The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  7

  LIEUTENANT MARINDELLE’S VENTRAL

  During the first year of their captivity the hundred and twenty officer prisoners of Camp One had refused to co-operate with the Vietminh in any way. They attended the instruction periods, but the bo-dois had to drive them to the assembly place with their rifle butts.

  There, on a little bamboo platform, the Voice or some other political commissar entrusted with their re-education would lecture them on a given theme: the misdeeds of colonialism . . . the exploitation of man by capitalism . . . But not one of the prisoners listened to their educators’ ponderous phrases, and when the Voice afterwards questioned them on the lesson they could never give the right answers.

  Faced with this display of ill-will, this refusal to collaborate in their re-education, the Voice had taken certain measures and the prisoners had their daily rations reduced to a ball of rice with a few herbs, but without so much as an ounce of fat or fish juice.

  They had held out a whole year, but thirty of them had died from exhaustion, beri-beri and vitamin deficiency. It was then the oldest and highest ranking officer in the camp, Colonel Charton, had given the order to “play the game” in order to survive.

  And so the day came when a lieutenant, young Marindelle, spoke up and gave the correct answers. The Voice was exultant and he felt that the secret wound deep inside him was beginning to close.

  The rations were improved, the prisoners were given molasses, dried fish and bananas, and they signed manifestoes in favour of peace and against the atomic bomb. They accused themselves of all sorts of crimes, almost always falsely; they shouted their guilt out loud; and in return were allowed a certain amount of medical treatment.

  But Potin who had been a Communist, and who could not be trusted to stand by his comrades to resist the Vietminh, was inveigled back into the bosom of the party whose expressions and vocabulary were already familiar to him.

  He was like those Christians who, after neglecting their duties for a long time, are restored to the church by some sudden chance in the course of a service. This swarthy little man who wore steel-rimmed spectacles was absolutely honest about it. One day he came up to his comrades and said:

  “Look. I was once a Communist. I didn’t think I still was but I have become one again, completely and without reservations. So from now on I’m on the side of the Vietminh. I want you to know this and to treat me accordingly. I shall try not to know what you are doing, what escapes you are planning, but please don’t tell me about it. Stop trusting me in any way.”

  From then on he had volunteered for the nastiest, most arduous fatigues; he had refused everything which could have improved his lot.

  Even Orsini and Leroy, who were irrepressible and animated by a tenacious and steadfast hatred for the Vietminh, bore him no malice. But they spoke to him as though to a bo-doi, which hurt him deeply, for he admired both of the lieutenants for their courage, loyalty and sense of friendship. Marindelle alone showed some understanding, but he was wary of him and his lively intelligence. He was the worm in the Communist apple, the choirboy who served Mass in order to drink the communion wine.

  Ménard was also converted, but his reasons were more questionable and when he was thrown out of the army, although he claimed to have played the double game, he found no one to defend him. A few others took to progressivism, either through conviction, cowardice, or to be given extra privileges. Marindelle was one of these, but for another reason. This incurable chatterbox, this cheerful merry andrew had an astonishing capacity for secrecy. This was only realized two years later when he escaped with the whole group of irrepressibles.

  There were a number of setbacks which should have enlightened the Vietminh and made them realize that their propaganda had gained a hold upon no more than half a dozen individuals. For instance, the incident of the chickens.

  The prisoners had been given permission to keep chickens for their own consumption. Orsini, with many an obscene allusion, applied to have ducks instead but his request was not taken into consideration; each prisoner, with the ardour of a retired suburban, kept two or three birds. There was clucking all over the camp.

  During one of his lectures the Voice announced that in token of satisfaction for this praiseworthy endeavour, he would allow the prisoners to put all their chickens into a common pool, which would enable them to recognize the superiority of collectivization to private enterprise. So, as from the next day, a chicken kolkhoz was to be established.

  The prisoners did put their chickens into a common pool, but in a somewhat unforeseen manner. They killed them all that night and clubbed together to eat them.

  At the end of the third year, however, they witnessed a strange conversion due entirely to the influence of Marindelle. The group of irrepressibles, about twelve strong, suddenly gave evidence of unexpected zeal. They hastened to sign every petition condemning war, the use of the atomic bomb and napalm. Given half a chance, they would also have condemned the air-gun and the bow and arrow. They indulged with frenzy in self-examinations, accused themselves violently of every crime they could think of, made a still noisier show of repenting of them, manifested their desire to be instructed in the Marxist religion and made really remarkable progress in dialectics.

  Marindelle had to do his utmost to curb their zeal for fear it should appear suspicious.

  The Viets are rather like Christians; they welcomed these last-minute converts with open arms, and, having soon become model fighters for peace, the neophytes occupied every responsible post in the camp.

  Not content with their daytime activity, with inventing a progressivist hymn in which every word had a double meaning, they also met at night, but always among themselves, to perfect their education under the tutelage of Marindelle.

  Marindelle would take a seat in the centre of the circle and fire questions at them:

  “Leroy?”

