Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  “What about the other time?”

  “My ship got beat to hell over the North Sea. This E-boat I was strafing blew up in my face. There was so much crap in the air…it was worse than any flak I’d ever been in.”

  “What year was that, sir?”

  “Forty-Five, a little while after VE Day. Our friends the Russians were driving those German boats, looking to stir up some mayhem at the Kiel Canal…but that’s a real long story we’d better save for the bar.” Then he asked Allen, the gunner, “What about you, Sarge? You went for a swim once, didn’t you?”

  “Affirmative, but that’s another real long story.”

  “All right, we’ll save it all for another time,” Tommy said. “How’re we doing on gas?”

  Roth spun his whiz wheel and replied, “We’ve got another twenty-three minutes of loiter time. If they want our help today, the ROKs better hurry up and ask for it.”

  “We may never get that call,” Tommy said. “You remember what they said in the briefing…those units in the eastern third of North Korea haven’t taken the same beating the rest of the UN forces have. They’re only withdrawing to keep our line of defense straight and continuous so nobody gets flanked.”

  No sooner had he said that, an American ASO was on the air with a mission for them. When he got to the target description, they turned to each other, dumbstruck.

  “Tanks? I thought the chinks didn’t have tanks,” Tommy said. “And I thought we saw the last of the North Korean armor, too.”

  “Maybe not,” Roth replied. “How should we attack them?”

  “We’ll douse them with napalm first. Whatever’s still moving, we’ll hit with rockets. Just confirm that the ROKs don’t have any tanks supporting them. All armor looks alike from up here.”

  The ASO confirmed there were no friendly tanks in the area. He added that the T-34s—most likely North Korean vehicles—were attacking in line formation.

  “Outstanding,” Tommy told Roth. “Give me a vector to an IP two miles north of the target. We’ll pass through that IP on a westerly heading, then do a one-eighty to the left and come across the tanks laterally for maximum coverage. They should present us with a fairly straight line.”

  “Roger,” Roth replied. “What altitude do you want over the IP?”

  “Eight hundred.”

  “No problem. It’s flat as a board along the coast. Fly heading three-one-two. We’re two minutes out from the IP.”

  As they bore down on the target area, Roth could feel his stomach tightening to a knot. Try as he may, he couldn’t hide his uneasiness, either. Picking up on it, Tommy asked, “You okay, Hank? You’re not going to puke on me, are you?”

  Now the young lieutenant was mortified. This wasn’t their first mission together, and he’d never exhibited a case of the jitters before. In vivid contrast, Major Moon looked as relaxed at the controls as if he was on a Sunday drive:

  The major’s done this a lot. It doesn’t faze him much.

  He could think of only one explanation for his nervousness: It must be the tanks. Maybe there’s something extra scary about a big rolling bunker with all that firepower…and we’re taking them on in this flimsy thing whose skin you can push a screwdriver through by hand.

  When he conveyed that explanation to Tommy, he got this reply: “Think of them as snakes, Hank. They’re more scared of us than we are of them. A lot of the Kraut tankers used to abandon their panzers and run like hell as soon as we showed up. Since they couldn’t really fight off aircraft very well, they figured they were safer on foot than inside those rolling deathtraps.”

  Roth asked, “But isn’t your brother a tanker? How does he feel about those rolling deathtraps?”

  “He loves them. Of course, my brother’s a lunatic…but he’s a good lunatic. You want him on your side when there’s a fight on.”

  Pushing the ship lower as they reached the IP—the initial point of the attack run—Tommy began a tight left turn, standing her on a wingtip as she reversed direction. Halfway through that turn, they could see the cloud of snow and dirt being thrown into the air behind the T-34s. Rolling level with the turn complete, the six tanks came into view dead ahead. Their line wasn’t perfectly straight, but Tommy figured he could spread the liquid fire—the napalm—across at least half of them.

  “Open bomb bay doors,” he told Roth.

  He put the bombsight’s pip on the tank that was second closest to his aircraft. Then he watched as the distance closed quickly and the sight’s indices converged on the target vehicle’s image. When they touched it, he pressed release.

