Saigon: A Novel Part 25

2.

On a forested mountainside three miles from Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Devraux's fortified bunker, Ngo Van Doug, the eldest son of his father's one-time hunting camp "boy," was at that moment straining against a long rope of plaited jungle vines that was cutting b.l.o.o.d.y weals into his bare shoulders. Groaning and bathed in sweat, he was helping a hundred of his men drag a ma.s.sive Chinese 105-millimeter howitzer up the side of a sheer ravine under the austere gaze of Dao Van Lat, who wore a neatly pressed khaki tunic without rank insignia, which along with his prematurely gray hair marked him as the senior political commissar at General Vo Nguyen Giap's headquarters. Each time the long- barreled weapon was s.h.i.+fted even an inch or two up the precipitous slope, the group of artillerymen cl.u.s.tered around it forced ma.s.sive wooden chocks under its rubber-tired wheels to stop it slipping back again, and each time Lat nodded his approval.

"The ravines are deep - but none of them are deeper than our haired of the French!" chanted Lat rhythmically whenever the company paused for breath, and all down the perspiring line of men the chant was repeated in a ragged chorus before a new effort was made.

"I-leave now and heave hard!" yelled Dong intermittently, and each time his orders won an immediate response from his men; their feet slipped and slithered on the rocky sides of the ravine as they strained at the ropes, but always the ponderous artillery piece was jerked another foot or two upward.

For three days Dong's company had been dragging the heavily camouflaged gun up the mountain, moving it no more than a yard a minute, half a mile in a whole day. To ease its pa.s.sage, a long trench had been hacked out of the limestone by hand, arid a camouflage of thick foliage had been woven into wide nests strung across the gully above their heads. The gun was the last of' twenty-four 105-millimeter howitzers which General Giap's351st Heavy Division had dragged undetected through the five hundred miles of mountainous jungle between Dien Bien Phu and the Chinese border; the other twenty-three were already concealed on the other mountain peaks, and Dong's company had been accorded the honor of siting the last one in recognition of his brave leaders.h.i.+p in many earlier battles. But he arid his men had already been toiling that morning for several hours, having risen long before dawn, and their strength and their spirits were beginning to flag; all of them knew it would take another whole day to haul the long-range weapon up to the camouflaged casemate which sappers had hewn from the summit of the rockface high above them, and Dong, after seeking Lat's approval with an inquiring look, ordered a halt.

Many of the company were no more than boys in their middle teens, and as soon as he gave the order to rest and eat, they collapsed in heaps on the mountainside. Several minutes pa.s.sed before they were able to drag themselves upright again, and then they gobbled down their fist-sized rations of cold boiled rice like hungry wolves. As he watched them, Dong's thoughts raced back to the wretched year and a half he had spent on the Vi An rubber plantation. Just like the youths before him, he and his brother, Hoc, had often sunk down weak with hunger among the rubber trees to bolt their meager rations of rice, but their only concern had been to survive the b.e.s.t.i.a.l conditions in which the foreign plantation owners made them live and work; the new generation had at least been given the chance to fight to free itself from the hated French colonialists who had oppressed their nation for so long. How fortunate they were compared to poor, dead Hoc!

Although they too were close to exhaustion, they had the pride and dignity of soldiers!

Moved by these thoughts, Dong began sauntering quietly among his troops, offering a few words of encouragement to each of them in turn as they rested; all listened respectfully and nodded as he moved on -- to them he was already a heroic figure. They knew that the stoop of his narrow shoulders had been made more p.r.o.nounced by the long years he had spent crouching in the cells of Paulo Condore after his arrest in Hue in 1936, and he had never lost the gaunt, undernourished look with which he had emerged from prison in t945. When he learned of his father's death in the course of the French coup d'etat, he had volunteered immediately to fight with the Viet Minh, and on account of his courage and his bitter hatred of the French, he had been recruited into General Giap's regular battalions in the north Soon after the outbreak of war in December 1946. During the next eight years his tall, round-shouldered figure had become a familiar rallying point in the thick of battles fought by the 59th Regiment of the 312th Division, and he had risen to the command of first a platoon, then a company. During those eight years of b.l.o.o.d.y warfare, he had been wounded many times, and he still carried irremovable shrapnel splinters embedded in his shoulders from a grenade blast that had almost killed him in 1951.

