L’enfir, c’est les Autres.
—J-P. Sartre
The road north was lined with fruit trees. It was late October and they had shed their leaves. A few persimmons still hung from the boughs like puckered oranges. The days were sunny at first, Indian summer weather, but skim ice formed on the rice paddies overnight. Fires burned on the sawtooth mountains to the north where they were headed. Some of the more impressionable Marines imagined a great dragon brooding up there, watching and waiting, its breath kindling the grassfires, but it was only napalm.
By 8 November there was frost in the Funchilin Pass and the next night they had their first snowfall. A week later the wind from Manchuria was blowing hard, as it would all winter, and the temperature dropped to fifteen below. They called it the Siberian Express. The wind tasted of sleet and fine dust. Manchurian camel dung, the old China Marines said. It stung their eyes and gritted in their teeth when they stopped to choke down their C-rats—wienerwurst, lima beans, fruit salad.
Supply sergeants broke out cold-weather gear. The wool socks and shoepacs with felt insoles were welcome, but the long, alpaca-lined parkas tangled their legs as they marched.
At night men cut firewood with their K-Bars. The wind died and they heard strange music from the mountains. Whistles and bugles. Distant dissonance. There were red deer and bear on the slopes and some said tigers too. Once they reached the high plateau they could see a big lake half a day’s march to the north. Steam rose from black ice. Marines bought Red Dot stogies, two for a nickel, and smoked them to ward off the cold. That’s where Ben acquired the cigar habit.
Yes, the Crotch takes care of its own. Thanksgiving dinner was traditional—from roast turkey and mince pie to fruitcake, shrimp salad, mixed nuts, stuffed olives, cranberry sauce—the works. But Field Marshal Winter disapproved of such largesse. The gravy froze first, then the sweet potatoes . . .
They moved north.
On the following evening, the night of 25 November, the Chinese launched their assault. No one was prepared for their coming.
General Douglas MacArthur’s staff in Japan had repeatedly assured Washington that there were no more than 16,000 to 30,000 Chinese troops operating in North Korea, all of them mere “volunteers.” In fact the CCF (Chinese Communist Forces, as they were officially known) numbered 300,000 troops.
Across the Taebek Mountains a hundred miles to the west, General Lin Piao’s Thirteenth Army Group, eighteen divisions strong, slammed into Lieutenant General Walton Walker’s Eighth Army. Regimental commanders issued urgent orders to their battalion C.O.s who passed them on down to company level—How Able! “Haul Ass!” The doggies reeled back to the south, toward Pyongyang.
Two days later, east of the mountains, General Sung Shihlun’s Ninth Army Group with a dozen divisions, hit Major General Edward Almond’s X Corps, which consisted of the First Marine Division and part of the U.S. Army’s Seventh Infantry. The Marines held.
Up past the reservoir, near a village called Yudam-ni, the sky looked like Christmas come early. The moon was lopsided, four days past full. American tracers were red, the Chinese green, and those used by the North Koreans were blue. They crisscrossed in the air. Orange sparks gushed upward from mortar tubes firing illumination rounds. The flares popped overhead, lit the mountains all around in a hard white glare, and squeaked as they drifted down. Now and then a white phosphorus round from the mortars would send quick orange-tailed snakes slithering over the snow.
You could smell the Chinese coming, like a gust of cold stale garlic breath. Even their gunpowder smelled different, like burning hair.
Their basic infantry weapon was a 1918 Mauser-style rifle in 7.92mm, manufactured in China, but they also carried Mauser machine-pistols, American Tommy guns, and Russian PPSh 41 burp guns. Some of their light machine guns were Japanese Nambus captured during World War II. They threw long-handled potato-masher grenades. To arm them they had to unscrew a cap from the bottom of the wooden handle, then pull a strip of cloth to light the fuse. These caps often froze, and in advance of an attack the grenadiers could be heard tapping the handles on a rifle butt or even the frozen ground to loosen them for action. Most of the grenades were frags, but the Chinese used a lot of concussion grenades too, perhaps in order to take more American prisoners.
Over and through it all, a cacophony of bugles and whistles, drums and cymbals. This was how the Chinese officers maneuvered their troops.
Sergeant Stingley had joined the regiment at Wonsan. He spotted Ben right away. “Slater,” he said, “I want you for my platoon. Most of these men are candyassed pogues—Reservists. The rest have been in country too long, from Pusan through Inchon to Seoul. They’ve gone Asiatic on me. You’re fresh meat. I know I can trust you. Hell, I trained you myself.” Stingley arranged the transfer.
