Devil's Guard Read online

  Devil's Guard

  George Robert Elford

  BOMB FOR BOMB, BULLET FOR BULLET, MURDER FOR MURDER...

  In 1954 the French were trying to fight the Viet Minh with armored convoys and isolated garrisons. But "the war against guerrillas," says the man who calls himself Hans Josef Wagemueller, "is not a war of airplanes and tanks. It is a war of wits."

  And, as fought by "Wagemueller" and his comrades in the French Foreign Legion's Nazi battalion, it was also a war of terror. It was a war in which bamboo land mines were countered by booby traps that combined Teutonic precision with primal bloodlust. A war where one side fought with children and the other slaughtered them. A war where every soldier—German, French, or Vietnamese— prayed to die without torture...and to be buried with his body in one piece.

  A Dell Book

  Published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc., 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, New York, New York 10017

  Copyright © 1971 by George Robert Elford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  Dell TM 681510, Dell Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN: 0-440-12014-4

  Reprinted by arrangement with Delacorte Press Printed in the United States of America

  One Previous Dell Edition

  New Dell Edition First Dell printing—May 1985

  Printed in USA

  Publisher's Note

  This book is being published to provide the reading public with a clear insight into the mind and personality of an unregenerate Nazi, to show the dehumanization of men in war, and to illustrate the ironies and hypocrisies to which men are driven in defense of their actions.

  The publication of this book in no way indicates that the publisher agrees with or condones the points of view it expresses.

  South, cruel south,

  Dreary nights and days,

  Green, rolling green,

  Where Death rides on the trails.

  You're weary? Carry on!

  Until the bitter end,

  You are Devil's Guard,

  The Battalion of the Damned.

  A LEGION MARCHING SONG

  To my dear Canadian friend, Roy Cooke

  INTRODUCTION

  Working in the Far East as a zoologist I met many interesting people and, occasionally, a few truly extraordinary individuals. One of them was the real author of this manuscript: Hans Josef Wagemueller, the one time SS partisan-jaeger—guerrilla hunter—who later became an officer of the French Foreign Legion in Indochina, now known as Vietnam. We met in a bar in the capital city of a small Asian nation of which he is now a citizen. He was interested in my anesthetic rifle equipment, which I was using to immobilize wild animals for scientific research.

  "I used to be a hunter myself," he said to me with a smile I will never forget. "I was a kopfjaeger—a 'head-hunter' as you would say in English. You hunt elephants, rhinos, tigers. I hunted the most agile of all beasts—man! You see, my adversaries were by no means any less ferocious than their counterparts in the animal world. My game could think, reason, and shoot back. The majority of them were what we now call the Vietcong. They posed as gallant freedom fighters, the redeemers of poor people. We used to call them 'the mechanized hordes of a space-age Genghis Khan.' If there was a spark of truth in the Hitlerian credo about the existence of superior and inferior races, we met the real subhumans in Indochina. They tortured and killed for the sheer pleasure of causing pain and seeing blood. They fought like a pack of rabid rats, and we treated them accordingly. We negotiated with none of them, and accepted no surrender by those who were guilty of the most horrible crimes that man or devil can conceive. We spoke to them in the only language they understood—the machine gun."

  The life story of Hans Josef Wagemueller is a long and unbroken record of perpetual fighting. He fought against the partisans in Russia during World War II; he spent over five years in French Indochina, fighting against what he described as "the same enemy wearing a different uniform." When that was over, he moved into a small Asian country to train its token, archaic army in the intricacies of modern warfare and the use of modern weapons. "I have managed to turn a horde of primitive, superstitious, and undisciplined warriors into a crack division of daring soldiers," he stated with pride. "You could incorporate them in any European army without further drilling."

  The head of state where he now lives has granted him citizenship. The local university has bestowed upon him the title Honorary Professor of Military Sciences. He is now Hindu by religion and has a local name. At the age of sixty-four, he is still going strong. His day begins with rigorous physical exercises. Target shooting is still his favorite pastime, and his steely blue eyes are still deadly accurate when looking through the gunsight.

  When the United States became entangled in the Vietnam conflict, Hans Josef Wagemueller offered his experience to the American High Command in a long letter that remained unanswered.

  "I probably made a mistake by having written a somewhat haughty and in a way maybe a bit lecturing letter," he said. "But our own long and unbroken record of victories against the same enemy in the same land was still fresh in my memory, and the unnecessary death of every American soldier, every debacle that could have been avoided, hurt me deeply. I could not think of the Vietnam war in any way except that it was my own war. Those GI's scouted the same jungle trails where we had trekked for many years. Many of them had to die where we survived. Somehow it was an inner compulsion to regard them as comrades-in-arms. And you know what? I am not surprised that young Americans are tearing up their draft cards and refusing to go to Vietnam. To take young college boys out of their super civilized surroundings and cast them into the primitive jungles of Asia is nothing but murder. Sheer murder. Only experts, highly skilled and experienced antiguerrilla fighters, can survive in the jungles of Asia. It takes at least a year of constant fighting before a recruit turns into an expert."