As Dong moved solicitously among the men under his command, Lat watched him carefully, noting with approval the respect which they instinctively showed him, and when he finally came over to sit by him, Lat patted the company commander lightly on the shoulder. "You handle your men well, comrade," he said quietly. "You're wise enough to know that's the way to get the best out of them."

Dong nodded his thanks, but his face remained furrowed in a frown of concern. "A lot of them are out on their feet, Comrade Commissar. And I was just thinking they remind me of my own young days on the rubber plantations. Our French bosses often drove us until we dropped then -. but we'd have given our right arms for the chance to shoot back at the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds with a gun like this!"

Lat stared thoughtfully at the rough-voiced peasant for a moment. "Then why don't you tell them about it, Dong?" he said quietly. "Perhaps it will help them forget their weariness - inspire them to greater efforts."

Dong nodded obediently and, s.n.a.t.c.hing off his palm leaf helmet, he leaped to his feet and waved it above his head to attract attention His voice shook with emotion as he gave a stumbling account of his life on the plantation, describing the leaking hues, the frequent deaths from fever, the dawn burials of dead friends in the gray jungle. H is face grew dark with anger as he spoke of the beatings administered by the Corsican plantation director, and when he arrived at the point where his young brother was dragged screaming from the hut during a night of torrential rain, his voice died away altogether. On the ground around him the exhausted soldiers stopped eating and looked up expectantly.

"My brother, Hoc, was raped by the labor recruiter," said Dong at last in a fierce whisper. "But he got his own back the next day by splitting open the Corsican's head with his coupe-coupe - and when they saw this, the other coolies attacked the rest of the French pigs. But because we were ignorant and badly organized, the revolt was crushed, and a year later Hoc was butchered by the French with their stinking guillotine. My mother died too in one of their filthy prisons, and my father was badly wounded in 1931 when French planes bombed ten thousand peaceful marchers at Vinh.

Although one of his arms was left paralyzed, my father still helped the Viet Minh take over Saigon in 1945. Then just as I was being released from Paulo Condore, the French murdered him too and smashed our new government...' Dong's words had poured out in an emotional torrent and he paused with heaving chest to regain his breath. When he glanced around uncertainly at Lat to seek his reaction, the commissar inclined his head slightly in a little gesture of encouragement. "But my story, comrades, isn't unusual," continued Dong, turning back to his men. "Most of you have got mothers, fathers, uncles or friends who've suffered like this too. I've got a wife and children of my own, and when my children were born I vowed they'd never suffer like this. Now at Dien Bien Phu we can show the French swine what we've been storing up for them all these years, can't we?"

Dong's impa.s.sioned outburst had stunned the men to silence, but although they were obviously moved, they gazed at him uncertainly. Seeing this, Dao Van Lat moved quietly to Dong's side and placed an arm about his shoulders.

"Comrades, I can verify part of your brave commanders story," he said in a calculatedly quiet tone. "I was marching at Vinh beside his father and saw the French bombs drop into our midst. Hundreds of innocent men, women and children were killed - and among them was someone who was very dear to me." Lat paused and scanned the faces of the young Soldiers around him again: their expressions were rapt, and he saw to his satisfaction that his skillful intervention had won their interest immediately.

"She was a girl, comrades, who was not only young and beautiful but also brave and patriotic," he went on. "1 loved her and she loved me, and she was marching beside me that day because she was as dedicated as I was to freeing her country from foreign tyranny. Her death caused me the greatest agony, and since then I have had to live with that agony every day of my life, because I organized that march." Lat lowered his head for a moment, overcome at the memory, and when he looked up again his face bore a strained expression as though he was reliving an intense physical pain. "It was especially hard to bear, comrades, because even before that day of horror, we had made a special pact to deny ourselves the pleasures of physical love for the sake of our country! I feared that often I wasted my energies pursuing the gratifications of the flesh. Therefore, to devote myself completely to the cause of our revolution, I took a knife and removed from my living body the means of such wasteful gratification!"