Ben was assigned as a BAR man. He already had plenty of experience with the weapon. A loaded Browning Automatic Rifle weighs twenty pounds; its ammo belt with twelve magazines—another 240 rounds—weighs nearly as much. Ben fired them all that first night and many more. Twice the Chinese broke through their perimeter, but Stingley rallied the men and drove them back. He moved the platoon higher on the ridge they were defending and formed a tighter perimeter, on the crest. Ben not only carried his BAR but dragged the body of a dead Marine with him as well. Marines didn’t leave their dead or wounded behind.
Another platoon was already on the hilltop, or anyway what was left of one. All of its officers had been killed or wounded. Stingley was senior N.C.O. He took command. The position was anchored by four .30 caliber Browning machine guns, one at each end and two in the middle.
They piled the dead Marines in the center of the perimeter, near the 60mm mortar tubes, and covered them with a tarpaulin. Not a man in the outfit hadn’t been hit. Many had frostbitten feet, hands, and faces. Corpsmen worked on the badly wounded, popping morphine Syrettes and dusting perforated bellies with sulfa powder. The men who’d only been nicked tended their own wounds.
At first light an L-19 spotter plane circled their position, and a few minutes later three gull-winged F4U Corsairs roared in low with 20mm cannonfire, five-inch rockets, and napalm. The Chinese faded into the surrounding hills. Pine trees blazed in their wake brighter than the rising sun. Mist rose from the frozen ground, writhing like ghosts. “They’ll be back come dark,” Stingley promised.
They counted eighty-five Chinese bodies on the slope below. Snow was falling. Soon the bodies looked like nothing more than hummocks on the landscape. Stingley’s Marines had lost six, including Mr. Wittold, the platoon leader, who took a bullet in the groin and bled out before a corpsman could reach him. Ben helped the corpsman slide the lieutenant’s body under the tarp. Hoarfrost bloomed like mildew on the faces of the dead. Even on their eyeballs.
All day they sweated it out under a bombardment from Chinese 82mm mortars and 76mm howitzers, firing from the reverse slope opposite them. ChiCom machine guns laced their position. The Chinese pulled their heavy Maxim MGs in two-wheeled dogcarts. The Marines dug their foxholes as deep as they could, not an easy job in that frozen, rocky soil. During a lull in the firing, Stingley sent out a work party to drag Chinese bodies upslope to their position. They drew sniper fire from the far ridge but no one was hit. Stingley had the corpses piled like sandbags around the foxholes. “Red revetments,” he called them.
The ChiCom dead wore canvas tennis shoes with crepe soles and uniforms of quilted cotton. The uniforms were reversible, white on one side, mustard yellow or a murky pea-soup green on the other. Most of the Chinese had fur-lined caps with earmuffs. In their knapsacks they carried a four-day supply of garlic, rice, beans, and corn, along with eighty to one hundred rounds of ammo. Some of them also had plugs of opium and tins of Benzedrine tablets.
Know your enemy, Stingley said. This was true intimacy. The cold weather kept the dead from bloating but the smell was overpowering. The bodies exuded essense of garlic. “Eat enough of it regularly and it comes out through your pores,” said Doc Magnuson, the Navy corpsman. “Eventually you’ll get used to the smell.”
On Stingley’s orders they rifled the enemy packs for maps and scraps of paper. These were passed along to the ROK second lieutenant who traveled with them. He could read Chinese. From these papers the South Korean interpreter learned that the troops opposing them belonged to the Chinese Seventy-Ninth Division, part of Lin Piao’s Fourth Field Army. A map showed that the Chinese objective was the southern end of the Chosin Reservoir, just north of Hagaru-ri and fourteen miles east of the Marine positions around Yudam-ni. The units detached from the ChiCom main force had orders to destroy the Marines, or at least pin them down so they couldn’t blunt the assault on the reservoir. Stingley tried to radio this information to the intelligence staff at regimental HQ, but the surrounding mountains blocked his transmission.
A small shrine stood on a knob just to the left and a bit forward of the perimeter. Toward dusk Stingley crawled over to Ben’s foxhole. “See that Buddhahead over there—no, not the dead gook, that stone thing on the hilltop. I want you to go up there with the BAR. From that position we’ll have a crossfire on any goonies that come up the slope. Take your buddy Darwin with you. He can cover your ass with his M1 in case they try to come up behind you. Take plenty of ammo—four belts anyways. Slip over the back of the ridge and make your way up to the shrine from behind. Maybe they won’t see you.”
“When can I come back?”
“When we’ve killed them all.”
