Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  Then he added, “And if your C.O. gives you any crap, you can paint yourself the hero of this little fiasco for all I care, because I ain’t got no dog in this fight except keeping my unit’s flank covered, which is the job you and your men are supposed to be doing right now.”

  The lieutenant understood completely. He smiled and said, “Thank you, Sergeant. Maybe I can pay you back someday.”

  “Yeah, right…but I won’t hold my breath.”

  As the lieutenant turned to begin policing up his men, Sean called after him, asking, “Hey, what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Moon. My name is Moon.”

  “You gotta be shitting me,” Sean replied. But he wasn’t really surprised: With all the people named Moon in this damn country, I’m surprised it ain’t happened before now.

  When his crew finally stopped laughing, his gunner said, “Gee, Sarge…the son of a bitch don’t even look Irish.”

  *****

  By 1500 hours, the ROKs had been returned to their units. As Sean had figured, there was a great deal of huffing, puffing, and draconian threats by ROK commanders about the would-be deserters’ treasonous behavior. But there was little chance those threats would evolve into action, for one simple fact remained: the only force with an abundance of manpower was the CCF…

  And the ROKs are hurting for people just as bad as we GIs are—maybe worse—so when the shit hits the fan, even a man you had to drag into that fighting hole by the scruff of his neck is worth a hundred men sitting on their asses in the stockade.

  And the good ol’ US Army ain’t had no qualms about turning a blind eye to its troopers who decided to pull a runner, neither.

  *****

  Master Sergeant Melvin Patchett, top sergeant of 26th Infantry Regiment, broke into a rare grin when Sean Moon walked into the CP. “Well, look who’s finally back,” Patchett said as he stepped away from the big situation map on the wall. “I hear tell you got to visit with kin on the road up from Pyongyang.”

  Sean knew what his fellow NCO was referring to by kin: the ROK lieutenant who shared his surname. He’d figured his tankers wouldn’t waste any time spreading word of the confrontation on the road between the two Moons. But he didn’t take it as the good-natured ribbing it was meant to be.

  “That ain’t fucking funny, Patch. Give it a rest, all right?”

  Too late, Patchett realized the nerve he’d struck. The last mention of kin around Sean Moon had been the next of kin notification he’d received a few days ago. It had informed him that his brother, USAF pilot Tommy Moon, was MIA: missing in action over North Korea.

  Quickly trying to make amends, Patchett said, “Hey, Bubba…you know I didn’t mean nothing by—”

  “Just drop it, Patch. I said give it a fucking rest, okay?”

  Hands raised, Patchett backed off, telling himself, This is gonna be one of them days, I reckon. Seems like everybody’s got a case of the ass. First, the colonel gets that damn telegram. He ain’t been right since…

  And now Bubba Moon’s got his knickers in a twist because I made a bad joke.

  Ah, come on, Melvin Patchett…who are you kidding? It wasn’t just a bad joke.

  You pissed on the man’s head…and maybe his brother’s grave, too.

  The colonel—Jock Miles, commander of 26th Regiment—appeared at the door to the CP, shaking the snow from his galoshes. He looked every bit the man whose thoughts were thousands of miles away.

  Patchett asked, “You get that telegram moving, sir?”

  “Radiogram, Top. It’s a radiogram…and yeah, I got it sent. Don’t know if she’s ever going to get it, though.” He sounded like the world had collapsed on top of him.

  It took Colonel Miles a few moments to acknowledge Sean was even in the CP, as if he hadn’t seen him standing there. It seemed an odd behavior for a man usually as observant as a hawk. But he finally told him, “You did a great job out there on the highway with those ROK runners, Sergeant. I heard they were green troops. Is that true?”

  “Yes, sir. Bright green. Like throw your weapon away green.”

  “Well, you saved us having to adjust our lines to fill in the gap they could’ve caused. We’re stretched thin enough as it is.” Sounding even further down in the dumps, he added, “And just when I was beginning to believe bug-outs were a thing of the past…”

  He paused to trace with his fingertip some new line Patchett had drawn on the map’s overlay. It seemed a vacant gesture, like somebody intently gazing on a work of art he didn’t comprehend.