  “Present.”

  “How much rice did you steal today?”

  “Three handfuls. That brings our store up to a hundred pounds. We’ll need four times more than that.”

  “Millet?”

  “I’ll get the hatchet tomorrow. The Man wants a litre of choum and a couple of chickens for it.”

  “Orsini?”

  “I scrounged a pair of trousers; they could be made into a sack. They belonged to Ménard and he made a fuss. So I pitched into him and accused him in the presence of a bo-doi of playing a double game and being nothing but an imperialist in disguise.”

  “Don’t overdo it.”

  “I,” said Maincent, “managed to relieve one of the bo-dois of his tinder lighter.”

  “Have you prepared your self-examination?”

  “I can’t think of any more crimes to accuse myself of.”

  “Use your imagination; you’ve got to replace Potin as officer i/c stores before the rainy season begins. I’ve been working on the Meteor for the last fortnight, but the supervisor-general is on his guard. From now on we’re going to work in four teams of three; each team will build its own raft. We’ll have the hatchet in turns.”

  “I’ve got a map,” said Juves, “or rather, a tracing on a bit of bum-wad. They let me have a look at a pamphlet on French atrocities and it contained a map of Tonkin. I made a copy of it.”

  “So what?”

  “Do you realize, smart guy, what we’re letting ourselves in for? Over three hundred miles roped to bamboo rafts; first the river by the camp in full spate, then the Song-Gam with its falls and rapids near Tho-Son. Enough to drown us twenty times over. We meet the Bright River at Binh-Ca, with Viets stationed on all the islets. It’s a hundred to one, a thousand to one, against our pulling it off.”

  “Do you know a better way? Can you see us marching barefoot through the jungle?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then? Do you want to die here, still performing your Marxist monkey-tr
icks? Especially as you’re not particularly gifted.”

  Orsini broke in heatedly:

  “We’ve agreed once and for all. Marindelle’s the boss and we’re sticking to his plan.”

  “This war is bound to end some day,” Juves protested.

  “Don’t you believe it. Do you think France is going to climb down because of these little bastards? If we stay on here, all that’s left for us is to become collaborators like Ménard or, better still, Commies like Potin. I’d rather do myself in.”

  The following month Maincent succeeded Potin as officer i/c stores. The Communist, who had given ample proof of his integrity, did not protest even though Marindelle had reported him to the camp commandant for stealing rice for himself and his friends. Leroy saw fit to apologize:

  “You understand . . .”

  “I think I understand,” he curtly replied.

  He went off, hunching his shoulders. He would have given anything to be one of them, to share in the fresh strength they had suddenly derived from preparing their escape and through which they had made themselves masters of the camp.

  That was how the political fiction of the camp came into being. The Vietminh only knew prisoners who were zealous or reluctant, who advanced with faltering steps along the path of re-education or else, on the contrary, made rapid progress. But in the shadows there already existed a sort of clandestine collective government which ascribed the role that each man had to play in the vast charade that had been prepared for the benefit of the Voice and the camp guards.

  To begin with, this state of mind was unconscious and unexpressed. It was Marindelle and his group who, in preparing their escape, gave it a cohesive and specific form. After they were recaptured the political fiction became general. With the sly and patient perseverance of prisoners, the officers of Camp One managed to lend a double meaning to every gesture and every word, to ridicule their guards, their ideas and their convictions at every instant, and to trick them all the time while maintaining an air of the utmost gravity.

  Discovering laughter again, the prisoners contrived to prize open the mysterious gates of this Kafkaesque hell into which they had been plunged.

  They remained captives, admittedly, but the part of them which the Vietminh were so anxious to enslave, all that was not purely physical, had broken free, and this time laughter was more effective than bamboo rafts.

  For the escape bid met with total failure.

  The rains had started. The level of the river no longer dropped in the interval between two storms and its muddy waters churned with driftwood. The four rafts were ready and, weighted with stones, lay on the river bed. They had been crudely constructed out of bamboo sticks held together with creepers which had already started to rot in the water. These rafts were in fact nothing more than thick logs some fifteen to twenty feet long which the officers planned to sit astride rather like horses. They were pierced by a plank at both ends to prevent them from turning turtle in the water. They had knocked together some clumsy paddles with which to steer them. The rafts, which they had tried out on several occasions, floated almost totally submerged, so that they had to carry their foodstuffs slung round their necks. Each team was equipped with fifty pounds of rice and a bully-beef tin full of salt, which was nowhere near sufficient.

  Four copies had been made of Juves’s map. Each prisoner had provided all the information he could on the country to be crossed and this information had been recorded on the maps.

  “A suicide operation,” Juves maintained.

  “It’s tonight or never,” Marindelle announced one morning. “Tomorrow they’re organizing a general search; we’ll have to be off before. That s.o.b. of a supervisor-general is beginning to suspect something. He’s not straight, that rat. He’s a dirty nha-que who’s impervious to all dialectic.”

