The Majors Page 4

  MacMillan had thought the stories they had been told in Hanoi about the Viet Minh cutting people’s cocks off and stuffing them in their mouths was so much bullshit.

  MacMillan reached in the back pocket of his trousers and took out a Colt .32 ACP pistol. Very carefully, he took the clip out and checked it, and then he silently replaced it and very carefully worked the action, chambering a cartridge.

  Shit, a lousy .32 automatic against three guys with submachine guns and a carbine!

  He inched himself around the trunk of a large tree. Two of the Viet Minh guys were working on the frog, the dirty bastards really enjoying themselves, and the third was looking vaguely in MacMillan’s direction. Fifteen yards away. Maybe even less. But the vegetation was so thick!

  MacMillan rested his left arm against the tree trunk, held the pistol in both hands, and aimed right at the gook’s nose. It hardly made any noise going off, the sound swallowed by the dense, moist vegetation. The gook, for a moment, seemed surprised. Then blood gushed out of his right eye, and he sank to the ground. MacMillan turned the pistol on the other two, got off a hasty shot, and then another, and then he rolled back, so the tree trunk would give him protection.

  There came expected bursts of fire from the Chink submachine gun. Two bursts. Two guns? Or one burst from two guns?

  Then something else. Two shots, evenly spaced. Boom! Boom!

  Loud shots. Certainly not a pistol. Nor a rifle. It sounded more like a shotgun. What the hell were the Chinks, or whatever they were, armed with? All he’d seen were the Chink submachine guns. Were there more gooks than he’d seen? A couple of perimeter guards, maybe?

  “It’s OK, Major,” the kid called out. “They’re all down.”

  MacMillan very cautiously edged around the tree. The kid was untying the frog.

  MacMillan stood up, and walked over and looked at the dead, holding the little .32 automatic out in front of him. He felt a little foolish when he got close enough for a good look. One of the Chinks had half of his head blown off, and the other one’s entire midsection was a mass of bloody pulp.

  It was a shotgun; no other weapon would have made a wound like that. He looked at the kid. He had the frog loose now, and was picking something up from the ground. A sawed-off shotgun.

  The frog, blood streaming all over him, bent over and picked up one of the submachine guns. He walked to the body of one of the Viet Minh and emptied the magazine into his crotch.

  MacMillan walked over to the kid and took the sawed-off shotgun from him. It was really a sawed-off people killer, not just what was left after somebody took a hacksaw to a 12-gauge Winchester Model 12. Even the magazine tube and the mechanism to work the action had been cut down. Instead of five in the magazine and one in the chamber, this wouldn’t hold more than two shells in the magazine. The stock behind the pistol grip had been cut off. What was left wasn’t a hell of a lot bigger than a .45.

  “Very nice,” MacMillan said.

  “I was an infantryman before I was a dog robber,” the kid said.

  “What the hell did you shoot the first one with?” the kid asked. MacMillan held out the little .32 Colt.

  “Don’t knock it, it worked,” he said. And then he thought of something else and grew angry. “Especially when you’re supposed to be unarmed.”

  “Yeah,” the kid said.

  “Where did you have that?” MacMillan asked. “I didn’t see it.”

  The kid didn’t answer. There was a sound in the forest. The kid dropped to his knees, holding the sawed-off people killer in front of him. MacMillan, holding the .32 out, realized that the kid had only one shell left.

  “Hold your fire,” Felter called out, from somewhere in the thick vegetation. “It’s me.”

  He came into sight a moment later, tucking a .45 automatic into his belt at the small of his back under his tropical worsted tunic.

  “You miserable little prick!” MacMillan said, as Felter walked into the small natural clearing. “Goddamn you!”

  Felter ignored him and knelt before the Frenchman, who was now sitting down, resting his back against a tree.

  “He’s going to bleed some more,” he said. “What happened to him?”

  “The Chinks were about to feed him his own cock,” MacMillan said.

  “Viet Minh, Mac,” Felter corrected him. “Are you all right, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir,” Staff Sergeant Greer said.