Dao Van Lat stopped speaking and remained silent for almost a minute, gazing up towards the mountain peak in a theatrical att.i.tude that at the same time expressed the real pain he still felt at the memory. Until that moment he had inspired in the young soldiers the kind of respect customarily accorded to remote scholar figures, and this unexpected display of emotion astounded them; as the full significance of what he was saying sank in, they stared back at him in an awestruck silence.

"That was twenty-four years ago," he said at last in a low voice. "During that tune I've never regretted the great sacrifice I made. Nor have I ever wavered in my determination to make our nation free one day. For most of that time I've worked willingly at the side of Uncle Ho and Comrade Giap, and now here at Dien Bien Phu we're at last on the brink of achieving the success of which I first dreamed all those years ago. All of us here have been chosen by history to fulfill the hopes of those millions of Vietnamese patriots who've died in chains. And we mustn't fail them! Thousands of our countrymen are at this moment trudging secretly through three hundred miles of jungle, pus.h.i.+ng bicycles loaded down with the rice and ammunition we need to win this battle. The French are convinced it's impossible for us to supply an army of fifty thousand men in this remote corner of Tongking. They also believe it's impossible to lift guns to the tops of mountains. But I know - and you know - that already we've made too many sacrifices to think of failure!" Lat paused dramatically, then ripped open the b.u.t.tons on the front of his tunic. Dropping it on the ground beside him, he stood stripped to the waist before the troops, and they stared in surprise at his pale, wasted torso. "We shall not fail those who've put faith in us, Comrades and most important of all we shall not fail ourselves and the promises we all made long ago. Comrade Dong and I have suffered greatly at the hands of the French, arid we're ready to give the last ounce of our strength to lift this gun to the peak of the mountain. You must do the same - now and at all times during the coming battle. Then we can drive the French out of our country and achieve the great final victory that our ancestors began dreaming about a hundred years ago!"

Turning aside, Lat bent to pick up one of the ropes attached to the long-barreled howitzer and, looping it over his bare shoulder, he started up the mountain at a run. When Dong shouted an order for the company to join him, they rose up as one man, cheering wildly. Within moments they were arching their backs and chanting in unison as they took the strain again, and slowly the heavy gun began to s.h.i.+ft and jerk upwards once more towards the rock chamber from which it would be able to pour lethal sh.e.l.ls directly into the midst of the detested French enemy in the long valley below.

3.

"You can tell the readers of the Was.h.i.+ngton Gazette, Monsieur Sherman, that we have a very strong battery of 155-millimeter guns," said Colonel Charles Piroth, the One-armed artillery commander of Dien Bien Phu. "We also have twenty-four 105- millimeter guns and sixteen heavy mortars. That's more than enough artillery to do the job we have on hand here."

Joseph was riding in a jeep beside the lugubrious, bearlike French officer responsible for the deployment of the major defense weapons in the fortified camp. Beetle-browed and swarthy, Colonel Piroth wore the empty sleeve of the left arm shot away in the Second World War tucked tidily into a pocket of his uniform jacket, and although his manner was formally polite, he was answering the American's questions with barely concealed impatience "In Korea," said Joseph, scanning the gun emplacements they were touring, "the United States had to Concentrate artillery in ma.s.sive batteries in the end to hold the Chinese and the North Koreans, I'm amazed you have so few guns here."

Piroth shrugged and pursed his lips in a little gesture of dismissal. "I've been offered more guns from Hanoi--but there's no need for them. I'm quite satisfied that my fire plan will be effective."