  They attended the instruction period which took place at five every evening. The daily storm broke after supper, towards seven o’clock. The downpour drowned every other noise and isolated the huts. This was the moment they chose for their escape.

  Marindelle had previously handed Trézel, “the parson,” a letter addressed to the Voice with instructions to leave it outside the camp office but not until the following morning.

  “What’s it all about?” asked the wary Breton who had never been able to understand Marindelle’s complex character.

  “Don’t ask too many questions. I’m making a break for it . . . but I’m taking certain precautions. In other words, I’m buckling on my ventral.”*

  The letter was written in pencil on bamboo paper and the Jesuits by whom Marindelle had been brought up in the prison-convent of Saint François de Sales at Evreux would have been proud of their pupil.

  Democratic Republic of Viet-Nam,

  Camp One

  Sir,

  When you read these lines I shall have left Camp One in the hope of reaching Hanoi and France. I suppose you will be disappointed and will think that I have relapsed into my former errors. I wish to justify myself in your eyes for I need your moral support if I am to carry on the struggle for peace. During the thirty months I spent in your camp you made me see not only where my duty lay but also that the title of peace fighter had to be earned. I now feel fully qualified and certain of my aim. I am impatient to engage in this campaign which you are waging throughout the world to wipe out the last traces of a society that is rotten, selfish and damned to eternity.

  This campaign I must wage in my own country, among my own people and my own class. If you had released me, I should have appeared suspect to many of my comrades and to my own government. Having escaped, however, I shall be able to operate in complete freedom. Were it otherwise, would I be writing to you now?

  My two comrades, Orsini and Leroy, likewise share my views.

  I am convinced that one day we shall meet again and that side by side, fraternally united, in Paris, the centre of our communal culture, we shall work together to bring about that world of hope and peace for which you have already sacrificed more than your life.

  Allow me, sir, to thank you for having made a new man of me. Thanks to your instruction and your example, I shall in my turn be able to conquer and to triumph.

  YVES MARINDELLE,

  FIGHTER FOR PEACE

  In groups of three they made their way to the river through the undergrowth, took the rice out of its hiding place, and distributed the prepared packets. Some of them dived in and pulled up the rafts. The river was in full spate and flooding the jungle.

  “See you in Paris,” said Orsini.

  “Or in hell,” said Juves.

  They climbed on to their rafts and with great difficulty reached mid-stream. The current swept them down one after another.

  All of a sudden it stopped raining. The darkness cleared, like ink being diluted by water, and the evening star appeared in the sky. They were soaked to the skin and began to shudder with cold.

  “Have you got a wife?” Marindelle asked Orsini.

  “No, but I’m going to find one, and not only one, a whole mass.”

  “What about you, Leroy?”

  “An old girl-friend down at Béziers.”

  “My wife’s name is Jeanine,” Marindelle solemnly announced. “She’s very young, very beautiful and it’s been a long time for her to wait.”

  The first night they covered forty miles, but one of the rafts, the one carrying Captain Juves, overturned. The three men managed to swim back to the bank, but at dawn they ran across a Vietminh patrol. They made a dash for it and the bo-dois opened fire. One prisoner was killed, another was wounded, and Juves gave himself up. The Viets finished off the wounded man and made Juves kneel down on the muddy bank. The corporal leading the patrol put a bullet through his head and with his foot toppled the body over into the stream which promptly carried it off.

  In the Song-Gam rapids the second raft came to grief agai
nst a rock. The creepers holding the bamboos together broke. Two prisoners were drowned and the third, Lieutenant Millet, was saved by some fishermen and handed over to the Vietminh. To punish him while waiting for instructions, the local commander had him tied naked to an ant-heap. All night long Millet begged them to put him out of his misery. The following morning he was taken back to camp where a people’s tribunal condemned him to nine months’ solitary confinement for having betrayed the trust of the Vietnamese people.

  The third raft capsized several times. The rice fell into the water. Dying of hunger, the three prisoners gave themselves up to the Communists. They were brought back to camp, tried and condemned to six months’ solitary confinement.

  The cells were rather like bamboo cages with a trapdoor opening. They were too small for the solitary prisoner to stretch his legs. Once a day a bo-doi brought him a minimum amount of food and for the rest of the time he stewed and rotted in the damp heat and solitude, haunted by his memories.

  The three lieutenants on the fourth raft held out for a fortnight. They had forgotten the number of times their vessel had turned turtle. Eaten alive by the mosquitoes, obliged to feed on raw rice, shivering with cold and fever, their limbs cramped and aching, they were frequently pushed to the limits of human endurance. But each time, at the last moment, they clung to life, Orsini and Leroy through hatred, Marindelle through love.

  Later on Orsini and Leroy were astonished to realize that in this pitiful and admirable endeavour they had still been able, after three years’ captivity, to summon sufficient strength and courage to perform one of those impossible deeds that gives man his grandeur, and that at the same time they had been delivered of their hatred.