  And then they were climbing away, their load of napalm canisters hurtling down on the North Korean armor. They were passing through a thousand feet when Allen reported, “Excellent spread, sir. We’ve got four of them covered in flames.”

  Tommy asked, “Can you tell what the other two are doing?”

  “At the moment, they’re stopped dead, just like the burning ones.”

  “Good,” Tommy said. “They’re easier to hit with rockets when they’re not moving.”

  Roth asked, “Are we going to attack from the rear?”

  “Yep.”

  “Did you ever use fifty cal against a tank, sir?”

  “Yeah, Hank, I have. And my advice on that is don’t waste your time and ammo, unless you’re only interested in shooting the baggage off their decks or busting some antennas.”

  “So all those stories about bouncing bullets under the tanks so they go through the soft belly skin aren’t true?”

  “Affirmative. They’re total bullshit. That only works in the movies.”

  As he brought the ship around for the rocket attack, Tommy said, “Tell me when we’ve got fuel remaining for five minutes on station, Hank.”

  Now aligned with the targets, he said, “Dammit, they’re turning. It’s going to be a deflection shot.”

  Roth asked, “Can we shoot at both on one pass?”

  “We could…but we’ll probably miss both of them. I’m going to take the trailing one first.” He asked Allen, “Hey, Sarge…are we taking any fire?”

  “Can’t see any tracers, sir. And I don’t hear anything hitting us back here, either.”

  “Keep your eyes peeled, Bob. We’re going down on the deck.”

  He got no argument from Roth or Allen; they both knew it was much harder for gunners on the ground to track and hit a fast-moving aircraft flying at low altitude. Any rounds coming up at them would be random and poorly aimed. A hit would be by pure chance…

  But to say it wasn’t possible would be kidding yourself.

  Moon’s Menace VI was a thousand yards out, with Tommy’s finger resting lightly on the firing button for the rockets.

  Get just a little closer…

  But before he could press that button, the T-34 in his gunsight blew up…

  And he had no choice but to fly right through the explosion’s debris-laden cloud.

  Tommy braced himself; just like that jug in the North Sea story he’d told just a few minutes ago, this plane had just as good a chance of being taken down by all the junk suddenly in the air.

  He gripped the control wheel for dear life.

  In an instant of obscuring darkness, she passed through the forbidding cloud…

  And emerged, still flying. Tommy had heard or felt no impacts. There were no vibrations signaling an airframe suddenly in distress. Her engines still hummed like clockwork. The only change was the stench of burning diesel, incinerated flesh, and cooked-off ammunition that permeated the cockpit, the horrific aroma of an armored vehicle on fire.

  “Give me a damage report,” he told his crew.

  “All okay on the aft fuselage and tail,” Allen said.

  “All good on the right wing,” Roth added.

  Tommy would have to survey the left wing himself; he was the only one who had the field of vision to see it. It, too, looked okay.

  Damn, we got lucky.

  “But what the hell just happened, s
ir?” Roth asked. “We didn’t even shoot that tank.”

  “The ROKs did. They hit it with something…a rocket, an anti-tank gun…who knows? But the one thing I do know is they’re putting us in jeopardy, shooting like that when we’re in the target area. It’s not like they can’t see us. They just don’t have any fire discipline.”

  He guided the ship out of the target area, saying, “Tell the ASO that we’re done here. I’m not getting taken down by friendly fire if I can help it. Watch the fuel gauges real close, Hank.” Then he asked Allen, “Bob, are we trailing a fuel stream?”

  “Negative, sir. Not that I can tell.”

  Roth said, “But we’ve got self-sealing fuel tanks, sir. Doesn’t that pretty much guarantee we won’t lose gas, no matter what?”

  “True, but we don’t have self-sealing fuel manifolds to the engines. A little leak for a long time means we lose a lot of gas, Hank. Give us a course for home.”

