Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  The only drawback to the regiment’s area of responsibility was its width; Jock’s GIs would be forced to defend almost five miles of the ridgeline. There’d be no regimental reserve; all the rifle battalions would be on line and spread very thin. As a result, communications across the 26th would be difficult and easily disrupted. If those communications broke down, so would command and control.

  It was late in the afternoon as the individual battalions moved into their assigned sectors of the ridge. Briefing his battalion commanders, Jock said, “Keep laying your commo wire even after it gets dark, duplicate lines wherever possible. I won’t tolerate any excuses for not doing so. We’ve got plenty of wire, for once, and our ability to stay in touch with each other is going to depend on it. We know damn well that most of our radios won’t cover the distance from one end of the regiment’s position to the other…if they keep working at all.”

  As the briefing adjourned, Lieutenant Colonel Beemon, commanding 3rd Battalion, asked for a moment of Jock’s time. “Any chance of reconsidering your edict on sleeping bags, sir?” Beemon asked.

  “Negative,” Jock replied. “We’re sticking with one bag for every two men. That’s the only way to ensure that the people who are supposed to be on duty will be awake and not snoring in the warmth of their bag.”

  “But what about the officers’ bags, sir? Why should we get punished, too?”

  “Nobody’s being punished, Beemon. Unless you consider trying to keep your troops alive is a form of punishment, that is.”

  The sleeping bag edict had been Patchett’s idea, after he found two entire platoons burrowed into their warm cocoons one frigid night, including the men who were supposed to be manning the perimeter.

  “If I’d been a chink, I woulda just bayoneted every last one of you stupid sons of bitches,” Patchett told them. “Now get your heads out of your asses…and your asses out of them fart sacks.”

  Then he personally reamed the asses of the two platoon sergeants—both of whom he’d had to wake up while cozy in their sleeping bags—and assured them their stripes would be gone the next time their platoon was caught with their guard down, adding, “Assuming, of course, Joe Chink ain’t already murdered y’all in your sleep.”

  The formal reaming of the officers involved would have to be performed by their battalion commander. But that didn’t stop Patchett from needling those lieutenants: “You do realize, gentlemen, that out here, the expression sleep like the dead takes on a whole new meaning, right?”

  *****

  Apathy among the GIs was fast becoming as great a threat to their survival as the Chinese. The extreme cold, exhaustion, and hunger were taking their toll. Even a man eating the official combat minimum of daily calories burned far more than that number just trying to stay warm. Once that indifference to his and his fellow soldiers’ well-being took hold of a man, the decline in his physical and mental condition came with alarming speed. When it took hold of a squad or platoon, it could spell death to an entire company.

  Surprisingly, the worst cases of apathy could be found in Beemon’s 3rd Battalion, a unit that had been in Korea less than a month and in combat with the 26th for only a week. The men weren’t caring for themselves and no officers or NCOs were forcing them to do so; frostbite and dysentery had already taken fifteen percent of the battalion’s manpower out of action in a period where they’d incurred only two combat casualties, neither of them serious.

  When Jock had been mapping out the regiment’s position, Patchett asked, “Where do you want to put our weak link, sir?”

  “We’ll put Third Battalion on the right flank,” Jock replied. “The strongest threat will be from the left, where the Imjin bends south at our boundary with Seventeenth Regiment. Over on the right, it should be easier. Beemon’s boys will have a sweet position up on the ridge. My grandmother could defend that turf.”

  Patchett was still skeptical. “And you ain’t worried about the boundary they’ll share with the ROKs on that side?”

  “Negative. I’m not worried. Having ROKs from their Second Division over there is probably a good thing.”

  It was true the Korean 2nd Division had fought well during the latest Chinese onslaught. The GI tankers and artillery who’d supported them had been impressed with the ROKs’ aggressiveness and tenacity. And since the ROKs weren’t shy about executing prisoners, the Chinese POWs Jock’s men had taken recently were more than glad to be in American hands.

  “As you wish, sir,” Patchett said.

