American Sector DMZ
"I don't like it, Sarge," Willy Johnson said into the handset. "Too damn much noise out there.
Isn't that where the NKs have a tank battalion?"
"Easy, Johnson. Remember last week when the NKs pulled that exercise just at dawn. We had half of our guys out of their sacks and buttoned up in their tanks. We got chewed out for a half hour by the damned colonel himself. I say we sit on it for a few more minutes."
"Yeah, easy for you to say, Sarge, sitting back there at fucking Bonifas. They wouldn't hit you for about three minutes after they squash us like bugs under their tank treads."
"Okay, Johnson, give it a level-one alert. I'll call the colonel. He ain't gonna be happy getting woke up at four damn o'clock in the fucking morning."
"Thanks, Sarge. Level-one alert now on the boards. Nobody here gets up, right? Nobody in his tank?"
'"Right. Now shut up a minute. Hey, you see anything with your NVGs?"
"Nope. Too far away. But the sound comes through. Everything but the tanks starting up."
"Stay on it."
Willy Johnson tried the night-vision goggles again. They turned the Korean no-man's-land into a dull green, but he could see the centerline, the bunkers, even some shrubs that had grown up.
But the NK tankers were too far away. He put down the goggles and listened.
More sounds of metal on metal. Were those closing tank turrets? Maybe the slap of a wrench on a stubborn nut? How about a tread getting slammed home with a hammer?
He listened again. Damn, he could just see those damn NKs swarming over those sixteen tanks over there with their 105 cannon all aimed south. Hell, maybe they were backing out of their revetments. No, not without starting their engines.
Then the sound came clear and unmistakable: The diesel engines on sixteen tanks ground over all at once. Johnson grabbed the phone.
"Sarge, Sarge. the damn tank engines are starting. Sounds like all of them."
Nobody answered. The line was supposed to be open all the time. "Sarge, come in, Sarge." He gave up on the phone and keyed the small radio. "This is Oullette calling Bonifas, calling anybody, over."
Only a gentle hum came from the radio speaker.
"Bonifas, we've got sixteen NK tanks with engines running. Does anybody copy?"
"Yeah, I copy, Oullette. This is the Ninety-first Tank. That for real, those NKs fired up?"
"Damn straight. I heard them before. Now I can't raise Bonifas."
"Let me try." Willy Johnson waited a long sixty seconds; then the radio came on.
"Yeah, I got Bonifas. The OD said remember last week. He's not excited about it."
"Hell, Nine One, they could be backing those machines out of their holes right now and pointing them at you."
"Right as rain, little buddy, right as — "
The first North Korean artillery round slammed out of the darkness and exploded on the 91st Armored Battalion's communications center. The officer of the day and three enlisted men died from the first shell and all communications were out. Twenty-four rounds rained down so quickly that half the tankers in the center were either killed or wounded.
Deep in their bunkers the tanker crews came awake with a jolt, pulled on boots and helmets, and ran for their tanks. Ten of the sixteen crews made it to their machines and started the motors. Long guns were lifted, trained on the DMZ to the north.
Another barrage of artillery battered three of the manned tanks and four of the empty ones. One tank took a direct hit, and twenty of the 10 5 shells in its locker went off with a deafening roar.
"Move out, move out," Major Kitts bellowed into his tank-to-tank radio. The big tanks backed out of their assigned bunkers and jolted into the DMZ to escape the killing artillery.
"How many tanks we have left?" Kitts asked his radio. He took reports from seven units. "Okay, we form a line here just in back of the centerline and wait for the bastards. They must be coming. Keep a sharp lookout."
The eight American tanks lined up forty yards apart, twenty yards from the DMZ centerline, and waited.
North Korean 42nd Tank Battalion
Major Yim Pak Lee had his troops up at 3 a.m. and briefed the officers, then the enlisted men. They manned their sixteen tanks at 0415. His orders were to attack as soon as he heard the first artillery shell come overhead. The shell whispered over at precisely 0420, and the major dropped into his tank and buttoned up the turret.