  Sean and Patchett exchanged worried glances. They’d served under Jock Miles through the darkest days of this Korean War and he’d never seemed in the least bit unfocused, no matter how bad things were. But now, they both had the same alarming thought:

  Did the colonel have a breakdown?

  “Just leave me be for a while,” Jock told them. “Let me sort this damn thing out.”

  *****

  The damn thing boiled down to this: his wife Jillian, who’d relocated to California with him and their two young children when his tour as military attaché in her native Australia ended, was being threatened with deportation.

  In fact, she might’ve already been deported. The goddamn cable from her that just showed up this morning was dated a month ago. Whose desk did it sit on all that time? The deportation hearing she talked about happened two weeks ago.

  For all I know, my wife and kids have been kicked back to Australia already.

  I’m not worried about them starving or having a roof over their heads. Hell, her family back in Oz has more money than God.

  But not knowing where they are…when I’ll get to see them again…and not being able to do a damn thing to help…

  It’s tearing me apart.

  Who the hell did she tangle with to get kicked out of the country?

  And why?

  Jill’s never been one to back down from a fight. She’s ten times tougher than I’ll ever be, for cryin’ out loud.

  But deportation? That smacks of some real shady politics.

  I’ve got to get my shit together, though…right here, right now.

  The lives of nearly five thousand men depend on me.

  I’ve buried far too many of my soldiers in this war and the last.

  Shame on me if any more die because I was in some kind of fog.

  Whatever it is she’s up against, Jill’s going to have to handle it on her own…

  At least for now.

  Chapter Two

  For Major Tommy Moon, the ejection from his crippled jet had been brutal. Falling from an altitude of over 30,000 feet, the emergency oxygen system on his parachute pack had malfunctioned and he’d blacked out. But he’d come to a minute and a half later when he hit the denser air below 10,000 feet, giving him enough time to pull the ripcord and make a semi-controlled descent onto a windswept mountainside strewn with trees. Luckily, he didn’t strike any stout branches and came to an unceremonious stop with the soles of his boots swaying just inches off the ground, suspended from the parachute canopy snared like a fluttering dome in the limbs above. Aside from some bumps, bruises, and a frostnipped face, he’d survived the descent intact.

  He had no idea where he was; somewhere in west central North Korea was about as close as he could nail down his location. But no matter where he’d dropped into that war-torn country, now frigid and glazed in winter, the escape azimuth to friendly lines was southeast.

  The icy, mountainous terrain made progress on foot agonizingly slow. His flying clothes protected him fairly well against the bitter cold: Hell, without this getup, you’d freeze in a heartbeat if the cockpit heat craps out. As long as these clothes don’t get torn to shreds, I shouldn’t have to worry much about dying of exposure. I’d better wrap this scarf around my face, though, to ward off frostbite. And there are plenty of fallen branches lying around to build fires.

  Water to drink might’ve been a problem if there hadn’t been several inches of snow on the ground. He’d
remembered eating snowballs as a kid in Brooklyn and telling himself they were ice cream. But his grumbling, empty stomach wouldn’t allow him to indulge in that fantasy now.

  The first few days, he’d sustained himself on the chocolate bars in his survival kit. Once they were gone, though, the quest for food became every bit as harrowing—and as important—as the trek to the safety of friendly lines.

  He was hungry, but not yet to the point where he’d cook rats, which seemed to be everywhere, inhabiting every abandoned shack he came across.

  There were Asian soldiers everywhere, too, but avoiding them hadn’t been too difficult. The rugged terrain offered plenty of hiding places for a lone man. He suspected at first they were KPA—North Korean troops—but he couldn’t be sure. The only Korean soldiers he’d ever laid eyes on were the ROKs around Pusan, and they all had American-style uniforms and GI weapons. The troops he was seeing now had neither.

