Devil's Guard- The Complete Series Box Set

by Eric Meyer

  She smiled wanly. “There’s always something to worry about, Jurgen. Just get back to us safely.”

  I said goodbye to her. We wouldn’t be back until the following morning, but I knew she wouldn’t sleep that night. We held each other for long moments, both of us reluctant to let the other go. Then we parted and I left the room and went downstairs. The hotel was deserted at this hour, even the night clerk was asleep. I stepped out, got into the Land Cruiser and drove to the airfield. The aircraft was already loaded, the two Special Forces men were already there, dressed in civilian clothes but the weapons they carried were anything but civilian.

  Robbins held an XM16E1, the modified version of the M16, his was fitted with a huge night vision scope. An assassin’s weapon, I reflected. Will Blaine had a short-barrelled Colt XM177, the carbine variant of the M16. Both were Special Forces assault rifles. They sported shoulder holsters with Ruger pistols and Blaine had a wickedly long fighting knife strapped to his leg. It was unfortunate that they had so armed themselves, if any Viet Cong observers saw them they were a walking billboard advertising the fact that they were embarking on an undercover mission.

  Paul saw me looking at them and understood my concerns immediately. “I know, they could have worn fluorescent vests printed ‘Special Forces’, but there’s nothing we can do about it now. The aircraft was loaded and fuelled up late last night, so hopefully there aren’t any Cong spies in the area.”

  Ritter climbed down from the cabin. “The pre-flight is complete and the tower has given us permission to taxi out to the runway, we’re all ready, Jurgen. Shall we leave?”

  I nodded at him and asked the two soldiers to board. Then I closed the cargo doors and Ritter started up. One by one, the four Pratt & Whitney R-2000 engines burst into life, he did a final check on the flaps, ailerons and rudder and then taxied slowly to the holding area. We didn’t have long to wait, a C-141 Starlifter was inline ahead of us, the four huge jet engines screamed and the giant cargo plane lumbered along the runway and took off. We got immediate clearance, Ritter opened up the throttles and we lifted off on the first leg of our journey.

  I had little to do, Paul was in the right hand seat so I went into the cabin to check on the two passengers. Robbins looked up. “Everything ok, Jurgen?”

  I nodded. “We’re all good, we’ll fly high to keep out of the small arms fire from the ground, we should be on the ground in Hue in three hours or so. Are your guys ready for us?”

  He nodded. “I contacted them on the radio before we left, they’ll be waiting.”

  “Right. Sergeant, a word about your weapons.”

  He looked me in the eye. “What’s the problem with our weapons?”

  “There’s no problem with the weapons themselves, but they’re unmistakably military. You might consider being a little more discreet with them while we’re on the ground if you want to keep your mission undercover.”

  He was about to make a sharp reply, but Blaine stopped him. “Ed, he does have a point. We do look a bit warlike, at least if we’re supposed to be on a mission to carry foodstuffs to starving natives.”

  He calmed down. “You’re right, we’ll leave the assault rifles in the aircraft while we’re loading and unloading on the ground. Thanks.”

  “No problem. How many men do we pick up in Hue?”

  “Ten of them,” Robbins answered. “They’ve been doing a bit of behind the lines work in Hue, bumping off a couple of their top people there. I know you don’t think it makes much difference, but I can tell you it sure put the frighteners on the gooks when they found their head commissar of whatever was dead.”

  I didn’t enjoy the use of the word ‘gook’ to describe Vietnamese natives, the Americans had used it before in Korea and before that in the Japanese war. But it was after all a theatre of war. They were entitled to be disparaging about their enemy, besides, I was the Nazi racist, not them, or so I was occasionally reminded.

  “I hope you’re right. Have you been to Khe Sanh before?”

  They both shook their heads. “First time, all we’ve seen is on the newsreels.”

  “They’re pretty accurate. The place is constantly under fire, the communists seem determined to take it off you.”

  “And we’re even more determined to keep it,” Robbins said confidently. “Believe me, Jurgen, we’ll beat those bastards, come what may.”