  Jock knew from long experience that those words meant his trusted advisor was not convinced.

  “Oh, and by the way, sir,” Patchett added, “some good news just came in. Major Grossman and Captain Pop will be here first thing in the morning.”

  “I’m sure looking forward to that, Top.”

  *****

  Perhaps Lieutenant Colonel Beemon didn’t appreciate the degree to which apathy was festering in his command. Or perhaps it infected him, too.

  In either case, he hadn’t bothered to check that his plan for occupying the ridgeline was being properly executed when the sun was still up. Now that darkness had fallen, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to determine compliance with that plan and make the necessary corrections.

  Instead, he elected to believe the reports of his junior officers who, like him, had not bothered to check. They had little idea where their men were emplaced.

  The result: only a handful of GIs from the three-hundred-strong 3rd Battalion were on the ridgeline. Most of them hadn’t—and wouldn’t—bother to dig in or establish wire communications with company or battalion CPs. Few had working radios.

  The rest were encamped along the road at the base of the ridge, more a bivouac than a tactical disposition. To the annoyance of the tankers, groups of 3rd Battalion GIs kept trying to ride the decks of the armor patrolling the road, seeking the warmth of their engines.

  Just past midnight, when the squad-sized CCF patrol slipped along the boundary between the ROKs and 3rd Battalion and scaled the ridge, no one knew they were there.

  *****

  The Chinese division commander shared Jock’s tactical assessment: the most likely route of CCF advance would be where the Imjin River changed direction from west to south. There, the terrain was mostly hilly, with little of the flat, open swampland that lay in front of 26th Regiment’s position.

  That terrain is far more suitable to our style of warfare—infiltrate unseen through your adversary’s lines, then block their escape to the rear while cutting them to shreds.

  He was stunned when the patrol that had ventured into the right side of 26th Regiment’s area returned to report no American or ROK presence on the ridgeline just north of Kamak-San, the mountain providing a crucial vantage point for anyone who occupied it.

  Oddly, reconnaissance hadn’t even been that patrol’s mission. What would be the point? Without radio communications, any information it might uncover would be worthless by the time they could relay it.

  But instead of accomplishing their assigned mission—the capture of an American officer or two—they’d found intelligence that, if it could be acted on quickly enough, might give us a breakthrough we never imagined possible.

  Perhaps I’m not facing the same tough American commander I’ve been up against these past few weeks.

  This one seems woefully stupid.

  By 0300 hours, the Chinese commander still hadn’t organized more than a battalion to infiltrate through the undefended ridgeline and get behind the American forces. But if he waited any longer, the opportunity would disappear with the dawn.

  He decided to launch the infiltration force immediately.

  *****

  When the CCF battalion scaled the icy ridge in the predawn darkness, they couldn’t help making a tremendous amount of noise. Men slipped and fell, equipment clattered. The ROKs to the east heard it but thought the source to be just clumsy Americans on the ridge. The GIs to the west—men of 1st Battalion—heard it, to
o, and thought the same thing…

  Until two lost Chinese soldiers, separated from their unit, stumbled into a GI wire team. In the shadows, the big wire-laying reel mounted on the truck bed looked just like a heavy machine gun to them. They immediately threw down their weapons and surrendered.

  The quick-thinking wire team sergeant spliced into the line they were laying from 1st Battalion and told that headquarters, “We’ve got chinks everywhere.”

  The word spread in seconds through the battalion’s wire network. “Light them up,” Major Appling, 1st Battalion commander, told his mortar section.

  Exposed in the glare of 81-millimeter illumination rounds, the Chinese infiltrators were cut down in a hail of fire from GIs on one side and ROKs on the other.

  When the sun came up, they found the bodies of over one hundred CCF soldiers littering the ridge. None of the Chinese had succeeded in getting behind the American positions on the ridgeline.

  It didn’t take long to figure out how the infiltration attempt had been possible. Colonel Beemon’s battalion, still camped on the road beneath the ridge, had failed to follow orders, leaving a huge gap in the regiment’s line. That failure had nearly resulted in an encirclement of the regiment.

