Sergeant Krebitz erected a small wooden cross. On it we nailed Karl’s French beret and his Wehrmacht belt inscribed: “Gott Mit Uns”—“God Be with Us”—that he always wore.
We stood in attention, then sang in a low tune: Heil dir im Siegeskrant, Heil dir im Siegeskranz.…
A last salute—then tears were wiped away and guns flung over the shoulders. Forward!
17. THE RED HIGHWAY (OPERATION “DELUGE”)
The battalion was camped for the fifth day, but the downpour did not seem to lessen. It was raining without a break; the hours of daylight shortened and deep in the jungle between the thickly forested hills the hours of darkness stretched to almost eleven hours. A wicked wind blew from the southeast, tearing at our flimsy lean-to shelters and driving the heavy drops through our fatigues and underwear.
Cooking was out of question and our tobacco turned into a soggy mess that could not be lit. Since the rain started our diet had consisted of dried fish, biscuits, and vitamin pills. The only fire which we were able to light was burning inside a shallow crevice, barely large enough to accommodate the girls. There we prepared boiled sweet potatoes, rice with curried fish, and occasionally a cup of tea for the girls and for Xuey, who was down with fever and abdominal pain.
Sergeant Zeisl suspected appendicitis, a condition which in the circumstances was a death sentence. Our faithful little Indochinese companion knew it too and he accepted the inevitable with a faint ironic smile saying: “We all have to go one day. Just let me go without much pain.”
I sat beside him for a long time under the tarpaulin sheet which the men had rigged up between the trees to make a primitive tent.
“You have reached your objective,” Xuey said, giving my hand a feeble squeeze, “but you will have to be very careful from now on. A hundred times more careful than ever before. Those down there are professionals.”
He turned his face slightly toward the steaming valley. “They overlook nothing.”
Even now he only thought of our welfare. Then he asked for some sleeping pills and Zeisl obliged.
The densely wooded plateau where we had established ourselves, for better or worse, was the only place where the streams, now swollen to rivers, wouldn’t flood us. Throughout the night we heard the crashings of uprooted trees and the distant thud of tumbling rocks and earth. During the day, the entire world seemed to be moving downward, along the slopes, into the valley.
Barely two miles away, in a narrow valley, was an important terrorist supply base, “a king’s ransom” as Schulze put it. A twelve-foot-wide jungle road ran through the enemy camp and into it entered a network of smaller paths. We had arrived at the long-sought “Red Highway,” the main terrorist supply route between China and the southern provinces. No troops of the Foreign Legion had ever before come closer to it than a hundred kilometers. Its existence had been suspected but never proven. Only airplanes were able to penetrate so far into the Communist rear; they had done so on many occasions but had observed nothing but unbroken jungles. Like all the important Viet Minh establishments in the hills, the Red Highway was a masterpiece of camouflage. It had been cut through the jungle without allowing as much as ten yards of it to be exposed to the skies. At a few less densely wooded sections, hundreds of trees had been roped together and drawn closer to one another with the aid of pulley-like contraptions. Then they had been fastened in such a way that their crowns intertwined over the road. In the open ravines networks of strong wire had been stretched between the slopes to support creepers, which had soon blotted out the road beneath.
The jungle road included permanent bridges, twelve to fifteen feet wide, most of them constructed a few inches underwater to fool aerial observation. Difficult or swampy sections of the road had been “paved” either with stones or with logs leveled with gravel. Along the Red Highway were checkpoints where guerrilla MP’s controlled transport or troop movements. Rest-houses and service stations where carts and bicycles could be repaired also were located on that incredible network of trails. Its very existence was ridiculed by some leading French statesmen. It was simply too incredible to believe. Yet it was there! Here the enemy was no longer taking chances. While trying to approach the camp to have a better look, Xuey and Sergeant Krebitz had had to stop short of concealed machine gun positions at eight different points. The emplacements were not easily observable, though they were not hastily dug foxholes but what one may rightly call permanent fortifications. Small blockhouses, constructed of heavy logs, covered with earth in which shrubs had then been planted, commanded all the approaches to the Viet Minh base. Along the relatively short section of the jungle road which Xuey had been able to investigate, he spotted two Viet Minh observation platforms. Rigged up high on the hilltop trees, the platforms offered a perfect view of the neighborhood. The guerrilla lookouts could spot not only airplanes but also any overland intruders who imprudently proceeded across the nearby ridges.
The base must have been only one of many similar bases established along the Red Highway. It included permanent huts where the arriving troops or coolies could rest for a while before resuming their long walk south.
Despite the difficult approach, Krebitz had identified nine storage shelters which contained hundreds of bulky bales, jute bags, and wooden crates. He had also observed brisk traffic in the area. Viet Minh units arrived or departed at about six-hour intervals, even at nighttime. Among them were armed troops and coolies who drove heavily laden bullock carts or pushed bikes. Still others transported crates suspended from long poles shouldered by four or six men.
Xuey had wanted to infiltrate the base alone. There were so many strangers in and about the place that he thought he would be in no danger while mingling with the enemy. Then the downpour had started and Xuey had come down with fever and the pain in his abdomen.
Sergeant Zeisl was sure of his diagnosis of appendicitis. “I don’t think I am mistaken,” he said.
“What are his chances?” Schulze wanted to know, much depressed by the unexpected calamity.
Zeisl shook his head slowly. “Without an operation— none at all, Erich. The antibiotic will slow down the infection but Xuey should be on the operating table very soon.”
“How soon?”
“Within twenty-four hours at the most.”
Xuey dozed off into a restless sleep and we huddled under the narrow burlap, trying to decide what to do.
“We are certainly having it all right,” Riedl fumed. “And it had to happen right now… What do you want to do about Xuey, Hans?” He was looking at me as though fearing my answer in advance.
“What do you want me to do, Helmut?” I asked him in turn.
He flicked away his cigarette butt and ran a nervous hand through his dripping hair. “We just can’t watch the poor devil die.”
“We should call for a copter,” Schulze suggested.
“Call a copter?” Sergeant Krebitz chuckled. “Sharks might fly in this downpour but nothing on wings, Erich.”
“Copters have no wings,” he sulked. “Xuey is too good a buddy to let him die like this.”
“Besides we might need him in the future,” Riedl added gloomily.
I was already considering that possibility. Whether the army would be willing to risk craft and crew on such a mission remained to be seen. Besides could the pilot find us in the pouring rain with visibility almost zero? “We are very close to the enemy base. They will hear the copter coming in,” Krebitz remarked.
“No, not in this rain,” Erich insisted. “You wouldn’t hear a thirty-two-centimeter shell exploding two hundred yards from here.”