  I thought of the airstrikes, the napalm, the rockets, the B-52 bombing raids. Yes, they would almost certainly beat them, but at what cost? Besides, sooner or later the Americans had to go home. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army were locals, all they had to do was wait them out

  “Yes, I’m sure you will beat them,” I replied. Paul came back into the cabin.

  “We’re about to land in around ten minutes. Everything secure back here?”

  We all nodded. “Very well. We need to make this quick, Hue is still pretty hot.”

  I went back into the cockpit and sat in the radio operator’s seat in the cubicle behind the pilot’s seat. Ritter got clearance to land, they were using a temporary communications system in a military radio truck parked at the side of the airfield. He gently put the aircraft down and taxied to the ramp. As we approached we could clearly see the ten soldiers waiting for us, they were sensibly dressed in black trousers and white open necked shirts, looking for all the world like civilian staff. Albeit very young, very fit and tough civilian staff. Next to the pile of cartons were several wooden boxes, I assumed they carried their weapons and combat kit. The aircraft stopped, the engines were still running and I ran back to open the cargo doors. Instantly the men were throwing cardboard cartons and boxes into the cabin, Robbins and Blaine stacked them on the floor. Then the men were clambering aboard the aircraft, I slammed the door shut and went forward.

  “We’re all ready to go!”

  Ritter acknowledged and throttled up and let off the brakes. “We’ve already got clearance to go straight out.”

  The aircraft picked up speed and we left the ground. This was the tense moment, when an aircraft was at its most vulnerable. Loaded, clawing for height it was a sitting duck if a VC machine gunner had positioned himself near the end of the runway. It made me think of poor Lan, almost certainly trying to return to the North, as we’d agreed, being pressed into manning a heavy machine gun, chained to prevent her from running off. Perhaps she’d got what she deserved for the misery she’d caused in Saigon, but she was a soldier, fighting the war in her own way. I didn’t think she’d deserved that.

  We weren’t hit with any machine gun fire. Paul shouted suddenly, “Smoke trail coming up from the starboard side, take her down low and left, Ritter.”

  Our pilot responded immediately, using his fighter pilot’s instincts to fling the aircraft into a tight bank to port.

  “I can see it, don’t worry, it’s all under control,” he said airily.

  I doubted it, this was something new, something we’d never seen before. We’d heard intelligence reports about man-portable missiles being shipped from Russia and brought south along the Ho Chi Minh trail, but so far it had been just rumours. Now it was more than that and we had no way of knowing how lethal this new weapon was. As we plummeted down to treetop level, I could see the missile smoke trail alter as it followed us.

  “It’s targeted us,” Paul said calmly to Ritter. “Perhaps on the heat of our engines?”

  “I’ve got it,” he replied.

  I wondered about our passengers in the back, flung around with the cargo in that violent manoeuvre. They would have to manage we had our own problems. Ritter threw the aircraft around again in a tight bank, this time towards the missile. We had been flying at about a hundred feet above the jungle canopy, now he dropped even lower, we were a huge, four engine cargo plane, flying at a hundred and fifty miles an hour and could almost feel the tops of the trees touching the underbelly of the fuselage. We watched the missile, fascinated by the way it seem have a mind of its own, which I found out later it did. It swung
away from us, looped around and then disappeared, exploding in the thick foliage below. There were no more smoke trails and Ritter started to gain height. I went back into the cabin.

  Robbins looked up angrily, he was just extricating himself from under a pile of cardboard cartons of powdered milk.

  “Jesus Christ, Jurgen, I thought your guy knew how to fly this plane.”

  The other soldiers were helping each other, lifting cardboard boxes away and bandaging some of the cuts and grazes they’d received from being flung around the cabin.

  “He does know how to fly the aircraft, you’re lucky he was as the controls.”

  I explained about the missile, how near we’d come to disaster.

  “Where did a guy like that learn his trade?” Robbins asked.

  “In the skies over Germany shooting down American B-17s and P-47s, as well as British Lancasters and Spitfires.”

