distinction in the trying times ahead”.
I had no doubt that Goldberg had earned his own ‘mark of distinction’. He looked fit and tough, about medium height, his jungle green uniform razor sharp, clean and neatly pressed, his hair cut so short as to make him almost bald. He carried a side arm in a holster on his belt, Vietnam was a war zone, of course. But I doubted the weapon was for show, he had a hard look in his eyes, the cold, calculating stare of someone who has seen much action and spilled a goodly amount of blood. A look I had seen often during my own career.
The civilian was wearing clothing so unsuitable for the climate, for the humidity and filth of Vietnam, that I briefly wondered why they had become almost a mandatory uniform for intelligence operatives. Beige chino trousers, pale blue button-down long sleeved cotton shirt and mid-brown Docksiders on his feet, the kind with a little tassel on the toe. He’d obviously left his bow tie and pipe at home, together with his tweed jacket. I could almost sense his discomfort at travelling without the outward trappings of his American WASP upbringing that would have taken him directly from Harvard or Princeton to a career in the corridors of Langley, Virginia. He may as well have been wearing a badge similar to his companion’s, but his would have said CIA.
“Gentlemen, what can I do for you? I see my wife has brought you cold drinks.”
The soldier looked straight at me and we shook hands. He came straight to the point. “Mr. Hoffman, it’s quite simple, we have a charter for you if you have an aircraft to spare.”
“That’s how I make my living, Colonel. If it’s just the two of you, I can have the Cessna 170B fuelled up and ready to go in the morning, where do you want to go?”
Our four-seat Cessna 170 was a light, single-engine, aircraft produced by the Cessna Aircraft Company in 1954. It had a metal fuselage and tail and fabric covered wings, and was fitted with a powerful 145 hp Continental engine and large fuel tanks. For simple jobs ferrying passengers or small loads around Vietnam it was the perfect workhorse, able to operate out of the smallest and roughest of the airstrips and it made the jungles of this hostile country a little more accessible.
“To Hue,” he replied, “Tay Loc. Is that a problem? Just the two of us, myself and Mr. Anderson here, not really much in the way of luggage.”
“That’s fine. Journey time is about three hours in the Cessna, she’s a four-seater so we won’t be fully loaded. When do you want to leave?”
“Is ten in the morning ok with you?”
“Fine, that’ll give me time to get back here the same day. I’ll see you at the airfield just before ten, the flight plan will be filed ready and the aircraft good to go.”
We discussed the price, when carrying military men I had a rule of thumb, think of a price and double it, but they just shrugged when I told them how much and Goldberg said it would be fine. Anderson suddenly took an interest in the conversation, he looked up and spoke to me.
“Do you ever miss Germany, Mr. Hoffman?”
The room suddenly felt as chill as his gaze. I could tell that Helene had been listening in the kitchen, she had stopped what she was doing when she heard his words.
“Why do you ask, Mr. Anderson?”
“You’ve got an interesting past, lots of rumours about you. You were in Russia during the war, I gather?”
It wasn’t really a question. What did he want?
“I was here in Vietnam too,” I replied. “I was a soldier in the French Foreign Legion. I am also a citizen of France, but I do not miss France any more than I miss Germany. Surely you’d know that, your people, wouldn’t you, Mr. Anderson?”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen your file, Hoffman.”
“So why do you ask?” I pressed him. “Do you have a problem with Germans?”
He smiled a superior, knowing smile. “No, of course not. Not all Germans were members of the, you know...”
“The SS, Mr. Anderson?”
“Something like that. Amazing, eh? One minute you’re all fanatical Nazis, the next minute half the country is commie. Which side were you on, Mr. Hoffman?”
“I can assure you I was not on the side that you
r agency is fighting a cold war against, Mr Anderson. The side that is supplying arms to their communist allies here in Vietnam. The side that I was fighting while you were still in kindergarten, my friend.”
His expression darkened and Goldberg jumped in before the conversation deteriorated further.
“Miles, we’re all allies now, you know that, Mr. Hoffman is a French citizen, so leave it alone. We’ll be at the airfield in the morning, Sir, see you then. Would you say goodbye to your charming wife for us? And wish her Happy New Year.”
“Yeah, do that, Herr Hoffman,” Anderson added, putting the accent on the ‘Herr’.
I smiled at them, “Of course, gentlemen, see you in the morning. Happy New Year to you.”
It was January the first, 1963.
So what the hell was wrong with Miles Anderson, CIA agent? The Second World War had ended eighteen years ago, yet some people seemed able to harbour a grudge for life. But he’d need watching, he was one of those people that naturally had to knock people down, perhaps to make himself look good. There was something else, too, something about Miles Anderson that was dark and hidden.
I told Helene I’d be going to Hue in the morning and then I telephoned Drexler and made sure he’d have the Cessna fuelled and ready to go. As I went to sleep that night, I thought more about the two men. One thing I’d learned about Vietnam, everyone had their own agenda and most were on the make too. And one other thing, of course, life was cheap here. Very cheap.
In the morning I said goodbye to Helene and walked out to the Hotchkiss jeep, Schuster had called in early to pick me up. The former Waffen-SS officer had stayed on in Vietnam when his enlistment in the Foreign Legion ended. We had both spent our termination pay on acquiring pilots’ licenses in the US, where it was cheap. Commercial and type approval licenses were not difficult to obtain in Vietnam, like most things here it was simply a matter of money changing hands. We drove the short distance to our hangar at Tan Son Nhat in our Hotchkiss, the French copy of the Willys jeep, open to allow the breeze to cool some of the sticky humidity, our clothes were already sticky with sweat.