Slaves to the Generals

By Nathan Toulane

Slaves to the Generals is a captivating and poignant love story set against the backdrop of the tumultuous final years of French colonial rule in Vietnam. The novel follows the journey of a British Foreign Legionnaire named Brian Miller, who arrives in the colony full of ambition and ready to fight for the French Foreign Legion.

However, as Miller's tour of duty progresses, he observes the reality of the conflict in a different light. He witnesses brutal atrocities committed by both sides and becomes increasingly disillusioned with the French government's colonial policies.

 

Then Miller meets a beautiful Vietnamese girl named Dai Long, and falls deeply in love with her, despite the many challenges and obstacles that stand in their way. Therefore, Miller and Dai Long dream of a future together away from Vietnam.

As the novel reaches its climax, Miller must make a tough decision: continue to fight for a cause he no longer believes in, or betray his fellow legionnaires and follow his heart. The ending is gut-wrenching and bittersweet, as Miller's and Dai Long's fate is sealed amid the chaos of the 1954 battle at Dien Bien Phu.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nathan Toulane
• Release date: Nov 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201679859

Book preview

Chapter One

SEPTEMBER 4,1953. 18.24 hours. Position: thirty miles from Tourane (Da Nang). French Military Base. Indochina.

They were huddled together like a herd of cattle, on their way to an abattoir of broken promises, delusional dreams, and savage barbarity: Finally, they were brought to the colonial country of France—Indochina. Here sat thirty-one French Foreign Légionnaires listening to the vibration of the French Military transport plane. It was cold—icy cold—and the smell of petrol, body odour and rubber permeated the too-small cabin. A sense of dread seethed their minds into turmoil as they gradually reached their destination.

Brian Miller sat motionless on the hard wooden seat. Wedged like unset cement between two other Légionnaires—abruptly, the air turbulence rocked the plane, making him gasp.

We will arrive soon; make preparations to depart from seating positions when I give the order, shouted one of the French Corporals near the front of the plane.

Miller glanced up; those words snapped him into reality. He knew Indochina would be welcoming him like a pit filled with hungry wolves waiting to devour anything: materials, military, money, and French culture thrown into it.

Directly opposite him sat two stout, heavily muscled men in their late thirties. One had blonde shaved hair; the other was devoid of any hair, no need for the customary Skinhead Special for him. They conversed fluently in German, gave an odd laugh, the nudge of a shoulder, and then raised their voices to each other.

Quiet! yelled the French Corporal.

The blonde Légionnaire’s eyes connected with Miller’s. It seemed like hypnosis—an invisible beam of burning light held his gaze. The expression on the blonde Légionnaire’s face was one of aggression—shifty and devil-like as if he hid a dreadful secret.

Miller felt a nudge that jolted him out of this hypnotic trance. A whisper of warning, given with harsh breath, blew into his left ear.

Why are you staring at that guy?

Miller turned left slightly, the French military green Para helmet partially restricted his gaze, and his backpack of equipment made the muscles in his back ache as if they were being stretched like a dog pulling at the flesh on a bone.

I don’t know, I zoned out for a second; the expression on that man’s face shocked me. The eyes, they looked...I don’t know...tormented to me, Miller replied sheepishly.

Knock it off, idiot! What, are you into poetry or something?

These words came from Michael Schubert, a Frenchmen who had volunteered to serve in the Legion. His life was a consumed, perplexed, and torment-fuelled journey. Serving in the Second World War for the Vichy French Government, he had worked as a Nazi collaborator informing on fellow French résistance fighters, condemning them to death.

At the end of the war, he fled to Spain and lived in a downward spiral of violence and deceit. Then, after boredom overtook him, he hooked up with a local Madrid gangster in 1948. They hatched a plot to assassinate the Interior Minister of Franco’s Spanish Military Government in November 1949. The plot was foiled and Schubert was thrown into prison, tried in a Military court and sentenced to be hanged.