Now that the dust of the Viet Minh barrage had settled, trucks were beginning to move back and forth along the valley floor, the garrison's little force of fighters and B26 bombers were taking off again to strafe and fire the hills with napalm wherever it was thought the enemy might be gathering, and other Dakotas, ferrying supplies and groups of reluctant soldiers returning from leave in Hanoi, were continuing to swoop down onto the dusty landing strip.

"But doesn't it worry you that the camp is surrounded by those high mountains on every side?" asked Joseph, taken aback by the artillery officer's complacency. "Can you still sleep soundly at night knowing those peaks are in the hands of the enemy?"

A ghost of a smile flitted across Piroth's heavy features. "I should have thought that a correspondent of your experience, Monsieur Sherman, would have at least some slight grasp of military strategy by now. Colonel Devraux told me you'd covered the civil war in China as well as Korea, isn't that right?"

Joseph nodded. He had joined the Gazette in 1947 after two restless years as professor of Asian studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and when appointed as the paper's Far East correspondent late in 5948 he had moved with Tempe and his two young Sons to Hong Kong. He had arrived in time to cover some of the climactic battles between Mao Tse-tung's Communist divisions and the demoralized forces of Chiang Kai-shek, and when the Korean war broke out in 1950, he had reported with distinction on the fierce fighting and ma.s.s slaughter he'd witnessed amid the bleak, treeless hills of the East Asian peninsula that was so different from Indochina. "What I know about war is based on experience, colonel, rather than textbook knowledge," replied Joseph evenly. "And giving the enemy the heights above you has never seemed like a good idea to me."

'Let me explain in more detail," replied Piroth, speaking slowly and deliberately as though addressing a dull child. "Those mountains which worry you so much are very steep, and they lie two or three miles from the center of the basin here. The cla.s.sic artilleryman's strategy would be to site 105-millimeter cannon safely out of sight on the tar side and lob sh.e.l.ls in a high arc over the top onto our camp. But I've inspected the mountains very carefully from the air, and I a.s.sure you they're so steep that if guns were sited on the far slopes, the 'yellows' wouldn't be able to fire them anywhere - except straight up into the-air! If they move them back far enough to fire over the top at us, they won't be able to reach the camp at all - but in any event our own 1555 will be able to drop sh.e.l.ls easily onto the other side of the crests and smash any batteries they set up there."

"But what if they site some guns inside the ring of mountains or even on the top?" asked Joseph in an incredulous voice. "What then?"

"My dear sir," retorted Piroth, "I suggest when you fly out you have a close look at those mountains. And if you still think that human beings can haul guns up those rock faces and through all that jungle, I shall be very surprised. However, if the yellows' proved themselves capable of working miracles, don't you think we should spot them? And as they struggled to carry the guns up there on their backs, do you think we wouldn't blast them to kingdom come before they get them in place?"

Joseph looked up at the crests again. "Those d.a.m.ned jungles are so thick, colonel, it's not inconceivable that the enemy might get weapons up there without anyone seeing them."

"A feat like that would put Hannibal's elephant march over the Alps firmly in the shade, Monsieur Sherman. But if your fantasy were to become reality, as soon as they opened up and revealed their positions we would neutralize them with our superior counter battery fire." The French officer turned his heavy jowled face towards Joseph and raised his bushy eyebrows," Have you and your American newspaper readers forgotten we're dealing with an army of peasant foot soldiers? They've got only a handful of Russian trucks, no air power, no tanks. Their depots are three hundred miles away at Yen Bay, and to supply several divisions with rice, let alone ammunition, would require a sophisticated logistics operation with a ma.s.sive fleet of trucks - if there was a modern road network leading to this valley, which there isn't. Our air force is also flying Constant reconnaissance missions and is ready to bomb any concentration of troops or supplies as soon as they're discovered. The enemy has no answer to our modern artillery and air power."

"But what about the March monsoon?" asked Joseph slowly. "Won't that hamper your flyers and favor those peasant foot soldiers up in the hills?"

"Our plans have been laid with the greatest care," replied Piroth with a shrug. "When the 'yellows' come down from the hills, you will see why our men are already calling this 'Operation Meatgrinder.'"