Luke Darwin was a tall, lanky, jet-black PFC from Harlem. He was a bebop fancier. “Too cool for school,” as he put it. Ben and Luke had hit it off from the get-go. Luke had brought a few platters with him, cushioned with cotton in his seabag, and in Wonsan before they moved out to the north they’d commandeered a phonograph in the Navy enlisted men’s club. He had Dizzy Gillespie’s Manteca, among others, along with Bud Powell’s Get Happy and a number called “Epistrophy” with Shadow Wilson on the drums, Milt Jackson on vibes, and a new pianist named Thelonius Monk who’d composed the thing. Monk was a bluesy marvel, Ellington times ten. “The Loneliest Monk,” Luke Darwin called him. They drank Old Overholt with beer chasers. It was a pleasant evening.
When Ben crawled over to Luke Darwin’s foxhole, he found his friend in mourning. “Them goddamn Chinamen,” he said, “they busted my platters. Lookit this!” He shook shards of black shellac out of his sleeping bag. “A fuckin’ mortar frag. I’ve got to get me some revenge.”
“You’ll have your chance come nightfall,” Ben told him. They slithered over the crest of the ridge and ran in a low crouch to the Buddhist shrine. Luke was draped in bandoleers and dragged a burlap sack of grenades along with his M1 rifle. They drew no fire from the opposite slope. They crouched beneath the Buddha, breathing hard. Ben pulled a few stones from the retaining wall and set up his BAR behind it. He spread the bipod and looked down the sights. With a short traverse he could rake the entire slope. Luke covered their rear.
The Buddhahead smiled down upon them. His broad calm face had been chipped by stray rounds, brow and chin. Two of the fingers on his upturned right palm were gone. He didn’t seem to miss them.
Red and green flares began to pop on the far side of the pass. Then came the bugles and what sounded like a shepherd’s horn. Dim shapes emerged from the rocks six hundred yards away. Too far yet for accurate fire. The Chinese mustered in the ditch on the south side of the road. Ben estimated their numbers to be more than five hundred, perhaps as much as battalion strength. The Chinese waited until full dark before moving out. A single bugle blared and was joined an instant later by the sound of a entire lunatic orchestra—drums, flutes, fifes, cymbals, pennywhistles—gone spastic on reefer.
“Dig it,” Luke said. “We gotta bring some of these cats to Birdland.”
“Whatever you say,” Ben whispered. “Let’s hold our fire until they’re almost on top of us. ‘Don’t disclose your position.’ That’s the word from Sergeant Stingley.”
Behind them, on the crest, mortar tubes chugged and illumination rounds popped high over the hillside, swaying as they descended, sending out long blue shadows that danced in the wake of their glare. The dissonant music stopped for a minute. The Chinese slogged uphill with tiny mincing steps, in perfect formation. The flares lent a jerky quality to their movement, like something from an old silent movie. Birth of a Nation, maybe. Some of the Chinese wore long olive-drab parkas that trailed behind them in the snow. Those coats, Ben realized, had been stripped from Marine Corps dead.
Up top the .30s opened fire, quick bursts, four or five rounds at a squirt. Gaps opened in the Chinese ranks. M1s joined the machine guns, measured shots, well aimed. A Chinese officer yelled something through a megaphone and his troops began to run, screaming as they came. More and more of them fell. Bodies piled up on the hillside. The first wave fell back. More Chinese emerged from the darkness beyond the road and came pouring uphill at a dead run. Now mortar rounds burst among them. They were only a hundred yards away. Ben leaned into the butt of the BAR and flicked off the safety. Fifty yards. Forty. He touched the trigger . . . . Chinese fell in windrows. He emptied the magazine and slapped in another.
Ben saw a Chinese officer glance his way and yell to his men. Then he blew his police whistle. Ben cut them down. This time his muzzle flash caught other enemy eyes. An entire wing of the assault formation peeled off and headed their way. Too many, too fast . . .
“Luke, you better start pitching grenades!”
He heard the spang of the spoon popping free and Luke’s long arm lashed past the corner of his eye. The grenade blew the first wave flat. More grenades followed. Steam rose from the barrel of the BAR. Ben spat on it while he was reloading. The spit exploded before it hit the steel.
Chinese potato mashers whirled their way, trailing tails of blazing cloth from their wooden handles. Luke caught one in midair and flung it back. Another fell between them. They rolled away from it and the blast hammered Ben’s eardrums. A concussion grenade. He felt woozy, like he’d been coldcocked by Jersey Joe Walcott.
Two Chinamen vaulted the retaining wall. Then three more. One of them stuck a bayonet into Luke’s shoulder. He lay there unconscious from the grenade blast and didn’t even wince when the steel slid in. A Chinese officer with a burp gun stood on the wall, staring down at Ben. Ben stared back. A police whistle dangled from a leather thong around the officer’s neck. A gust of wind made the pea in the whistle rattle tinnily. The Chinaman smiled at Ben and said, “Nobody lives forever.” He spoke perfect English. He shot Ben twice, bup-bup, in the chest.
