by Barry Sadler
Langer sat down heavily on a box of rations. He opened his canteen and took a pull to cut the dryness of his throat before answering. Xuan found a corner to stand in, watching them and waiting until he was asked to contribute his information.
Boissy opened his eyes, both of them red rimmed with traces of pus around the lids.
"Well!" he repeated. "What is going on?"
Langer spat a portion of the water out of his mouth. "They're going to hit us, and soon I would say, probably later tonight or early in the morning. We spotted a detail of medics moving up. I had Xuan follow them. Tell him what you saw, Xuan."
Xuan eased himself off the wall he had been resting against. "The Viet Minh have moved an aid station up to this spot." He'd moved to the area map on top of the field desk and was pointing. "I would say from the amount of men and medical supplies they were bringing in, that it's going to be a big one. They are planning on having plenty of work to do. "
Boissy checked the spot indicated on his map. "Then it's us they're going to hit. They're too far away to do much good if they were going after Lalaine or Beatrice. No! It's going to be us again, gentlemen. Good enough. We'll be waiting." Then he added bitterly, "Of course we don't have any choice but to wait. Now go ahead and get some sleep or do whatever you want. You are relieved from duty for the rest of the day, unless things pick up a bit. "
He pointed a finger at Langer before he left. "Will you please do something about Gus? He has been pestering the hell out of me for a pass to the nearest village. He says he just wants to see if they have a decent restaurant."
In spite of his exhaustion a grin forced its way on to Langer scarred face. "If there isn't a restaurant there, I'll give you odds that in two hours he could arrange to have the Viet Minh build one just for him."
Boissy shook his head. "Is he really serious? I don't know how to read him. "
Langer nodded his head. "If Gus is talking about food, women or booze, and that's all he ever talks about, then he is absolutely serious."
Boissy nodded his head. "That's what I thought, but tell him, no! He can't go out of the camp and there'll be no passes. Passes!" He laughed. "The man is obviously mad. You know that, don't you?"
Langer answered with a grin. "You're not the first one to think that, sir. But when things get tough have Gus stay close to you. You won't regret it."
He left to find his sack, which consisted of two molding blankets in a niche cut in the side of the clay walls of the underground bunker. He didn't complain. There'd been times when having a hole like this would have been an indescribable luxury. The only other item of interest for the day was that Gus had found several large grass snakes while he was digging a new trench. From the gleam in Gus's piggish eyes, Langer almost pitied Hermann for whatever it was Gus had in mind for him. No one else at Isabelle was worthy of this kind of attention. Well, he'd probably find out tomorrow what his hairy friend had in mind.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Hermann rolled over in his sleep, restless. The night air was heavy and his dreams were troubled by alternating fits of memory. Memories of the girl he had killed, and of his hatred for Gus and his friends. His dreams kept him from hearing the soft shuffling steps entering his bunker room. Ever so slowly large fingers lifted the olive drab blanket at the end of the makeshift bunk. From a lantern outside the room there was barely enough light to make out the greenish, squirming things in the thick fingers as they slipped the snakes under the covers, then gently tucked in the ends of the blankets. The figure crept back into the tunnel hallway and down the passage to wait.
Hermann shifted in his sleep. He had his shirt off but had kept his boots and pants on. However, the buttons were undone and open to the groin to make his rest easier, less constricted. A coolness touched his warm flesh by the pubic region. Another length of sinuous muscle slid up to the matted hairs of his chest. Hermann groaned and stirred in his sleep. The slithering forms under his covers explored their new surroundings, forked tongues flickering out, tasting the aura of their new host. One was tired from the manhandling it had received earlier and picked the warmness of Hermann 's armpit for a resting place. It slid into the hair and began to curl up.
Hermann 's eyes jerked open, his mind instantly aware that something was not right. The snake by his belly moved up toward his chest. Cold icy sweat burst out of his pores.