  “He saved our ass with his shotgun,” MacMillan said. “You owe us one big fucking apology, Felter.”

  “Because of the gun, you mean?” Felter asked, smiling.

  “You’re goddamned right,” MacMillan said. “‘No guns, Mac. Not even that little Colt of yours. We’re neutral observers.’”

  “I didn’t think for a minute that you’d pay a bit of attention to me,” Felter said. “That was for the record.”

  “Bullshit!” MacMillan said.

  “Off the record, Sergeant,” Felter said, “I’m glad you misunderstood my instructions.”

  “He must have had that thing stuck inside his pants,” MacMillan said. “Take a look at it.”

  Staff Sergeant Greer handed over the sawed-off shotgun.

  “That’s very nice,” Felter said. “Very nice. Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it,” Greer said.

  “When we get out of this,” Felter said, “I’d like you to make one for me.”

  “Are we going to get out of this?” Sergeant Greer asked.

  “At this point, Sergeant,” Felter said, “we place ourselves in the capable hands of Major MacMillan. He’s actually quite good at dealing with situations like ours.”

  “Fuck you, Sandy,” MacMillan said. He walked over and had a look at the frog, to see if he was up to doing what they would have to do to keep alive.

  (Two)

  Hanoi, French Indo-China

  17 March 1954

  Les cocktails were served by le Général Commandant de les Forces Francaise de Indo-Chine and his staff, to Lieutenant General E. Z. Black, USA, and his staff in the Cercle Sportif’s upstairs lounge. The cocktails were served by soldiers, enormous, jet-black Senegalese in French service, who wore white jackets, billowing trousers, and red hats, soft, but something on the order of a fez. Following cocktails, le dîner would be served in the main dining room.

  The French officers were in full uniform, despite the civilian clothing the Americans wore in the now obviously absurd notion that by so doing they might conceal their presence in Hanoi.

  General Black was not in a good mood. What the goddamned French actually were having the gall to ask for was troops, and airplanes, and ships, but mostly troops, infantry troops, to fight their goddamned colonial war under French officers. They had the experience in dealing with communist insurgents, they said, and the Americans didn’t, and Indo-China was part of France.

  Black had slipped a note to Newburgh at the conference table:

  “Take a list of names, so we’ll know where we can find experienced officers the next time we need to lose a war.”

  He had, of course, behaved himself during the conference. He had been the soul of military charm and tact, and tried to explain the difficulty that General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower, would have in getting Congress to agree to send American troops to Indo-China at all, much less to serve under French officers.

  He had made it through lunch without incident, and through the afternoon session, but here, with a couple of drinks in him, Colonel Newburgh was just a little worried about Black. He had encountered him at the urinals.

  “I have just figured out what all those medals the frogs are wearing are,” Black had said to him. “The brass one with the naked lady on the horse is for the Phony War. The one with the massed flags is for losing the battle of the Maginot Line, and the one with the triple-barred cross is for shelling the Americans when we came ashore at Casablanca…”

  “Take it easy, E. Z.,” Newburgh said, sternly. “It’ll be over soon.”


  “You know when I was happiest, Carson?” Black said, zipping his fly. “When I was a full bull colonel, hoping for a buck general’s star to retire on in the by and by, and had nothing to worry about but commanding Combat Command A. Just a soldier, none of this smiling bullshit.”

  “I suppose George Washington felt the same way about the French and Indian Wars when he was asking Congress for money and troops.”

  “French and Indian Wars? Goddamn right. He knew who the enemy was.”

  “Prepare to smile,” Newburgh said, chuckling. “Smile!”

  “I’ll go charm the sonsofbitches, Colonel,” Black said. “A good soldier goes where he is told to go, and does what he is told to do, and he smiles.” He leered insanely at Colonel Newburgh. “Smile satisfactory, Colonel?”

  “Try to hide the fangs a little more,” Newburgh said.

  It was very difficult.