When he woke up, Ben wondered if he was dead and this the beginning of an afterlife he didn’t believe in anymore. He felt of his chest where the Chinese bullets had hit him. It was sore as hell but he couldn’t feel any blood. There were holes in the parka but not a trace of red on his palm. He unzipped his parka and field jacket, pulled the OD wool sweater up to his clavicle, unbuttoned his heavy wool shirt, and found the two burp gun bullets lodged against his longjohns. No wonder their gunpowder smelled like burnt hair. It had no oomph.
Or had the Buddha saved him? Ben looked up at the statue. Its smug, peaceful smile seemed to affirm salvation.
Luke was gone. So was the BAR, Luke’s M1, and the bag of grenades. Luke wouldn’t have taken off on his own, leaving Ben behind. The Chinese must have him. Ben looked over the parapet. Dead silence. Bodies littered the slope, hundreds of them it looked like. It was quiet out there except for the moans of the wounded and the whisper of night wind. Quiet on top, too. No Marine voices barking orders or whoops of exultation at having repelled the Red Menace once again.
Ben stood up. His legs were wobbly but he could hear again. He had a hell of a headache and every time he took a deep breath his ribs grated high in his chest. He walked through the lopsided moonlight to the top of the ridge. Marine bodies lay in their foxholes and at first he thought the men were sleeping. They were dead. Arbogast, Fleming, little Rojas from West Texas huddled over his machine gun as if in prayer, Cotwinkle’s guts ripped open and his left arm lying ten feet away to the west, blown there by a mortar blast. The fingers were locked in the crusted snow as if the arm were trying to drag itself back to its rightful shoulder. Ben was looking for Doc Magnuson, or at least Doc’s B-1 bag. The medical kit might have some aspirin in it. Maybe those big yellow pills laced with codeine. But he couldn’t find the corpsman or his kit. Nor could he find Sergeant Stingley’s body. They must have pulled out, back down the reverse slope, when the Chinese overran the position. Along with the rest of the survivors. There weren’t enough jar-head bodies up here to spell Little Big Horn.
Ben searched among the dead Marines for a weapon. The enemy would be out there in the night. All over the mountain-top. He could hear Chinese voices on the road that led to Hagaru. They were headed down through Toktong Pass toward the reservoir.
The Chinese had taken most of the weapons, but in a foxhole over at the far western end of the perimeter he found an M1 pinned under the body of a marine from How Company. The jarhead was already stiff and Ben’s head whirled as he stooped over to pry the rifle loose from its owner’s grip. The clip had only one round left in it but he found a full bandoleer behind the foxhole. He reloaded, draped the bandoleer over his shoulders, and walked away.
There was nothing more he could do here.
Ben stayed to the shadows wherever he could. There were Chinese everywhere. He could hear their voices, singsong and far-carrying in the moonlight. The breechblock of the M1 was frozen and he thawed it with his breath, worked it a few times and replaced the eight-round clip, then carried the rifle with his gloved palm wrapped around the receiver. He’d taken a .45 pistol from Rojas and tucked it into the waistband of his windproof trousers. The spare magazines for the Colt he carried in his pants pockets to warm them. Frozen springs don’t feed bullets when you need them.
He was trying to make his way to Hagaru, navigating by the North Star. There was sporadic firing off to the southeast and he recognized the slow heavy chug of an air-cooled .50 caliber machine gun. Chinese burp guns chattered like firecrackers. The Fifth Marines were down there, guarding Toktong Pass, probably surrounded by now like his outfit had been. Topping a ridge, he found himself looking down at the western shore of the reservoir. Where the wind had blown the snow clear, the ice shone black in the moonlight. He saw hootches along the shores of an inlet. No lights in the windows, no smoke rose from their roofs. Abandoned. If he could get down to them, he could hide out until morning. With sunrise the Corsairs would be prowling the skies and the Chinese would be hidden in the hills. Maybe he could make his way across the ice to Hagaru and 1st MarDiv headquarters.
He started down the slope toward the hootches but then thought better of it. The ground between here and the huts was open, treeless. In this moonlight, he thought, some Chink would certainly see him. Off to his right a ravine choked with shrubs and stubby pines snaked its way down to the reservoir. He hit for it, running hard in a low painful crouch. His headache was fading but his ribs still hurt where the bullets smacked them. From the grating sounds they made, they were probably cracked. He slipped into the shadows of the pines and sat down in the snow, catching his breath.
