Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  “Wouldn’t that be splendid?” Pitney replied. “And it gives General Molloy more time to muster any help he can from friends in high places.”

  “I’ve got to get word of the postponement to Jock right away,” Jillian said. “The poor lad has enough on his plate without having to worry about this, too.”

  “How will you notify him? Isn’t the mail to Korea slower than molasses in winter?”

  “Yes, it bloody well is. But General Molloy is standing by to send a radiogram through official channels. That should only take a day or two.”

  She fell pensive for a few moments before adding, “You know, with the hearing moved back to the end of April…that’s about the time Jock is due to rotate home.”

  Pitney’s eyes lit up like he’d just heard angels sing. “Now that would be wonderful, having him in the courtroom in full uniform. What a positive image he’d present for the case!”

  She didn’t share his enthusiasm. “I’m not sure it’s going to matter a hill of beans to that judge, Mark.”

  Chapter Twenty

  In all his combat experience, Sean Moon had never seen quite so much armor and artillery massed in one sector—and more was coming to 8th Army. He told himself, Ol’ General Ridgway’s building us up for another big offensive. You can take that to the bank.

  But how much you wanna bet the chinks are doing the same damn thing?

  At the moment, Sean was riding herd on some drivers he’d detailed to pick up a shipment of new tanks at the rail depot in Ansong, just a few miles south of Line D. As their deuce rumbled through the ravaged city, he could see almost nothing had changed there since 26th Regiment took it from the KPA three months ago, back in early October. Before that battle, most of Ansong’s civilians had fled south. Few had returned.

  They passed the scorched hulks of ten T-34s Sean and his tankers had destroyed during that fight. He yelled to the GIs in the back of the deuce, “If any of you jaboneys ever wonder why I call them T-34s rice cookers, the reason’s right before your eyes. Take a look at them burned-out sons of bitches. They look like they’ve been on the stove too long.”

  But the sight of the T-34s revived a stinging memory: We only lost a few tanks ourselves that day, Sean recollected, but we didn’t have to lose any. It was all that idiot captain’s fault. Damn glory hound cost us vehicles and got good men killed for nothing. Couldn’t talk sense to him. He saw too many war movies and believed all that gung-ho bullshit.

  He didn’t last long himself, though. The next day, he decided to drive off on his own to do a little recon. What a dumbass move that was. The gooks left him and his crew laid out dead on the road and stole their Pershing…

  And it left us down another tank and crew for no fucking reason.

  At the rail depot, the deuce’s driver, who wasn’t a tanker, watched in bewilderment as strange-looking tracked vehicles with long-barreled, large-caliber guns—but no turrets—were being maneuvered off the flat cars. “What the hell kind of tanks are those, Sarge?” he asked. “Seem a little light in the armor department, ain’t they?”

  “Yeah, because they ain’t tanks, numbnuts,” Sean replied. “They’re self-propelled artillery. You ain’t never seen eight-inch SPs before?”

  The driver shook his head.

  “How long you been in this man’s army, anyway?”

  “Six months, Sarge. Just got to Korea a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Then you’re gonna learn something new every day, my friend,” Sean told him. “Those SPs come in real handy when armor’s leading the way. They can keep up with tanks, go off-road with ’em if necessary without getting bogged down like towed artillery would. And they throw one hell of a big round, too.” Pointing to a column of Pershings lined up on the road, he added, “Now fall in as ass-end Charlie behind those new tanks of ours.”

  “No can do, Sarge. The lieutenant told me to come straight back after I dropped you guys off. I’m not supposed to wait around or anything.”

  “What? The lieutenant told you wrong, pal. You and me are gonna stay on the tail end of that tank column, sweep up any breakdowns, and corral anybody who’s thinking about getting lost. And you are coming straight back, anyway. You’re just gonna be doing it at a more leisurely pace.”

  “You’re putting my ass in a sling, Sarge. The lieutenant’s going to be pissed.”

  “Yeah, I know damn well what delicate little flowers lieutenants can be, but I’ll help him get over it real quick. Now, follow them tanks…and do it with your mouth shut.”