Three days before his execution, he bribed one of the guards and escaped with the help of Lobelia Dolores—a former prostitute who had fallen in love with Schubert during his time in Madrid. Both of them fled to Tangiers in Morocco to make a new life. However, over time, Dolores became hopelessly addicted to opium and alcohol. Eventually, this syrup of emotional blocking concluded in Dolores’ committing suicide near the sea, on the sands in Algeria. Algeria: the prize jewel of French colonial countries controlled in Africa.

Schubert became distraught—he aged quickly and smoked very heavily, giving him a deep, gruff voice. Months later, one night in October of 1953, in a bar near Marseilles, he heralded bottles of warm, smooth brandy. It flowed like ale after a Viking raid while the Viking hoard worshipped their god, Thor. Drunk and with emotions firing with love, hate and patriotic guilt, he met a recruiting officer from The French Foreign Legion with a motto of Ask no questions. Fight for France and we welcome you into the bosom of our family.

Schubert duly signed up; he had nothing else in his life to hang onto.

The whirl of propellers from the plane began to slow, and Miller felt the descent in his belly; it was not unlike the sucking sensation felt when a syringe withdraws a patient’s blood for medical analysis.

At twenty-seven years old, he had closely shaved black hair and was thin—a bag of bones held together by taught muscle and pale white skin—his eyes were piercing blue, and his nose petite; not a stereotypical soldier was he. He would have been more suited to the Royal Ballet. His educational background involved being a student of Art and political parties.

He had been a teacher in civilian life and an avid reader of international affairs. He would also watch cinema news broadcasts with relish. Then, while reading an article one Sunday morning, he came upon a piece about the French’s war in the Far East being conducted against the Viet Minh resistance in Indochina.

Miller worked in Indochina back in 1946, and a terrible event happened to him, haunting him every waking moment. As a Forensic Pathologist goes back to the scene of a crime, so this same morbid career was Miller’s bully, making him return against his will.

An article had been written by the war correspondent, Jonathan Grant, of The Daily Mail. His description in his piece about the war consumed Miller. Grant described how he had been on a mission with the French Foreign Legion’s Airborne Division and dropped into the northern delta fourteen miles from Hue. While on patrol with an elite Légionnaire and loyal Vietnamese mercenary platoon, they came under attack by the nationalist Viet Minh Guerrillas.

The fighting had been brutal and fierce. Amidst blood-curdling cries, hand-to-hand combat, and the wails of the wounded and dying as artillery shells ripped into many, Grant fled, aided by four surviving Légionnaires. 

Through the monsoon-swept jungle a day later, they came upon a local Vietnamese village not loyal to the Viet Minh nationalists. The villagers’ reward for this action: to be brutally slain.

No mercy was spared—children lying dead next to their mothers, their faces like wax masks. The final expressions on their pathetic faces gave the impression that they were trying to scream out the identities of their executioners. The men were tortured and then killed. In a muddy water ditch, Grant came upon one weeping man, moaning, shivering, and crying. Two giant native rats scurried over his face. Grant knelt, putting his hand on the Vietnamese man’s forehead for comfort.

"Why did the Viet Minh attack us?  For our loyalty to the French? We had no choice, be it starve or obey." The Vietnamese man then curled up and died.

Grant’s other writing on the war was both inspiring and disturbing: The beauty of the country, the political complexities, the madness of the fighting factions, the corruption, the involvement of the Communist Chinese supporting the Viet Minh, and the United States OSS Secret Service supporting the French and local Warlords in the south of the country. It seemed insane to read at times.

In addition, Grant’s love for a beautiful French daughter of a Colonial trader in Saigon stirred up Miller like a fermenting vat of wine, becoming intense and viciously pretentious. As time went on, the urge for Miller to return to this place possessed him—controlled him. Like electrical signals from a radio, he wanted to be an actor in the independent theatrical show that was being played out to an audience of news-hungry fanatics.

