Jean Leriche's Story

INDOCHINA

At Christmas time, the Viet Minh radio announced that 300 prisoners would be released as a token of the Communists' devotion to world peace. Last week the first batch of 109, wearing safe-conduct insignia reading Hochiminh Muon Nam" (One thousand years for Ho Chi Minh), arrived at a French strong point on the Red River delta perimeter. Among them was 24-year-old Jean Leriche, a civilian cameraman attached to the French army, who was captured by the Communists in November 1952.

In a Saigon hospital where he was being treated for malnutrition (he lost 55 Ibs. in captivity), Leriche was interviewed by an old acquaintance, TIME Correspondent null Sully, who cabled his story -- a rare view of life with the Viet Minh enemy.

Peril from Tigers. During the first weeks of his life with the Reds, they made Leriche do chores such as carrying supplies for combat troops, but he had time (and was permitted) to watch the Viet Minh preparations for an assault on Moc-chau. The commanders built crude sand tables, then made their men practice the attack again and again. "Each soldier rehearsed his job 50 times, maybe 100 times. C'est formidable. When they attack they move like machines."

The prisoners were loosely guarded. One moonless night, Leriche, four other Frenchmen and one German legionnaire stole away. They soon learned why escape had been so easy: travel through the jungle was impossible, partly because of tigers. The fleeing men moved only by night, and stuck to the main colonial route leading to Hanoi. It was jammed by tens of thousands of Communist coolies and Russian-made Molotov trucks, and they escaped notice in the turbulent swarm. On the third night, however, they ran up against a check point where they could not give the password, and the jig was up. Workers Like Ants. Punishment was light--their shoes were confiscated for two days, during which they had to march. The Reds' view was that the escape try had been stupid rather than criminal. One officer explained: "Of course, you're fresh from colonial slavery and you don't understand. You're like children. Later you'll learn it's our policy to release prisoners as soon as they have been taught the righteousness of our cause--so why try to escape?"

In March, Leriche was put to work on a road that was under daily attack by French bombers. "It was fascinating. One day the B-26s made a series of direct hits on the road, converting hundreds of meters to a mass of rubble. When a Viet Minh officer said it must be repaired for use that very night, we thought he was joking. But before long, thousands and thousands of people began converging on the road. The Communists evidently collared the whole population for miles around, peasants, coolies, children, women with babies, old people, everyone who could walk. It was raining. They worked with straw baskets, shovels, picks, bare hands. They were like ants. After dark they worked ,by torchlight, singing a strange, monotonous chant like a dirge. At midnight, we saw the lights of the first trucks coming through."

Tears for a Song. For eight months, Prisoner Leriche was quartered in a cluster of straw huts called Camp No. 113, in a valley 50 miles from the China border. It was so remote that the Viet Minh did not bother with barbed wire or close guarding. Of 350 French, Senegalese and North Africans in the camp when Leriche arrived, some 200 died of starvation, beriberi, malaria, dysentery. Yet, grotesquely, Camp 113 was proudly regarded by the Reds as a special operation. It was run by a pair of polished, French-speaking Vietnamese who addressed the prisoners as "Mes chers amis."

The No. 3 man was a French professor named Pierre Boudarel, a former philosophy lecturer at a Saigon lycee. Boudarel's line was that the U.S. was backing the Indo-China war because it wanted to take over colonial power in Indo-China from the French.

In November, Professor Boudarel told the prisoners: "You are now new men. My government has pardoned you. You will soon be freed." They were fattened up, treated in a hospital, equipped with shoes (Leriche had had none for eight months). As the lucky 109 headed across the paddyfields toward freedom. Professor Boudarel began singing "Madelon." On hearing that Jean Leriche burst into tears.

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