  A major general waited outside in the lounge to tell General Black that while he was sure le Général didn’t remember him, he remembered le Général from the glorious days when le Général had Combat Command A of Hell’s Circus, and had “assisted” le Général LeClerc’s 2nd (French) Armored Division in their preparations to liberate Paris.

  It was Lieutenant General E. Z. Black’s professional opinion that (a) there had been no military requirement whatever to take Paris in the first place; it could have been easily bypassed, and Von Choltitz, the German commandant, had been perfectly willing to declare it an open city if they had bypassed it; and (b) that if it was in the best interests of the United States to take the goddamned place, they should have permitted Hell’s Circus to take it. Combat Command “A” of Hell’s Circus (which he just coincidentally happened to command) had been poised on the outskirts of Paris, ready to roll around or through (whichever was ordered) when the radio had come from SHAEF ordering him to stand in place and let LeClerc pass through him.

  General E. Z. Black’s smile was rather strained when a French colonel came to the French major general and spoke into his ear in what he thought was a whisper.

  The C-47 on which the two American officers and the American sergeant had been trying to get into Dien Bien Phu had been shot down. There were no survivors.

  The French major general was obviously torn between telling General Black what he had just heard, or passing this sad responsibility to le Général Commandant.

  “General,” General Black said, in his fluent French, “please be so good as to offer my apologies to le Général Commandant. The men lost to your enemy were all personal friends of mine, and I must see about informing their families of this tragedy.”

  Lieutenant General E. Z. Black and Colonel Carson Newburgh left the Cercle Sportif in the Rolls-Royce the French had assigned for his use. They went to the American Consulate on the Rue General Marneaux, got the cryptographer, and sent the URGENT radio to the Joint Chiefs of Staff reporting that Majors Sanford T. Felter and Rudolph G. MacMillan and S/Sgt Edward C. Greer had been aboard a French C-47, trying to get to Dien Bien Phu, had been shot down, and were presumed dead.

  Then General Black and Colonel Newburgh went to the villa they had been assigned by le Général Commandant, and they drank all of one, and part of a second, quart bottle of Haig and Haig scotch whiskey.

  (Three)

  Dien Bien Phu

  French Indo-China

  21 March 1954

  “What we’re betting on,” MacMillan said, “is that they’re soldiers.”

  “Blooded troops, is what you mean,” Felter said.

  It was six in the morning and they were in the jungle, overlooking one of the outposts of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu. They were in what in World War I would have been called “no-man’s-land.” The French emplacements were two hundred yards ahead of them, across a relatively open area strung with barbed wire, and probably mined, and torn up by literally a hundred thousand artillery and mortar shells. The Viet Minh emplacements were behind them, over the crest of a line of hills, out of sight and safe from direct, line-of-sight rifle and machine-gun fire from the French.

  They had spent the last four nights crawling through the Viet Minh lines on their bellies, literally inches at a time. They had made it—although privately none of them thought they would—but it hadn’t solved their problem. They were within two hundred yards of French protection, but it might as well have been two hundred miles.

  So far as the French were concerned, anybody out there in the jungle was Viet Minh. The moment the French saw movement out there, they would bring the area under fire. From the shot-down trees, and the countless craters in the ground, a generous expenditure of ammunition to repel a ground attack was the standard French tactic.

  The problem, then, was to let the French know that they were out there, and friendly, without having the French blow them away.

  MacMillan’s solution to the problem was unusual, but neither Felter nor Greer could think of a better idea.

  They would start a fire, using dried leaves, twigs, and limbs from the shot-down trees. The French would naturally bring this under fire. So the fire would have to be started slowly, in order for them to get away before the firing started. The fire would be large. It would continue to attract French attention. After they had brought the fire site under enough small arms and mortar fire to have blown away anybody close to it, they would crawl back to it, stand up, put their hands over their heads, wave their arms, and walk slowly toward the French lines.

  They would either be permitted to enter the French lines, or they would be blown away.

  If they stayed where they were, they would be blown away by the Viet Minh, probably after the Viet Minh had cut their cheeks open and fed them their cocks.

