Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  “If Comrade Giap is unhappy, Major Ba, perhaps he should look to the failure of the people to rise up against the capitalists, isn’t that what they predicted would happen? My men have played their part, and many have sacrificed their lives. Where is the people’s revolution that Hanoi assured us would occur?”

  They sat their frozen with shock, Vo Nguyen Giap was widely regarded as the military genius behind the communist successes in Vietnam. He had few critics, few that lived.

  “Do you wish me to inform the General that his plan was at fault, Comrade Phuc?”

  Phuc looked down at the table. He was a brave man, but not a suicidal one. “No, no, I did not mean that,” he added hastily. “But we all need to look into the failure of the people to rise up as was predicted. I’m sure there were many reasons, perhaps we were betrayed.”

  They all nodded, satisfied. Betrayal, a possible traitor in their midst, was always a face saving way to explain away military and political stupidity.

  “Perhaps you are right,” Ba said smoothly.

  Nguyen Cong Trong, as the local commander at Cu Chi, carried a heavy responsibility if this line of thought was to go much further. “I will investigate immediately, Comrades,” he said hastily, if a little louder than was necessary. The others noted his nervousness. “Be assured that if there is any traitor in Cu Chi, which I doubt, they will be found and executed immediately.”

  “Commissar, do you have anything to add?” Ba asked the fourth man there. Trinh Tan Binh, Viet Cong commissar, who was personally charged with ensuring the revolutionary enthusiasm of the guerrillas, and of course the civilians who so far had failed to rally to the red flag, stared back at him. Everyone present knew that in fact the whole plan was ill thought out, the idea that the civil population would take up the armed struggle on behalf of the government of the North, whose culture and customs they actively disliked, was absurd. But it would take a brave and foolhardy man to say it out loud.

  “The fight goes on, Comrade Ba, as you know. Even as we speak, our fighters continue to take the war to the enemy wherever they can be found in and around Saigon and in the countryside. We are still hopeful of victory.”

  It was a good answer, they were all old hands here, too experienced in political infighting to blurt out answers that were indiscreet or directly critical of Hanoi.

  “And what of Son? Why was he allowed to take part in the offensive, the General was quite clear, he was here to observe and learn, nothing more. And yet you let him take part in the assault?”

  Phuc drew breath. “I was aware of Comrade Giap’s orders, Major. As was Captain Nguyen Tang Son. Believe me, he took it entirely upon himself to lead an assault team into Cholon, it was just ill-luck that he was wounded. But he is an adult, the son of one of our most illustrious leaders. We can only order him so far.”

  Ba looked at all three of them in turn. The fools, Giap’s son, his illegitimate son at least, he should have been cocooned against any kind of direct enemy contact.

  “And what if he had been captured, what kind of a propaganda triumph would that have been for the enemy?”

  “But he wasn’t captured,” Phuc continued. “Despite his recklessness and disobeying orders, we took care of him and brought him back here. It was only bad luck that caused his injury, this is, after all, a war zone down here.”

  Ba noted the ‘down here’ reference, as if the North wasn’t bleeding itself dry of soldiers and resources to support the insurrection, as if it was the South that was making all of the sacrifices.

  “And where is the Captain now?”

  “In the infirmary, it’s about five hundred metres away along the East main communication tunnel, he is being looked after by the French doctor who patched him up when he was wounded. She obviously knew what she was doing so we brought her back with us, in view of the importance of Captain Son.”

  Well at least they got that right, Ba thought.

  “The General is aware of the French doctor that is treating his son. She is to be looked after, is that clear? Well looked after! Comrade Giap is taking a personal interest in this matter.”

  They were suddenly interested. Who was this woman, why the personal interest of the Commander of the People’s Army of Vietnam?

  “You will provide him with regular reports of his son’s welfare as well as that of the woman, is that clear?”