Like many a man, he presumed the quickest route to an adventure like this would be through the French Foreign Legion. But this would be no glamorous Beau Geste novel Miller had read as a boy—it would be a reality of hell, spawning flashes and imagery that would remove his breath, distort his consciousnesses, and he would pray to God to escape in the approaching months to come.

The rumble of the plane changed as it hit the ground, rocking to the left side slightly. The roaring engines seemed to be moaning like a dungeon full of nightmarish Frankenstein monsters; the Légionnaires all went silent.

Miller felt massive butterflies eating into his stomach, gnawing away as if it were their Chrysalis from which they were trying to break free. He was here at last.  The plane stopped; there was a brief moment of stillness, and then the sounds of unfastening belts, rifles knocking, murmuring, and other sounds like voices in different language dialects filled the air like a poisonous gas.

"Allez, move!" Came the cry from the two Légionnaire Corporals.

Everything sprung into action like a taught rubber band stretched around a catapult and then released. Miller, Schubert, and all the other Légionnaires shuffled to the transport plane’s grey door, there was nudging, barging, and tempers were rising. The noise from within the plane then stopped, striking a final note with its angry engine.

Sergeant Robert Taylor, an American from Texas, screamed some order in French; Miller guessed he meant get the fuck out when the door opens.

Taylor was thirty-eight, thin, and was a gung-ho style military man, who desired the trappings of war, like an alcoholic desires bottles of potent moonshine. His face and whole appearance resembled the Lee Van Cleef character from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly spaghetti western film.

A Corporal released the stainless steel handle and kicked the transport plane’s door. He used his shoulder to push at it—then a blonde German Légionnaire rushed to assist the Corporal as if he were a pre-programmed instrument.

The door then swung outwards, slamming against the right-hand side of the plane—a shaft of light entered the cabin from one of the airbases’ spotlights—an intense tropical heat Miller felt. Faint voices from outside were heard as if a choir of nationalities were communicating with each other in rapid sequence.

Then came the steps that were rammed up against the plane’s door opening.

GET OUT! MOVE! screamed Sergeant Taylor.

Miller duly obliged. There was a sense of being spaced out, an altered state of consciousness as he trudged quickly down the stairs, out of the plane, and onto the French Air Force’s tarmac at the base called Tourane, later to be known as Da Nang. 

Miller had arrived. His eyes gazed upwards; the Vietnamese/Tonkin moonlight tinted the dark sky mapping its stars to a cruel horoscope. The heat hit Miller again—sweat dripped from his creased brow. The equipment on his back seemed to be breeding, increasing in weight. He staggered slightly, and a Moroccan Légionnaire, called Hassan, who had skin as black as the night sky, punched him in the arm and spoke in his thick French accent.

Keep upright, look alert—don’t appear weak. These Corporals and commanding officers are your gods now; don’t give them excuses to single you out.

Move out of the way, savage! Came a quote from the shifty blonde Légionnaire called Brunner, who was standing behind them.

The spotlight from the airbase was now shining directly onto Brunner and this new batch of Légionnaires. The roaring sound of another transport plane was heard in the night sky, and the sounds of military trucks created a stereo effect of preparation for battle vibrating in Miller’s eardrums.

A glance from Brunner bored into Hassan; Brunner gritted his teeth; he seemed incensed, as if Hassan, the Moroccan, was subhuman to him.

Then in the hazy distance, two Corporals and a Lieutenant seated in a military camouflaged jeep approached. The jeep, which was being driven with extreme speed, was getting nearer.

MOVE INTO TWO FUCKING LINES! DO IT! screamed Sergeant Taylor. 

The Corporals started pushing and screaming for everyone to follow this order.

I suppose we are going to get the usual Foreign Legion welcome, said Miller.

Brunner glanced for a second at Miller with a sly, menacing look and then stepped back to be next to his fellow German comrade, Heimlich.