  “Fuck it,” S/Sgt Greer said, “let’s do it. Light the sonofabitch.”

  “‘Light the sonofabitch, please, sir,’ Sergeant,” Major MacMillan said.

  “With all respect,” Greer replied, as he started to crawl away, “fuck you, Major.”

  It went almost exactly as planned. The fire was lit; the fire site was brought under fire by the French; the mortar fire was lifted; they crawled back to the fire site; then gathered their courage and stood up.

  They held their arms over their heads and walked, waving their arms toward the French positions. The French did not open fire on them. They had walked perhaps fifty yards when the French opened up.

  They dove to the ground, and spent ninety seconds, which under some circumstances can be a very long time, trying to make themselves as thin and flat as possible. And then they realized that the machine-gun and rifle fire was ten feet in the air, and that the mortars were arcing down to the ground and exploding between them and the Viet Minh positions. The frogs’ fire was covering them!

  They got up and ran toward the French emplacements, and made it unhurt, except for Greer, who caught a piece of mortar shrapnel on his right leg, outside, about ten inches from his crotch.

  (Four)

  The Dien Bien Phu hospital was, of course, underground. Despite the fact that everybody knew it was impossible, the Viet Minh had manhandled American 105 mm howitzers, captured in the early days of the Korean War, up into positions overlooking the French positions, and kept them under a steady barrage of fire. Sometimes one shell every ten minutes, sometimes fifty shells in one minute.

  The French were living underground, and their hospital was underground.

  The piece of shrapnel which had caught Ed Greer had sliced his skin open like a jagged knife, but had not stayed in his body. The wound had been sutured shut, and he had been given, by injection and orally, medicine to resist infection and pain. The doctor who had treated him, after professing astonishment and joy that the American spoke French, told him that the greatest risk of infection was not from the shrapnel wound, but from the leech and other insect bites, and that “after you’re out of here, take a lot of baths with antibacteriological soap.”

  He was put to bed for the night in a private room, a small cubicle equipped w
ith a U.S. Army hospital bed, an American Coleman gasoline lantern, two canteens of water and a glass, and copies of months-old French and Indo-Chinese newspapers.

  Felter and MacMillan came to see him. MacMillan explained the situation precisely, if not with overwhelming tact.

  “We’re going to party with the officers,” he said. “That leaves you out. You can party with the troops, if you like, but if you’re smart, you’ll stay where you are in the clean bed. The troops here sleep on the ground. They’re going to try to get us out of here in the morning, or the next day.”

  “I’ll stay here,” Greer said.

  “Got you some clothes,” Felter said. He hung a set of Foreign Legion jungle pattern camouflage fatigues on a nail driven into one of the white-painted tree trunks which supported the hospital bunker roof.

  “You want something to drink?” MacMillan asked.

  “Please,” Greer said.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Ten minutes later, the legionnaire the Viet Minh had tied to the tree came into his room accompanied by two other very drunk legionnaires. Greer was sure that one of them was an American, although he denied it and said he was a Belgian. He was either American, or he’d lived in the States long enough to acquire a perfect command of Chicago English. He was a sergeant, and he had been brought along to translate by the company sergeant major, who didn’t know that Greer spoke French.

  “Franz told us what you did for him,” the “Belgian” legionnaire said. “And the sergeant major says that now that you nearly got yourself killed in this sewer, and jumped into here, you are now one of us.”

  They sat him up in bed, put the camouflage fatigue jacket on him, pinned parachutist’s wings on it, the company sergeant major kissed him on both cheeks, they both saluted him, helped him out of the jacket, handed him two unlabeled bottles of red wine, and left, staggering.

  Greer drank about half a bottle of wine, from the neck, while reading Paris Match and Le Figaro by the hissing light of the Coleman lantern. Then he turned it off and went to sleep, naked under the damp sheet.

  He woke up when he sensed the nurse’s flashlight probing the room, but didn’t move until he heard the hiss of the Coleman as she lit it. Then he turned his head and looked up at her.