"All tanks fire one round at predesignated target one on my command. Ready, fire." His own gunner blasted one 105 toward the Americans. Yim reveled in the smell of the burned powder in the tank despite the best fans.
"'All tanks move out into attack positions on command. The three-tank spearhead and five. Bravo Team to the right. Move.'"
The sixteen North Korean tanks swung into position, then angled to their right directly at the enemy tanks they knew had been hit hard by artillery fire. Major Yim lifted the turret of his tank and looked out. He could hear the rumbling of his battalion on both sides of him. There was concentrated artillery fire directly ahead. He would slow enough to miss it. There was the whisper of fighter jets high overhead waiting for dawn. The light would come in three quarters of an hour. By then he hoped he and his men would have punched a hole five miles into the South Korean landscape.
A gentle valley leading southwest was his route. Once he broke through there, there would be little to stop him for twenty miles. He grinned in the morning darkness. They were only a quarter of a mile from the start of the DMV. The machine gunner on his tank cut loose with a ten-round burst, then a second one. Nerves. They all had them, but the MG men could do something about it.
"Target, gunner?" Yim asked.
"Swear I saw some troops out there, Major, maybe an ambush patrol."
Corporal Arley Whitworth had tried for almost three minutes to get a radio contact with Bonifas. Nobody answered. He and his ambush patrol had heard the first artillery. He figured it had targeted the camp's headquarters and then the American tanks.
Five minutes later they all heard the tanks coming from the north. "Tanks, Sarge," Whitworth said.
The older man nodded. Sergeant First Class Benton Crawford had seen it all. Vietnam, Gulf War, and now Korea. "They're coming, sure as hell. We've got no radio, no phone. We play it by fucking ear. We bring any RPGs?"
The word went around quickly. "We got two pair, Sarge. Holy shit, there they are. Must be twenty fucking tanks."
Sergeant Crawford signaled down the line for all of his nine men to get into a shallow ditch in case the tanks came right at them.
"Get them RPGs up here." Benton sent the word down the line. His men were ten yards apart. The two troopers with the rocket-propelled grenades settled in three yards on each side of their patrol leader.
"Coming our way, Sarge?" one of the GIs asked.
"Looks that way. The only good we can do with those RPGs is to knock his tread off. I want you guys to aim at the tread. So shoot low. Each of you take a different tank. Closer the better. Shit."
He looked up and saw one tank less than thirty yards from them and aimed straight at his men. A machine gun on a tank down the row cut loose. They had another ambush patrol fifty yards down on the right.
"If this bastard keeps coming at us, we crawl through the ditch so half of us are on each side. When he hits the ditch, you two guys blast him with your RPGs. Should be one on the other side. Let's knock this guy out of action."
The infantrymen settled down in the three-foot ditch. It wouldn't be enough to save them if the tank ran directly over them. The dirt would cave in on both sides and smother whoever was under the tank.
The big long gun on the tank fired, the round slamming over the heads of the troops in the ditch.
"Still coming right at us, Sarge," Corporal Whitworth said.
"Spread out," Sergeant Crawford called. "Whitworth, you take half on down to the right. Rest of you, move my way. Remember, hit those fucking treads."
Five of the GIs crawled along the trench to get out of the way of the clanking monster rolling towards them. The tank's machine gun cut loose again, but the fire was well over their heads. The tank rolled forward, aimed at the part of the trench vacated by the men. Sergeant Crawford grabbed the RPG and sighted in on the tank as it rolled and clanked toward them. When it was thirty feet from the ditch, he aimed at the tank's treads and fired.
At that close range, the RPG barely got started before it hit the tank and exploded with a roar. The big NK tank shuddered, a cloud of smoke drifted upward, then the lumbering metal monster pivoted toward the sergeant. The track on his side had come off and the other track kept turning the rig in a circle. Then it stopped.