  “You’re relieved, Beemon,” Jock told him. “Report to Division Headquarters for reassignment.”

  “You’re not giving me a chance to explain, sir. My command was—”

  Jock cut him off. “It’s not your command anymore, Colonel.”

  Scanning the 3rd Battalion troops moping along the road, he added, “I’ve got all the explanation I need.”

  As Beemon walked off, Patchett asked, “Who you gonna replace him with, sir? Not his XO, I hope. The man’s looking pretty weak, too.”

  “Actually, Top, I was thinking of Lee Grossman.”

  “I was hoping you might say that, sir.”

  *****

  Switchblade Green Flight was in the air again to support the Marines on the MSR. But this time they were operating in daylight, flying flak suppression for a very special mission. Moon’s Menace VI was lead ship in Green Flight as it hurried north in a tight, four-ship formation. Tommy and his crew had earned the honor of leading this mission after their stellar performance in the otherwise unproductive Firefly fiasco of a few nights ago.

  All the credit goes to Hank Roth for that one, Tommy told himself as they cruised toward Koto-ri, but you don’t get any medals when the mission was officially considered a failure. The squadron wasted a lot of gas for next to nothing that night. Our Japanese bases are just too far from just about anything north of the 38th Parallel. We had hardly any time at all on station to coordinate with the Firefly ship before we went fuel critical. Throw in all that gas wasting with the navigation mistake the rest of the flight made, and the whole thing went straight into the crapper.

  Actually, I’m kind of surprised I didn’t get in Dutch for going it alone and then diverting to Taegu. But since we brought the ship home in one piece—even though our return to Itazuke was about ten hours behind schedule by the time we refueled and caught a quick nap—nobody made much of a stink that the squadron’s combat effectiveness was down by one ship during that time. These days, having the unit readiness look good on paper is more important than fighting the war, dammit.

  The brass say we won’t be doing any more coordinated night missions like that one until we move to South Korean bases, but that’s still a month or two away, supposedly. They just don’t have the equipment and people in place to support us there yet.

  Until then, we’ll do what we can flying out of Japan.

  But it’s going to be in daylight only...

  Which brings us to today’s mission.

  *****

  The Marines on the MSR were as good as trapped, their withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir stalled. At Funchilin Pass south of Koto-ri, an essential bridge across a river gorge had been sabotaged for the third time in a week by the Chinese. The first two times, the damage had been minor; Army and Marine Corps engineers had managed to repair it under fire so it would be available to the troops withdrawing from Hagaru. But the third time, the Chinese succeeded in blowing a bigger gap in the concrete span. It would require prefabricated repair sections to span this new gap, but the engineers didn’t have any of the cumbersome components on hand.

  Nobody had to tell Gunny Ramsay what that meant: If we don’t have that bridge, we’ll need to abandon all our vehicles: no tanks, trucks, artillery, or heavy weapons. We can keep trying to walk out, but without our fire support, we’re not a fighting force anymore. We’ll just be target practice for the chinks in the surrounding mountains who haven’t frozen to death yet.

  But there’s a rumor the Air Force has a plan to bail us out. Let’s hope it’s a damn good one.

  *****

  Switchblade Green Flight had just gone feet dry over the North Korean port of Hungnam. Visible through the scattered clouds below were four cargo planes—C-119 Flying Boxcars—headed in the same direction, at a speed fifty miles per hour slower than the B-26s. Each of the big transports carried two Treadway bridge sections which they’d drop via parachutes into the valley at Koto-ri. The engineers on the ground knew they needed two sections to repair the bridge at Funchilin Pass; eight would be delivered to improve the chances of two being recoverable and serviceable after the drop.

  What the engineers didn’t know: there’d been one practice parachute drop of the Treadways. It had been a dismal failure; the sections were destroyed on impact with the ground. But there was no time left to experiment further. With each bridge section now rigged with larger parachutes in pairs, the C-119s were dispatched to Koto-ri with nothing but the hope that this untested improvisation would work.