A small stream had cut the ravine but it was frozen solid. He was thirsty now, his mouth tasted of stale gunpowder, and he walked down the ravine hoping to find an open riffle where the fast water refused to freeze. It was eerie in there in the pine-scrub. The moon cast shifting shadows on the snow and he stopped often, looking for human movement. Ahead of him, where the ground fell away even more steeply, he heard water lapping. Must be a small waterfall. He moved toward it, but the closer he got, the odder it sounded. An even, rhythmic, steady sound, like a thirsty dog lapping water from a bowl. He stopped again and searched the shadows.
Something twitched down there. Something long and sinuous. And furry. It was a tail. It was striped. Then the lapping sound stopped and a huge white boulder, striated in moonshadows, raised up from the edge of the streambed and turned his way. The yellow eyes locked on his. The eyes were a handspan apart. His blood froze. For a long long moment they stared at each other. Then the tiger turned away and like smoke he was gone. Ben’s blood started flowing again.
He walked down to the riffle and knelt in the tiger’s paw prints. His kneecaps didn’t quite fill them. He drank the racing water, ice cold. Then he backtracked the cat up the side of the ravine. Near the top he found what he’d hoped for, a fresh-killed red deer. He’d eaten nothing since morning. The tiger had consumed the deer’s guts and most of one haunch but there was plenty of meat left.
With his K-Bar he skinned out the backstraps. He looked around. He was well concealed. He could risk a fire. He broke off a handful of dead twigs, gathered some pine cones for kindling, and kicked a clear spot in the snow. One flick of the Zippo and the fire was going. He skewered a slab of deer meat on the point of the knife and sat back, the rifle across his lap, while the meat seared. Fat dripped and sizzled in the flames. When the meat was half done, he wolfed it down, burning the roof of his mouth. The pain was worth it. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.
The meal warmed him inside and out but he knew he’d soon be cold again. He had no sleeping bag. He debated his moves. It was cozy in the ravine, away from the wind. He was getting drowsy. Should he wait out the night here and freeze his ass off or push on down to the hootches . . .
The edge of a knife pressed against his throat.
A voice hissed in his ear—“You die, Maliner!”
Oh, Fuck! A Chink! Ben rolled away and grabbed for the M1.
Then the voice continued in a lower register. “Cool it, pogue. I taught you better than this in boot camp.”
It was Stingley. He sheathed his K-Bar.
“Goddamit, Slater. I could smell that meat cooking halfway down the mountain.” He stomped out the flames and kicked snow over the coals.
They headed downhill through the pines. Snow squeaked underfoot. A dozen Marines waited in a side gully. They were huddled together to share the warmth of their bodies. Sergeant Stingley slung the deer haunch to them. “Chow down, you pogues, before the meat’s froze solid,” he said.
“But Sergeant, it’s raw!”
“Oh, is it? Good. Maybe it’ll put some hair on your chest.”
When the men had eaten, Stingley divided the remains of the meat among them. “Okay, saddle up,” he said. “I reckon it’s about ten or twelve miles to the Hagaru perimeter. But it’s all downhill so the going should be easy.” He turned to Ben. “Slater, you take the point.”
Twice on the way down the ravine Ben heard Chinese patrols moving through the snow, big groups of men. Grenades rattled on their belts. They were close enough for him to smell them. The Marines lay flat and waited until the patrols had passed, then continued their way down the mountain.
They came to the end of the pines. Ahead the ground was open, bright in the moonlight. They could hear bugles and sporadic bursts of gunfire coming from Hagaru, the chugging blasts of Chinese grenades and the louder slam of 4.2-inch mortars replying. Illumination flares drifted down and columns of smoke rose from the scruffy little hamlet. The Chinese were hammering the place with all they had, wave after wave of them. They had plenty of troops to waste.
“How the hell do we get in there without being killed,” somebody asked, “either by the Chinks or our own guys?”
“Who’s got binoculars?” Stingley asked. A corporal from a How Company mortar crew produced a pair. Stingley scoped the scene. He fiddled with the focus. By the light reflected from the snow Ben saw that Stingley’s chin was bearded in dried blood. His left eye looked swollen shut. “Goddamit, I can’t see worth shit anymore,” he said. “Here, Slater, you take a peek.”
“What am I looking for, Sergeant?”
“The place where the gook lines are thinnest. They won’t be looking behind them. If we can sneak up close and open fire, we’ll have a chance of busting through.”
Ben took the binoculars and scanned the Chinese lines. There seemed to be what looked like a command post behind them, a knot of officers in knee-high fur-lined boots carrying maps. He watched them for a moment as they dispatched runners to the front. Then his eye was caught by a group of men in Marine green field jackets, about twenty of them, maybe two dozen. They were squatting or lying in the snow, most of them, guarded by half a dozen Chinese with burp guns. Prisoners! He focused on their faces and saw Luke Darwin among them, lying among the wounded.