The tank was now heading in the wrong direction. The ambush patrol lay quietly in the ditch. The turret of the tank popped open, and a moment later a head and shoulders came out. Four M-16 rifles blasted off three-round bursts and the commander of Tank 22 slumped in the hatch, half his head blown off by the rounds. For a moment, nothing happened, then the body vanished inside the tank.
Before Sergeant Crawford's men could move, they heard another explosion to the right. Then the rest of his patrol came running down the ditch and slid in beside the sergeant.
"We killed a tank, just like you did. Blew his fucking tread halfway back to Scotland."
"Where to now, Sarge," the corporal asked.
"Damned if I know. Most of the tanks are past us. We haven't heard much from the American tanks." Crawford was about ready to move when a machine gun opened up, digging up dirt beside their ditch. They hugged the bottom of the depression, and the tank machine gunner looked elsewhere for targets.
Somebody groaned. The medic crawled over.
'"Casualties, Sarge. We've got two dead and one wounded. We should be getting to the rear." Sergeant Crawford nodded. "Oh, hell, yes, but just where is the rear, and where are the North Koreans'? What the hell we going to do when the infantry that's sure to follow these tanks comes running through here?"
"In the dark we have a chance," Whitworth said. "We've got to leave our dead and run like hell to the south. That way we'll have a chance."
The rest of the ambush patrol that had killed two North Korean tanks turned south and began to jog. The American lines had to be down there somewhere.
91st Armored Battalion
Major Donovan Kitts heard the enemy tanks before he saw them. It was just as he had envisioned it in all the practice alerts and war games they had played. But this was no game.
"I have four tanks breaking through the DMZ," Kitts said on the radio. "Fire at will."
Kitts buttoned up his lid and checked with the gunner. Just as he did, the 105 gun went off with a roar. The gunner had his eyes fast on the scope of the M-21 solid-state analog ballistic computer and the AN/VVG-2 ruby laser range finder to direct the next round. Kitts knew his counterpart across the line had sixteen tanks, but all of his were probably charging across the line right now. Sixteen against eight. Not pretty odds.
Then the battle was on. His gun scored the first direct hit, blasting the tank across the line into a flaming, exploding mass of heavy metal. He lost two of his tanks in the next three minutes and called the rest off, racing to the rear as near to their thirty-mph speed limit as they could go. They twisted and turned and hid behind a small rise and got away, but by then they were five miles into South Korea.
That was when Major Kitts remembered his guests for the night.
"Oh, damn, the Vice President and those Congressmen are still back at the underground headquarters. Holy shit!" He tried to contact somebody with his long-range radio, but all he got in return was static.
Underground Bunker
91st Armored Battalion
Vice President Wilson Chambers jolted awake when the first artillery round exploded fifty feet from him in a tank revetment area. He had heard enough artillery to recognize it even there in the underground. He sat up on the Army cot and shook his head. Another round slammed in and exploded farther away. He pulled on his pants and shoes.
"Everyone up, we're under attack," he bellowed. They had put the visitors in a room that was farthest away from the access tunnel upward. Some of the other men in the room didn't believe him until the next artillery round landed close enough to make dirt drift down from the ceiling.
"Damn close. Get dressed. See if we can find some weapons. If this is the damn North Koreans' push across the DMZ, we're in deep trouble here, people."
Before the men could get dressed, three others from another room rushed in. They had dressed. All twelve of the delegation were accounted for.
"What's happening?" a Congressman from Oregon asked.
Just then another round hit, caving in the tunnel that led out of the room.
They were trapped.
The men finished dressing, and the Vice President scowled.
"Gentlemen, there's no rush. We aren't going anywhere. That has to be the North Koreans out there attacking the tank battalion, which means they are driving south in an all-out invasion just as the general threatened to do yesterday."
"So where does that leave us?" one of the Secret Service men asked.
"In deep shit," somebody cracked, and they all laughed.
"He's right," Congressman Anderson, Republican from Indiana, said. "If the North has attacked, this is one of the first units that would be overrun, which means right now we're behind the enemy's lines. When they find us, we all say we're Congressmen. We don't even hint that our Vice President is here. We're all Congressmen and we demand to be released at once."
