WAFFEN SS
The first sign of any French troops we saw was when a group of members of the French Foreign Legion appeared on the scene. They were electricians and were inspecting the electrical installation on the airfield. One of them approached me and tried, in very poor English, to ask about the electric power. I immediately realised that they were not French, from the accent they appeared to me to be German. So, in a very bad halting German I asked "du bist ein deutsch?" The answer, "Ja," confirmed my suspicions. After much difficulty with his broken English and my bad German I found out that these troops were in fact German Prisoners of War captured in Europe and given the option, join the Foreign Legion or stay in POW camp. Worse than that was the fact that they were ex-Waffen SS, some of Hitler's crack troops. Obviously the French thought that they had skills that would be of use in the fight against the Vietnamese Liberation Front. It soon became evident that these examples of Hitler's "master race" were using the same methods in Vietnam as they had used in Europe. They boasted about the raids into the countryside where they burned and pillaged in the name of French colonialism. The poor peasants we had seen in the prison yard had been rounded up by these examples of the pure Aryan race.
In March 1945 Lord Mountbatten made a farewell visit to Vice Admiral d'Argenlieu in Saigon and was greeted by a Guard of Honour made up entirely of Waffen SS as according to the French, "They are the smartest legionnaires."
Not all of my time in Vietnam was as traumatic as had been suggested up to now. I met some people who made my stay in Saigon, known as the Paris of the East, an interesting and in many ways, an enjoyable experience. The city was, when I was there, probably the most beautiful city I had seen. Wide, tree-lined boulevards, the city centre full of fine buildings, with shops, cafés, restaurants, and some of the most beautiful women, the result I imagine of the intermarriage between the French and Vietnamese.
Amongst the people I became friendly with were two men, brothers, who were of Greek/Jewish descent. Born in Calcutta, they had lived in Saigon for many years and had business interests in the country. They had managed to escape to Calcutta when the Japanese occupied Vietnam. After the war they were invited back to Saigon by the British administration to help in rebuilding the economy of the country. I don't remember the circumstances of our meeting but I do remember their wonderful hospitality. Our Unit had by this time been moved from our camp on Tan Son Nuht airfield to a building in the city that had at some time been a girls' school. It was an elegant colonial building in the form of a quadrangle with the entrance through an arch. The reason I mention this is that the house of the bothers David, for that was their name, was quite close to the school in which we were billeted. So I often walked round to the house of my friends whenever I had some time to myself. Again I was to experience the contrast between how the colonialists lived and the poverty and deprivation of the masses of ordinary working people. In the house of David luxury was commonplace. The house was a typical example of the sort of accommodation that was built by the colonialists for themselves. Cool marble floors, large airy rooms with separate accommodation for the servants, of whom there were a few. Food aplenty served by the aforesaid servants. In fact absolute luxury in every possible way. Whilst in the areas of Saigon like Cholon where the workers lived, the absolute opposite was the norm whilst out in the countryside the peasant families lived in huts with no facilities whatsoever.
In contrast to the David brothers another couple I became friendly with whose name I do not remember, was a young married couple with a daughter. He was a Polish Jew who had escaped from Poland and made his way to France and from there to French Indo-China, where he met and married a young Catholic woman of French extraction. He was an electrician. Unfortunately I don't remember a great deal about them except that they lived in a small house similar to the sort of house one would expect of an artisan here in England.