George Elford - Devil's Guard

The party departed and we sank back under the burlap. Suoi and the girls prepared some biscuits with jam. Noy poured five cups of hot tea—a very tempting delicacy which we gently declined to accept.

“You drink it,” Schulze urged the girls, nodding toward a dozen of our comrades who were sitting miserably soaked beneath the dripping trees. We never accepted a privilege that was denied to our comrades. It was rule number one of our jungle code of companionship.

“So much for Xuey’s reconnaissance trip,” Riedl remarked quietly, as Sergeant Krebitz and his small group disappeared into the woods. I, too, was thinking of our fat prize so temptingly close yet now so far out of reach.

Then all of a sudden Noy stood before me. “I go there, Commander,” she announced resolutely. “I can do what Xuey wanted to do… See camp. Thi comes with me.”

“I come,” Thi nodded. The two must have discussed the matter already.

Riedl protested. “That’s ridiculous, Hans,” he began, but lie stopped short of saying anything else. He, too, realized the importance of Noy’s mission. We desperately needed information. Someone had to go and only a native Indochinese could penetrate the base.

“There are many, many women in the camp,” Noy insisted. “They come and go.”

“Nobody will know us not belong there,” Thi added in her broken French. “We see camp and come back.”

“What do you think of it, Erich?” I asked Schulze.

“I think it is quite feasible.”

I turned to Noy and reached for her hand. “Do you think you will be all right, Noy?”

“Jawohl, Commander,” she replied in German and smiled. “We go there, see all and come back. Then you can attack.”

“It is very important for us that you do come back, Noy. Not only because of the information you might bring back but because we all like you very much and we think you belong to the battalion.”

She blushed slightly, lowered her head, and said quietly, “I am doing it for Karl.”

She looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry.”

“If you overstay, I shall go and bring you back myself,” Riedl stated. “Be careful.”

Noy and Thi had been away for three days, and we could do nothing but hope for the best and wait for their return. The day after their departure the rain finally stopped but the sky remained overcast, and we had to keep our sodden clothes on until they dried from our own body heat. Sergeant Krebitz and his party returned muddy to the ears and dead tired—but also successful. Xuey was safely on his way to Hanoi. Schulze, who somehow always managed to keep his tobacco dry, lit a cigarette for Krebitz. “How was your trip?”

“Merde!” Krebitz grunted, puffing contentedly. “Twice we slipped into a river, performed a ski slalom with stretcher, provisions, and all down a hundred-foot slope, missed a falling boulder by inches, and almost guided the copter into a cliff. The pilot finally managed to land the thing with its left gear hanging over a precipice. The crew dumped some crates, we pushed the stretcher through the hatch; a guy grabbed your report and off they went. And just as well, because half a minute later the whole precipice began to crumble. I guess the vibration had done it. The whole works went to hell, and we barely managed to jump clear.”

“A magnificent venture,” Schulze grinned; reaching into his rucksack he withdrew a canteen. “You deserve an extra rum, Rudolf.”

“You should see what’s in the crates big daddy sent us.”

Krebitz gulped some rum, wiped the canteen, and handed it over to one of his troopers. “Toss it around and don’t be shy—it’s on the house.”

Colonel Houssong had been thoughtful enough to send us everything we were short of. The crates contained, among other items, tea, coffee, cigarettes, tobacco, jam, insect repellent, saccharin, matches, drugs, and letters. Among them were two for me, from my parents and from Lin. There is nothing more heartening than to receive*let-ters in the jungle—“a hundred miles beyond God’s back,” as Karl used to say. Letters from Europe, from people who lived (incredibly enough) in nice homes with beds, electric light, and bathrooms.

“Yesterday we spent a magnificent day at Bexhill-on-the-Sea,” Lin wrote. “My uncle has a small plot and a trailer there. After lunch we went to the movies and saw a terrific French picture with Yves Montand, ‘The Wages of Fear’; in the evening we had a garden party with barbecue. I truly hope you will visit us here one day…”

Cities, highways, bars, cinemas—people changing their shirts twice daily, people at beach parties… Europe… I read the letters as if they brought news from another planet.

“I hope you are not living too dangerously,” Lin wrote. “The news about Indochina is quite fearful. Please don’t risk your own we!! being for a transient advantage that is going to be lost anyway. The newspapers here are writing that whatever you may do (or for that matter, whatever the British Tommies may achieve in the British dependencies) the future of the colonies will be decided here in Europe, or maybe in America. Don’t risk your life in chasinq the shadow of a victory that cannot be yours, Hans.”

How right she was…

“Life is improving here,” my father wrote. “There is much talk about a peace treaty which would restore Germany to her own people. Personally I believe it is only twaddle. I doubt if Stalin will ever conclude a peace treaty with us. Eighty percent of whatever Russia now has, from photo cameras to printing machines, is coming from the zone that the Russians are busy milking round the clock. Stalin will never give up his German “cow.”

Here in the west we now have enough provisions. Most of the industries have been rebuilt, also the cities and villages. Everything was financed by the Americans! Naturally not because they began to “like” us, but for the simple reason that they need a strong buffer state between the Reds and the rest of Europe. The prosecution of the so-called “Nazi criminals” continues. It will probably go on forever. The only change is that it is no longer the Allied Military Tribunal but German courts who prosecute and condemn. Alas, son—Germans versus Germans. Those who were slimy enough to escape prosecution themselves now prosecute the less fortunate ones. There are so many “anti-Nazis” and “resistance fighters” here that one should indeed wonder how Hitler ever managed to gain control of the Reich.”

The letter bore a Swiss postal stamp. There was still strict censorship in Germany Most of the letters I received from home had been mailed in Switzerland. The return address was also a Swiss post office box.

But our own world now centered on an area two miles downhill—in a Viet Minh camp. We gathered to discuss our coming operation against the guerrilla establishment, and, in general, our possible undertakings along the jungle road. Much depended on the girls. Although their loyalty could not be questioned, I ordered the customary precautions immediately after their departure. The defense perimeter of our camp was drastically altered. Sentries changed positions, machine guns and flamethrowers were removed and placed elsewhere. Our supplies were moved farther uphill. I also dispatched two hundred and fifty troops to deploy higher up in the woods. Our original establishment became a ghost camp. Whatever Noy and Thi may have seen was of no consequence now. A surprise Viet Minh attack would hit only the vacant woods.

Riedl at first took my arrangement as a “personal insult,” and seemed annoyed as he commented, “Noy will never betray us, Hans.”

I explained to him that the girls could be captured and tortured into making admissions. They could be placed under surveillance, permitted to move about the camp, only to be shadowed on the way back to us. In our position we could not take chances. Not even if those chances were one in a million.