There were some murmurs of approval. The Secret Service men agreed. Then Vice President Chambers took the floor.
"I think the Congressman is right. I was a representative from Ohio. I can play that part. So we're all members of our government and we demand to be released at once."
"Now, we settle in to wait, or do we try to dig out?" one of the younger Secret Service men asked. "Anybody got a shovel?"
The blasted end of the access tunnel wasn't as bad as it looked. There were some timbers down, but the concrete walls were intact.
After an hour of digging with their hands and some boards, they could see daylight on the other side.
"Hey, out there," one man yelled. "Help us, we're trapped in here."
They heard some shouts, and then a jabbering in Korean. None of them understood a word of it. They all smiled when they heard someone on the other side of the blockage begin to dig it out with a shovel. Now it was just a matter of time.
Eighth Army Headquarters
Seoul, South Korea
Lieutenant General Richard F. Reynolds shook off the hand on his shoulder. It wasn't even light outside yet.
"General. General, sir, the telephone."
"What? What the hell?"
"It's the telephone, sir. Camp Bonifas has been attacked and overrun by the North Koreans."
General Reynolds came awake at once. "No shit?"
"True, sir. The phone." The sergeant handed his commanding general the phone and retreated.
"Yes, General Reynolds here. Who is this?"
"Lieutenant Hardiman, sir. I'm on a cell phone trying to hide from a full-thrust attack by the North Koreans. They've done it, sir. Blasted across the DMV about 0430. They must be eight, ten miles to the south by now. I don't know how much longer I can hide. I'll move south as soon as I can. Bonifas is ruined. Artillery blasted it for half an hour, knocking out communications, flattening most of the buildings. The tank battalion took a lot of hits too. Some of them got away to the south with six or seven of their tanks."
"Thanks, Hardiman. You take care of yourself and stay hidden until dark, then work south. Be careful."
The general hung up. He dressed and rushed to his office. Three of his staff were there taking reports. They established a line on the big wall map. The North Koreans had launched a massive attack along a thirty-mile front with Panmunjom at the center. His troops and those of the South Koreans
had taken large losses. One enemy tank column had penetrated five miles through the center, but had been blunted and stopped. North infantry units all along the line were running into increased resistance from the Southern forces.
Americans were only manning one section of the 114 along the 151-mile DMZ. The rest of the 37,000 Americans were in rear-area support and headquarters and supply units.
The first orders General Reynolds gave were for Air Force support to get off the ground and give close-in firepower. Then he studied the map. They had to push back that bulge in the middle. It was aimed directly at Seoul and the enemy tanks were only about twenty miles away.
"You finally did it, General Soo, you bastard. Okay, we'll see who has the most firepower. We're going to find out in one hell of a rush."
4
USS Monroe, CVN 81
Off South Korea
Vice Admiral Nathan Kenner came out of his bed at 0437 when his steward knocked on the door.
"Telephone from CIC, Admiral."
"Yes, yes, I'm awake. I have it." He picked up the handset. "What?"
"Word from Seoul, Admiral. The North Koreans just blasted across the DMZ in a thirty-mile-long offensive. They have penetrated five miles in spots. That puts them only twenty miles from Seoul. General Reynolds, CO of the Eight Army, wants to talk to you."
"Put him on."
The phone buzzed for a moment, then came clear. "General Reynolds?'
"Yes, Reynolds here. Admiral Kenner, we've got trouble. Can you send me about fifty ground-attack aircraft? We're in need of more air support."
"Yes, let me talk to my CAG, but I'm sure we can get you F-18's when you want them, and six or eight Cobra chopper gunships. Give me two minutes."
A knock sounded on the door, and CAG Irving Olson walked in.
"I heard. What does the Army want?"
"Ground support. What can we send them on a rotating basis?"
"We've updated our ground-attack capability on the Eighteens. We have fifty-six aircraft that can serve for ground support. We can scrape up about twenty chopper gunships from around the fleet."
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