  *****

  Driving to Major Grossman’s 3rd Battalion HQ, Patchett’s jeep was flagged down by Ralph Shelnutt, first sergeant of a company in that outfit, and—in the absence of any officers to fill the slot—its acting company commander. He obviously had a load on his mind.

  “I hear you know Major Grossman from way back, Patch,” Shelnutt said. “Maybe you can help us talk some sense into the boy.”

  “He ain’t no boy, Ralph…and I ain’t liking the sound of this right off the bat. Not one damn bit.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, brother. Don’t go making me the bad guy here.”

  “You’re gonna have to prove to me you ain’t, First Sergeant,” Patchett replied, “and it better be a damn good story. Do me a favor, too…ain’t neither of us in no Southern Baptist church right now, so don’t be pulling that brother shit on me.”

  “Fair enough,” Shelnutt said. “It’s just that the major—that city slicker jewboy—is trying to push these men too damn hard, Patch. He keeps wanting them to dig more foxholes and bunkers—”

  Patchett interrupted him. “First off, they’re called fighting holes in this regiment. A foxhole is where some green troop with his head up his ass hides, remember?”

  Shelnutt nodded, his head down to avoid eye contact.

  “Second,” Patchett continued, “the major and me spilled blood together back in the jungle. I’m more his brother than I am yours. So I better never again—and I mean never—hear him referred to in the terms you just used. You understand me, First Sergeant?”

  The way he spoke the term First Sergeant made it sound like a question in itself, one that suggested the pay grade and prestige it carried could be a fleeting thing.

  “Okay, Patch, okay…I read you loud and clear,” Shelnutt said. “But the engineers dug us some beautiful bunkers already. The men just don’t understand why they gotta dig some more, especially up on that rock-hard ridge.”

  “I don’t really have to tell you the answer to that, do I, First Sergeant?”

  “Because the major likes to hand out busywork, right? So they don’t have so much time to think about how miserable they are?”

  Shaking his head, Patchett said, “No, you moron. It’s because he wants to keep as many of their stupid asses alive as he can. You know, Ralph, it’s a cryin’ shame when an old infantryman like you forgets how he got to be an old infantryman. Rule number one: when you ain’t moving, you dig your sorry ass in as deep as you can.”

  “So what do I tell the troops, then, Patch? They’re still pretending to follow his orders, but I’m afraid we’re just around the corner from them refusing an order. Help me out here, will you?”

  “The first thing you’re gonna do, First Sergeant, is remind those men they don’t wanna get on your wrong side. Or mine, neither…because I could sure use some fresh volunteers for them night patrols.”

  Just the mention of night patrols sent a tremor of fear through Shelnutt’s body. He knew they were personally supervised by Patchett or that other city boy lunatic, Captain Pop. Nobody ever volunteered for them—not in the literal sense, at least. They were instruments of corrective discipline as much as they were tools to gather information on the enemy. Those who’d tried to sandbag their way through one of those ass-puckering outings had been made very sorry about it in short order. There was never a mention of the stockade; they just found themselves assigned to the next night’s patrol. And on that patrol, they’d be the point man, th
e first one in the column.

  Unless he remained completely focused, he’d be the most vulnerable one, too.

  It was an all-too-real example of what hardened NCOs always told recalcitrant GIs: I can’t make you do anything, boys. I can just make you wish you’d done it.

  Patchett decided his visit to 3rd Battalion’s CP could wait a few more minutes. He needed to see with his own eyes what Lee Grossman’s men were complaining about. He told Shelnutt, “I tell you what, Ralph…show me a place on your perimeter where your men think they know tactics better than their commander and don’t have to pay him no mind.”

  *****

  The section of the perimeter Shelnutt brought him to was on high ground at the eastern edge of the battalion’s sector, a barren ridgeline overlooking a highway that paralleled frozen marshland. It was one of those areas 8th Army engineers couldn’t do much to improve; climbing that steep slope was nearly impossible for bulldozers and earth-moving vehicles.

  “This terrain’s not exactly generous with natural cover and concealment,” Patchett said. “I reckon it could use a little shovel work.”