The French officer raised his head and gazed absently into the heavens; white arid khaki parachutes, guided through the low clouds by a moored meteorological balloon, were blossoming from the leaden sky. Crated foodstuffs, ammunition, bolts of barbed wire, trenching tools, mosquito nets, hoots and all the paraphernalia of a military camp under siege were continuing to flutter down like ragged snowflakes onto the yellow plain, and as the jeep drove on from one artillery battery to the next, little squads of Legionnaires, dark-skinned Moroccans of the Infanterie Coloniale, Algerians and even little Vietnamese soldiers loyal to the Bao Dai government scurried quickly from the trenches to retrieve the supplies.

"Are all your big guns set up like that, colonel?" asked Joseph as the jeep pa.s.sed the sixth or seventh circular pit he'd seen in which an artillery piece was mounted unprotected on its swivel base. "Doesn't that make them a little vulnerable to a direct hit?"

"The guns are deployed in that manner to allow them an unrestricted field of fire. This way they can be brought quickly to bear in all directions without difficulty. Fortifying them would reduce their effectiveness." The French officer glanced down at his watch. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Monsieur Sherman, I have other inspections to carry out. If there are still aspects of our artillery arrangements which puzzle you, speak to your own American colleagues at your military mission in Saigon. They've all made inspection tours of Dien Bien Phu - even General O'Daniel. And all of them agree that our defenses for the camp and airstrip are sound."

Without addressing Joseph further, the colonel ordered his driver to halt the jeep close to another gun emplacement and climbed out. He gave a crisp order for Joseph to be taken back to the central command post, then turned arid strode rapidly away to talk to the waiting gun crew.

4.

The drone of the duty Dakota taking off to drop guidance flares over the darkening hills reached faintly into the log and sandbag hunker of Colonel de Castries' chief of staff as Paul and Joseph settled themselves on facing army cots. The ground shook as the plane pa.s.sed along the nearby airstrip, and Paul covered his own tin mug and dropped a hand over Joseph's an instant before a shower of fine red powdered earth drifted down onto them from the low ceiling.

"if you choose to live like a mole, Joseph, you must learn a few of the mole's tricks to make life bearable." The French officer laughed affably and raise his drink to toast the American. "Courvoisier fine champagne isn't at its best drunk out of an enamel service mug, but it tastes worse mixed with the red dust of subterranean Dien Bien Phu - Salut!"

"Salut. "Joseph lifted his mug smilingly in response, drank, then leaned back wearily on one elbow. He had spent the day touring the hills and installations of the fortified camp with different escorts, and the green war correspondent's fatigues in which he had trudged through China and Korea were streaked with dust. The notebook in his breast pocket was crammed with details of conversations he'd had with a dozen different officers and NCOs, and the camera he invariably carried slung around his neck had consumed several rolls of film in the course of the day. Paul had set up a sleeping cot for him, beside his own in the bunker, and during the previous half-hour, Joseph had watched the French lieutenant-colonel wading conscientiously through his chief-of- staff duties with the help of a junior officer. The leather-bound field telephones on the makes.h.i.+ft desks whirred constantly, piles of supply papers came and went, and Paul rose Frequently from his chair to update cellophane-covered maps and stores charts with colored chalks. Every time a sh.e.l.l landed in the vicinity of the camp, clouds of fine red earth showered down from the low roof, and the straw mats covering the walls did little to restrain the damp, sour smell of the earth that permeated everything in the dugout.

"Needless to say, Joseph, this isn't my idea of what soldiering should be," said Paul, ruefully waving a hand around the bunker when his aide had gone. "I'd take a (lay patrolling in the mountains any time for every hour I have to spend here." He paused and sipped his drink again. "But I'm glad you've turned up because it's reminded rue how long it's been since I went out. Arid to put that right I've persuaded Colonel de Castries to let me go with the patrol that's taking you into the hills in the morning."

