This sudden addition of his sounded so funny that we all broke into laughter.
“How are you coining and going then,” Schulze chuckled, “Thumbing rides on army copters?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Van Ho, “we have a few narrow trails.”
“Very precipitous and slippery at places, I presume,” Riedl interposed. “Maybe even mined here and there?”
“No!” Van Ho protested, taking Riedl’s teasing remark in earnest. “We have no mines, no weapons—nothing we have.”
He appeared to dislike the direction our conversation had taken. “Our village is very tiny, very filthy, and very poor with many sick people in it. There is nothing to see.”
We laughed again and Van Ho’s face reddened as he realized the childish quality of his remark.
“Don’t worry, Monsieur Van Ho Tien.”
Erich tapped him lightly on the shoulder. “We don’t want to visit your village. It seems to be out of our way.”
I checked the location of Van Ho’s village on Schulze’s map, a very special one, which due to his meticulous recording of various significant landmarks revealed a great deal more information than the regular army maps. The village was marked on it all right, with the numbers 12/15 indicating the number of dwellings. But placed alongside the numbers a tiny red star caught my attention and I asked Erich about it.
“I recorded the village from air reconnaissance of the area,” he explained. “Here the star means that peculiar movements were observed in and about the hamlet which could be associated with guerrilla activities but not proven.”
“I see____” I wheeled back toward Van Ho and now asked him bluntly, “Are there any Viet Minh cadres in your village?”
“Our village is very small,” he repeated after what I thought was a slight hesitation. “Only fourteen dwellings with forty- men. The Viet Minh knows that we could be of little help to them and they leave us alone. We hope the French, too, will leave us alone.”
“And we hope we can oblige,” Schulze retorted. “Believe me, the last thing on earth we care to see is a local village.”
Van Ho smiled. “We know that our villages are much too backward for you to enjoy. You live in big cities like Paris, Marseilles, or Lyons.”
“Or Berlin,” commented Riedl.
Van Ho seemed surprised. “Berlin is in Germany, so I have learned,” he blurted out.
“You learned it where?” Erich asked.
I thought it was a most extraordinary encounter—a local ricepicker in the middle of nowhere knowing about Berlin. So after all the natives were not so savage as the French insisted they were.
“When I was a child I attended the missionary school at Yen Bay,” Van Ho explained. “The missionaries taught us many wisdoms, including geography.”
He paused for a second, then asked with some restraint, “Are you the Germans of the Foreign Legion?” His barely perceptible hesitation before saying “Germans” brought another grin to Erich’s face.
“I bet he wanted to say ‘Nazis’,” he remarked in German and I saw that Van Ho looked up sharply when he heard that word. It must have been familiar to him. “Bien ser,” Schulze answered. “We are the Germans, the Nazi wolves, the man-eaters, the angels of death, the unceasing fighters.”
“I haven’t said that you are wolves and man-eaters,” the man protested, showing fright for the first time.
“Why not? That’s what we are,” Schulze teased him. “Have they not told you so?”
“Who should have told us?”
“The commissars.”
“We are not guerrillas,” Van Ho protested vehemently.
“I have not said you were.”
There was a pause and a sense of restlessness in the group. “May I ask you something?” Van Ho spoke finally.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Why are you fighting?” he asked.
“Your people won’t let us retire,” Krebitz told him with a chuckle.
“It is your own choosing, for this is not your war,” Van Ho insisted.
“Correct,” Schulze agreed. “This is not our war. It is everyone’s war—France’s, England’s, America’s, and maybe even Sweden’s or Japan’s, but they have yet to realize it.”
Van Ho shook his head. “I do not understand your mentality. Truly I do not.”
“We are complicated people.”
said Krebitz. “No one seems to understand our problems.”
“Maybe you are very warlike,” nodded Van Ho. “The SS—” He cut off as soon as that word slipped out.
“That’s right!” Erich roared. “SS tradition, mon ami, sheer SS tradition. By the way where did you learn about the SS, Monsieur Van Ho Tien, also in the missionary school?”
“I read some books about the war.”
“What did you read about the SS?”
“They were much feared during the war.”
“You are being very polite,” Schulze chuckled. “You ought to have read a lot more about the SS than that.”
Then shouldering his submachine gun he added, “You are a clever man, Monsieur Van Ho Tien. I think you deserve a better job than picking rice—or,” he concluded, stressing his words, “maybe you do have a better job and work in the paddies only part-time.”
He strolled over to the pile-supported shelter, lifted some bags casually, examined a few nearby baskets, then turned. “What do you think of the Viet Minh, Monsieur Van Ho?”
“I feel neither love nor hatred for them. We live far away from the war and we are happy that it is so.”
“It cannot be as idyllic as that. Your village is in the center of a very important Viet Minh-dominated province, isn’t that so?” I realized that Erich was playing hide-and-seek with the man and began to wonder what might have awakened his suspicion.
“How about your feelings for the French colonialists?” Schulze pressed on.
“Do you want me to be frank with you, officer?” Van Ho asked with a sour smile.
“Naturellement,” Erich nodded. “We can take any amount of truth, however painful, and no one will start shooting.”
“We have lived here for centuries. The French came to our country only recently. We regard them as passing visitors who will depart one day like the Japanese departed.”
“But how about us Germans?” Schulze persisted.
“We think you are capable of only one human feeling, officer, and that is hatred,” Van Ho exhaled with defiance.
“Well, aren’t we being complimented?” Krebitz remarked. “What do you think we should learn in this bloody country? Love for our treacherous, slimy, poison-spitting, lying fellow human beings?”
“Who told you that we can only hate?” Schulze went on, ignoring Rudolfs outburst.
“The books,” Van Ho stated.
“Printed in Moscow? Or in Peking?”
“No, officer,” Van Ho shook his head. “I can read neither Russian nor Chinese—only French. And the books which I read about you were all printed in France… the country you are fighting for. They call you murderous wolves yet you are serving them. Why?”
“They pay well,” Riedl cut in.
“Are you fighting only for money?” Van Ho wondered. “Even the Viet Minh has more money than the French.”
“Bien ser,” said Erich. “We know that lately Giap has a pile of American dollars to get rid of. Maybe you can arrange a better deal for us with the Viet Minh.”
“You will have to find the Viet Minh yourselves,” the man evaded Erich’s flimsy trap.