Oh my God! he thought, kraits or cobras are crawling on me. He was afraid to move or yell. It might aggravate his two sliding parasites. He tried to whisper a cry for help but nothing could get out of his suddenly dry mouth with the thick tongue in it that wouldn't work. Uncontrollable tremors ran along his body, and the snakes moved in response to it. Hermann nearly fainted. One of them was moving up under the blanket getting closer to his face. He could feel it crawling through the hair of his chest. He knew he was going to be bitten. Chin down as low as he could get, he felt the unseen things progress along his body. His heart almost stopped when the serpent popped its head out from under the covers and stuck its tongue out at him. Hermann screamed. He couldn't take it any longer. He burst out of his bunk, the snakes dropping from him. Grabbing his Mats 49, he chopped his bunk into splinters. The blasting of the bullets nearly deafened him in the confines of his small underground room.
Screams followed by several long bursts of automatic fire snapped Langer's eyes open. Running feet and groans could be heard as men raced for their positions, thinking an attack was coming. They were halted by Hermann 's appearance, holding a Mats 49 submachine gun in one hand and in the other, the tattered remains of two four foot long grass snakes. He was screaming, face white, eyes, wild and sweaty.
"I'll kill the son of a bitch. I'll cut his balls off and feed them to him. Where is that overgrown lump of dog shit?" He started down the hall to where Gus slept, bumping his head on one of the log rafters, nearly knocking himself down.
Staggering back to his knees, he grabbed a stack of magazines for the submachine gun. Throwing the mangled snakes down, he slapped a full magazine into the gun.
"I'll blow his guts out and feed them to the pigs." Still a bit tired, Langer got out of his bunk fully dressed as always. He took the pistol by his bunk and stepped into the hall. Hermann was just passing his niche to get to Gus's room when he felt something cold pressing at the back of his neck.
"I don't think you really want to do that, Sargent Hermann, because if you did, then I would have to blow your throat out. It's late now. Why don't you just go back to sleep? You don't know for certain that Gus put the snakes in with you. They could have crept in here on their own and picked you because you're the closest thing in here to being one of them."
Gulping air, Hermann slowly set the weapon down, his chest heaving with fear and anger. Seething, he turned to look Langer in the face ignoring the pistol now, pointing straight at his nose.
"One of these days, just remember that. No one can do something like this to me and live. You'll all pay, and pay soon."
Langer lowered the pistol. "Well, if you're going to get even you had better do it soon. Because I think our little friends out there on the mountain are going to try and beat you to it. So knock the shit off and I'll tell Gus to go somewhere else to play”
Dominic came down the tunnel carrying a tin of canned meat, his ration for the day. He ignored Hermann and addressed Langer. "The rest of the 2nd BEP is coming in tonight. They should be here within the hour. Think we should go topside and see if we can give them any help?"
Hermann stuck his face into Dominic's. "Make reports to me. I'm still the senior man here!" Dominic stared at him as if the sargent was retarded and spat a hunk of phlegm on the floor.
"Like I said," he repeated to Langer, "think we should go up? They'll probably need a lot of support to get down alive."
Hermann stomped away back to his room, still grumbling under his breath about death and revenge.
Langer shook his head. Maybe Gus was going a bit too far in his harassment of Hermann. It would be better to jus
t kill the son of a bitch and get it over with. Dominic led the way topside. Even in the dark the evidence of fierce conflict was everywhere. If a man wasn't careful he could break his leg or his neck just trying to get from one place to another. The attacks of the last few days had turned the once orderly looking outpost into a morass of broken timbers, collapsed bunkers and shell holes. The litter of war was everywhere. Spent cartridge casings, empty boxes for the mortars and recoilless rifles lay everywhere. There was no time for any clean-up to be done. It was all they could do to keep their main bunkers in usable repair.
The strongest bunker was where the wounded were kept under the tender eye of a Somalian medic, a giant black man, who still wore the marks of his tribal scars on his dark oily face. He treated his charges with unbelievable tenderness, worrying over each one as if he were his own child.
