The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy Page B

the Resistance!”
    Thus it was that Lacombe was detailed as leader of the team.
    A search had taken place after the meeting; it had been extremely thorough. The
bo-dois
had not confined themselves to going through the prisoners’ pockets and the hems of their clothes, but had insisted on them stripping stark naked.
    Up till then Boisfeuras had managed to conceal his dagger, a thin stiletto which he carried strapped to the inside of his leg with adhesive tape like the silver piastre he had given Esclavier.
    Realizing he would be found out, while Merle, who was one in front of him, was in the process of being searched, he had extracted the dagger and brandished it in the face of the N.C.O. in charge, a former Hanoi rickshaw coolie bursting with self-importance:
    â€œOf course I’m keeping it, that’s agreed with the boss. He said each team was entitled to a knife for cutting wild herbs.”
    Recovering from his surprise, the Viet had thought it over for a moment, then given his assent, when he suddenly realized it was a lethal weapon the prisoner was putting back in his pocket:
    â€œNo, you no ungderstangd; give me knife.”
    Glatigny managed to conceal two silver piastres by slipping them into his mouth, and Pinières a little mirror with a dent in the middle which could reflect the sun’s rays and thus be used as a ground-to-air signalling lamp.
    Then, at first light on 18 May, the team left for Camp One, with its rice urn slung on a bamboo pole, its madman who quietly followed behind like a poodle, Boisfeuras barefoot as usual, Glatigny and Esclavier, Merle and Pinières, Lacombe and Mahmoudi.
    â€œThe camp has been set up near Dien-Bien-Phu,” Lacombe had told them, “so as not to be too far away from a landing ground. Once the armistice is signed at Geneva, aircraft will be able to come and pick us up.”
    â€œI don’t believe it,” Esclavier had replied. “They’ll make us move down towards Hoa-Binh on the edge of the delta and hand us over in Hanoi. Or maybe we’ll have to march as far as Son-La, and be taken on from there by truck.”
    â€œIt’s much too far,” said Pinières. “We’re nearly a hundred miles from Son-La.”
    Glatigny felt it wiser to say nothing. At Christmas, as a propaganda move, the Vietminh had released four officers who had been taken prisoner at Cao-Bang in 1950 . The C.-in-C. had made him responsible for their interrogation, and one of them had told him that Camp One, where the officer prisoners were held, was situated in the limestone country of the north-east, in the region of Bac-Kan, that’s to say some five hundred miles from Dien-Bien-Phu.
    Most of the prisoners were in a poor state of health and unlikely to stay the course.
    During the first day’s march the prisoners covered twenty miles or so in a north-easterly direction, towards China. The senior officers and the wounded had passed them in trucks.
    Raspéguy was sitting in the back of the last truck, with his bare feet dangling over the edge. A Vietminh sentry had been detailed to keep an eye on him. Had not Generalissimo Giap declared that his capture was the most important of all? Raspéguy and his battalion had repeatedly eluded the two most powerful Vietminh divisions and on one occasion had even destroyed the command post of one of them.
    Raspéguy waved to the team and shouted:
    â€œConserve your strength; you’re in for a long march.”
    He would have liked to be with them, to encourage them and make them stick it out; and he would have shown them that, colonel though he was, he could do better than the youngest among them.
    He cast a friendly glance at the sentry; he would probably be forced to kill him when he made his escape—because he was going to escape and he was going to succeed where Esclavier had failed.
    The prisoners were now moving with the main stream of the Vietminh battalions, trucks and