"That's great news," said Joseph, grinning, "Yes, I'll be able to keep an eye on you - make sure you don't stray into any smoky native huts.' Paul smiled back at him with real pleasure. In his late forties, the Frenchman had lost none of that infectious warmth which had helped make them firm friends the moment they met nearly thirty years before, His close-cropped hair was now steel gray above his temples but his body was still spare and fit-looking, although there was a new gauntness in his features that made him look more like his father than he had done in his youth.

"Can we expect any help then from the local tribes in these parts?" asked Joseph, grinning facetiously.

"No." Paul sighed exaggeratedly and shook his head. "There aren't any friendly Moi chieftains offering us ternum anymore. Those days are gone forever."

Despite Paul's cheerfulness, Joseph thought he detected a note of sadness and resignation in his voice, and this filled him with fresh feelings of guilt and remorse. He had been to Indochina perhaps a dozen times in the past few years to cover the war, and during his early visits Paul had always been away from Saigon on duty with the French Expeditionary Corps. What had begun as tentative visits to his home in the hope of finding him there had developed as time went by into carefully calculated efforts to arrive when Paul was away. Almost without their realizing it, both he and Lan had begun to go back on the firm decision they'd taken in 1945 to go their separate ways. After the brief euphoria of finding Tuyet together, they had been forced to face up to the stark reality that with the ending of the war, their paths must diverge once more; with young families and partners dependent upon them in countries on opposite sides of the world, there had seemed in the end to be only one choice. Joseph had insisted on making arrangements to help support Tuyet financially while she was brought up, at Lan's suggestion, in her brother Tam's household, but beyond that they had agreed there should be no further contact between them.

When he first returned to Saigon with the Gazette five years later, however, Joseph had become aware within moments of seeing her again that Lan, like himself, was still torn between loyalty to her marriage vows and her feelings for him. She had said enough to make it clear that she and Paul were not close, and during his subsequent visits, although she had insisted on stopping short of any outright act of disloyalty, she had given in to her emotions sufficiently to continue meeting him secretly. That alone had induced in Joseph intense feelings of guilt, and each time he'd seen her he'd anxiously sought rea.s.surance that Paul knew nothing of their meetings or Tuyet's existence. A few days before his first visit to Dien Bien Phu, he had learned that Paul had been appointed chief of staff to the camp's commander, and realizing that a meeting between them was at last unavoidable in the beleaguered camp, he had promised himself that he would try to tell Paul the truth; but now that they were face to face in the bunker, Joseph found he couldn't keep that promise; seeing the French officer smiling cheerfully despite the obvious dangers and disappointments he faced caused his resolve to desert him completely.

"Do you still suffer any ill-effects, Paul, from the wound you got in Saigon?" he asked lamely instead.

Paul shook his head. "They don't keep cripples on in the 'paras.' The shots were high, and two of the bullets went straight through me. I was lucky." He looked at Joseph for a moment with the same mischievous twinkle in his eyes that the American remembered from the reception in the grand palais of the governor of Cochin China - then his gaunt features fell into serious lines again. "But there are more kinds of ill-effects than just physical ones. I've never forgotten the look on Loc's face as he screamed for his guard to kill me. From that day I knew that there was nothing I could do to wipe out the memory of what my father's generation did here. The agony runs too deep."

"And how have you managed to keep going, knowing that?"

"By trying to be a good soldier and not thinking too much, perhaps. A soldier, remember, isn't supposed to reason why-just to do and die."

"But that can't have been easy in your position. Not many officers in the Expeditionary Corps have your long connections with the country."

"No, it hasn't been easy. And it hasn't been possible to keep the poison from creeping into my family life."

Joseph looked sharply at his companion; Lan had always loyally refused 'to discuss her relations.h.i.+p with Paul in any detail, arid this sudden frank admission that all was not well between them made Joseph's pulse quicken. "How do you mean?' he asked casually.

