“When you are through with me, you are going to change those orange ribbons for some blue ones,” I told her. “They are much too conspicuous and we don’t want to see your pretty head being shot at by the Viet Minh.”
“I change ribbons—why?” she asked, not quite understanding the meaning of my “complicated” sentence.
“Because the terrorists can see your ribbons from far away,” I explained, imitating a pair of binoculars with my hands. “The Viet Minh see your ribbons, tatatata—and Noy is dead.”
She nodded, a series of quick little nods. “Oui, monsieur. I change ribbons.”
“Good girl!”
“You have luck,” she commented, working on my wound. “Your head was shot by a bullet. It comes little lower and you drop dead.”
Her way of selecting and assembling words was charming.
“Thanks for the consolation,” I grinned, submitting myself to the treatment.
With deft fingers, Noy separated my matted hair and began to bathe the wound with disinfectant. The process brought tears to my eyes, which seemed to amuse my faithful companions.
“Stop grinning like a clown,” I snapped at Karl, “and go look for your men. Noy won’t be running away.”
Sergeant Krebitz came, carrying papers. “Twenty dead and thirty-five wounded,” he reported grimly, handing me the list.
“How many serious ones?”
“Seven, Hans. Shot through the lung, in the groin, in the abdomen.”
“We are moving out in twenty minutes!”
“I know.”
“How about the rest of the wounded?”
“They will be able to march any reasonable distance.”
Noy finished bandaging my head. “Tomorrow I see you again,” she said quietly. “Your head will be good, one week time.”
We walked over to our gravely wounded comrades. One of them, Heinz Auer, a former paratrooper, had already died. The six others were barely conscious.
Although it seemed that, at least for the time being, the guerrillas had had enough, they still occupied a dense patch of forest and I knew we had to march before they could receive reinforcements, or even worse, mortars! Exposed as we were on that barren ridge we would have no chance to withstand a prolonged mortar attack.
Sergeant Zeisl came slowly toward me. He was carrying a small medical container. We all knew what it contained and for what purpose. “Shall I proceed?” Zeisl asked grimly.
I nodded. “Make it quick.”
The troops began to gather. Some of them bandaged, others uninjured. No one spoke; all stood in bitter silence. Riedl kneeled down beside a wounded comrade to wipe his perspiring forehead and to shoo off the flies. Zeisl filled a syringe with a lethal concentration of morphine. Noy, who was watching the preparations, and thinking that all we wanted to do was ease the suffering, suddenly bent down for the empty vial which Sergeant Zeisl had discarded. She looked at it, then turned toward me with her eyes wide open.
“Sergeant do wrong!” she exclaimed pointing at Zeisl. “Gives them too much. The men die. He is mistaken.”
“He is not mistaken, Noy,” Pfirstenhammer drew her aside gently. “We cannot carry them and we cannot leave them here either. Do you understand?”
“I understand,” she answered and her eyes began to fill. “You kill them!” She looked around bewildered, looking at Karl, at Eisner, at me. We all averted our eyes. Noy began to sob. “You cruel people… you very, very cruel people.”
“Come, Noy,” said Karl, placing an arm around her shoulders. “You should not look.”
“You are worse than the Viet Minh,” she cried, “for even they help their wounded.”
“We cannot help them, Noy. You are a nurse, you should know better.”
“You why not call helicopters?”
“It would take hours before the copters could come. Do you think they can live that long? Or that we can live that long? The Viet Minh will gather more men, then attack again and again.”
“You are not God,” she sobbed, “you cannot give or take life.”
Karl led her away gently.
Sergeant Zeisl delivered the injections, replaced the needle in a small vial of alcohol, and put it away in his kit. He turned. Facing the six men on the ground, he raised his hand for a last salute.
“Attention!” I commanded. The ring of troops froze.
“Salute!” And as Sergeant Krebitz proceeded with his gloomy task of collecting identity tags, watches, wallets, and pocketbooks from the men who were leaving us forever, the troops began to hum, then sing in a low tone, the old , German soldier’s song, “Wacht am Rhein.”
I read their names from the list in my hand: Heinz Auer, Rudolf Forcher, Leopold Ambichl, Josef Bauer, Josef Edler, Anton Gebauer, and twenty more. Although the Free World has yet to honor them, they had fought the enemy of all mankind for ten long years and in battlefields ten thousand miles apart. The same enemy in different uniforms, in a different disguise. They had done more to preserve freedom and civilization than many much-decorated generals and celebrated statesmen. Only they received no medals for their deeds. Not even a decent Memento mori! They were forgotten and forsaken heroes. We could not give them as much as a decent burial. We placed them in a deep crevasse and blew rocks over the makeshift tomb. A single line in German was inscribed on a jagged boulder: “Deutschland-Poland-Russland-Nord Afrika-Indochina 1939-1951, 27 comrades.”
We had no time to count the enemy dead but they must have numbered several hundred. Removing the weapons, grenades, ammunition, and papers of those who had fallen on or immediately below the ridge, we descended the southern slope, still under sporadic enemy fire. But the very boulders which had sheltered the guerrillas before now provided us with cover. Keeping low so as not to silhouette ourselves against the moonlit sky, the battalion descended. Covered by the MG’s of Gruppe Drei we entered the woods, and followed a path which we sighted and compass-marked from the ridge.
A few hundred yards inside the forest we passed a small clearing, but as we penetrated deeper and deeper, the forest became thicker. The trail led straight toward Muong Son, but that was precisely the place where I no longer wanted to go. The enemy seemed well informed about our destination and that concentration of Viet Minh troops below the ridge was the very last “coincidence” I was willing to digest.
We were moving deep within enemy-controlled territory and far from French fortifications or patrol routes. We could march without fearing mines or even traps; we could even use our flashlights, shielded with green plastic. My idea was to advance as far as possible, then rest for the remaining hours of the night. At dawn I intended to leave the path and to move west, penetrating still deeper into the Viet Minh “hinterland,” seeking a favorable spot to vanish into the jungle. As we had often done we would cut our own trail, starting a few hundred yards from the regular path without being connected to it.
We had, in the course of months, cut several secret trails in the guerrilla-held areas. Since our routes had no connection with the existing paths, it was very difficult for the enemy to detect them. Arriving at an existing path we never continued directly opposite but fifty paces to the left, or to the right. In each section my men left a few innocent-looking objects to serve as “markers”—a casually bent bough tied with threads, a discarded tin holding a few cigarettes, an old lighter, or something similar. The disappearance of the marker would tell us immediately that strangers had come across our trails. Naturally no guerrilla would ignore a lighter or a fountain pen on a tree stump.