  The twelve men stiffened and looked at me. A lieutenant, their commander got up and came across to me. “You’re telling me he was shooting down our boys?”

  “I’m telling you he was a soldier, like yourself. Yes, while your bombers were dropping thousands of tons of bombs on our homes, our women and children, he was trying to stop them. And what he learned just saved all of our lives.”

  A soldier called across.

  “The guy’s right, Lieutenant. That war was a long time ago, everyone fought on one side or the other, not their fault where they happened to be born.”

  The officer nodded. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. You’d better thank him for us.”

  “I will.”

  I went back to the cockpit and we droned on towards Khe Sanh. I got out weapons out of the cabinet, the two M2s and Ritter’s new Thompson M1A1, the variant of the Tommy Gun. Paul joined me and we checked each weapon over carefully, made sure that each was loaded with a full clip and that the spare clips were all ready for use. Then we checked out our pistols, the Colt .45 automatics that were ‘de rigueur’ for almost every male adult in South Vietnam. Except the Vietnamese, of course. There was little left to do. We would be landing during a battle, by all accounts it was becoming the hardest fought contest of the current war. We had few illusions, we could be shot at during the approach, on the ground or taking off. I was mulling over all the possible outcomes when I heard Paul speaking to me.

  “This mission, do you think it’ll change anything?”

  I smiled. “Do you?”

  He shook his head. “Not really, nor did our last job, guiding those men into Trang Bang. But we did get Helene back, so it wasn’t all bad.”

  “No, I was grateful for that. But there were a lot of casualties.”

  “Yes, too many,” I replied. Then I saw the puffs of smoke on the horizon, the unmistakable sign of an artillery barrage. We were coming up on Khe Sanh.

  Paul went back to the co-pilot’s seat and prepared for the landing. We got clearance to go straight in, he throttled back, dropped flaps, dropped the landing gear and put the heavy aircraft neatly onto the runway. And into the teeth of an artillery barrage. As he was taxiing to the ramp, I went into the cabin.

  Lieutenant, the second we stop I’ll open the doors, I want this cargo straight out, we’re not planning on hanging around here.”

  “You’ve got it,” he said. They were still dressed in their black trousers and white shirts, I wasn’t sure if they would fool anyone here into thinking they were innocent civilians. There were no innocent civilians in Khe Sanh, everyone here either fought or they were dead or wounded. The aircraft came to a halt, I flung the doors open and the men frantically started to unload. If there was any need to underline the urgency, an artillery duel was in progress. Heavy shells fell constantly on the base, the American artillery thundered and roared as they sent dozens of shells back towards the enemy. A pity that the war couldn’t be decided on the number of shells fired, the Americans would certainly win hands down. Within a few minutes, the cartons were all out of the aircraft and I slammed the doors shut, Ritter throttled up and we were taxiing out to turn around and take off. We were facing the runway, Paul moved his hand forward to throttle up to maximum power ready to take off, when a salvo of shells hit the tarmac. A series of enormous holes appeared five hundred yards in front of us, we were trapped.

  The artillery duel continued as we pondered out next move. The strip was very narrow, too narrow to avoid the holes. We might thread past them, but the strip wouldn’t be long enough for us to take off. “It seems we are stuck here,” Paul said, calm as ever.

  “The hell we are,” Ritter snapped. “I’ve had enough of this place.”

  He opened up the throttles wide, the DC-4 leapt forward.

  “Ritter, for Christ’s sake,” I shouted at him.

  “Relax, calm down, I’ve got it,” he said quietly.

  But his eyes were fixed on the runway. I looked ahead and spotted what he had seen. One of the shell holes was separate from the others, either side of it there was a narrow strip of concrete, very narrow. So narrow, it was not much wider than our wheels. I wanted to ask him if he was sure, to make certain that he’d calculated correctly, if the wheels went into the shell holes at speed the Douglas was lost. But if we stayed here and got hit by an artillery shell, it would be the same result. Faster and faster we rushed towards the holes in the runway. Paul was icy calm, staring ahead with a disinterested look on his face. Perhaps he really was disinterested, I considered. After so much war, so much killing, the line between life and death had blurred his reality, they were all one and the same to him. But not to me, I wanted to do something but whatever I did would distract Ritter. Then we were on the shell holes, the port wheel seemed to lurch as the hole left side of the aircraft dropped slightly, then we were over it and gathering speed. I heard a transmission over the headphones.

