Having marched for over two hours without finding a suitable place for camping out, Sergeant Zeisl suggested that we should stop because of our wounded comrades. “We will have to remove two bullets tomorrow,” he reminded me. (Two of the men were marching with bullets in their flesh.) “They have lost much blood and need a rest.”
I decided to camp down where we were. Eisner dispatched advance and rear guards to cover the trail with machine guns. Sooner or later the enemy would catch up with us.
“Change the sentries as frequently as possible, so that everyone can have some sleep,” I told Bernard.
At dawn two platoons went up and down the trail to plant mines and primed grenades triggered with boughs or trip wires. Another group advanced a mile to discard cigarette butts, empty tins, and other “evidence” of our presence far beyond the point where we intended to leave the trail. A hundred yards inside the woods the trailblazers began to cut a new path. Very cautiously, careful not to leave tracks or break branches, the troops left the trail. I was confident that the guerrillas would bypass the place. Discovering our planted evidence farther up, they could easily march headlong into our mines.
Around ten A.M. we stopped at a shallow creek to cook a meal and to attend the wounded. With the help of the girls, Sergeant Zeisl extracted the two bullets and changed the bandages of the others. I thought it was time to give the troops a well-deserved rest.
“We will camp out here until everyone is fit again,” I told Eisner. For a moment he looked surprised.
“It might be a week, Hans… or even more.”
“So what?”
“You are forgetting about action Transit.”
“To hell with action Transit,” I growled, massaging my aching temples. My head was throbbing like a steam engine and I could imagine how the two men with bullets just extracted from their flesh must have felt. “What if we blast a few wretched Viet Minh convoys? It won’t stop the war. They can wait.”
I swept an arm about the woods. “This is a good place. We have ample shade, water, and we are far from villages and trails. The enemy has no idea where we are. A week later we may hit them like a bolt out of the clear sky.”
I lowered myself to the ground with my back against a tree and closed my eyes. “We need a rest, Bernard. Especially the wounded ones, including me. I am weary.”
Eisner nodded. “I will give the word to build shelters,” he said.
“Do that, Bernard—but tell the men not to make much noise.”
We were to camp along the creek for eight days. By the afternoon we had a triple row of small huts, made of branches and leaves, on either side of the creek. Suoi and the nurses were presented with a cozy little hut, “furnished” with love and appreciation. It even had beds—thick layers of dry leaves, covered with towels, in place of mattresses—and a table. In order to insure their comfort and privacy, Sergeant Krebitz and a few men from Gruppe Drei built a bathing hut for the girls right in the creek. They had become very popular with the troops who kept referring to them only as “our angels,” not only because the girls cared for the injured ones with tender zeal and were always ready to help and never complained of hardship or fatigue, but also because their very presence, their cheerfulness and ever-present smiles, seemed to uplift everyone’s spirit.
Game appeared to be plentiful in the area. Carrying the silencer-equipped rifles, our Abwehrkommando left for short hunting trips every day and brought back deer and wild boar. Xuey and the girls prepared wonderful native meals and taught the men how to cook better meals for themselves. We had no facility for mess-cooking. The men had to take care of their own meals.
One evening, I think it was our third evening in our jungle camp, I sat in my hut writing my journal, when Erich appeared all of a sudden. “Hans,” he addressed me in a troubled voice, “Do you suppose you can perform a marriage ceremony?”
“Perform a what?” The pen dropped from my hand and so did my chin. “Marriage,” Schulze repeated and I saw he was in earnest. “I want to marry Suoi!”
“That is no news!”
“I want to marry her now,” he added quickly. “I thought you could do it… like a captain of a ship.”
“Are you serious, Erich?”
“Hell, of course I am serious. Can you marry us, Hans?”
“I don’t think it would do you any good as far as the law goes, Erich.”
“We can take care of the legalities later.”
I lit a cigarette and offered him one, then taking my canteen, I filled two small cups with rum. “I think we both need a drink, Erich.”
We drank, but all the time Erich’s eyes remained on my face questioningly.
“What does Suoi think of your idea?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have come to you on my own, Hans. We are in love.”
“That is also known,” I commented repressing a smile. “But you had better wait until we return to Hanoi.”
He wet his lips and wiped the perspiration from his handsome face.
“I will go to pieces before then, Hans,” he confessed. “What do you suggest?”
“I suggest that we have another cup of rum.”
We drank. “Where is Suoi?” I asked after a while.
“In my hut—crying.”
“I hope you did not—”
“No, I didn’t!” He cut me short. “That’s exactly why I am cracking up, Hans. I am crazy about her.”
“I can understand that,” I agreed sympathetically. “She is a beautiful girl.”
“She takes my hand, I kiss her, and the scent of her hair is enough to send me up the wall.”
He lit another cigarette with shaking fingers. I never saw Erich so excited. “There ought to be a missionary around. The men say there is a priest in Muong Son.”
“So is the Viet Minh, Erich!” He ran his hand through his hair and rose slowly. “Hans,” he spoke to me, his voice full of emotion. “I’ve never asked for any special favor in all these years together. I am asking for a favor now. We don’t know how long we will last, do we, Hans? We cannot think of the future, not even in terms of weeks. The only certain thing we have is our present—this very day. Get me that priest from Muong Son.”
There was a pause. He was looking at me penetratingly and I was thinking.
“I suggest that you should return to Suoi now. I will see what I can do about you. But whatever I do will depend on what Xuey thinks of it. He knows Muong Son and Father Bousseau, a French priest there, and only Xuey can make the trip. For anyone else it would be suicidal even to try. The place is teeming with guerrillas.”
I glanced at him. “I presume you know what it could mean if we lose Xuey?” He answered nothing, only sat there with his face buried in his hands. I went on. “Provided that the priest is still there and he is willing to come, and he is able to come, I shall try to get him here.”
“Thank you, Hans… thank you indeed.”
“Don’t thank me, Erich. I am not happy about it—and I will be damned if this isn’t the bloodiest military expedition I have ever been on.”
“I am sorry.”
“In a sense I was afraid that this would happen, Erich. Today you, tomorrow maybe Karl or Riedl. After tomorrow it might be Schenk or someone else.”
“I am sorry, Hans.”
“It’s all right. In the meantime be kind to Suoi and remember that she is not a European girl. The Orientals still consider love and marriage something truly sacred and everlasting.”
Erich swallowed hard and extended his hand. “I shall remember it, Hans. You have my word.”
Schulze left and I spread out my map to spend almost an hour pondering the problem. Muong Son was about eight miles away, as the crow flies, but overland the trip would be much longer. I sent a trooper for Eisner and told him the whole story. He seemed amused, but he only shrugged at my dilemma.