Chicken Soup on Sunday

BATTLE OF INDOCHINA

Where the Giang River divides French and Communist territory 220 miles south of Hanoi, the French have a watchtower. One morning last week a sentry in the Giang tower saw a group of people waving flags on the Communist side of the river, and a canoe patrol was sent across to investigate. The flag-wavers proved to be 56 men, women & children, all French, released after six years in a Viet Minh concentration camp.

They were French civil servants, soldiers, coffee and tea planters, and their families. The oldest was a woman of 82, the youngest a child of six months. Dressed in the coarse homespun of native peasants, they had a strange story to tell. When Communist Ho Chi Minh attempted to seize the government of Indo-China in December 1946, they had been roughly arrested and thrown into a camp in a sandy, sun-scorched mountain valley. They lived communally in four large huts, sleeping on bamboo camp beds. In the beginning, the camp was guarded by tough young Communist soldiers.

It was hungry country. The camp commandant and his officers kept for themselves part of the prisoners' slender rice rations. Twelve of the weakest prisoners died. The others planted a small garden of arrowroot, sweet potatoes and tobacco to add to their ration. Several French soldier and civilian bachelors married the elder daughters of other prisoners in ceremonies held without benefit of clergy. Each young couple then went to live in a tiny, palm-roofed home in the camp. Of the nine babies born in the camp, three died for want of milk, but six remained in good health, bringing the child population to 22. A Viet Minh doctor visited them twice in the six years of their internment, distributed some quinine pills and laxatives among the children.

As the war went on, without any sign of French collapse, the conditions in the camp became easier. The rough military guards were called away and their place taken by less unfriendly guards. The food ration was increased. There was rice every day and chicken soup on Sunday. The prisoners were allowed to exchange part of their rations against Communist currency, with which they could buy vegetables, pork and tobacco. The new guards attempted to re-educate their prisoners in Marxism, and organized Communist-style propaganda meetings.

One day last year a Viet Minh official, speaking excellent French, introduced himself to the prisoners as M. Chi, delegate of Ho Chi Minh's government. Solicitously he asked the prisoners to state their most urgent needs. Said Chi: "The French and the Vietnamese people are brothers." Then followed a distribution of blankets, mosquito nets and new clothes. Sentries were withdrawn and women prisoners were allowed to visit the village market.

Thenceforth on Saturday nights they got a theater show (with Marxist significance). On Jan. 10 the prisoners were suddenly told to pack up. Loaded on to river barges, they went southward along the coast of central Viet Nam. At every small village they were given a friendly welcome and, under cover of night, they met with the local Viet Minh. Said one white-haired Frenchman: "It seems that these people were truly glad to see us, poor and shabbily dressed as we were. Their former hate had turned to friendship."

In Hanoi the French High Command carefully analyzed the reports of the ex-prisoners. Was their release a gesture for peace? Or a new kind of Communist stratagem?

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.