“They’ve got a bunch of Marines down there, Sergeant. Right next to what looks like the Chink CP.”
“Are you sure?”
“Fuckin’ A—I mean, yes sir. Luke Darwin’s one of them.”
“Let me see.” Ben handed him the binoculars and pointed out the spot as best he could. Stingley looked for a long time.
“You’re right.” He handed the binoculars back to the mortarman. “That changes our priorities. Okay, here’s the plan . . . .”
The Chinese command post was behind a low hill that rose like a crusted scab on the southwest flank of Hagaru. On their map it was designated East Hill. Gullies trailed off the knob, draining toward the Changjin River, which flowed into the reservoir just north of town. Stingley’s men—about squad strength and armed only with rifles, grenades, and two BARs—bellycrawled across the snow to the nearest gully, taking advantage of the rolling terrain to keep out of sight. It took what was left of the night, and the sky to the east was brightening to dull gray by the time they were in position. It was 0500 by Stingley’s watch. East Hill lay three hundred yards to their south, the command post perhaps a hundred yards closer. Easy killing range for Marine marksmen armed with M1s and .30 caliber automatic rifles. And all of them were marksmen. You didn’t get out of boot camp until you’d qualified.
“Make sure your actions aren’t froze,” Stingley told them. “We’re going to pick off as many Chink officers as we can. Rapid fire but accurate. Slater—you, Talia, and Holt are going to move up the gully till you’re almost on top of those guards with the burp guns. Kill ’em all. Kill ’em quick. Kill ’em dead. Then spring the prisoners. Bring ’em back down the gully, fast. We won’t open fire till we hear your shots. Don’t worry about a thing. When all the Chink brass is dead we’ll be covering your ass. Grab any weapons you can lay your hands on, grab ammo too. With those extra Marines we’ll be about platoon strength and if they’re all well armed, we should be able to fight our way to the top of that fuckin’ hill. We’ll hold out up there until help comes from town.”
“Our guys must have that hilltop registered by now, Sergeant,” the mortarman said. “What if they take us for Chinks?”
“Let’s worry about that when we get there,” Stingley told him. “Anyways, it’s better to be killed by Marines than by these rat-fuckin’ commie bastards.”
Ben and the others bellycrawled up the gully. Talia was a big-shouldered, hawk-eyed Croat from northern California, a retread who’d served with the Old Breed—the Fifth Marines—on Peleliu and Okinawa during World War II. He was a CPA in the real world, but he hadn’t lost his military skills. During the fight at the pass, Ben had seen him kill a Chinese sniper at nearly half a mile, and with iron sights at that. Holt was a tall, cool, lanky PFC from Chicago, a goof-off in most respects but a serious Bears fan. On the cruise from Inchon to Wonsan he and Ben had nearly duked it out one afternoon during an Armed Forces Radio broadcast of a Bears-Packers game. Green Bay had just scored on a forty-yard TD pass and Ben was inspired enough to exult out loud. But when Holt, his face gone red then white with outrage, clenched a fist and threatened to come across the messdeck table, Luke Darwin had told him to cool-breeze it. “Save that shit for the gooks, man.” Ben hoped he’d saved some.
Near the top of the gully Ben signaled the others to wait and crawled to the lip of the berm. He took off his helmet before peering over. Then he slid back down. “Okay,” he told Talia and Holt, “the guards are in pairs, two men to the right, two to the left, and the others on the far side of the prisoners. Holt, you take the left-hand pair, Talia the ones on the right. I’ll pop the far pair, then run in there and roust those jarheads. The healthy ones can carry the wounded and whatever weapons and ammo we can find. You two cover us. With all this gunfire going on, maybe the other Chinks won’t pick up on us right away.” He looked from one to the other. “Questions?” They shook their heads.
“Okay, lock and load.”
Bellydown behind the berm, they laid their sights. “On three,” Ben whispered. “One, two, three . . . .” The M1s banged in unison, two quick shots each. The guards were down in their tracks. Ben slipped over the top and ran toward the Marines. They gaped at him, wide-eyed.
“Drop your cocks and grab your socks, jarheads, we’re getting out of here. Grab those burp guns and ammo belts, whatever grenades you can find too. Everyone not carrying a weapon, help some of these wounded guys. We’ll rally at the bottom of the draw. Down there.” He pointed the way.
Then he ran over to Luke, who stared at him with a wide grin. “Fancy meeting you here, dude.”
“Can you walk?”
“Yeah, but slow.”
No counterfire yet. Ben could hear Stingley’s men shooting and saw that most of the Chinese officers were down. A few Chinese in white quilts were running lumpily from the front line, their feet wrapped in burlap, babbling and firing occasional bursts in their direction.