  Tommy said to Roth, “Give me the numbers, Hank. How much time will we have on station?”

  “Twelve minutes, sir. The winds are helping us out a little today.”

  They were able to raise the ASO at Koto-ri when they were still five minutes out.

  “Sounds like the same guy as the other night,” Roth said. Then he went to work plotting a vector to the target coordinates the ASO had called.

  “Okay, sir, bring it right to heading zero-one-four. Target is anti-aircraft guns on a mountaintop. Open bomb bay doors now.”

  Tommy ordered the rest of Green Flight to form in trail behind him. They’d drop their napalm when they saw Moon’s Menace VI drop hers.

  “I’m hoping these clouds don’t thicken up,” Roth said. “As it stands now, we should be able to see the target pretty well. I’m still wondering how they got heavy flak guns up on top of a mountain, though.”

  “Chinks are clever bastards who aren’t afraid of hard work, Hank.”

  A Corsair appeared out of nowhere and raced diagonally across their flight path, just a few hundred feet below.

  “Whoa! I’m a little surprised to see that guy,” Tommy said, “and a little worried, too. I hope those Marine and Navy pilots know we’re up here…and that the Boxcars are going to be right behind us. If these clouds start socking in, though, people could start bumping into each other real easy.”

  Roth nodded and said, “I’m surprised the brass didn’t just let Marine air handle the flak suppression for this drop.”

  “Just like the Marines, Hank, the Air Force prefers to take care of their own, especially when the game’s on the line. We could do a better job of it if we were able to stick around a little longer, though.”

  They both knew the rest of that story: they could stay longer if they diverted to a South Korean airfield for fuel on their way home to Japan. But the brass had made it crystal clear after the failed Firefly mission: diversion was not authorized for anything other than emergencies, since those airfields weren’t equipped to handle a sudden surge of drop-in aircraft. The squadron was to perform its mission as well as possible and then return—intact—to its home base. No freelancing. Period.

  Thirty seconds passed in tense silence before Roth said, “On my mark…fi
ve, four, three, two, one, DROP.”

  Climbing away from the target, Moon’s Menace VI had to avoid a flight of Corsairs streaking through the clouds from the east. The evasive action—a hard roll to the left—was so violent that gunner Allen’s helmeted head struck his canopy frame, leaving white streaks on the aluminum and glazing.

  He was stunned and annoyed but not hurt. He asked Tommy, “A little warning might be nice, sir, if you can spare the time.”

  “That’s the problem, Bob. There was no time.”

  “I figured. No big deal. I’ve been knocked around a lot worse. My helmet’s ready for the trash can, though.”

  “I’ll buy you a new one when we get back,” Tommy said.

  The ASO’s voice filled their headsets now, announcing, “Good strike, Switchblade. Excellent job.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Tommy replied, “but how about clearing the airspace for the Boxcars? There are Corsairs all over the place, and those lumbering girls won’t be able to dodge them like I can.”

  “Working on it right now, Switchblade. Clear the frequency, please.”

  As Moon’s Menace VI completed the 180-degree turn to exit the area, her crew could see the C-119s lining up for the drop, now just seconds away.

  “I can’t believe how low they are,” Roth said. “Anybody with a peashooter can hit them.”

  “They don’t want to miss, Hank. There won’t be another chance for them.”

  *****

  The Flying Boxcars vanished as quickly as they’d appeared, their job done. Of the eight Treadway sections they’d rolled out of their cavernous fuselages, six were serviceable after their brief parachute rides to the ground. Of the remaining two, one was damaged on impact; the other fell too far outside the Marines’ perimeter at Koto-ri and was conceded to the Chinese. Two good sections were quickly hoisted by crane onto the engineers’ heavy-duty Brockway trucks and, under escort from Gunny Ramsay and his tankers, began the four-mile drive to Funchilin Pass. It would be treacherous; not only would the Chinese be shooting at them, but the Brockways—top-heavy and unwieldy with their loads—could easily slide off the road and tumble down an embankment.