In the mountains, the Viet gunners were already ranging their sights for the next day's targets. As usual, the airstrip was one of them. They knew that if they kept the airstrip inoperable the camp would have to fall. The fighters and bombers of the French air force had been unable to reduce their effectiveness. The dozens of antiaircraft guns concealed in the trees and rocks were taking too deadly a toll on the French's thin number of operational aircraft, and there were other needs to be filled elsewhere.
Claudine was getting it again, as was Lalaine. Several of the outposts had been lost and retaken three or four times and every time the enemy became a bit stronger, the Legion a bit weaker. On the twenty fifth of March, the French lost part of Lalaine and now the Legion and the Viet Minh were killing each other daily at distances of less than twenty five meters. The Viet Minh had already begun their program of digging trenches toward the French positions. Each day they came a bit closer and all knew that when they were close enough they would burst out at them and the fighting would be hand to hand.
The outposts were keeping their activities to a minimum, saving it for when the planes came in. The 2nd BEP would be trying to jump over the airstrip so they'd be inside friendly wire. In the dark, Langer knew that many of them would land outside the relative safety of the airstrip and have to get back inside as best they could. Once the plane's engines were heard by the Viet Minh in the mountains hell would break loose in the valley. It was the ninth of April and Langer wondered why more men were being sent into the meat grinder. If something drastic didn't take place to change the circumstances, all the men trapped inside this ruined valley would either be killed or taken prisoner. The Viets sent up a few illuminating rounds from the mortars to cast their artificial, eye searing glare over Claudine and Gabrielle. There was no response from the defenders. They had their orders; they were to wait. It wouldn't be long now. What at first sounded like the droning of a few mosquitoes, gradually increased into a distant swarm. The planes were coming.
All lights were off on the approaching aircraft. They were coming in blacked out. At the airstrip, Langer could see some kind of light coming on. Cans of petrol had been set on fire to mark the drop zone and guide the planes in. They'd have only one chance. The planes were close now, passing nearly overhead. In the night sky, they appeared as a flight of dark swallows sailing through the skies. He guessed they would be jumping at about six hundred feet, with no reserve chutes. At that altitude there would not be time for a second chance.
The night was beginning to erupt. From the Viet Minh dozens of flares and illuminating rounds were being fired to light up the sky. The defending camps responded with all they had, firing their own illuminating rounds over the mountains to blind the eyes of the Viet gunners. At the same time they fired what remained of their one hundred five shells in support of the drop. At Lalaine, the only remaining quad fifty hosed down the western ridges as all the camps opened up in a mad picture of rapid fire. Tracers cut through the dark like bleeding arrows of fire and the Viet Minh answered in kind. Isabelle was too far away to do much good with any light weapons support, but her mortar crews were working feverishly, plastering the jungle and brush to give their comrades in the air an extra second before they leaped into the night to be met by enemy machine gun fire.
By the light of a dozen flares, Langer and his men could see the blossoming of parachutes and tiny bodies drifting helpless in the dark sky, hoping they would not overshoot the airstrip. They began to land. Nearly four hundred men came in, hitting the ground, rolling, snapping out of their now dangerous parachutes to grab weapons and race for the safety of the nearest bunker. Over fifty missed the wire and had to fight their way back in, ignoring the crash of one hundred five shells all around them and the increasingly accurate fire of Viet Minh automatic weapons. Over a dozen died on the wire, or tripped mines and booby traps laid by their own comrades but the majority made it to the temporary safety of the bunkers surrounding the airstrip. One plane, bringing up the rear, veered off course to avoid running into a bright stream of antiaircraft fire directly in front of it. The cargo master must have been edgy because two small parachutes came out of the door to drift near the wire of the outer perimeter of Isabelle. Langer hadn't noticed that they had been joined by Xuan until the smaller man touched his arm, pointing toward the wire to the left front where the bundles were falling to the earth. Before they touched down, Gus was over the side racing for the bundles. A burst of machine gun fire kicked up dust around him but he was single minded in his pursuit of the bundles. Cutting the shroud lines, he returned, leaping over his own wire like a mammoth gazelle. His last leap threw him back over the sandbag wall, a three-foot square, canvas wrapped bundle in each paw.