  He’d nursed a nasty suspicion they were Chinese. They seemed to be moving in the same general direction as he was—southeast, away from the Yalu River and Manchuria—but only at night. During daylight hours, they bivouacked in the concealment of forests and villages. Tommy figured he knew why:

  When the sun’s up, they’re hiding from our airplanes. I’ve heard plenty of ground attack ships overhead, too, but I guess they never see these guys. I can’t blame those pilots, though. I know how hard spotting people on the ground can be…especially those who don’t want to be seen.

  I’d love to signal those pilots somehow—maybe with this dinky signal mirror in my kit—but that would probably only give me away and get me captured. It looks like rescue is going to be provided by my feet…or nothing.

  The Asian soldiers seemed to have little concern for perimeter security. They didn’t patrol; Tommy sometimes got within a hundred yards of their bivouacs. Nobody noticed him.

  Sometimes being a small guy has its advantages, I guess.

  It wasn’t difficult to avoid civilians, either. There were so few of them, all primitive farmers who received nothing from this world but the ravages of war.

  Whoever those soldiers were, their rations were the only source of food in this barren wintry landscape now that the chocolate was gone and the rats were still taboo. The trouble was he’d have to steal that food from under their noses. After shadowing a unit for a day, he had a plan:

  These troops seem a pretty disciplined lot, but like all soldiers, they lose a lot of that discipline when they’re unsupervised, away from their officers and sergeants. They joke around, play games…mostly grab-ass.

  Right around sunset, they have a meal: a couple of them light a communal cookfire and put big rice balls in a pot of boiling water. After they eat the rice, they break camp for the march through the night.

  But while that rice is cooking, they’re usually horsing around…

  And while they are, I can sneak up, swipe some of that rice from the pot on the edge of a bivouac area, and beat it out of there.

  By the time they realize something’s missing, I’ll be gone, too. I don’t imagine they’ll bother launching a search party at twilight for the missing handful of rice.

  The plan worked better than Tommy imagined. Though sure his pounding heart could be heard a mile away, he managed to swipe an entire rice ball from the pot and slip away just as the soldiers stopped smoking and joking and returned to their fire.

  From a wooded hiding spot on a hillside not very far away, he munched on the rice—the size of a baseball—as he watched the shadowy figures of several soldiers argue in the dim glow of the cookfire. The argument quickly devolved into a shoving match.

  Those dummies must be accusing each other of glomming the rice.

  This little tactical victory over hunger and the Asians was exhilarating. The rice—mushy and tasteless, probably full of dead insects—was a prize to be savored.

  During the next week of his long walk to the southeast, he pulled off similar heists three times more, each theft from a different unit. Somehow, those balls of rice kept him going.

  *****

  For the first time in the two weeks since he’d been shot down, Major Tommy Moon heard voices that weren’t speaking some Asian language. Those voices spoke the English of Britain, in accents to which he’d grown accustomed while stationed there in 1943 and ’44, before Operation Overlord and the move to France of the US 9th Tactical Air Force in which he served.

  I guess I’ve finally made it to the UN lines…some Brit outpost, for sure. And they sound pretty jumpy, too. All the noise they’re making, I guess they figure it’s no secret they’re here.

  Now all I’ve got to do is approach them without getting myself shot. Looking as shabby as I do right now, they might take me for anything but an American airman.

  From behind a boulder, Tommy started singing at the top of his lungs. The song—The White Cliffs of Dover—had been a sing-along every night in every pub he’d ever been in while in England:

  There’ll be bluebirds over

  The white cliffs of Dover

  Tomorrow, just you wait and see…

  He even sang it in the warbling style of the Irish tenors his mother had loved to listen to on her old Victrola. His big brother Sean had most likely stolen that phonograph so she could have a Christmas present during a particularly lean year of the Depression.

  By the time he’d finished that first verse, Tommy figured it was safe to stand up and show himself.

