“Poor all-too-clever Monsieur Van Ho Tien,” Erich commented over the corpse of the little Indochinese. “You had known so much yet you knew so little.”
He turned toward me and added, “He could have been of great service to his country—somewhere else.”
I examined the corpses; head, face, and neck wounds and no misses. The machine gun, a Soviet Goriunov, was a clumsy weapon but accurate up to a thousand yards. It had fired only fifteen rounds before its crew died, and to appreciate the skill of our experts one should remember that to fire fifteen rounds had consumed only 1.4 seconds.
How could the enemy produce the Goriunov (weighing nearly seventy pounds) while under constant surveillance remained an enigma. “We saw some brisk comings and goings with baskets and sacks between the shelter and the woods,” Corporal Walther explained to me later on. “Then came the boat seemingly laden with empty baskets. All of a sudden there was the gun spitting fire and we blazed away.”
One of the machine gun crew was a young woman, the wife of a gunner. Later we learned that they left behind two children, now orphans, because of a senseless raid that was doomed from the very beginning. One needs more than a European mind to understand the Oriental mentality.
Sergeant Krebitz quickly dismantled the machine gun and scattered its parts all over the paddies. The ammunition we trampled into the bottom mud.
Forward! Three hours later we arrived at Van Ho’s village. Its dwellings were vacant, the road and the yards deserted; the hamlet gave every sign of a hurried evacuation. We searched the huts and the hillside and discovered a complex tunnel system still under construction. The slopes of the hill contained a labyrinth of dug-in positions for mortars and machine guns which were connected by caves and tunnels to provide living quarters and storage space for weapons, food, and ammunition. There were several levels of tunnels, many of them with multiple exits, and some suitable for smaller field artillery pieces. The fortification complex was to be a major Viet Minh storage and training center.
The muddy trail revealed many footprints of men and beasts heading for the hills. In front of one hut a trooper discovered Chinese cartridges trampled into the mud. From one of the cellars came a broken mortar. I ordered” the tunnels blasted and the huts demolished, which job Sergeant Krebitz accomplished in three hours. Then leaving behind Gruppe Drei to set a trap, we moved on in full view for the benefit of all guerrilla spies who cared to look.
Soon after we left the population emerged from the woods and crowded in on the narrow trail; men, women, and children driving heavily laden carts, pushing wheelbarrows and bikes burdened with crates and sacks. Gruppe Drei rushed forward and captured the milling crowd before they could utter a cry. Krebitz’s booty was a rich one—weapons and ammunition enough to sustain a Viet Minh company for at least a month of prolonged fighting.
Acting on my orders, Sergeant Krebitz spared only women, children, and old people. The entire male population consisting of about fifty men was executed. The destruction of enemy manpower had always been our principal aim in Indochina, and we had no alternative. The Viet Minh could always excavate new tunnels, could always obtain new weapons and ammunition from across the frontier, but not even Ho Chi Minh could manufacture trained guerrillas.
With guns blazing our troops marched up and down the trail shooting up bullocks, pigs, hens, weapons, and other guerrilla hardware until destruction was complete. Another lesson of war told in the language of the Viet Minh.
Whizzz… whammmm… A cry of agony; a trooper staggers, his hands grasping a tree for support; then he folds up and lies moaning in the grass. From his abdomen projects the shaft of a three-foot arrow spilling blood and partly digested food onto his clutching hands and tunic. The troops scatter to take shelter. There is not much they can do but squat low and scan the sinister jungle. Bows make no report. There is no telltale smoke or muzzle flash to draw one’s attention. But we know that the sniper is not very far away. One cannot shoot far in the jungle.
My men execute the only protective measure available to them; canteens, map cases, and ammo bags come up in front to protect their chests; rifles and submachine guns are held high so that their stocks may deflect projectiles coming for their throats. The bulky rucksacks offer ample protection against a shot in the back. Those who are sheltering behind trees hold their rucksacks in front of their abdomens, and no one moves.
Ignoring the danger, Sergeant Zeisl creeps up to the wounded trooper.
Whizzz------ Zeisl freezes and we look on petrified. The arrow crashes into the thorny thicket, ripping the leaves only a few yards from where Zeisl embraces mother earth. A merciful miss. Taking the chance that the sniper cannot let loose another arrow immediately, I spring forward with Schulze on my heels to cover ten yards in a flash, and drop beside Zeisl.
Whizzzzz… whammmm… The sniper is not alone.
Zeisl examines the wounded man and shakes his head grimly. “The point is probably poisoned,” he whispers, “but even without the poison he cannot survive without immediate surgery.”
A few minutes later the life of our comrade shivers away.
Whammm… Another projectile zooms in to find its mark; a careless trooper has lowered his rucksack to light a cigarette; the arrow plunges into his breast and he falls sideways thrashing in agony. It is a sequence out of the Middle Ages.
“I think one of them is over there,” Schulze says pointing at a small elevation. Whizzz… whizzz… the arrows whine. Whammrnm…
One projectile plunges into the soft soil only three paces from where I shelter. The other comes to a quivering halt in Erich’s rucksack. The invisible enemy is not joking and he is an excellent marksman. But he made a mistake—he missed! The arrows are coming in at sharp angles and we know where to look for the snipers. Instantly a dozen glasses scan the treetops; a solitary shot cracks, then a submachine gun opens up spraying the thicket. The leaves of a solitary tree rustle. The branches crackle and part; a frail brown body falls from above, tearing the boughs: the sniper—at least one of them. With a dull thud the body hits the ground, rolls over, and lies still, blood oozing from a bullet wound below his left eye. Of the submachine gun salvo we find no trace; the solitary hit came from the rifle of one of our sharpshooters.
A loincloth and a crude leather belt with a curved knife is all the sniper wears. His bow must have gotten caught in the branches. We look at the guerrilla—if he can be called a guerrilla—in astonishment; he is nothing but a caveman who dared to challenge the atomic age. Yet he managed to kill two of us.
Whizzz… We duck instinctively. The jungle begins to spit arrows. Another man dies with his throat torn agape. The bushes erupt. Rifles and submachine guns open up, raking the treetops, the hillside undergrowth; Sergeant Krebitz with Gruppe Drei withdraws to fan out on the flanks and envelop the small hill where the snipers hide. After an hour’s siege five snipers are dead and a sixth one is captured by Riedl’s troops. Sergeant Zeisl examines the seized arrows. “They are poisoned with buffalo dung,” he comments, “cheap and effective but not for game hunting.”
“You mean that they use dung only against men?”
“Exactly.”
The captured tribesman is brought forward; an evil-looking young lad of maybe fifteen years of age with a heavily pockmarked face. When I ask him why he fights for the Communists he just stares at me. The word has no meaning for him. He does not know what the Viet Minh stand for. Who is Ho Chi Minh? Now his face erupts in a broad smile. Ho Chi Minh is the great tribal chief who says that all white-faced men should be killed. Why? Because they come to raze the tribal villages, to rape the women, and to bring loathsome diseases to them. White men, and especially white -men in uniform, are evil, Ho says. They must be destroyed on sight.