Langer nearly slapped him across the head.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, you fool? Don't you know you could have gotten yourself killed out there? What's so important about those goddamned bundles? You don't even know what's in them?"
Gus grinned good naturedly, tossing one of the bundles to Xuan. "Take it easy, mon ami. Packages of this size mean one thing. Food or drink and, if we're lucky, both!"
The night's show was over. The 2nd BEP was on the ground and already being broken up to replace those that had been lost at Lalaine and Claudine.
Once again Gus proved his instincts were right. The packages contained delicacies for the general's table. There were three magnums of Dom Perignon, truffles in wine sauce, canned chickens, potted meats, cheeses and a whole ham. The other items included newspapers and some badly needed penicillin, which Gus graciously consented to have sent by the next runner to the hospital. The rest he claimed as legitimate spoils of war.
CHAPTER TWENTY
During the night, two squads from the 2nd BEP made it to Isabelle. Leading them was Lieutenant Villon. Meeting Langer and the rest of the crew, he found that instead of being welcomed, they wished he and the others had stayed where it was safe. Villon shook his young head. "Do you think that I am going to miss out on what is promising to be the greatest feat of French arms since World War One?" There was no reply to a question like that, so they let it slide as Hermann, asserting his rank as top non-com, took Villon aside to give him a briefing on what was taking place and to show him around the camp. It didn't take long for the lieutenant to understand what they'd meant by staying where it was safe, but all his life he had wished for the chance to prove himself in a desperate battle. Now he had that chance and he would not fail himself or France. There were more important things in life than dying.
During successive nights, several more drops came in to bring volunteers from the 3rd and 5th REI, most of whom had never made a parachute jump before and never would again. A noble exercise in futility.
Thich watched the drops. They were of no importance. It only added more men to the bag and made their inevitable triumph that much greater. Everything was going according to plan. For the next month, the Viet Minh kept unceasing pressure on the defenders with constant artillery shelling and attacks by the infantry. And every day they drew closer to the main line of resistance. One by one the outposts fell, and this time they were kept, bringing them that m
uch nearer to victory over the hated colonialists.
Giap called Thich to him. Offering his old friend a seat, he poured hot tea, which they sipped with obvious relish. "Comrade Thich. It is nearly done. I have made my decision. The last assault will begin tomorrow and shall not end until all of those below us are killed or taken prisoner. We have them now but if we delay much longer we will lose our advantage. As it stands now, I know that the Americans are not going to send their bombers against us. But, if we wait, the French may find friends in the outside world who admire their foolish stubbornness and force the western powers into sending aid. That must not happen. In addition, our own supplies are running low and we have lost too many men to continue this rate of attrition indefinitely. We must smash them and do it now. I have made another decision and that is that you will have the honor of being the one to destroy the last French outpost, Isabelle. That will be our final objective. Perhaps they will give it up when the main camp falls, but who can tell how these illogical Legionnaires will respond? In any event, it will be you who will be responsible for reducing their last outpost and either killing them or accepting their surrender. I give you this as reward for your years of faithful and unswerving loyalty to me and our great cause. "
Thich was overwhelmed by the honor. To be the one who received the final glory of their campaign was almost too great an honor for him to accept, but he forced himself to. "I promise you, Comrade General, that all will be as you wish, even to the cost of my own life, which I have always been ready to give in our cause."
Giap finished his tea, poured one more cup and looked at Thich 's crippled leg. "Your wound will not hinder you in this, will it?"
Thich rose from his seat and bowed. "Nothing will stop me from achieving that which you desire. I swear it by my ancestors."
