The Centurions

by Jean Larteguy

  “The next thing was to create a sort of Pavlovian conditioned reflex in you, a politico-stomachic reflex. The prisoners have been enlightened and are making political progress. The minimum vital ration is increased proportionally and the stomach is prepared to think along the right lines . . . On the other hand, any backsliding is punished by a reduction in the diet and the stomach has to suffer the consequences of this mental rebellion.”

  “But there was still one weed which was particularly tenacious because its roots lay buried deep in the earth: hope—the hope of getting back to France, living as free men once again, seeing our families once more and making love to a girl without committing a political sin.”

  “It’s worse than quack-grass, this hope. No sooner is it pulled up than it grows again and in a trice strangles the tender little shoots of the Marxist crop. It’s got to be pulled up all the time. The best method they’ve found is the false rumour. Here’s what I mean: on the 14th July everyone in camp was filled with hope of a speedy release. The quack-grass was running wild. So the Voice disseminates one of his false rumours by one of his usual means: a piece of paper dropped on the ground, a bo-doi who shoots his mouth off: ‘The Vietnamese delegation has left Geneva for Prague. The Mendès-France government has just been overthrown; the marines are landing at Haiphong . . .’ Hope is abruptly snuffed out. There’s no other solution . . . the only way to survive and get away with a whole skin is to become good fighters for Peace.”

  “And all the time there’s the stomach clamouring for its ration, anxious not to have it decreased . . . The conditioned reflex . . . Good night, gentlemen, sleep well. Take it from me, that rumour’s all nonsense. But we shouldn’t have been able to tell you so with such conviction if we had not ourselves been subjected to this treatment hundreds and hundreds of times.”

  • • •

  When the news of the Geneva armistice eventually reached Camp One, no one needed any confirmation to believe it. Truth always has a stronger, more convincing flavour than rumour.

  On 21 July, after the siesta in the damp heat of late afternoon, a great clamour rose from the old hands’ quarters and spread across the river. Boisfeuras, Glatigny, Merle, Marindelle, Orsini, Mahmoudi and Pinières got up without saying a word. Leroy appeared at the top of the ladder:

  “This is it; it’s all over; they’ve signed,” he said.

  Marindelle had gone quite pale beneath his dull yellow tan and Glatigny had to support him.

  “You know, Jacques,” he said, “I’d given up all hope. Now I’ll be seeing Jeanine again.”

  Glatigny suddenly felt deep affection for the little lieutenant. He put his arm round his shoulder and made him turn round towards the corner of the hut so that no one should see the tears in the eyes of this aged child who was so weak and so strong, worldly and naïve, cynical and tender.

  All the canh-nas were disgorging their tou-bis, who raced in single file along the mud embankments towards the river to join the old hands.

  Prisoners and bo-dois intermingled, fell into one another’s arms and fraternized and, as God was witness, at that moment there was no one in the whole camp except men who saw their hard time coming to an end.

  That evening the Voice, all sugar and spice, informed them that the armistice had been signed some days before* and they would soon be leaving for the release camp. Preparations for the departure began in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and delight.

  The Voice called for volunteers to act as stretcher-bearers for the sick and seriously wounded. Every member of Marindelle’s team of “wily serpents” offered his services, even Esclavier who had just rejoined his comrades and could still hardly stand upright.

  “We’ll be free in three days’ time,” said the optimists. “Trucks will come and fetch us away.”

  “Nothing’s as simple as that in the Communist world,” said the old hands.

  On the day of the departure from Camp One a certain number of Vietminh officers and N.C.O.s approached their prisoners with paper and pencil. Hiding from one another, they asked the Frenchmen to give them a written testimonial stating that they had treated them decently and had behaved well towards them.

  “They’re afraid we might come back,” Pinières sneered, “so they’re taking proper precautions.”

  “It’s not that exactly,” said Marindelle. “In a few weeks’ time they’re all going to undergo a purge; they’ll be demoted and a few of them will be shot. They’re already preparing their defence without even knowing if they’re guilty. Anything may be useful, even a prisoner’s testimonial.