  “SGN-SS1, this is Khe Sanh control, you must wait for clearance before taking off.”

  We were still open mouthed with astonishment as the DC-4 lifted off the runway and into the sky. I had to stop myself from sending a suitably abrupt reply, we had enough problems without upsetting the U.S. military. Besides, they had problems of their own, big problems. I didn’t envy them. We were out of Khe Sanh, I could hardly believe we were unscathed.

  “That’s it, that’s the last time I fly into that place,” I said, almost as an afterthought.

  “You’ve said stuff like that before,” Paul observed. “But when the shit hits the fan, you’re the same as the rest of us, you’re attracted to war like flies to a piece of camel shit.”

  “You’re very eloquent today,” I smiled at Paul.

  He shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. But it’s true, you’re a warrior, like the rest of us.”

  “I’ve told Helene I’m going to take more of a back seat,” I told them. I felt ashamed, slightly ashamed, almost cowardly as I said it. They just roared with laughter.

  “My friend,” Ritter said, “the day you take a back seat is the day you lay down and die.”

  I thought about that. There was some truth in it, what was it about the sudden excitement when bullets started to fly, bombs started to fall and yes, the satisfaction of seeing the enemy fall, beaten, dead.

  “But I have to do something, I have a wife and daughter to consider.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you, old man,” Ritter smiled.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of, my friend.”

  We got back to Saigon safely and I was re-united with my wife and daughter. A week later we moved into our rented bungalow and had to put up with the chaos of workmen who were making the alterations that Helene had set in motion. During that first week we took delivery of our leased DC-4, we now had two large cargo aircraft again with which to develop our little airline. Although fighting was still going on in Hue and Khe Sanh, it was clear the enemy offensive was running out of steam. Saigon had become relatively quiet, due more than anything to the colossal casualties the Viet Cong had suffered. Put simply, they were running out of fight
ers. Not this it would stop them, each day, more and more men flooded down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from the North. I had little doubt that when they had re-gathered their strength, they would try again. And again and again.

  It was a pleasant, mild day and we sat at a pavement cafe in Saigon, Helene and Sophie, Paul and his current girlfriend, Cam and me. Paul had become like an uncle to Sophie and we had something resembling a normal family life. The street was busy, even in the middle of the day, cars and mopeds rushing along, churning up the dust. It was April, the end of the dry season here in the South.

  “Business is looking good,” Paul said. “We’re avoiding the military stuff, they’re pouring so many resources into the country that they’ve got whole fleets of transport aircraft, a massive infrastructure. But it means the spin-off for us is good demand for civilian operations, mainly cargo.”

  I knew he’d spoken mainly for Helene’s benefit, she didn’t take such an active part in the business these days, preferring to spend her time bringing up our daughter. Sophie sat quietly next to her, sipping a glass of coke through a straw, a thoroughly modern child of the sixties. I thought about what Paul had said, we both knew the truth of it.

  “You mean the American military bring in thousands of tons of supplies every week, give them to the ARVN, the ARVN officers sell them on the black market and we move them around the country?”

  He smiled. “That may be so, I wouldn’t like to speculate about that. But it’s good business all the same.”

  I reflected on the corruption, the wholesale theft that the American intervention had brought to this country. They had always been pretty lax in terms of some things that we Westerners were more morally rigid about, like prostitution. But now, the whole of Saigon was becoming a sink of squalid excess, especially after dark. Whatever benefits the Americans brought to it was not evident in the way many people conducted themselves. Family honour and dignity had given way to avarice and self–first. There was just too much of everything, too much food, too much money, too much equipment, too many soldiers with pockets full of money looking for somewhere to spend it, especially in the brothels and sex shows that had sprung up everywhere.