"It took me a long time to realize that I probably married Lan to prove that all Frenchmen weren't colonial rapists and galley- masters. I think I was more idealistic than I knew at the time. Unconsciously I saw my marriage as living proof of my commitment to the Vietnamese - my determination to change things, if you like." Paul shrugged and picked up the bottle of cognac to replenish their mugs. "But because of that, there was probably always something missing. We love our son deeply, but what I first thought was love on my part was shot through with a lot of wishful thinking. And with Lan, I know now there was always something lacking."

A rumble of distant explosions shook the bunker, bringing down a new flurry of red dust from the ceiling, and on his cot Joseph stared fixedly into his drink, trying riot to betray the new sense of hope surging through him.

"In a funny way the marital bed has been divided down the middle by politics for a long time." Paul tried to make the remark lightly, but he couldn't keep a note of regret from his voice. "It all has a terrible logic, somehow." For a minute or two they sat without speaking, listening to the distant sounds of the garrison's B-26s attacking the heights around the valley with napalm. When Joseph finally looked up he found the Frenchman smiling at him with an expression of undisguised affection on his face. "It's good to be able to tell someone, you know, Joseph," he said quietly. "Those aren't the kind of things I can say lightly to my brother officers."

"I guess not." To his dismay, Joseph found he couldn't look his friend in the eye, and raised his mug hurriedly to his lips to hide his discomfort.

"What about you, Joseph? How is that side of your life?"

"All right, I guess. I have two fine sons who're growing up fast. My wife and I get along well enough." Joseph looked up to find Paul watching him closely, and he smiled with an effort. "I suppose no marriage is all fun."

Paul didn't reply, but continued to look quizzically at him. "Are you sure you're keeping to our old rules of total honesty with one another, Joseph? You seem a little on edge - that's not like you."

"I'm fine, Paul -just fine."Joseph took another nervous pull at his cognac. "It's you I'm worried about. Have you ever thought of resigning your commission and getting out before it's too late? Couldn't you take Lan and your son back to France where you belong?"

As he watched for Paul's response, Joseph wondered if in his anxiety to change the subject he'd just destroyed his last chance of persuading Lan to make her future with him; but to his relief the French officer shook his head slowly from side to side.

"It may seem strange, mon aim, but I find it hard to think of France as my country now. Perhaps I'm a bit like sonic of those Legionnaires out there in the trenches - perhaps I don't have a country to call my own anymore. I'd feel like a fish out of water in France. I've spent more of my life in Vietnam than anywhere else.

I've never considered doing anything except seeing it through."

"But for what? For the sake of all those colonial shareholders in Paris who are still skimming off profits from the rubber trade, the mines and their s.h.i.+pping and banking interests?"

"No." Paul shook his head more emphatically this time. "For the same reason that your own country has poured three billion dollars into our Indochina war chest already - to stop Moscow and Peking from taking over. We're fighting Chinese weapons and training now - but if we can hold the Communists off until the other Vietnamese nationalists have set up a strong government, maybe they will still be able to build themselves the kind of future I've always hoped for."

Joseph stood up suddenly and began pacing agitatedly back and forth. "I've never believed we should think of Vietnam as another Korea, Paul - they're two different kinds of problems. We had a chance to make a friend of Ho Chi Minh nine years ago and we botched it. But from what I've see here today, if Dien Bien Phu is going to be a model for defeating world Communism the West's lost already." He stopped and turned an apologetic face towards his friend. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to seem unsympathetic. But d.a.m.n it, this camp looks like the nearest thing to a site for ma.s.s military suicide I've ever seen in my life."

Paul shrugged. "I've got some private reservations of my own, of course, but every day you'll hear officers here telling one another that we're only frightened of one thing - the Communists deciding riot to come down and attack us. Until now we've never been able to maneuver their main force into a position where it's become a concentrated target. It's always been like chasing a will-o'-the-wisp - you know that. General Navarre is confident, Colonel de Castries is confident. Colonel Piroth is sure our defenses are sound." Paul shrugged again. "There's no choice left now. We've got to put our shoulders to the wheel and push."