  They all nodded enthusiastically. Trong couldn’t help himself, who was this woman who was a prisoner in his tunnel system? What was the knowledge worth? He opened his mouth to ask Major Ba, but the officer held up his hand to stop him.

  “Don’t ask, it is a matter of state security. I advise you not to be curious in this matter, just make sure she is looked after. And that she doesn’t escape, of course.”

  The meeting broke up with the three leaders desperately curious about the French doctor in their midst.

  “Comrade Phuc, I take it you are joining your men for the next assault, is that correct?”

  The VC leader nodded. “Certainly, I shall travel back to Saigon as soon as night falls.”

  “Very well, I wish you luck on your next attack, Comrade Giap will be awaiting news of your breakthrough.”

  “Thank you, Major,” Phuc replied. He could do with a victory to present to Hanoi, but in the meantime, he would put in place some enquiries about the doctor. It could be useful insurance if he failed to satisfy their Northern masters.

  CHAPTER 3

  ‘I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.’

  Martin Luther King

  I hardly slept that night, I knew that there was little I could do to counter the ponderous bureaucracy of the military. In the morning they brought me lukewarm coffee and a stale sandwich for breakfast. Two soldiers came to the door of my cell, one of them cold and hard-faced, no doubt Cohen had spread the word that I was a Viet Cong sympathiser. The other was one I’d drank with on the odd occasion, Corporal Lec Wiecknicz, a Polish American and formidable chess player that I had shared a few games with. And lost.

  “Jurgen, how’s it going?” he asked.

  “It’s been better,” I smiled wryly.

  “I’ll bring my chessboard in later if you fancy a game.”

  “That’s ok, Lec, I’m aiming to be out of here before much longer.”

  “Good luck then, maybe we can get together another time.”

  “It’s a date.”

  The other soldier, a private, just grunted, confused that the so called ‘traitor’ was apparently a friendly. They both left and I was alone once more, with nothing to do but wait. It wasn’t a long wait, the communists decided to liven up the morning with a renewed mortar barrage.

  There was the familiar whistling sound, I threw myself to the floor just in time as the shell exploded next door to the guardroom where I was imprisoned. The whole building shook and there was a tremendous crash as part of the structure gave way. A machine gun started to chatter, then another. Voices were shouting, bellowing orders, cries of alarm and hurt and the distinctive sound of aircraft engines being hastily started up drowned out much of the noise of the conflict. More mortar shells struck the airfield, then the wind changed and I heard the familiar sound of communist battle cries, they were attacking again. There were continued bursts of AK-47 fire, the lighter, faster sound of Colt M16s giving reply. Grenade launchers added to the din, punctuated by the explosions of the mortars that kept up an incessant fire. The Americans would have gunships and fighters in the air by now, but using them in the cramped vicinity of the airfield would prove next to impossible. But even without the gunships the Viet Cong were outgunned and outnumbered as well as in possession of inferior military technology. The end was pre-ordained, yet still they pressed on with their attack. Another mo
rtar shell struck the guardhouse bringing down chunks of concrete on my head and all I could do was shelter in the lee of the wall, away from the worst risk of stray bullets and shell splinters. Then almost as soon as it had started the battle ended. The whole airfield was quiet, no aircraft took off or landed, no shots were fired, nothing exploded. Except for the General.

  “What the hell is going on here, Lieutenant? Who authorised this man to be put in here?”

  “Er, I did, kind of, Sir. My sergeant found enemy propaganda leaflets in his house.”

  General Westmoreland, MACV commander in Vietnam and overlord of the American military effort in South East Asia, looked through the bars at me.

  “Is this true, Mr Hoffman?”

  I nodded. “General, it’s true alright, but it’s not that simple.”

  I explained about the Viet Cong occupation of my house and the kidnap of my wife. He nodded and turned back to the hapless MP Lieutenant.

  “So you thought by arresting the husband it would do your job for you and bring back this kidnapped French doctor, is that right, Lieutenant Withers?”