  After that evening together—which left me shaken and sleepless for the rest of the night—I asked Wagemueller if he would tell me his entire story. He obliged by talking into the microphone of a tape recorder for eighteen consecutive days. I have merely altered some of his technical military phraseology for the sake of better understanding. This is a true document with nothing essentially changed except the names. Wagemueller obliged me to keep his true identity, as well as that of all the others, undisclosed.

  "I am requesting this not because of my being a war criminal. I have told you the true story. I can give you my word of honor on it. I still consider myself a German officer and a German officer will keep his word of honor no matter what. But I have an eighty-seven-year-old mother whom I would never expose to endless inquiries by the authorities and by the press. And there are certain people mentioned in my story who are still living in my hometown near the Swiss frontier and who helped many other fugitive German officers to avoid prison and prosecution after the war. I do not know who the other fugitives may have been, but what I do know is that there were close to two thousand comrades in distress who left Germany the way I did in 1945. The escape route was extremely well organized and it is quite possible that some important Nazis used it too.

  "Another important consideration is that I should not embarrass certain high officials of my adopted country who have been helping me ever since my arrival here. Besides," he added with a smile, "I was not very popular with the Chinese People's Army—and China is not very far from here."

  He wants his share of the author's royalty to go to the widows and orpha
ns of those Americans who fell in Vietnam. "I have all I need for the rest of my life. I want no money, only justice to German officers and soldiers who were correct to the core, yet had to share the disgrace of a few. And I want to show the enemy stripped of its mask of gallantry and heroic myth."

  I have refrained from adding any comment of my own. It is up to the reader to form his own judgment, as it is up to history to pass the final mandate upon him, his companions, and their deeds.

  GEORGE ROBERT ELFORD

  1971

  FOREWORD

  I have seen many deadly landscapes, from the Pripet swamps in Russia to the jungles of Vietnam. Unfortunately most of what I saw was seen only through a gunsight, with no time to enjoy the scenery. I was a kopfjaeger—"headhunter," as our comrades of the Wehrmacht used to call us. We were a special task force of the Waffen SS—the "fighting SS"—which had nothing to do with concentration camps, deportations, or the extermination of European Jewry. Personally I never believed that the Jews could or ever would become a menace to Germany and I hated no people, not even the enemy. I never believed in German domination of the world but I did believe that Germany needed lebensraum. It was also my conviction that Communism should be destroyed while still in its cradle. If my beliefs should be called "Nazism," then I was indeed a Nazi and I still am.

  During the Second World War my task was to frustrate guerrilla attacks and suppress insurgency in our vital rear areas and around communication centers, seldom farther than fifty miles from the front lines. Regardless of age or sex, captured guerrillas were, as a rule, executed. I was never interested in their race or religion and tolerated no outrage against prisoners. My orders were to hang them, but I permitted the brave ones to die a soldier's death, facing the firing squad. During five long years we executed over one thousand guerrillas. If there were Jews among them, we shot them too—but without any religious prejudice.

  I have not stayed away from Germany because of my crimes but because I have no desire to behold what they call Germany today—a land of bowing Jawohl Johanns who can only repeat "yes, sir" or "da, tovarich" in either American or Russian servitude. The present German Army is only a shadowy midget of its former self. The old 'Wehrmacht needed neither foreign advisers nor protectors. It is a fact that we have lost two offensive wars, fighting alone against the World. But I doubt that the Wehrmacht would have lost a defensive war had the frontiers of the Fatherland been invaded from the outside.

  Once our German engineers built the best fighting aircraft in the world, and I believe that we can still build the best if given a chance. Instead we must use Starfighters in which the young German airmen are obliged to fly kamikaze missions. About eighty of them have already crashed without having been shot at. Germany is obliged to purchase foreign rubbish; tanks, for instance, many of which are probably inferior to our wartime Tigers and Panthers. Our formidable NATO allies will not permit German industry to produce equipment for the army. Our best brains are siphoned away by foreign countries because our government will not pay them the wages they deserve. Should another war come, Germany will be expected to stand by her allies, who are, nevertheless, still scared of the Teutons, and any proposal for a German rearmament remains anathema for them. Our Western allies have yet to realize that the map of the world has changed. Now the nations of all continents may choose between only two camps. Any thought of neutrality between those two camps is nothing but self-delusion that will crumble under the first serious pressure from the outside.

  Fortunately the East German regime fares no better. The Russians, too, would think twice before giving the People's Army any sophisticated weapon. But the Volksarmee has an ideology to follow and it certainly does not have draft dodgers.

  I spent five years in Indochina, fighting the same enemy that I had fought in Russia, wearing another uniform. I know well the marauders of Ho Chi Minh. We fought them and routed them a hundred times, in the mountains, in the jungles, in the swamps. We beat them at their own game. We never regarded the terrorists as demigods or specters who could not be destroyed. After our years in Russia we could put up with hardship and misery. When we arrived in Indochina we were not beginners.' When we moved into Communist-dominated territories, there was soon peace. Sometimes it was the peace of the bayonet, sometimes the peace of a cemetery. But it was peace. Not even a lizard would dare to move. If history records any French victory in Indochina, it was won either by the French paratroops, who were magnificent fighters, or by us Germans.