“Here, hook your arm around my neck.”
They made it to the gully just as a machine gun opened up. Bullets spanged the frozen ground, throwing shards of permafrost that stung like shrapnel. Ben felt blood running down into his eyebrows. He brushed it away. Can’t let it get in my eyes. Not now when every round counts.
He felt Luke flinch and stagger beside him, the arm around Ben’s neck clenched tight. He looked over. Luke’s eyes were glazing.
“You hit?”
“Just a stitch in the side,” Luke said.
His knees buckled. Ben saw blood darkening Luke’s field jacket just above the kidney.
Ben stooped and swept him up in a one-armed fireman’s carry. The bastard was heavy. Carrying the M1 in one hand, Luke with the other, he staggered back to where Stingley was waiting.
“You got ’em all?”
“We’re the last ones,” Ben said. “But Darwin’s hit too hard to go up any hill. He caught a round from that m.g. right when we dropped in the gully.”
“That’s okay,” Stingley said. “Change of plans. No way we can get through those gooks now that we stirred ’em up. We’re going back down the gulch, then up into the pines again and wait. Maybe the Chinks will pull back to cover when the airdales get here. Then we can march into Hagaru unopposed.”
Stingley looked around at the freed Marines. “Any of you guys a corpsman?”
A grizzled old guy stepped forward. “I’m Morgan, Pharmacist’s Mate One,” he said. “The Chinks took my B-1 kit, but I hid some sulfa and a few morphine ampules.”
“Check this Marine, Doc.”
A squad of Chinese charged the gully, most of them carrying nothing but grenades. But the rifles and BARs stopped them out of throwing range.
“They’re testing our firepower,” Stingley said. “Next time they’ll send a whole lot more Chinamen. We’ve got to mount up, boys, and run for it. Right quick now.”
Morgan stood up from beside Luke and stepped over to Stingley. “It’s through and through,” he said. “It may have nicked a kidney. No way I can stop the bleeding for long without at least a yard of gauze.”
Stingley reached in his pocket. “Here’s my snotrag,” he said, handing Morgan a neatly folded Marine green handkerchief. “Don’t worry, I haven’t used it. Slater, give him yours, and you damn well better have one.”
Ben did. Morgan dusted the handkerchiefs with sulfa and pushed them into the holes in Luke’s sides. With his K-Bar he cut a long strip from Ben’s parka liner and knotted it around Luke’s waist. Luke was shivering hard. Ben took the parka off and stuffed Luke’s arms into the sleeves, then zipped it up around him.
A white-phosphorus round from a Chinese 82 exploded on the lip of the gully. Marines fell back from the edge, batting at their uniforms, slapping handfuls of snow on their burns. But there’s no escape from Willy Peter’s bite.
“What about the rest of the WIA?” Stingley asked. “How many can make it on their own steam? We’ve got about a mile to go and we have to clear out fast.”
“There’s three leg wounds—fractures or torn ligaments. They’ll have to be carried. One blind guy but someone can lead him. Major Thomason . . . . He’s not gonna make it, gut shot, internal bleeding. With plasma and penicillin I could maybe save him.” He shook his head. “Not got. The rest are mostly bullet and frag wounds, arms, legs, butts, faces, nothing life threatening.”
Stingley called five men down from the firing line and told them to start humping the wounded toward the pine ravine. “You can help your buddy Darwin,” he told Ben. “Move out, now.”
When they reached the pines again, the sun was just clear of the horizon. Blood red, blink, bone white. The air sparked with frost motes. By 0900 the ground mist burned off. Long white snakes of Chinese troops were moving back toward the mountains but they’d left it too late. The first Corsairs of the day appeared. Two flights of three birds apiece. They roared in low with the sun behind them, hedgehopping the naked hills and the town itself, just clearing the two-story building that housed the mayor’s office.
On the first pass they were firing their 20mm cannons, every third round high explosive, and tore long swaths in the Chinese columns. Distant bugles blared. The Chinese marched on, double-time but they didn’t break.
The second pass was napalm. Fire flowers bloomed on the snow, red black and yellow. Little black and tan hulls littered the snow when the smoke blew clear. They were Chinese corpses, crisped up hard like the “spinsters” you find at the bottom of a popcorn bowl.
The Corsairs saved their rockets for the finale. They hit the heads and tails of the columns, hoping to take out officers and their Korean guides. The bombs flung dirty snow and body parts into a clear blue sky.
The Chinese marched on.
Ben watched it all from the edge of the pines where he sat beside Luke in the sunshine. The sun had little heat to it but at least it gave an illusion of warmth. He took off his shoepacs to check his sore feet. The frostbite was severe. His toes had the color and stench of incipient gangrene. Well, there was nothing much he could do right now but air them out and let his wool socks dry in the sunlight.
