“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Pfirstenhammer remarked. “The way our reconnaissance works…”
“There is a road but we will have to circle the paddy fields,” Xuey explained. Then turning toward the girls he ordered, “Now face the woods, all of you. I want to change clothes.”
I switched on my shaded flashlight and examined the map.
“The road is here all right but the village is missing,” Riedl commented.
Taking my pen I marked the apparent locale of the village with a small cross. “It is about here.”
“Trucks… ,” Eisner fumed. “I believe the Chinese could build a four-lane highway to the Mekong delta without our intelligence ever noticing a thing.”
Because of the dogs we could not enter the village undetected. I made a plan for encircling the settlement and moving in right on the road. It was a bold plan but I thought it would work. Dividing forces with Eisner and Riedl, we set out, following the forest line for a mile, then skirting the paddies until we arrived at the dirt road. It was comfortably dark and the neighborhood deserted. The woods on the southern bills, the route I planned to use later on, extended almost to the road and offered ample concealment.
“What are we going to do about the dogs?” Schulze queried.
“We are going to whistle!” I replied with reserve.
He screwed up his mouth and shrugged. “If you think your whistling will quiet the dogs, Hans…”
“I want to quiet their masters, Erich!” I said, then added, “Can you hum the ‘Internationale’?”
“What ‘Internationale’?”
“The Communist one!” I hummed the first bars. Xuey glanced up and broke into a grin. He understood me. “Now we are going to turn into a bunch of real Viet Minh,” I told the troops. “We will have to confuse the enemy, if only for the first critical minute and I think the Communist song will do exactly that.”
Erich flashed a quick look of approval. “I am with you. En avant!” Splitting troops once again, I sent a hundred men to approach the settlement from the north, between the road and the forest, then we moved on. My group was about four hundred yards from the village when the dogs began to bark. Within seconds the place was alive with barking and baying.
“Whistle!” I passed the word, “whistle for all you’re worth.”
Behind me the men began to hum, at first hesitantly, seeking the proper tune; then with Xuey’s help, they found the melody and whistled “Proletarians of the world unite” as they marched with steady strides. Ahead of us lights appeared; dark shapes, carrying lamps, emerged from the huts.
One hundred yards!- In an open space between the huts fires burned; a group of villagers was busy boiling syrup distilled from cane sugar, They rose and moved closer to the road to have a better look at us.
“Chieu hoy!” Xuey yelled the native greeting which was returned by a few discordant, hesitant voices coming from the darkness. “Long live Father Ho!” Sixty yards! No one was shooting yet. The people were curious but not alarmed. The figures on the road raised their lamps, trying to see into the darkness.
Forty yards! I knew that we had them.
“Who is there?” a heavy voice demanded. A couple of men moved forward with lamps.
“Friends,” Xuey replied, “on the way south with ammunition. We are going to liberate Saigon.”
The next instant we were upon them.
“Disperse!” I shouted, firing a red Very light over the huts. In a moment, the small group of people was enveloped by my troopers. The women began to scream, the men cursed. Lamps, tools, and weapons clattered to the ground.
“The French! The French!” someone yelled. From the far end of the settlement a short burst of machine-gun fire crackled. We heard a shriek, then silence.
Within seconds my men occupied the huts. Motioning Erich and Karl to follow me, I entered the nearest dwelling where husband, wife, and grandparents were already lined up, facing the wall; half a dozen children sat or rolled whimpering on the floor.
“Over here!” Krebitz called, pointing at the wall where a pistol hung in a holster. He took it down and examined it expertly. “Seven-sixty-two caliber Tokarev TT,” he remarked. Emptying the magazine, he dropped eight bullets into a canvas bag which one of his troopers held ready. “The goddamned cutthroats don’t even hide their guns anymore,” he remarked. With a sullen glance from his blue eyes he stepped to the owner of the hut and turned him around by the shoulder. “Where are your other weapons, you whoreson?” The guerrilla was a squat little creature with wide nose, square face, and bold, large eyes with closely grown brows. He reeled, steadied himself by grabbing at a bamboo rafter that supported the roof. His eyes seething with hatred, his fists clenched, he replied defiantly, “You may take our weapons but we shall have new ones before the sun rises.”
Without warning, Sergeant Krebitz struck him with the back of his hand. The man toppled over a low bench and crashed to the floor with his lips ripped. “Before the sun rises you will be a dead hero, you scum,” Krebitz growled.
“Take them out!” I ordered the troopers. “The kids too.”
As they were being led out, Pfirstenhammer handed a length of bamboo to a trooper and pointed out the man Sergeant Krebitz had struck. “Give him a dozen strokes for the good of his soul.”
Krebitz was already pulling away mats and boxes, searching for trapdoors. Outside the civilians were led to the paddies, where the men had to lie down with their hands extended, facing the water; the women and old people were permitted to sit, but also facing the paddies.
From down the road came Riedl. “Anything there?” I asked him.
“Guns and grenades,” he replied, “and plenty of them.”
“Keep looking.”
More people were brought forward and taken to the rice fields. Ransacking the huts, my troopers dumped weapons and ammo on the road. The local terrorists had an incredible selection of weapons ranging from vintage muskets and swords to submachine guns. In one of the huts, Sergeant Schenk seized a bow with twenty-six arrows, every one of them poisoned. The owner was taken to the woods and executed immediately.
Sergeant Krebitz selected weapons and ammunition that we could use, and the rest of the terrorist hardware was taken to the trucks, marked for destruction. “Let’s have a look at those trucks,” Schulze suggested. “I wonder where they got them?” We found Eisner already busy examining the vehicles. “Look at this,” he said, “Soviet Zises with Chinese plates.”
“Don’t tell me they came all the way from China.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they did.”
“There is no road,” Erich interposed.
“Not that we know of,” Eisner agreed. “But keep searching. We might find a couple of tanks too.”
Beneath one of the dwellings, Pfirstenhammer discovered a large underground shelter packed with guns and ammo. “Mortar shells,” Xuey interpreted the inscription.
“Over one hundred crates, each containing eighteen shells,” Karl remarked. “Two thousand rounds.”
“You had better get busy,” I told Sergeant Krebitz. He nodded and began to work, arranging primers and fuses. I ordered Schenk to march the villagers down the road. “Half a mile will do. We are going to blast the dump along with the trucks.”
While Krebitz and Gruppe Drei mined the dump and the trucks, Corporal Altreiter and fifty men gathered foodstuffs: rice, bundles of dried fish, fruits, and sugar cane were distributed among the troops. Half an hour later we evacuated the settlement.
“They will see the blast from Peking,” Riedl remarked, waving a thumb toward the village.
“Let them!” Pfirstenhammer shrugged.
Schenk and company were waiting on the road with the prisoners. Krebitz glanced at his watch. “In three minutes…”