  The war in Indochina was not lost on the battlefield but in Paris. The Americans are losing the same war in Paris —right now. Paris and Geneva . . . the only battlefields where the Western world has suffered debacles, and where the Western world will always lose.

  It is, of course, nonsense to say that the American Army cannot defeat the guerrillas in Vietnam by force of arms. After all the American fighting men defeated Japan. The jungles and swamps of Guadalcanal or Okinawa offered no easier going than, for instance, the Mekong delta. Besides, what army in military history was more effective in jungle fighting than the Imperial Japanese Army?

  But now American generals are compelled to fight world opinion instead of the Vietcong. History will only repeat itself. At the beginning of the Second World War the German generals were free to plan and conduct their own battles and they won every battle on every front. Then Hitler took command and everything was lost. When General MacArthur was permitted to act to the best of his abilities, the world saw a marvelous landing at Inchon and the North Korean rout. But when he had to obey orders coming from ten thousand miles away, American soldiers had to sacrifice their lives for no gains whatever.

  C'est la guerre!

  HANS JOSEF WAGEMUELLER

  Content

  1. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

  2. THE TARNISHED FATHERLAND

  3. THE BATTALION OF THE DAMNED

  4. "THE CONVOY MUST GET THROUGH!"

  5. OPERATION "TRIANGLE"

  6. HUMANE AND INHUMANE INTERLUDES

  7. THE MAN-HAO INCIDENT

  8. RAID INTO CHINA

  9. THE END OF A GARRISON

  10. WITH BAYONETS AND ARSENIC

  11. AMBUSHED

  12. DIALOGUE WITH AN AGITATOR

  13. THOSE INNOCENT NONCOMBATANTS

  14. ACTION AND VENGEANCE

  15. MOVE QUIETLY—KILL QUICKLY

  16. THE LITTLE TRAITORS

  17. THE RED HIGHWAY (OPERATION "DELUGE")

  18. THE LAST BATTLE (OPERATION "FIREFLY")

  1. UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

  The news of the German capitulation reached us by radio deep in the Czechoslovakian mountains, east of Liberec. We had been up there for almost a month, holding an important pass, waiting for the Russians to come. But as the days went by, nothing disturbed our positions and even the local partisans refrained from engaging us in a major skirmish. Unusual stillness blanketed the peaks and the valleys—the sort of sullen tranquility that, instead of relaxing the mind, only charges it with tension. Strange as it may be, after five years of war and hundreds of engagements with the enemy, both regulars and insurgents, we were in no condition to bear the quiet of peace. Of all the natural human functions which we had once possessed we seemed to have retained only those that were important for our immediate survival: to eat, to sleep, to watch the woods—and to pull the trigger.

  None of us doubted that the end was near. Berlin had fallen and Hitler was dead. Military communications had long since broken down, but we could still listen to the foreign broadcasts, including those of the victorious Allies. And we knew that our saga would not end with the capitulation of the Wehrmacht; that there would be no going home for the tired warriors of the vanquished army. We would not be demobilized but outlawed. The Allies had not fought only to win a military victory. Their main objective was revenge.

  The last dispatch which we had received from Prague eight days before had ordered us to hold our positions until further orders—orders that never came. Small
groups of haggard German soldiers came instead. Unshaven and hollow-eyed troops who had once belonged to every imaginable service in the Wehrmacht—the SS, the Luftwaffe, and the SD (Security Service). Among them were the surviving members of a decimated motorized infantry brigade, a Luftwaffe service group, a panzer squadron left with only two serviceable tanks; there were also five trucks of a one-time supply battalion and a platoon of field gendarmes. The remnants of an Alpenjaeger battalion had survived the retreat all the way from the

  Caucasus to end up with us, near Liberec. We were all waiting for a last sensible order, the order to evacuate Czechoslovakia and return into Germany. The order to cease hostilities came instead.

  For us, deep in hostile territory, the news of the armistice sounded like a sentence of death. V/e had no one to surrender to except the Czech guerrillas or the militia, neither of which recognized military conventions or honor. Up to the very end we expected to be ordered back to Germany before the weapons were laid down. We could expect no quarter from the partisans—-we had killed too many of them. As a matter of fact we could expect no prisoner-of-war treatment from the Red Army either. The truck drivers of the supply battalion might be pardoned but not the Waffen SS, the archenemy. In a sense we felt betrayed. Had we known in advance that we v/ere to be abandoned to our fate, we would have withdrawn despite our orders to stay. We had taken more than a soldier's share of the war and no one could have accused us of cowardice.

  For five long years we had given up everything: our homes, our families, our work, our future. We thought of nothing but the Fatherland. Now the Fatherland was nothing but a cemetery. It was time to think of our own future and whether our beloved ones had survived the holocaust wrought by the Superfortresses during the last two years of the war.