From the height of land he could see Marine engineers bulldozing the new airstrip on the south side of Hagaru. It was slow going. The ground was solid ice. The engineers had welded steel teeth to the dozer blades. Every few passes they stopped and knocked the frozen dirt clear. Even at this distance you could hear the clank of sledgehammers on the still, cold air.
He looked down the road to the south, toward Koto-ri and the Funchilin Pass. The First Marines must be fighting their way up it right now, he thought. Once Chesty Puller’s boys get here the Chinese will realize they bit off more than they can chew. He saw the road that wound its way up to Yudam-ni. The Fifth and Seventh Marines were still up there. He could hear gunfire and the boom of 105mm howitzers. They’ll have to be pulling out soon, rejoining the Marines at Hagaru. After that . . . well, it’s seventy-eight miles back to Hungnam, fighting all the way.
The wind picked up and the sky turned gray. It started to snow. Ben put his still damp socks and boots back on. He pulled up the collar of his field jacket and shrugged down into it. Morgan used one of his last morphine Syrettes on Luke, and he was feeling no pain.
Pretty much out of it now, Ben thought.
In a way you’re lucky.
Luke was scatting bebop riffs.
“Groovin’ High.”
“Cool Breeze.”
Ben knew those numbers. Gillespie compositions. He picked up the beat, rolled frozen fingers on the rifle stock.
The bugles faded . . .
He heard a far, frantic, whinnying sound, oddly in tune with Luke’s music. Some of the higher-ranking Chinese officers rode ponies—shaggy little animals with long manes and forelocks, short coupled and sturdy legged. Now one of them ran across the snow, uphill toward where the Marines were lying. It was badly burned by the napalm strike. Twice it stopped to roll in the snow, then bounced to its feet again and galloped—trying to outrun the unrelenting hornets that were searing their way through its hide.
Ben raised his rifle and clicked off the safety.
“Good thinking, Slater.” Stingley had moved up beside him, attracted by the screaming. “We can use the meat. It’s already half cooked.”
“I just want to put the poor bastard out of his misery.”
Stingley laughed. Then he nodded. “That too.”
They broke their fast on horsemeat tartare. Stingley said no fires. The pony meat was tough but hot, plenty of blood to put hair on their chests. They washed it down with canteens of ice water from the rivulet.
Nobody complained.
Stingley sent a work party with orders to bring back any weapons, ammo, and clothing they could find—even burned uniforms would do. Padded cotton was better than nothing. “If it don’t fall apart when you touch it, you damn well better bring it in. It’s gonna be a ballfreezin’ hike into town and we gotta keep the WIAs warm.”
When the last of the Chinese units had disappeared into the hills, Stingley mustered the men. Every man who could walk had a weapon now. The detail that went down to loot the Chinese dead had brought two sleds back with them, piled high with burp guns, grenades, ammo belts, and uniforms. Morgan lashed the worst of the wounded to these toboggans. Major Thomason was dead. The corpsman planned to bury him in the snow and mark the spot for later retrieval by Graves Registration. Stingley brought the Major’s body along.
It took six men to drag the toboggans.
They were a strange-looking platoon when they set out for Hagaru, many of the smaller men wearing scorched Chinese uniforms, others with quilted jackets and trousers draped across their shoulders or tied around their waists. At Stingley’s orders all the Chinese clothing was turned inside out, with the field green color showing, for fear that trigger-happy defenders in Hagaru would mistake them for another Chinese suicide squad and grant their wishes. It was a wise precaution. Twice on the march Corsairs peeled off and dove on them but checked their fire on closer inspection. Finally a Corsair pilot must have radioed Hagaru because as they neared town, a patrol slogged out to meet them. They were doggies—raggedy-ass troops of the U.S. Army’s 31st Infantry Regiment. The patrol was led by a Jeep mounted with an air-cooled .50 caliber machine gun. Stingley called his men to attention. They snapped to.
“Hand salute,” Stingley bellowed.
An army captain climbed down from the Jeep and touched the brim of his helmet with a limp, loosely cupped hand.
“What outfit are you men with?” he asked.
“The United States Marine Corps, sir.”
Ben limped back down the line to the toboggans. Luke was on the second one. He was dead. The cold had killed him. Everyone on the toboggans was dead. Graves Registration was already there. They removed a dead man’s dog tags from the chain around his neck and attached one to his ankle, the other around his wrist. Then they scribbled his name, rank, and serial number in a little Marine green notebook.
Gone but not forgotten.
Ben looked down at his friend’s cold face. Hoarfrost bloomed on Luke Darwin’s eyeballs.
Ben said, “Cool-breeze it, man.”