Polygamy for La Patrie

JUNGLE MISSION (204 pp.)--Kene Riesen-- Crowe//($3.50).

As soon as Captain Pierre, commander of the Kong-Plong outpost in south Indo-China, saw the handsome, flaxen-haired corporal from Lyon, he felt that he had a solution to the problem of winning over certain Moi' tribes which had taken up a neutral position in the war with the Communist-led Viet Minh. After a workout with the colonial troops, Corporal Riesen, the author of this book, was sent into the mountainous jungle 'of central Viet Nam. Friendly Moi' chieftains offered him a bride. Corporal Riesen demurred ("She was only nineteen and very pretty . . . with her breasts placed high, and her long jet-black hair hung down to her supple waist"), but on Captain Pierre's solemn remonstrance, he decided ta do his duty.

A Moi Talleyrand. The marriage, performed with the aid of blood rites, was everything Captain Pierre had hoped for: the devoted Ilouhi carried her husband's Tommy gun through the leech-infested rain forests, saved his life many times over, taught him the language, and initiated him into the secrets of the primitive hill tribes; as the "Father with white hair," exploiting his wife's tribal connections, he won the allies France needed.

His earnest tribute: "A woman's charm and attraction are more effective than force of arms. Ilouhi . . . played the part of a Talleyrand among the Moi's." In Jungle Mission (the English edition of Mission Speciale en Foret Moi, published by Editions France-Empire} Rene Riesen sets out to describe the guerrilla war in Viet Nam (1946-54), in which carnivo rous insects play almost as important a role as the cunning Viet Minh. There are exciting interludes in which elephants are hunted by day and tiger, buffalo, roebuck, boar and deer shot by flashlight at night.

But what makes this unsophisticated book more interesting than most jungle jour nals is the sophisticated corporal's many-sided marital problem. By her fifth month of pregnancy, Ilouhi is obliged, under the strict tribal law, to find her husband a second wife. Rene protests the bigamy: "To carry out my mission would I have to become . . . lord and master of a harem?" But Ilouhi finds him Crey the Bahnar huntress, a wild creature from the inner jungle. With the appearance of Crey, Riesen is surprised to discover in the de voted Ilouhi "that boundless distress which is as old as the world itself." A new relationship develops in which Rene finds that Ilouhi can "have the same sort of dreams as a white woman," but in the ef fort to share her thoughts and influence her mind he finds that she is "slowly lead ing me back to primitive ideas and in stincts." Fascinated but also scared, the Frenchman writes : "No European woman had ever played the same part in my life." Another Age. The distinguishing qual ity of French colonialism was its lack of racial prejudice. But the war in Indo-China already belongs to another age, and in the once-prized colony, only a few French linger today. Corporal Riesen barely had time to write his book and to enjoy the fruits of his Croix de la V ail lance Vietnamienne, with palm, before he was sent off to crumbling Algeria. There, last December, his devotion to La Patrie led him to death in an Arab ambush.

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