Schubert, the Frenchman, whispered into Miller’s ear for a second time. Waffen SS. That is who those two are.  They think all of us are inferior to them.

From chapped lips, Miller’s softly spoken reply fell into Schubert’s ear, People can change, we all can— something suddenly rammed into Miller’s stomach, making him sink to his knees.

Next time it’s your throat, came the growl from a Corporal as he then pushed his brown baton under the neck of Miller.

Miller grimaced and coughed, and then Schubert and Hassan hoisted him upwards and glared around territorial-like to keep others away.

This Corporal was from Switzerland and called Max Von Herwart. A brutal disciplinarian, he was in his 40s and was defunct of any compassion. He’d had four years of service in Indochina amongst the blood, guts, and the fallen, which had unbalanced his mentality. Empathy meant nothing to him. Brunner briefly looked over and nodded in approval at Herwart’s actions like a corrupt Roman emperor, drunk on wine, mad with loyalty and feeling Herwart was untouchable.

The military jeep screeched to a halt, and out jumped the two Corporals, who stood at attention. Inside the jeep, a Lieutenant called Jean Gensert, sat motionlessly. His face held no expression like an empty book, but imprinted in it were terrible pictures that told their own story. Medals decorated his uniform. A big deep scar, sustained during combat, created a long cleft down the left-hand side of his sun-bronzed face. Miller briefly glanced at the Lieutenant, and then put his left hand over his face for cover, wishing he had not been spotted. The sound of two helicopters could be heard in the distance, followed by a succession of loud bangs lighting up the night sky over the orange coloured western horizon.

Mosquitoes and other endemic pest insects buzzed around. The faint crack of gunfire and explosions of artillery shells sounded. Lieutenant Gensert got out of the military jeep with the precision of a clockwork toy and then put his black Kepi on his closely shaven greying head.

Corporal Von Herwart marched over and then saluted. "These are the new recruits requested. For Operation Divine Lord," he shouted.

Gensert nodded, then slowly, like a panther, walked to the front of the two lines of Légionnaires.

For the grace of the Legion...I welcome you to this wonderful country, he began. Gensert paced around and then stood rigid, his hands behind his back slowly watching, like a gunner, for any comment from the first line of Légionnaires, he continued with his speech.  "You are here for dreams of glory—you are here to be a hero, fight for a righteous cause, or some other ‘noble’ reason.

Wrong! You volunteered to fight for France and for the Legion. If you had dreams of Hell...they will now become reality. Your enemy is the Viet Minh, the Communist resistance supported by their coolies. Our troops are engaged on a constant basis throughout this entire region. I have lost three-quarters of the men given to me in the past seven months due to this combat.  The Viet Minh take no prisoners; they give no mercy. Do not get taken alive. I repeat, do not be taken alive!

Our objective from French command is to build a force to defend the northern territory of Laos. A camp is being prepared, and, in the next few weeks, a command to reinforce that base will be given.  Its position, Cao Bang...

Operation Castor hovers on the horizon and is another military operation that may involve all of us soon...that’s all I’m prepared to say about these operations at the present time." Gensert faced Miller and then the other Légionnaires with lines on his forehead that creased into a heavy frown.

Finally! A detachment waits to escort you to the base barracks here at Da Nang. Your kit and medical checks are the final stamps of duty.  Then rest: I am giving you three days leave. Use it well—you will need it. Strength and morale are essential!  Ignore this rare chance for rest, and your carcasses will probably lie in the jungle, stripped down to the bone by crawling maggots and the insects after the enemy has finished mutilating you. 

There were a few shocked gasps and murmurings from the assembled Légionnaires.

"QUIET!’ yelled Herwart.

Welcome to the paradise of Tonkin Indochina! stated Gensert.  There was emotion in his voice. Welcome, to the fulfilment of your darkest fears.

