We kept the camp under observation all morning, and I have to admit that I witnessed a great deal of training and discipline, ranging from what were obviously political classes to hand-to-hand combat exercises and grenade throwing. The commissars seemed to keep a rigorous schedule. A roll call took place only a hundred yards from where we lay and I was able to count the guerrillas. There were 322 altogether, among them 58 women. The women, too, were armed and participated in the same routines as the men. But 322 was below the number of terrorists I expected to find in the camp. Schulze reminded me of those who might be lying wounded in the huts. A number of terrorists could also be under way, or in the village. Nam Hoa was present. Xuey spotted him at the pool taking a bath. The local terrorist “fuehrer,” Trengh, was absent.
“He will return,” Xuey said assuredly. “If not today, then tomorrow, but he will return. This is his camp. Nam Hoa is only a guest here.”
Several times the guerrillas came to fetch water from the tank but never to fill it. Dusk was falling and it seemed as if we were to spend a night on the cliff. Then, to my great relief, two men came and mounted the platform on which the tank stood and removed the cover.
“This is it!” Schulze whispered, gesturing us to get ready with the bags. Sergeant Schenk, who was watching the action below the cliff from a narrow parapet, now glanced up and nodded. The pipe had been connected. Schulze steadied the hollow bamboo; Xuey and I kept the bags ready.
Erich signaled.
We emptied the preparation into the brook and sank back relieved. The job was done! We began our careful withdrawal. There was no need for us to spend the night on the cliff. “We shall return in the morning for the burial ceremony,” Schenk remarked.
Shortly before sunrise, Schulze and Schenk set out once again for the cascade. They returned after nearly three hours. Still a hundred yards from me, Erich raised his fist with his thumb turned down. “Total rout!” he exulted, gasping for air.
“How’s the camp?”
“The plague could not have done a better job.”
“The guerrillas killed four of their own cooks, thinking that they were the responsible ones,” Schenk reported excitedly.
“Are they all dead?”
“You bet they are,” Schulze said. “A few of them are probably still breathing but they wouldn’t last long. We finished off a couple of machine gunners in the ravine but they were already on the way to hell anyway.”
Assembling the troops we marched to the ravine with fixed bayonets. Schulze found two more gun emplacements littered with dead and dying guerrillas. We bayoneted them and pushed on.
“Do you think it is safe to enter the camp?” I asked Schulze when the base came into sight.
“It is a morgue, Hans,” he assured me.
“I want no shooting!” I warned the troops. “The village is only two miles away and some guerrilla detachments are absent. I want them to return to home sweet home.”
We found about sixty of the terrorists still alive. Some of them lay in their bunks, others on the ground, writhing and moaning. Only about fifteen Viet Minh had been unaffected by the drugs. They were busy tending the sick ones when we overran them. The body of Nam Hoa sprawled in front of the command post in a pool of partly digested food which he had vomited before he died. We made a photo of him for later reference and to collect the reward. Many of the victims had vomited where they fell before death seized them.
“Suoi,” I said to the girl as I led her into the commander’s hut, “you can help us now. Look through all the papers which you think could be important for us and please put them into this bag.”
I handed her a small canvas bag.
“Oui!” she nodded and began to work immediately.
I wanted to get her inside; the spectacle of bayoneting the dying and captured enemy was not a pleasant one. I posted a man in the door. “Keep her busy until we finish the job.”
“I guess we should have left her with Eisner,” Erich remarked when he joined me on the porch.
“We should have left her in Hanoi!” I growled.
Searching the huts, Sergeant Schenk discovered three girls. They had not been affected by the poison but were much too terrified to stand up, let alone to use their pistols. Schenk escorted them to the mess hut. “Sit down here and don’t move!” he told them harshly. “Otherwise I will cut your slender throats… And don’t utter a sound either.”
With Xuey’s assistance I interrogated them immediately. The girls spoke some French but not enough to understand the implications of my questions. According to them, Trengh and his one hundred and sixty guerrillas had departed two days before our arrival. They had taken a part of the stolen wares to another dump fifteen miles away. More items had been hidden in the village.
“Where is that other dump?” I asked, telling Xuey to interpret my question as sternly as possible. The girls did not know the place.
“We have never been there,” one of them muttered.
“You are lying!” I shouted in her native tongue. The girls shrank away from my outburst and huddled together terrified. One of them began to sob. I knew I had to apply the squeeze right then.
“Sergeant Schenk!” I called Victor. “Tickle them a little with the bayonets.”
Schenk and two of the troopers stepped forward with their bayonets extended, the points touching the girls” throats.
“Have you seen what happened to your sick comrades?” I asked slowly, stressing my words. “I am asking you once more where that other dump is. If you don’t tell us, you will die.”
The blades, still spattered with blood, were a macabre sight. “Please, no,” the smallest girl cried, burying her face in her hands, “please don’t kill us. We are very young.”
“You weren’t so young when you joined the terrorists.”
“We had to,” she mumbled, “we had to go with them.”
“When is Trengh coming back?”
“If we tell you, Trengh will kill us all… our families, too.”
“If you tell us, Trengh won’t kill anybody anymore. When is he coming back?”
“Tonight!” she whispered.
“I want to know—”
“Leave them alone!” A cry from behind interrupted me. Followed by Erich, Suoi came running toward me. She pushed aside the bayonets and stood between us and the girls with her eyes blazing. “You… you cannot do this… You wouldn’t dare… you…”
She was so aroused that she could barely form her words and I couldn’t resist teasing her.
“Oh, yes, Suoi—if necessary I would dare.”
“Not as long as I am here—commander!” I cast a glance of resignation toward Erich, who lifted and dropped his shoulders with a grin and waved the troopers aside.
“I guess this is the end of my interrogation,” I remarked in German. “Maybe you and Suoi can take over.”
I glanced at the captive girls, a frightened bunch of little rabbits; the oldest one of them was probably less than twenty years of age.
“Why did you join those bandits?” Suoi spoke to them softly. “Do you think it is right for young girls to kill people?”
“We did not kill anyone. We were only tending the wounded.”
“Are you nurses?” I cut in.
They nodded.
“All right. You will show us the way to the other dump and we will let you go home.”
They began to cry again and explained something to Suoi between a series of small hysterical sobs.
“They cannot go home,” Suoi translated for me. “The Viet Minh will kill them.”
“That’s too bad, Suoi.”
“You are too bad,” she replied, shaking her head. “You are much too hard and have no heart.”
“There is a war going on around here. Wars are very bad—not me, Suoi.”
“But if they betray the guerrilla camp to you, the guerrillas will kill them all. Can’t you understand? You might