  Westmoreland peered closely at the officer’s nametag, as if to imprint the name on his memory forever.

  “Er, no General, not exactly. The VC leaflets in the house...”

  “The house that the VC had occupied, correct? So if they take over this guardhouse and leave some of their stuff behind when we kick their butts out, you should be arrested as a traitor, is that it?”

  “No, General.” The hapless MP Officer froze, lost for any further reply. It was obvious what had happened, Cohen had persuaded him that I was a Nazi traitor working for the communists to cause me problems. I wondered what would happen to him when Withers realised how he had been used.

  “Release him, Lieutenant Withers,” Westmoreland said, very quietly.

  The MP rushed to find keys and opened my cell door allowing me to walk out. I thanked Westmoreland. He brushed it aside. “Hoffman, come with me.”

  I followed him, astonished that he was taking an interest in my case. Was it about Helene, I wondered? Then I remembered that he was senior military, the most senior. We reached his office and he sat behind his desk. I waited for the axe to fall, to find out what he wanted.

  “Hoffman, this insurgency is a lot worse than we realised, it looks as if the communists are going for broke, we’ve got our work cut out to stop them.”

  I went to answer, but he held up his hand. “No, it’s not that bad, we will stop them, but casualties are getting worse, the war of attrition that we have been fighting here is unpopular back home, if the casualty rate gets any higher public support for the war will plummet.”

  “Why are you telling me this, General?” I asked him.

  “You know about Cedar Falls, last year?”

  That stopped me for a moment, I now knew where he was heading with this. I remembered the massive operation to strike a decisive blow against the Viet Cong. Operation Cedar Falls was mainly conducted by U.S. forces. The aim was to eradicate the so-called Iron Triangle, the area located in close proximity to Saigon, which intelligence had reported had become a major stronghold of the communists.

  Operation Cedar Falls was reportedly the largest American ground operation of the Vietnam War. Two Army divisions, one infantry and one paratrooper brigade, as well as an armoured cavalry regiment participated in the operation. Altogether, Operation Cedar Falls involved thirty thousand U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. The Viet Cong, unfortunately, chose to evade this massive military force by either fleeing across the border to Cambodia or hiding in a complex system of underground tunnels. Nevertheless, the U.S. military uncovered and destroyed some of the tunnel complexes as well as some stockpiles of Viet Cong supplies. In the course of the operation, so-called tunnel rats were introduced for the first time to infiltrate Viet Cong tunnel systems. I shivered to think of the fight in that claustrophobic environment.

  I had overflown the area several times and seen the devastation. In an attempt to permanently destroy the Iron Triangle as a Viet Cong stronghold, Operation Cedar Falls also entailed the complete deportation of the region's civilian population to so-called New Life Villages, the destruction of their homes and the defoliation of whole areas of the countryside.

  From the air, much of it now looked like the surface of some alien planet, like the blurry black and white pictures of the First World War battlefields. The B-52s had done their work well, dropping vast bomb loads on the wild jungles to turn them into a pitted wasteland of craters and stunted vegetation. I also remembered the operation sixteen years ago when as a senior sergeant in the French Foreign Legion I had gone into the area with a small team of volunteers to rescue a wealthy French civilian, a banker, who had been captured by the Viet Minh during a fact finding tour of the area. What the Viets didn’t know at the time was that the banker was in fact a senior planner for the General Directorate for External Security, the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE. He was a spy, in Indochina to upgrade the French military and intelligence effort. If the Viets found out the truth, it would have meant an overwhelming intelligence disaster for the French. In the event, they met their disaster at Dien Bien Phu, but at the time devastating defeat in Northern Indochina was long in the future. I had led that operation into the area known nowadays as the Iron Triangle. I shuddered as I thought of that desperate bloody battle that ended up in a primitive tunnel system, crawling along narrow passages that could cave in at any time. Waiting every second for a hand or foot to touch a sharpened, poisoned stick. For an enemy knife or spear to strike from an unseen position. By a miracle we had found the DGSE man still alive, his true identity kept a secret. We fought a running battle to extricate him that ended with the deaths of half of my men. The air force flew round the clock ground missions, bombing and shooting everything that moved until eventually a battalion of paratroopers dropped in and covered our return to Saigon. It had been a close run thing, and that in a country that was supposedly pacified and friendly to France, for the main trouble spots were then in the North, closer to the Chinese border.