Gensert saluted Sergeant Taylor, turned away, removed his black Kepi and got back into the jeep while the two Corporals stood to attention.

Next, they followed the Lieutenant into the jeep, in the fashion of a dog after a wandering Légionnaire, just as if the dog were hunting a fox. The jeep revved up its engine and then drove Gensert away towards the command and control centre.

Corporal Herwart ushered Miller and the rest of the Légionnaires into a military truck, where they were driven to the administration centre for their assessment and registration. They were then taken to their barracks for whatever sleep they could find for the rest of that journey enriched night.

Chapter Two

Three weeks had passed after the men had all taken their leaves, and Miller’s new platoon, called Force Amiens, was now being prepared for its rendezvous to a camp some twelve miles north of Hanoi. Their mission: to meet up with the 2nd Battalion of the Armee d` Afrique (The Army of Africa) platoon, avoiding—enemy Viet Minh Guerrillas.

The daily routine of Indochina’s Legion life became instilled into Miller like a hammer smashing down onto a rock, chipping him away piece by piece creating a figurine of despair. The training was hard, intense, and never-ending. The drill commands from Corporal Herwart reverberated around Miller’s head as if it were a nursery rhyme; its tune corrupted and distorted. Even when he tried to sleep, there was never any escape.

The atmosphere of this country was everything he had remembered—it oozed and gushed serenity and excitement, the smell created a feeling of warmth. The local Vietnamese women in the nearby town were beautiful to the eye, temptresses that stirred the passion of any weak-willed man. Dai Long was the one woman Miller had fallen for.

While out one evening on leave along with Hassan, Brunner and Heimlich in the old city of Hue, he caught the eye of this nineteen-year-old Vietnamese waitress who served him a Cognac. She had clasped eyes on him a few times on earlier excursions into town, but Miller never seemed able to pluck up the courage to communicate with her—until tonight, when like a drifter desperate for love, he spoke to her for the first time. 

"May I say...what beautiful eyes you possess? They flurry a story to me of such kindness, Mademoiselle." 

The waitress, dressed in a long white oriental patterned dress, stopped. Her skin glistened like Platinum. She was slender, her nose perfectly formed, and her eyes seemed to inflame a man’s passion like a magical potion. Her long black hair flowed down to her lower back. She seemed frightened and hesitant to answer Miller as if a Viet Minh spy was watching her.

Please, your name? asked Miller softly.

Dai Long, she whispered back, giving Miller a smile and glance that created an explosion that spun into reverse as if a movie’s special effects had been used to connect Miller and Dai Long.

Brunner, the German, interjected, "She’s another congaie whore! (An insulting term for a young mistress or prostitute). Only useful for one function—sex! And a good beating! he said in drunken arrogance, which was symptomatic to him. Dai Long turned away in disgust. Heimlich, his cohort laughed and then swigged some more wine.

The French quartet band inside the café strummed another melodic song; they were good, even Édith Piaf would sing with them if here in the flesh.

Brunner, your comments stink; you’ve no respect for anything, or anyone! responded Miller.

Stick to your poetry, leave the whores to us: you couldn’t pleasure them.

Whaddya mean by that comment, Herr Brunner?

Brunner and Heimlich pursed their lips together, making kissy, kissy sounds.

C’mon. Out with it! demanded Miller.

It’s obvious, Heimlich intervened. 

Miller’s face paled. Swines! Think! I’m homosexual...Mmm!

Brunner and Heimlich’s eyes were hard and mocking.

Penal colony bastards!

Ignore them, said Hassan.

"Herrenvolk!" shouted Heimlich.

The name for Hitler’s master race, shot Hassan.

Don’t talk to us black savage, hissed Brunner.

Miller’s thoughts swelled as he discovered he was in discussion with men of hate. What festers in their minds, their past cause. Kissing Henrich Himmler’s jackboots in 1938, swearing blind loyalty to the Swastika as Berlin burned in April