Devil's Guard by George Robert Elford

Author:George Robert Elford [Elford, George Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Southeast Asia, Military, World War II, Asia, History
ISBN: 9780976738015
Publisher: Dell
Published: 1972-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

WITH BAYONETS AND ARSENIC

We computed the possible enemy losses by fixing the number of spots where blood had been found but with no corpse to account for it. Karl and Erich were able to establish eighty-two positive and about the same number of likely places where guerrillas might have fallen. More should have fallen outside the stockade, while storming the compound. Schulze calculated over two hundred Viet Minh casualties, including the wounded.

Schulze had other computations as well. "Do you know what?" he exclaimed suddenly, glancing up from his notes. "The terrorists carried away their dead and wounded, which means that at least two hundred or more men transported nothing but corpses and the wounded."

Before he came to the point, I already grasped the implications of what he was saying.

"How many people do you think were necessary to remove all the weapons, the ammunition, the food stores, blankets, and God knows what else, apart from carrying their own equipment?"

"Over a thousand! Thirteen hundred might be a close bet."

"Precisely!" Erich agreed. "Nevertheless we know that no Viet Minh unit of such proportions is operating anywhere in the province or Xuey would know about them. I think we had better start looking for additional clues."

"What clues?" Karl asked.

"Footprints! Those of women and children from ten years upward. The guerrillas alone could never have taken everything that has been removed."

Shading his eyes he surveyed the neighboring hills. "I think somewhere in those hills we are going to find a guerrilla graveyard and the place where the population of a whole village camped out while waiting for the terrorists to seize the fort."

I could only agree with Schulze's reasoning. None of the corpses had been stripped naked—a frequent terrorist practice—probably because of the presence of women and children in the stockade.

"Well, gentlemen," Erich concluded, "neither women nor children can walk very far laden with crates and sacks. I think we will discover the responsible party in a not too distant settlement, and the Viet Minh camp won't be far from it either."

"Trengh's village!" Xuey added. "That is where we should look."

I radioed a brief report to Hanoi, suggesting the dispatch of engineers to rebuild the stockade. I waited only for the signal of acknowledgment, then sent the coded signal "unit under enemy attack" and cut the set before any instructions could come through.

"The colonel is going to be mad. We are pulling that on him much too frequently," Eisner said.

"Do you want to sit here?"

"Not me. I prefer the woods."

"Well, I know what Hanoi's answer would have been."

Pfirstenhammer grinned. "Stay put until the new garrison arrives," he said.

I nodded. "Exactly."

That was the very last thing I wanted to do. The head-hunters seldom rested. We would come, do the job, and vanish. Our strength lay in mobility; keeping the enemy uncertain and unsafe was our principal maxim.

Schulze was right about the guerrilla cemetery and the civilian helpers. Barely two miles from the compound Xuey discovered the burial site of the dead terrorists. Their common grave was a shallow one and it took us only an hour to exhume and count the corpses.

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