A Life of Violence

In the turbulence that has beset Indo-China in the past decade, none lived a more dangerous and colorful life than young Le Quang Vinh. He led a 20,000-man army all his own, recruited from the Hoa Hao, a sect which successfully combined religion and pillage. To dramatize his hatred of the French, he chopped off the end of a finger and called himself Ba Cut. In protest against the Geneva conference that split Viet Nam, he refused to cut his hair. Refusing also to recognize the sovereignty of the new nation of South Viet Nam, he terrorized the back country, declared he would lop off the head of Premier Ngo Dinh Diem. But last April Diem's army captured the rebel general, and the problem of whose head would roll was posed another way.

Ba Cut underwent three trials for murder; each time he was condemned to death. When Diem refused to pardon him, Ba Cut asked to be shot like a soldier. One night last week 32-year-old Ba Cut wrote a farewell letter, asking his parents to care for the innumerable children of his nine wives. Then, before dawn, he was driven in an army truck to Cantho cemetery. Dressed in black, his waist-length hair now cut short, Ba Cut was led to the place of execution. Only then did he discover that his plea for a firing squad had been rejected; before him loomed the shining blade of a French guillotine.

Ba Cut walked resolutely forward, placed his body on the execution platform. As dawn came to Cantho cemetery, the blade swished down and General Ba Cut's head rolled into one basket, his body into another.

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