A tall, lean guerrilla with protruding teeth materialized in front of me. Howling with his mouth wide open, he pushed his bayonet so far forward that he lost his balance and crashed headlong into Schulze. Erich swore. He reeled, steadied himself, and swung his gun up in a savage blow. The barrel caught the terrorist a terrific wallop across the mouth. He stopped howling as a few of his teeth went down his gullet; staggering back he fell on his knees until a kick from Riedl helped him over the precipice.
The enemy was falling all over the ridge, for numerous as they were, in hand-to-hand fighting my men held the advantage of both weight and muscle power over the smaller guerrillas. A couple of our six-foot-plus comrades were obviously enjoying themselves whacking and tossing aside the enemy troops as though they were mushrooms. Indeed some of the brawny ones fought in what looked like a ring of dead or dying terrorists, heaped high. Still more Viet Minh were climbing upward on the rugged slope. Ignorant of peril and unconcerned about losses, they came flowing over the precipice, swamping the plateau like army ants and cutting a swath across the land they invade.
“Drop, everybody!” We heard a vicious yell in German from higher above. “On your belly! Down! Down!” The next instant the clatter of a machine gun erupted from the rocks and a couple of submachine guns joined in simultaneously. Dropping to the ground, I saw militiamen and Viet Minh collapsing in heaps of agonized flesh. Shredding uniforms, staggering under the impact of the heavy slugs, crying, bleeding, twisting, and falling, the enemy went down all over the plateau. Lying on a flat boulder overhead, Sergeant Schenk, Suoi, and the three ex- guerrilla nurses coolly proceeded to clear the place of the enemy, the girls sweeping the ridge and Sergeant Schenk the slope. While we were fighting for our lives with bayonets, rifle butts, and our bare fists, Victor had climbed the rocks and reloaded an MG. The magnificent four were now blazing away at the bewildered enemy.
The guerrilla reinforcements stopped; their ranks faltered and fell back on the slope. On the ridge the struggle came to a sudden and dramatic end. Enemy dead and wounded littered the plateau, but unfortunately our bullets could not distinguish between friend and foe either; a few of our comrades were still struggling with the terrorists, locked in brutal hand-to-hand brawls when the bullets from above began to pour. It was a small consolation that we had no way of knowing who had been hit by our own bullets. But the enemy was beaten. Those who survived that sudden rain of steel were now tumbling down toward the woods, slithering and crawling away to shelter. Schenk and the girls had saved the day. The guns fell silent and we rose.
“Hans, I was right,” Riedl yelled. “The nurses are an asset for the battalion.”
“Hey, men!” Schenk called from above, “are you all dead or asleep down there? Let them have a couple of grenades for good measure.”
” Still overawed by their unexpected deliverance, the troops now gathered themselves, sprang forward, and began to hurl grenades after the escaping enemy. Explosions shattered the silence. The MG’s opened up once more; earth and stone erupted below the ridge as more and more Viet Minh curled and crumpled like broken dolls, rolling down into the ravine. Wiping the sweat from his face, Schulze glanced up and shook his fist at Suoi.
“We will talk about this shooting business of yours— just come down,” he called to the girl with joking apprehension mixed with relief.
“I am not coming.”
With a few powerful strides, Erich mounted the rocks, caught hold of the girl, and brought her down. “I am going to whack you good and hard, if that’s what you want.”
”
“You wouldn’t dare!” No, Erich “wouldn’t dare.”
He only drew her close and held her tightly. And for the first time, at least in our presence, he kissed Suoi. Though surprised for an instant, she responded; the strap of the submachine gun which she was still holding slipped from her hand and the weapon dropped with a clatter. The girls giggled. Riedl and Karl helped them down, glanced at them, then at each other, and broke into a broad grin.
“Shall we join the party?” Karl asked. “At least we won’t be the only ones around here.”
Helmut nodded as he caught hold of Thi and before the girl could do anything about it, he kissed her long and hard. Karl was struggling with Noy for a similar favor.
Sergeant Schenk wiped his lips, turned toward Chi, who stood leaning against a boulder giggling. “You are the smallest one here and I am small too. We seem to match, don’t you think so?” he asked. Chi did not understand much of the commentary but she understood what came afterwards.
“What a touching family scene,” Eisner commented.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, lowering myself beside him.
“Not that I know of.”
He glanced at me. “Say, Hans, you’re bleeding like a pig.”
I touched my scalp. It was matted with blood. “It seems they put a hole in your head,” Bernard joked. “We had better call the girls.”
I called them. They came, holding hands with their newly acquired sweethearts—every one of them obviously very content with the turn of events.
“I cannot give you a medal but I thank you for what you did,” I told them. “You were magnificent.”
They blushed and stood looking at each other, then at us. Noy stepped closer.
“You are wounded,” she said. “Shall I look?” I sat down on the ground and bent my head obediently. She opened her first aid kit. Eisner sent Suoi and the other girls to help Sergeant Zeisl look after the wounded. Smiling apologetically, Noy began to examine my scalp. Only then did I realize that Noy, too, was a very pretty girl with her faultless oval face, large dark eyes, and long braids neatly woven and held in place by a pair of wide orange ribbons.
“When you are through with me, you are going to change those orange ribbons for some blue ones,” I told her. “They are much too conspicuous and we don’t want to see your pretty head being shot at by the Viet Minh.”
“I change ribbons—why?” she asked, not quite understanding the meaning of my “complicated” sentence.
“Because the terrorists can see your ribbons from far away,” I explained, imitating a pair of binoculars with my hands. “The Viet Minh see your ribbons, tatatata—and Noy is dead.”
She nodded, a series of quick little nods. “Oui, monsieur. I change ribbons.”
“Good girl!”
“You have luck,” she commented, working on my wound. “Your head was shot by a bullet. It comes little lower and you drop dead.”
Her way of selecting and assembling words was charming.
“Thanks for the consolation,” I grinned, submitting myself to the treatment.
With deft fingers, Noy separated my matted hair and began to bathe the wound with disinfectant. The process brought tears to my eyes, which seemed to amuse my faithful companions.
“Stop grinning like a clown,” I snapped at Karl, “and go look for your men. Noy won’t be running away.”
Sergeant Krebitz came, carrying papers. “Twenty dead and thirty-five wounded,” he reported grimly, handing me the list.
“How many serious ones?”
“Seven, Hans. Shot through the lung, in the groin, in the abdomen.”
“We are moving out in twenty minutes!”
“I know.”
“How about the rest of the wounded?”
“They will be able to march any reasonable distance.”
Noy finished bandaging my head. “Tomorrow I see you again,” she said quietly. “Your head will be good, one week time.”
We walked over to our gravely wounded comrades. One of them, Heinz Auer, a former paratrooper, had already died. The six others were barely conscious.
Although it seemed that, at least for the time being, the guerrillas had had enough, they still occupied a dense patch of forest and I knew we had to march before they could receive reinforcements, or even worse, mortars! Exposed as we were on that barren ridge we would have no chance to withstand a prolonged mortar attack.
Sergeant Zeisl came slowly toward me. He was carrying a small medical container. We all knew what it