  A gruff voice called to him, saying, “You can come out now, Yank. Just do us a bloody favor and don’t sing anymore. You aren’t exactly Vera Lynn, you know.”

  *****

  A burly British sergeant major named Peel was astounded that Tommy had survived two weeks in the desolate mountain wastelands of North Korea, in the midst of numerous Red Chinese divisions, before reaching friendly lines near Unsan.

  “So they’re Chinese, eh?” Tommy said. “I suspected as much, but not speaking the language, I couldn’t be sure.”

  “We think they’re coming down from Manchuria in droves,” Peel added. “They hit us hard…and then they vanished. Haven’t seen or heard them in over a week. You really don’t know about the Chinese attack, sir?”

  “I’ve been a little out of touch, Sergeant Major. The last thing I heard was MacArthur telling the whole world the chinks wouldn’t dare get involved. I guess he called that one wrong.”

  Peel replied, “Let’s hope his latest pronouncement isn’t wrong, as well, because now he’s claiming the Chinese assault was merely a probe—a demonstration—by a force incapable of doing much more.”

  “I take it you don’t believe that, Sergeant Major?”

  “No, sir, I do not. I don’t know why the Chinese broke off their attack, but if they hadn’t, probably none of us would be standing here right now. So you see why we’re more than a little apprehensive.”

  Tommy ate another spoonful of the stew the Brits had given him, cautioning himself not to overload his shrunken stomach. He washed it down with a few sips of hot coffee. Food had never tasted more delicious.

  Watching him eat, Peel said, “I’m still amazed you don’t have the trots, sir. Especially after the swill you’ve been eating. Even here in our unit—with regular rations—we’ve got about a dozen lads down with dysentery. It’s the bloody water. No matter what you do, somebody takes in a bad batch.”

  “Yeah, I guess I am pretty lucky,” Tommy replied. Eager to change the subject, he asked, “How about showing me on a map exactly where we are? Maybe then I can figure out where I was when I got shot down. It might help me look a little smarter at the debrief…”

  Rather than just some dumb-ass who didn’t know where he was and got jumped by a MIG he never saw coming.

  The British C.O.—a colonel named Rigby—joined them. “How are you getting along, Major Moon?” he asked.

  “Just fine, sir. Thanks for the hospitality.”

  “You’re very welcome. But I’m afraid you’ll have to enjoy that hospi
tality until morning. The liaison plane picking you up won’t arrive until then. The weather, you know? In the meantime, I was hoping we could have a discussion of what you observed while among our Chinese friends around here at Unsan and farther north.”

  Tommy filled them in on everything he’d observed: the small arms they carried; the absence of motor vehicles, armor, and radios; the horses ridden by men who were apparently officers; the lack of heavy infantry weapons; and, of course, what they were eating.

  “All they seem to have a lot of is people, sir,” Tommy said. “I mean, some of those bivouacs were so crowded they looked like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. A couple of five-hundred-pound bombs would’ve wiped them all out.”

  Having already fought the CCF, none of this came as a surprise to the Brits. But Colonel Rigby was encouraged by one piece of new information: the lack of security patrols around the Chinese bivouacs and assembly areas.

  “I figure that’s the main reason I didn’t get myself caught,” Tommy explained. “Nobody was looking. The only chinks you’ll find outside a perimeter are there just to relieve themselves.”

  “Very good to know,” Rigby replied. “Very good, indeed.”

  *****

  The pilot of the liaison ship was a US Army lieutenant named Joe Novarro. Tommy asked him, “What’re our chances of making a stop at Sunchon on the way to Kimpo?”

  “The chances are pretty good, sir,” Novarro replied. “I’ve got to stop for gas somewhere along the way. I was going to make it Pyongyang, but Sunchon’s just as good. The latest field report says the engineers have packed down the snow on the runway nice and hard, so getting in and out should be a snap. I saw a couple of C-47s land there on my way up here this morning. If they can do it, we sure as hell can. What’ve you got going on there?”