Fields of Poppies

About the Book

After fighting in Morocco, then in the High Mountain of Tonkin at the frontier of China against the Annamese and the Chinese Black Flag pirates, Sergeant Karl Hazé of the Foreign Legion ended up in Darlac in the south of Indochina. There he had to go to war against the unsubdued Montagnard Djaraïs, and Rhadés who refused to submit to France.

He happened to hear from his Montagnard guides that there was a Djaraï king on the Laotian border, who was known for his depraved habits, cruelty, and also his fabulous wealth acquired through the traffic of opium he obtained from the cultivation of poppies in fields that extended as far as the eye could see. With a small party of six soldiers of his battalion, Hazé raided the village. Surprised by the sentries, almost everyone was killed except Karl and one of his companions. The king, Y'Siap, decided to let them live, after blinding them and castrating the soldier. Karl was allowed to keep his manhood in order to father a white son for the impotent monarch.

Hazé had to accomplish his task within three months. He succeeded in impregnating the first three Montagnard concubines, but the Chinese favorite that the king put into his hands did not show any sign of becoming pregnant. If Hazé failed with her in the time allotted to him, he would be castrated then impaled and she would be delivered to the king's soldiers.

About the Author

Etienne Oggeri is a descendant of colonists who, for four generations, contributed to the development of Vietnam by building roads, bridges and tunnels. His fascinating life until he was arbitrarily expelled from the country at the age of 32 would have tempted the pen of a Hemingway or a Graham Greene.

Like many Frenchmen of that period, he was jailed by the Japanese during their occupation, then by the Viet Minh in October 1945, until he was freed by the return of the French army. A decree exempting unique sons of widows from military service shortened his training in the Foreign Legion. Later he acquired a world-wide reputation as a professional big game hunter guide which enabled him to have prestigious clients like Berry B. Brooks, one of the five recognized greatest hunters in the world.

His destiny made him meet Lechi,the sister of Madame Nhu, the very powerful First Lady of the Ngo Dinh Diêm government nicknamed 'The Dragon Lady' by the American press because of her cruel remarks about the public suicide of the Vietnamese monks in protest of her government's wrong doings. Madame Nhu gave Etienne a choice: either a huge amount of money if he gave up Lechi or his expulsion from the country. He refused the money. This caused him to be expelled after a stay in the President's brother Nhu's secret underground jail where he was tortured, inoculated with the cholera virus, then led under heavy escort into Cambodia.

Lechi's parents, then Ambassadors to Wachinton DC, succeeded in helping him come to the United States. Etienne and Lechi had to struggle to live honorably in the American society. Working during the day and going to the university in the evening, they acquired the degrees enabling them to have a good position first in the Department of the Defense, then for Lechi as a university professor.

Now in their property on the side of a lake, Etienne writes his memoirs while Lechi becomes a professional artist painter. Fields of Poppies as far as the Eye Can See is his first novel. It is a true story told first by the Montagnards, his hunting companions, then confirmed by Diêp, a former drug dealer. This book will be followed by three others, already finished:

1) I killed for a living (memoirs)
2) My beautiful years in the Vietnam of Yesteryear (memoirs)
3) Operation Frangipani Flowers ( novel based on a true story)