  But Roth persisted, asking, “Shouldn’t we hang around and see if the ASO can get the ROKs to knock it off and give us another chance? We’ve got a couple of minutes of loiter time left, and we could still divert to Taegu if we think we’re losing fuel.”

  “Negative. Nobody’s going to fix some ROK’s itchy trigger finger in just a couple of minutes. We’re getting out of here. Just do what I’m asking, Hank.”

  *****

  They’d flown five miles east when Tommy spotted a column of eight trucks moving south along a road paralleling the coast. Moon’s Menace VI was still low enough to make out the white stars adorning the hoods of the vehicles.

  “More GIs headed to the Parallel,” he said, “from Seventh Division, probably.” Then he turned his attention back to the instruments, especially the fuel gauges.

  Roth kept his eyes on the column. Just before it would disappear from view behind the aircraft, he saw the attack on the American trucks begin.

  “They’re getting hit, sir,” he told Tommy. “They’re stopped dead on the road.”

  But there was no call for help on the air-ground frequency.

  As Tommy turned the plane to keep the roadway in view, they could see enemy soldiers—maybe Chinese, maybe North Korean—swarming the column like ants, clambering onto the beds of vehicles, pulling the drivers from the cabs.

  With the combatants mingled as they were, there was nothing Tommy and his crew could do to help the GIs. They would only kill them.

  There must’ve been gunfire, but from this distance, the airmen had no sense of it. Men would run and then they’d fall, never to stand again. It made the mortal combat going on below them look like a game of cowboys and Indians.

  It was all over so quickly. The enemy wreaked their havoc and then scattered into the woods, careful not to mass and become an easy target for the aircraft orbiting above. The trucks were ablaze, the plumes of gray and black smoke like thick brushstrokes trying to paint over a canvas filled with dead men.

  Tommy asked his crew, “You boys see any place the bad guys might be using for an assembly area?”

  Neither Roth nor Allen could give an answer. But they kept searching, hoping that somehow they could avenge the massacre they’d just witnessed.

  But even if they could, it wouldn’t matter anymore. Tommy said, “We just ran out of time. Fuel’s gone critical.”

  Roth protested, “But it doesn’t look like we’re losing any gas, sir. Maybe we can squeeze a couple more—”

  “No, Hank. It’s time to go home. Can you pinpoint the location of that ambush?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

  “Good. Report what we just saw on the air-ground freq. Maybe there are survivors they can rescue.”

  Allen’s voice came over the interphone: “You really think anybody survived that mauling, sir?”

  “Stranger things have happened, Bob.”

  On the flight back to Itazuke, the crew maintained a dejected silence, speaking only when operationally necessary. Even then, they used as few words as possible.

  Only once, when Tommy’s finger had lingered on the push-to-talk switch after a brief exchange over the interphone, did they hear him mutter, “What a fucking waste...”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Twenty-Sixth Regiment’s sector of the MLR was on the northern outskirts of Seoul, centered on a small civil airport they called Northeast Airfield. It had been heavily damaged in the fighting last September, when US Marines took the city back from its North Korean occupiers. Due to the poor condition of its runway, the US Air Force had little use for it. Jock Miles didn’t have much use for the airfield, either: “It makes it too easy for the brass in their helicopters to drop in whenever they feel like it,” he told his staff.

  On the morning of 23 December, another frigid day that threatened a snowstorm before nightfall, General Walton “Johnnie” Walker, the 8th Army commander, used Northeast Airfield—and Jock’s CP—for a meeting of his senior commanders. The gathering was marred by tragedy before it even began.

  A helicopter bearing Brigadier General Ellis, 24th Division’s assistant commander, crashed just outside the airfield’s boundary, falling into an infantry company’s defensive position. Two of Jock’s GIs on the ground had been killed and six injured.

  The helicopter’s three crewmen escaped with only minor injuries. But their passenger, General Ellis, suffered head trauma and died instantly.

  Before details of the crash had reached the CP, General Bishop was already telling Jock, “If that aircraft was shot down over your area, I’ll see to it that you’re court-martialed for dereliction of duty, Miles. Whether it was your own men or the chinks who did it won’t matter. It’s on your turf. You’re responsible, one way or the other.”