  “They’re the poor wretches, not us, for they have to stay on in prison and haven’t a hope of ever getting out.”

  “Are you getting soft-hearted?” Esclavier asked him in a peculiar tone.

  “I went and said goodbye to the Voice. I was almost moved by the bastard. I thought he was going to ask me to kiss him, as a man condemned to death might ask his lawyer or the chaplain at the foot of the scaffold.

  “And look what he gave me.”

  He held out his hand to show them a little boy-scout cross.

  “There’s every sort of type in the Vietminh,” Esclavier curtly replied, “pearls and swine included, but it’s always the swine who eat the pearls.”

  “You don’t seem to have much to say about your spell in hospital. There was a rumour, however . . .”

  “I almost died. Dia, a little Viet nurse and good luck saved me.”

  The team was given only one sick man to escort. He was an elderly senior officer who had been captured at Cao-Bang. He was on his last legs; but he had sworn that he would not die in the hands of the Viets, so he was infinitely careful in the use he made of what life he had left. He never spoke, he never moved.

  Throughout the march the “wily serpents” helped themselves to fruit, molasses and poultry and halted when they felt like it in the huts along the road. They got hold of some choum by threatening the peasants that they would denounce them—for it was forbidden to possess any alcohol—and some wads of tobacco by exchanging them for objects which they subsequently took back.

  They trotted along like coolies, four of them at a time carrying the stretcher. They would cover three or four miles in an hour, then suddenly declare that they had had enough and doss down just outside a village where, as soon as darkness fell, they would go “scrounging.”

  All personal differences within the team soon disappeared, while solid bonds of friendship between them began to be forged; they formed a united and unbroken front. What belonged to one belonged to the others. No one gave orders, but they had fallen into the habit of putting their heads together to decide what they were going to do next.

  They parodied those meetings of the People’s Army at which each bo-doi made his self-examination and gave his opinion on the best way to capture Dien-Bien-Phu or look after a rifle.

  But, without realizing it, they were developing collective habits in their everyday life and way of thinking; they were no longer merely comrades thrown together by chance and circumstance but an organization with its own rites (based on stealing molasses), a cell whose function was to frustrate another organization.

  Three years later, when the military examining magistrate was interrogating Mahmoudi in Cherche-Midi prison, he asked him this question:

  “Why, after signing the letter to the President of the Republic, didn’t you go the whole hog and join the F.L.N.?”

  Mahmoudi looked at the captain from the judge advocate general’s branch with his well-cut uniform and gold-rimmed spectacles. He had noticed the bureaucratic self-satisfaction with which he had spread out on the table the carefully documented papers he carried in his brief-case.

  “Were you ever out in Indo-China?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Then it would be difficult for you to understand.”

  What had held him back was
Pinières and Glatigny, the touchy Esclavier with whom a little Vietminh girl had fallen in love, the madman Lescure whom he had protected, and little Merle who longed for civilian life; it was Marindelle and his tuft of tow-coloured hair on the top of his head, and Orsini who once told him: “You silly fool, when you get caught stealing, you must always think up some excuse, otherwise what’s the point of dialectics?”; it was Leroy and that old colonel they had carried on the stretcher who was hanging on to life in order to see France again.

  It was one of those things you can’t discuss with an examining magistrate.

  On 30 August, after a fortnight’s rest on the banks of the Bright River, the prisoners reached Vietri where the release camp had been installed. It consisted of some big, newly constructed bamboo huts over which fluttered Vietminh flags, banners and Picasso doves of peace.

  The prisoners had been issued with cigarettes, new uniforms like those worn by the bo-dois and fibre helmets which were not, however, covered in camouflage material, and, one hour before their release, some very poor-quality canvas shoes.

  The transit camp was situated on a sort of hill which descended in a gentle slope towards the Red River where the LCTs of the French Navy were now moored.

