Evidently the colonel was in a good mood. His eyes danced with amusement.
“Is it going to be as bad as that?” I asked him, taking my seat opposite him. Eisner and Schulze sat down and placed their map cases on the table. Pfirstenhammer opened his notebook, Riedl took pencil and paper. We were ready for the briefing.
“It depends on the way you look at it,” the colonel answered my question. Reaching for the bottle he poured drinks for us, filled his own cup, and lifted it slightly, “To your success with the Tien-pao raid.”
“You mean the Man-hao raid, mon colonel,” Eisner corrected what he thought was a reference to our excursion into China.
“I said Tien-pao,” Houssong repeated, stressing the last word. “That is the place you will be going shortly.”
There was a curious silence while we digested the implications of that short sentence. “To Tien-pao?” I repeated cautiously.
“To Tien-pao,” said the colonel. His eyes kindled. “You have convinced certain gentlemen in the upper regions that such raids are feasible and can be executed without complications. So, off you go. But this time it isn’t going to be a pushover, messieurs. You will have to work hard to earn a victory.”
“To earn a victory?” Schulze commented with a chuckle. “I will be happy if we can earn a simple return ticket, mon colonel.”
“And rightly so,” Eisner added with emphasis. “There are some thirty thousand Chinese troops at Tien-pao.”
“Eighty to one against,” Riedl said.
“Sometimes it was worse in Russia,” Karl added and lit his pipe.
“I am glad to note your good spirit; a spirited action is already half a success,” the colonel remarked. He unfolded a large map of northern Indochina and spread it on the long table. The map covered the district north of Cao Bang, including Chinese areas as far as the Siang river, thirty kilometers north of Tien-pao. Tien-pao was the town where we believed that Ho Chi Minh’s “government” had been hiding out for the past two years, although Ho himself was thought to be residing in Nan-ning, further to the east.
Holding his pen lightly over the map, Colonel Houssong swept the upper regions of the map, then circled a smaller area and looked up. “Do you think you can make it here, Wagemueller?”
“We can always make it there, mon colonel. The question is whether we can also make it back?”
“You had better make it back—and without leaving corpses behind. It must be a clean job like the one in Man-hao.”
I rose slightly and bent over the map. It was not just a map but .an operational plan with the essential details already incorporated: the routes were marked out, time elements considered and noted down in brackets: the area between the border and Tien-pao, and eastward to the Sengen highway, featured a number of small red stars, some of them placed within rectangles, others in circles, “As you can see, I spent some time arranging your action in effective patterns,” the colonel said good-humoredly. “The stars are known Viet Minh bases and Chinese garrisons.”
“The size of which, mon colonel?”
“The size of which we can only guess. But it does not really matter for you are to avoid them anyway.”
“But do they know that, mon colonel?” Eisner cut in and everyone began to laugh.
Colonel Houssong paused for a moment, then joined us over the map. “Your principal target will be the establishment marked “A,” which must be destroyed before anything else. It lies thirty kilometers north of the frontier.”
“As the crow flies. Overland it will be fifty,” I remarked.
“Sans doute. Nevertheless you will have to get there. The second objective, “C,” is located only half as far inland but more to the east. As you can see, objective “B1 is unfortunately off limits. It is much too close to Tien-pao and the main garrisons. Two objectives should suffice for the time being. They are large enemy bases and training camps.”
“What are the X-es, mon colonel?”
“Small Chinese guardhouses along road bridges with three to five men in them.”
“What about them?”
“Don’t ask me, Wagemueller, suit yourself. If you find time to demolish also a few bridges it will be an asset.”
The conference lasted for two hours. With all the important problems discussed, the colonel announced, “Needless to say this whole business is strictly between us, messieurs,”
“Of course, mon colonel.”
“Your Man-hao raid was a big shock to the Viet Minh and especially to the Chinese. They have many bases along the border and the General—thinks we should hit them at least once more before Peking decides to decentralize.”
He added with a smile, “// faut piquer dedans— we should hit them where it hurts.”
His eyes focused on the map. “Alas, most of the Viet Minh training bases and supply dumps are still just across the frontier, but soon Giap will move his establishment farther north, to safer locations.”
He lifted his eyes to me. “What do you think of it?”
“It seems to me either glory or court-martial, mon colonel,” I said jokingly.
“You had better forget about the second alternative,” said he. “Since your Man-hao business I am, er, your accomplice in Crime.”
“In crime, mon colonel?”
“What else can you call it? We are not at war with China.”
“Peking doesn’t seem to know it,” Eisner remarked. “We should call such actions only an exchange of mutual courtesies, mon colonel.”
“How about those garrisons at Tien-pao, mon colonel?” I asked, thinking of the thirty thousand Chinese troops.
“They have no transports,” the colonel explained. “Fifteen trucks and some derelict jeeps are all they have. The troops are armed mostly with vintage Russian rifles and for the present their ammo is restricted to about five cartridges per weapon.”
“That’s comforting,” said Karl.
“So keep quiet until you arrive at objective “A” and the garrisons won’t be able to interfere with you in force.”
He folded the map and handed it to me. “This is the only map covering the operation,” he advised me. “Prepare two copies for yourself, then bring it back. Don’t bungle this job, for if you do, you might as well remain in China and go down lighting.”
“I understand that, mon colonel.”
“You will be wearing civilian clothes, of course—”
“Of course.”
Of course, I thought. No papers, no identity tags, no army rations, only native pajamas and foodstuffs.
“What will you do about possible casualties, Wagemueller?” he asked cagily.
“The Chinese will find neither corpses nor graves, mon colonel.”
“So be it.”
He extended his hand. We avoided discussing the gory details.
Corpses were to be destroyed either by grenades or by flamethrowers: blasted to bits, burned beyond recognition, and should there be gravely wounded comrades who could not march while the enemy was pressing us, it was also our duty to turn them into corpses, so that they wouldn’t turn into evidence in Chinese hands.
“You will have a good chance to succeed,” the colonel said before dismissing us. “I have selected your guides personally. They know the area well and they are also professionals.”
We code-named the operation “Longhand” because of its far-reaching implications.
“Here we go, one hundred against half a billion,” Schulze remarked, gazing back toward the moonlit ridges of Bao Lac. Ahead of us loomed the sinister hills of China. We crossed the frontier following the remote trail which native warriors must have cut across the virgin woods decades before. It must have been maintained by smugglers, then cleared again, probably by Nationalist warring parties. After a few miles on the trail I knew that Colonel Houssong’s “blueprint for aggression” had been based on precise data, the result of exhaustive intelligence and even aerial reconnaissance. The colonel did not believe in venturing an important job on the spin of a coin. And since our lives depended on his meticulous exactitude, we indeed appreciated it.