The Centurions by Jean Lartéguy Read Free Book Online

answer my questions. What was the strength of Marianne II?”
    â€œI’ve already given you my name, my Christian name, my rank, everything that belongs to me. The rest isn’t mine to give and I know of no international convention that obliges officer prisoners to provide the enemy with information while their comrades are still fighting.”
    Another heavy sigh from the Vietminh. Another deep puff at his cigarette.
    â€œWhy do you refuse to answer?”
    Why? Glatigny was beginning to wonder himself. There must be some ruling on this matter in military regulations. Every eventuality is provided for in regulations, even what never comes to pass.
    â€œMilitary regulations forbid a prisoner to give you information.”
    â€œSo you only fought because military regulations obliged you to do so?”
    â€œNot only for that reason.”
    â€œIn refusing to talk, then, perhaps you’re abiding by your sense of military honour?”
    â€œYou can call it that if you like.”
    â€œYou have an extremely
bourgeois
conception of military honour. This honour of yours allows you to fight for the interests of the bloated colonials and bankers of Saigon, to massacre people whose only desire is peace and independence. You are prepared to wage war in a country which doesn’t belong to you, an unjust war, a war of imperialist conquest. Your honour as an officer adjusts itself to this but forbids you to contribute to the cause of peace and progress by giving the information I request.”
    Glatigny’s immediate reaction was typical of his class; he assumed an air of haughtiness. He was remote and disinterested, as though he was not personally involved at all, and slightly disdainful. The Vietminh noticed this; his eyes glinted, his nostrils dilated and his lips curled over his teeth.
    â€œHis French education,” Glatigny reflected, “must have weakened his perfect control over his facial expression.”
    The Vietminh had half risen from his seat:
    â€œAnswer! Didn’t your sense of honour oblige you to defend the position you held to the last man? Why didn’t you die defending the ‘peak of your fathers’?”
    For the first time in the conversation the Vietminh had used an expression translated directly from Vietnamese into French: the “peak of your fathers” for “your ancestral land.” This minor linguistic problem took Glatigny’s mind off the question of military honour. But the little man in green persisted:
    â€œAnswer! Why didn’t you die defending your position?”
    Glatigny also wondered why. He could have done, but he had thrown the grenade at the Viets.
    â€œI can tell you,” the Vietminh went on. “You saw our soldiers who looked puny and undersized advancing to attack your trenches, in spite of your artillery, your mines, your barbed-wire entanglements and all the arms the Americans had given you. Our men fought to the death because they were serving a just and popular cause, because they knew, as we all know, that we have the Truth, the only Truth, on our side. That is what made our soldiers invincible. And because you didn’t have these reasons, here you are alive, standing in front of me, a prisoner and vanquished.
    â€œYou
bourgeois
officers belong to a society which is out of date and polluted by the selfish interests of class. You have helped to keep humanity in the dark. You’re nothing but obscurantists, mercenaries incapable of explaining what they are fighting for.
    â€œGo on, then, try and explain! You can’t, eh?”
    â€œWe’re fighting, my dear sir, to protect the people of Viet-Nam from Communist slavery.”
    Later on, when discussing this reply with Esclavier, Boisfeuras, Merle and Pinières, Glatigny was forced to admit that he was not quite sure how it had occurred to him. In actual fact Glatigny was only fighting for France, because the legal government had ordered