  The evening before, a large detachment of Pims had arrived who were to be released as a reciprocal measure; a group of journalists accompanied the party. The entire population of the neighbouring villages was assembled on the beach, lined up along the barrier in their cone-shaped hats and black trousers under the command of can-bos in uniform.

  When the first boat lowered its ramp the can-bos gave a signal and the crowd gave a loud cheer and waved their hats.

  The Pims replied by waving their hands, but without much enthusiasm. At Haiphong they had almost had to be driven on to the vessels by force and some of them had taken flight, so reluctant were they to go back to the Vietminh paradise.

  The journalists Pasfeuro and Villèle, who had flown out from France a week earlier, made an incongruous pair on the beach, standing slightly apart from the cohort of accredited pressmen, agency representatives, magazine photographers, news-reel and television cameramen, and foreign correspondents.

  In spite of the torrid heat and an uncomfortable night on the LCT, Villèle still looked elegant in his sky-blue tropical suit and tie worn with studied negligence. He had a patrician figure in spite of slightly lop-sided shoulders. With his handsome face, intelligent features and deep-set eyes, he took a well-meaning interest in everything. He invited confidences and his perpetual expression of mild astonishment prompted the people he interviewed to tell him more than they had intended in order to convince him.

  They all thought him pleasant, understanding and well-disposed until the moment they read what he had written about them. But by then it was too late and they couldn’t even bash his face in, for he had skipped off.

  He was thirty-five years old; a few grey strands in his thick well-groomed hair added to his charm and distinction.

  No one had ever seen Pasfeuro in anything but baggy trousers and a shirt opened at the neck to reveal a powerful torso. There was always a cigarette dangling from his lips and his uncouthness was proverbial. He had a sulky face and undistinguished features; he was extremely clumsy both with people and inanimate objects, he sweated copiously, had a strong smell and frequently forgot to wash. His heavy square hands were those of a stone-mason or riveter who by some stroke of fate had taken to journalism. He scribbled notes down on odd bits of paper and more often than not mislaid them.

  When Pasfeuro smiled a mischievous gleam came into his dark brown eyes; he then looked extremely young. Children, dogs and even his own colleagues were quite fond of him, whereas they could not abide Villèle.

  Ten years earlier Villèle was still called Zammit and his parents kept a shop at Saint-Eugène near Algiers. His father was Maltese, his mother a Greek from Alexandria, and the blood of every Mediterranean race flowed through his veins.

  Villèle had spent his childhood in the little streets which smelt of rancid butter, grilled skewered meat and kesra. He knew every pimp, tart, kif-addict and pickpocket in the Kasbah. He liked to make himself useful to the members of this underworld. But his brothers and comrades, quarrelsome, touchy and ticklish on a point of honour which in general they did not value particularly highly, accused him of lack of virility and referred to him with contempt as a coulo.*

  He won a scholarship; his father and uncles paid for his passage to France. He shed his accent, invented a suitable family for himself, passed out of college with flying colours and, on joining the weekly Influence, became Luc Villèle. It was only an unexpected sense of the ridiculous that prevented him from adding the particle “de” to his assumed name.

  Progressivism was all the rage, so he followed the fashion.

  Villèle loved discreet luxury, deep arm-chairs, cakes and pastries and very sweet coffee with cream, and delighted in the heady scent of high game that emanated from western civilization in this decaying city of Paris. He had no political opinion, but his instinct prompted him to rise up at once against anyone who preached courage, endurance, endeavour and heroism. He had a taste for defeat and anarchy.

  From time to time a fit of aggressive nationalism prompted him, under the influence of passion or in a spirit of rebellion, to write the opposite of what he generally preached. He was regarded then as suffering from a twinge of conscience, which enabled him in consequence to pass himself off as a journalist torn between two stools, a man of absolute integrity and largely independent of the editorial policy of his paper. Whereupon he would resume his slow undermining activity with increased effectiveness.