  Nearly a mile away on the far side of that board-flat marsh lay a line of hills as barren as the ridge on which they stood. They seemed uninhabited, but Patchett was sure that if the GIs looked hard enough with binoculars, they’d get a hint of the well-dug-in fighting positions their Chinese adversaries had prepared.

  Walking among the GIs manning the perimeter, he found only the crew-served weapons teams—those manning the machine guns and recoilless rifles—had bothered to dig any kind of fighting positions, though they appeared entirely inadequate. Low parapets of loose dirt, wood, and sandbags reduced the weapons’ silhouettes but did little to protect the gunners. Overhead cover hadn’t been constructed anywhere. Patchett collapsed one of the parapets with a shove from his foot.

  “It don’t look like this little fortress of yours is gonna stop shit,” he told the startled GIs, “and surely not bullets, grenades, or shell fragments, that’s for damn sure. If I was you, I’d get that weapon dug into the ground as far as she’ll go, then use that lumber and sandbags to put a roof over your heads.”

  The other GI defenders—the riflemen—hadn’t bothered to dig in at all. They were huddled in pairs behind the boulders that were strewn along the ridge.

  “Now that’s mighty fine cover in a pinch, boys,” Patchett observed, “except, of course, if you want to shoot back. When you stick your head up to do it, you’re gonna get a face-full of rock fragments from that incoming fire that’ll cut through you just like shrapnel. You’re better off behind a thick berm made of dirt or sandbags. They don’t make their own shrapnel. Minimizes your risk, you know?”

  Then Patchett walked behind the line of boulders about twenty paces, picked up a rock, and hurled it like a fastball ace. It split the air between two startled GIs and struck the boulder they were huddled against with a resounding crack.

  “Hello, GI! Me Joe Chink,” Patchett called out in a bad parody of an Asian accent. “Me sneak up behind you!”

  Shifting back to his normal voice, he continued, “And he blows your asses to kingdom come.”

  A GI wailed, “But the chinks won’t be coming from that direction, Sarge!”

  “Son, you ain’t paying attention to what you don’t wanna hear,” Patchett replied. “Or maybe you slept through that part of the briefing. But I’m here to tell y’all that the chink is gonna stand on his head to get behind you. More than half the GI units that got wiped out got themselves overrun from behind. And y’all look like prime candidates to be the next ones on that sorry list. So them rocks ain’t doing you good like you figured, boys. They can’t hold a candle to nice deep holes that’ll let you fight in any direction you gotta.”

  A tall, cocksure corporal replied, “But who’s gonna dig into this concrete, Sergeant? It’s frozen fucking solid.”

  Pointing to the hills across the wide marsh, Patchett said, “Them chinks over yonder ain’t having no trouble digging into it, son, and they ain’t even got the top shelf pioneer tools y’all do. Shit, them Chinese are digging tunnels through this stuff, not just li’l ol’ holes in the ground. And they do it all for a little bucket of spoilt rice a day. I reckon one of them tunnels might just pop up right in the middle of your position. Then they jump out and kill all y’all, just so they can steal your Hershey bars and canned peaches.”

  He paused to let them ponder in stunned silence for a moment. Then he added, “So what’s it gonna be, soldiers? You gonna dig…or you gonna die?”

  Patchett didn’t have to look back as he walked to his jeep. He could tell what was happening just from the sound; dozens of shovels and pickaxes hacking into the frozen turf made a clatter that was unmistakable.

  There was another sound, too: the muttering of griping GIs, blowing off steam but knowing they didn’t dare cross this old sergeant who knew more about war fighting—and war surviving—than all of them put together.

  Patchett couldn’t decide which of those two sounds he found more pleasing.

  *****

  At 3rd Battalion CP, Patchett and Lee Grossman were having a long talk over canteen cups of hot coffee. “Thanks for helping me out on the east ridge, Top,” Grossman said. “I know I’ve got a big problem with Shelnutt’s company. But believe it or not, it wasn’t my most pressing one. That’s why I hadn’t paid them a visit in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “No problem, sir. Glad to do it. But you’re right…that company’s in sorry shape.”

  “What do you suggest I do, Top?”