  Bishop didn’t realize General Walker had just arrived from the crash site and was standing behind him, able to hear every word.

  Softly, Walker said, “I need a word in private with you, General.”

  Then he led Bishop outside the CP tent.

  “You’re making an ass of yourself, Ted,” Walker told him. “That helicopter went down for mechanical reasons. I spoke with the pilot myself. He lost power and couldn’t keep the damn thing in the air. It’s a cryin’ shame what happened to Ellis. He was a good man. But before you go threatening other good men, you’d better get your facts straight first.”

  He left a stunned Bishop just standing there with his mouth wide open. Then he walked back into the tent and convened the meeting.

  After a brief eulogy for the late General Ellis, Walker said, “I need to fill you in on the facts coming out of Tokyo and Washington. You’ll need the straight scoop to stamp out the rumors that will be running wild throughout Eighth Army any day now. Yes, I’m afraid it’s true that General MacArthur has publicly stated he wants to bomb Red China, preferably with nuclear weapons. He’s also put forth a plan to invade Red China using Chiang Kai Shek’s Nationalist Army.”

  He let the surprised murmurs die down before continuing.

  “Now, even though there are some politicians in Washington who think that sounds like the greatest thing since sliced bread, I can assure you Mister Truman will allow none of it to happen. Never forget, gentlemen, that our nation is involved in two wars at the moment, one being here in Korea, the other in Europe against the Russians. The only difference is that we and the Russians are not expending any ammunition at each other at the moment.”

  Standing at the back of the tent, Sean Moon couldn’t hide his amused look as he thought, I’m sure glad the general specified “at the moment.” I guess he knows full well there’ve been a bunch of “other” moments.

  Walker added, “The president is well aware that any provocative escalations here in Korea could have catastrophic repercussions in Europe, where the Allies are outnumbered by Soviet forces five or more to one. Therefore, gentlemen, it’s important for you and the men under your command to understand that they, and they alone, will be holding the line against the Chinese in Korea. The path home will not be lit by Nationalist Chinese
lanterns or glowing mushroom clouds. Do I make myself clear?”

  Their silence was all the acknowledgment he needed.

  As the meeting moved on to tactical and logistical matters, Patchett whispered to Sean, “Ain’t MacArthur not supposed to be saying things like that out loud? Sounds like he’s skating on pretty thin ice.”

  “I got a hunch the guy’s running for president, Patch.”

  “You gonna vote for him, Bubba?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “Me neither.”

  Walker’s G4—the bird colonel who was 8th Army’s supply and logistics chief—had the floor now. He had the unfortunate job of telling the commanders that Christmas dinner would be nothing special. “If you’re expecting another feast like we put on for Thanksgiving, you can forget it. It’s just not logistically possible right now, I’m afraid.”

  Patchett’s expression turned more sour than usual. He resisted the urge to spit on the dirt floor. Fighting a similar reaction, Sean said, a little too loudly, “I guess the man in Tokyo is only a sport with the holiday food when he thinks he’s winning. Now that the chinks called his bluff, the rest of us can suck on C rations. But who knows? Maybe they’ll come with a candy cane stenciled on the fucking box.”

  “Betcha MacArthur’s gonna eat pretty damn good on Christmas Day, though,” Patchett added.

  *****

  Another tragedy would mar the day, as well. Driving back to his Seoul headquarters, General Walker’s jeep would be accidentally struck by a ROK vehicle that had swerved from its lane. Thrown from the jeep by the force of impact, Walker was mortally injured. He would die a few hours later.

  *****

  Master Sergeant Warren Orr was pretty sure he was wasting his time. An investigator with 6th Army CID, he’d made the long trip from San Francisco to Seattle to interview a man being held at that city’s jail. The prisoner was charged with a local armed robbery and was reported to be an AWOL soldier from Fort Ord, a buck sergeant who’d vanished from that post two months ago. The name on the arrest report was Willis, Steven M.