  He had heard that Phillipe Esclavier might be in the batch of prisoners who were shortly to be released: the poor misguided idiots.

  He thought of writing a long article on the return of the captain, heir to one of the greatest names of the French left wing, the son of the late Professor Esclavier, who had been taken prisoner in a colonialist war while fighting against the liberty of the people, whereas back in France his sister and brother-in-law, the Weihl-Esclaviers, were directing the para-Communist movement of the Fighters for Peace.

  With an article on these lines he could get everyone’s back up and assume the pathetic tone which he exploited only too well to expound on those heroic degenerates who were the last remaining defenders of a condemned civilization.

  At the end of the war Pasfeuro had been authorized by a court decision to assume the strange name he had thought out for himself, while serving with the maquis in Savoy, to the exclusion of all his others: Herbert de Mortfault de Puysaignac de Cortelier, Marquis of This and Count of That, all perfectly authentic titles earned in a succession of royal beds. When the daughter of the family wouldn’t do, the son was sent in her place. No inhibitions or complexes in that clan—if they failed by the front entrance, they succeeded by the rear! And their success had been brilliant, as all the history books showed. They had played the same game with the Empire and the Republic, with the Jewish bankers and American big business. During the occupation they had carried on in the same way with the Germans. But they did not sleep with any old German, never anyone below the rank of general; so no one had worried about it.

  Pasfeuro sometimes wondered who on earth his father might be. Certainly not the old marquis, whose tastes were exclusively unnatural. Perhaps the plumber who happened to call that day. Ever since the Crusades his family had been easy-going in that respect. But what the hell did he care? He was now plain Pasfeuro, a reporter on the Quotidien, who earned 150,000 francs a month, plus the fiddles on his expense account.

  He loved his job, but he was less talented than Villèle; he did not cheat so much. Pasfeuro was against the war in Indo-China but not against the men taking part in it.

  Perhaps he would shortly see Yves Marindelle, Jeanine’s husband, coming down the sandy path. It might be slightly embarrassing . . . I
n this batch there was probably also a distant family relation, that fellow Glatigny who wore an eyeglass and who was allowed to ride horses which were even better bred than he was.

  Pasfeuro suddenly noticed a little Vietminh in uniform who earlier on had introduced himself to him as a journalist. He was now on board one of the LCTs and had just handed a piece of paper to one of the Pims.

  The latter promptly turned round towards his comrades and gave certain instructions.

  “Ho Chu Tich, Muon Nam!”* the Pim shouted.

  His comrades took up the cry, shouting louder and louder, and suddenly, at a sign from the “journalist” who had gone back ashore, they all threw their bush hats into the water.

  That wretched dented headgear which was worn by every soldier in the expeditionary corps had suddenly become the symbol of servitude.

  The crowd on the banks cheered and waved small flags but there was nothing spontaneous about this manifestation.

  “Enjoying it?” Pasfeuro asked Villèle. “The whole thing’s a put up job.”

  “Men regaining their liberty, it’s always rather moving.”

  As a Pim passed close by him waving wildly, for it was wiser to be in with the new masters, Villèle recoiled in a squeamish sort of way. Pasfeuro sneered:

  “They’re quite clean, you know; they were all given a bath before embarking.”

  A medical orderly or doctor in a white smock, with a surgeon’s mask stretched across his mouth, was preparing to deal with the sick and had lined his stretchers up in a row on the bank. Behind him stood his team of nurses, detached and aloof. But the Pims were all perfectly well; they were as plump as could be and bursting with health. The man in the white smock dithered; he had received his instructions and behind him two cameramen were watching him rather reproachfully.

  At long last he noticed a victim of sea-sickness who was still somewhat green in the face. He fastened on to him; he was saved; here at last was a victim of colonialist atrocity. The Pim, wondering what was happening to him, tried to get away, but he found himself laid flat on his back, held down on the stretcher, photographed and filmed. Only his legs kept kicking out in a rather ridiculous manner.