  “Get rid of Shelnutt, sir. Shitcan him…he’s a weak sister. Maybe he’s an adequate first sergeant, but he needs a real company commander over him to keep him straight.”

  “I figured that out already,” Grossman replied. “I asked the colonel if I could have Theo, but he turned me down.”

  “I know. He and I talked about it. But we need Captain Pop right where he’s at, and company officer attrition has been brutal across the board. But there’s another six-striper coming in with the next batch of replacements who should be right up your alley. He don’t need no captain or lieutenant telling him what to do.”

  “No officers in that batch, Top?”

  “Nothing but a handful of green second louies, sir.”

  “Figures,” Grossman said. “So when will my new master sergeant show up? We’re going to be moving north again in a couple weeks. I’ll need him in place before we start rolling.”

  “He should be here in a coupla days, sir. That should give you plenty of time to break him in.”

  “I’ll hold my breath until he gets here, Top.”

  Patchett downed the last of his coffee and rose to leave. “You got the colonel’s meeting at 1600 hours on your calendar, right, sir?”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Grossman replied. “I want to hear more about General Ridgway’s plans to take back Seoul before the snows melt.” He paused, making sure nobody else in the CP could hear. Then he asked, “What do you make of Ridgway, Top? At first glance, he seems like the right man for the job…but is he on the level?”

  “From what I can tell, sir, we couldn’t’ve asked for better.”

  “The rumor mill’s saying he’s going to hang a star on Jock Miles. Is that true?”

  “Ain’t my place to say, sir…but I reckon the star’s there for the taking.”

  “That’s great, but is he going to take it?”

  “That depends a whole lot more on what happens back in the States with Miss Jillian than what’s going on here, sir.”

  Recoiling in disgust, Grossman said, “I can’t believe they’re serious about deporting her back to Australia, Top. What the hell could she have done to deserve that? And after all she did for us—for MacArthur and his whole goddamn Army—when we were all back in the jungle? That’s the thanks she gets?”

  “You’re preaching to the choir, sir.”

  *****

  Taxiing out for takeof
f from K-2 at twilight, the crew of Moon’s Menace VI passed an unusual sight: in a run-down hangar built by the Japanese during the last war, a glass-nosed B-26 was having both gun turrets removed from her aft fuselage.

  “That’s going to be our squadron’s first SHORAN ship,” Hank Roth, Tommy Moon’s navigator, said. “You should’ve come to the briefing, sir. They put out a lot of good poop about that system.”

  “I would’ve loved to be there,” Tommy replied, “but giving check rides to those new pilots ran a lot longer than it was supposed to. I’m not worried about having missed anything, though. You’ll tell me all the good stuff, right?”

  Rear gunner Bob Allen’s voice blared in their headphones. “I don’t know what could be so good about it. It’s putting guys like me out of work. Ain’t no room for a gunner on a SHORAN-equipped B-26.”

  “Don’t sweat it, Bob,” Tommy replied. “I hear they’re looking for B-29 gunners.”

  “That’s all I need, sir…riding one of those lumbering beasts through MIG Alley. I always had the nasty feeling I should’ve gone to cooks’ school. To hell with this glory of aviation shit.”

  “But if the system works like they say it should,” Roth added, “SHORAN will let us bomb blind with pinpoint accuracy. It won’t matter if it’s dark or the target’s socked in. We just line up those two little arcs in the scope and then bombs away. It’s more than just a short-range navigation system. It’s a precision bombsight, too.”

  “All that Buck Rogers stuff sounds great,” Tommy said, “but save it for later. Read me the takeoff checklist, Hank.”

  *****

  The two-ship formation was cruising north through the night sky at 10,000 feet, en route to what promised to be a lucrative target area: fifteen miles due east of Seoul, two major highways intersected near the village of Chinjung-ni. Intelligence reports indicated heavy convoy traffic on those roads after dark as Chinese and resurgent North Korean forces massed to counter 8th Army’s buildup along Line D. The two aircraft—the heavily gunned Moon’s Menace VI and another B-26, lightly armed but equipped with a powerful wing-mounted searchlight—were the first relay in a series of attack ships flying an all-night interdiction effort against the enemy convoys.