"But your pilots aren't confident," retorted Joseph. "And they're your lifeline. The monsoon season's coming on fast, and if your air support goes down The American hesitated, his expression indicating that the prospect was too gruesome to express in words.

Paul got up from the cot, holding the bottle of cognac loosely by its neck, and led Joseph by the arm towards the sack-covered doorway. "Let's go up and get some air, mon vieux, before we turn in, shall we? It's stifling in here"

Outside, at the top of the sap, they watched the duty Dakota circling above the mountains, dropping flares. From time to time one of Colonel Piroth's artillery batteries opened up, and the exploding sh.e.l.ls set patches of jungle alight high on the distant mountain slopes; .beside Joseph, Paul sucked the cool night air noisily into his lungs.

"You know, Joseph," he said at last with a sigh, "the French are no longer the only people doing crazy things in Vietnam. If the 'Amorous American' went in search of his dusky princess in her Moi village today, do you know what he'd find?"

Joseph shook his head.

"He'd find she no longer displayed her naked bosom proudly to the world. Such sights have offended the eyes of your newly arrived American missionaries and some of your Economic Aid Mission's funds are being spent on free bra.s.sieres for the Moi women. A new 'mission civilisatrice' is under way - the uplifting American way of life is beginning to penetrate into Vietnam."

Joseph chuckled quietly. "You're not serious, Paul."

"But I am, mon vieux. And that's not all. Your countrymen are trying to teach the Moi and the Vietnamese peasants Western food hygiene - they distribute cheese wrapped in cellophane to the villages, and the peasants don't know what it is. They try all kinds of things and even wash themselves with it, thinking it might be soap. So you see, your Moi princess, when you find her, will be sobbing bitterly in the corner of her hut, that beautiful bosom once so proud and free pinched tight inside a wired American bra.s.siere. What's more, her whole body will reek of Wisconsin cheese as well because she's mistakenly washed herself with it."

The guns ceased suddenly, and the flares dropped by the Dakota were swallowed up one by one in the black jungle; slowly the stars above Dien Bien Phu became visible again, and Joseph and Paul's laughter was for a moment the only sound in the sudden stillness of the night.

"But none of these things are important," said the Frenchman, resting a hand affectionately on Joseph's shoulder and offering him the corkless cognac bottle again. "What matters most is that I feel so much better for seeing you."

5.

The battalion-strength sortie moved stealthily out of the camp before dawn next day, the French paratroopers gliding like silent wraiths through the clammy fog that cloaked the foothills. Beyond Beatrice, the northeastern strongpoint, the undergrowth was so thick that the wiry pathfinders from the Third Thai Battalion had to hack their way through the vines and creepers with their long-bladed coupe-coupes, and initial progress was slow. Near the front of the column Joseph marched watchfully behind the erect figure of Paul Devraux, his hands, unlike those of the armed and fully equipped troops around him, swinging free and empty. He had deliberately refused Paul's offer of a service revolver before they set out; in China and Korea he had decided a war correspondent should always go unarmed, and he had clung stubbornly to the decision through several close brushes with death under fire He wore a canvas-peaked cap with his olive-green drabs and around his neck he carried his only "weapons" - a small pair of French binoculars and his camera.

There had been no barrage by the French 105-millimeter or 155-millimeter howitzers to soften up the ground ahead, no tanks had rolled in front of them to the edge of the valley with guns roaring as they often had done in the past before a sortie was mounted; the patrol was going out unannounced this time, Paul had told him, to try to silence the battery of light mountain guns which had sh.e.l.led the airstrip during his arrival.

On waking Joseph had found Paul already dressed, moving briskly round the hunker, whistling softly to himself. He wore his red beret at a rakish angle and his manner was lighthearted, almost carefree, as if he felt a heavy burden had been lifted from him, at least temporarily. From time to time as they trudged up the narrow mountain track, he turned to grin encouragingly at Joseph and in the pale light of the approaching dawn his lean, leathery face looked suddenly more youthful, less careworn.