  It had been a lesson to me and one I always thought the French High Command should have learned, that they had severely underestimated the communist strength and determination. I wondered if the Americans would fare any better.

  “Of course I know about Cedar Falls, General. We could hear the B-52 bombing raids from here in Tan Son Nhat.”

  “You were there, not so long ago.”

  I had always assumed that the mission was kept a secret. “That’s confidential, General.”

  He shook his head. “Not any more, it isn’t. We’ve been pressing the DGSE for a release of their confidential files, they finally came through. When we searched for operations and personnel that concerned the Triangle, your name came up.”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry, but I’m still bound by the confidentiality agreement I signed when I discharged from the Legion.”

  “I respect that, Mr Hoffman. I’m not asking you to reveal any details of French operations.”

  “So what do you want, General?”

  “I want Dung Vo Phuc, the VC commander. These attacks around Saigon have hurt us badly, morale has been shaken and civilian confidence has plummeted. I want the head of the guy that is behind these current attacks.”

  “I believe that would be Vo Nguyen Giap, General.”

  He smiled. “Yeah, he’d do nicely, but short of invading North Vietnam it isn’t going to happen. Phuc is the Saigon Area Commander, he’s reportedly hiding out in the Cu Chi area at the moment. I want someone who knows the area and has experience of fighting in and around those tunnels to guide my people in, we’ll do the rest.”

  “And when you find him?”

  Westmoreland looked at me. It struck me that there were no aides in his office. Astonishingly the MACV supreme commander was talking to me alone. Clearly he didn’t want any record, any witnesses to this conversation.

  “He’ll
have to take his chances, he’s a criminal insurgent. If possible he’ll be brought here to stand trial.”

  Obviously, it was a search and kill mission. That was nothing new in Vietnam, both sides increasingly used assassination as a tool.

  “And what exactly do you want from me?”

  “Just to guide my party in.”

  In some respects, the mission could dovetail with my intention to look for my wife around the Cu Chi area, following the ARVN officer’s tip. The problem of course was that a quiet inquiry to find a kidnapped civilian would be blown apart by leading a party of Special Forces in to assassinate the local warlord. I explained this to Westmoreland. He nodded and pressed a button on his desktop.

  “Send in Captain Edwards.”

  An officer came into the room, I’d spoken to Edwards on occasion, he smiled a tight hello.

  “Captain, would you ask members of Team Zebra to come in here?”

  “Yes, Sir.” He left the office and we sat waiting. After a few minutes, the door opened again and a group of soldiers trooped in. They saluted the General and one of them turned to greet me, it was Abe Woltz, the Special Forces sergeant who had been on a mission that I had led into North Vietnam.

  “Jurgen, great to see you again.”

  We shook hands, he looked good, fit and confident. But was in civilian clothes.

  “You’ve left the army?”

  “Sure have, I’m a civilian now.”

  “Company job, eh, Abe?”

  He shrugged. “Something like that.”

  Then I recognised Aaron Goldberg, the Special Forces colonel who had gone into North Vietnam on an undercover mission. The mission went badly wrong and I had flown an aircraft in to get him out, an operation that grew into a messy and costly engagement. He came over and shook hands. “Hoffman, good to see you.”

  “Colonel, you’re looking well.”

  “Gentlemen, if I could have your attention,” Westmoreland called out. “Mr Hoffman, these people will be going on this mission, as well as some others that you may have met before. I wanted to reassure you that the men chosen would be the best.”