W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire

by Under Fire(Lit)

  The colonel had thought that order of battle best, primar-ily because the Charley Company commander had been on the job only a couple of days.

  The colonel had found it necessary to employ his re-serve, for by the time Able Company reached the crest of the ridge, more than half its men were down, either from enemy fire or heat exhaustion, and by the time Baker Com-pany got there, they had lost a fifth of their men, mostly to exhaustion, and what was left was put to work carrying the dead and wounded off the slopes of the ridge, with Charley Company now needed to protect them.

  And then the colonel had ordered everybody off Obong-ni Ridge when it was apparent to him that the men holding the crest were not going to be able to repel a North Korean counterattack.

  Once everyone was back, reasonably safe, in the posi-tions they had left to begin the attack, the artillery was called in again, and the mortars, and the North Korean po-sitions on Obong-ni Ridge again came under fire.

  Following which, the 1st Battalion attacked again, this time with what was left of Able and Baker Companies in the van, and with Charley Company following, and with Headquarters & Service Company in reserve.

  By the time the 1st Marines again gained the crest of the hill, their strength had been reduced by 40 percent, and Charley Company had lost almost that many, but there was enough of them left, in the colonel's judgment, so they stood a reasonable chance of turning the North Korean counterattack when it inevitably came, and he had ordered the Charley Company commander to take command of the Marines on the crest and defend it to the best of his ability.

  Thirty minutes after the North Korean counterattack be-gan, the colonel began receiving reports of the casualties suffered and of the ammunition running low. The colonel knew he didn't have the manpower to get ammunition in the quantities requested up the crest of Obong-ni Ridge.

  He called Brigade and explained the situation. Brigade said the 2nd Battalion would be immediately sent to the area, and as soon as they arrived, he had permission to or-der his Marines back off the bill. And ordered him to make every effort to see they brought their dead and wounded back with them.

  Once back, they would re-form. There were some re-placements, not as many as he would like, but that was all there was, and they would be sent as soon as possible.

  `Trucks are coming," the exec said. "They're having a hell of a time getting through the mud, but they'll be here shortly."

  The company commander did not reply.

  "They're bringing the noon meal, and some replace-ments," the exec said. "And following an artillery softening-up, 2nd Battalion will attack through the 1st at 1600. Charley Company will lead."

  "Major, I have, counting me, two officers and a platoon and a half of men."

  "You'll have some of the people who went down with the heat back by then, and as I say, some replacements."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the company commander said.

  "And the softening barrage may be more effective this time. We've been promised a bunch-including some 155-mm-from the Army, and half the ammunition will be fused for airburst, which should do a better job on the far slopes. And it will be TOT." (Time On Target. All artillery pieces fire their tubes at the same predeter-mined instant. Among other things, this takes the enemy by surprise, and keeps him from seeking shelter before more shells land. It also has an of-ten terrifying psychological effect.)

  "I wondered if anyone here had ever heard of airbursts, or thought about TOT," the company commander said.

  "We're hurting them, too, Captain," the exec said.

  "Yes, sir, but there seems to be a lot more of them than us," the company commander said.

  "I'll be back before you move out. The 1st is up there. I don't think the NKs will try to come this way. Get the men as much rest as you can."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "You hurt your hand, Captain? You seem to be favoring it."

  "My finger was hurt on the airplane on the way over here, sir. Little sore, nothing serious."

  But if I ever see that candy-ass captain who did this to me again, I'm going to pull his arm off and shove it up his ass.

  I wonder what that cocksucker's doing right now. Prob-ably playing tennis with his wife, the general's daughter.

  Goddamn the U.S. Marine Corps.'

  [THREE]

  TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND

  1215 20 AUGUST 1950

  "A little problem, Mr. Zimmerman?" Captain McCoy asked, surveying what was left of the small stone, thatch-roofed building that had housed the small German diesel generator and, the last time McCoy had been there, the SCR-300 radio. "I would say we have a world-class, A-Number-One fucking problem."

  There was nothing left of the building but three walls, one of them on the edge of falling over, and the generator, which now lay on its side. The floor of the building-and the generator-was covered with a six-inch-thick layer of foul-smelling mud.

  "When the storm really started getting bad, we moved the SCR-300 up the hill," Zimmerman said. "We didn't have the muscle to move the generator. By then, anyway, there was three feet of water in here. I mean all the time. When the waves hit, it was deeper; you had a hard time standing up."

  Ernie means, "I had a hard time standing up," McCoy decided. I left him in charge, and he met that responsibility as best he could.

  He had a mental picture of the barrel-chested Marine gunner standing in water up to his waist trying to salvage something, anything, in the generator building from the fury of the storm.

  "I guess the diesel fuel's gone, too? Even if we can get that generator running again."

  Zimmerman nodded.

  "Everything that wasn't up the hill got washed away," he said. "Including most of the ammo for the Jap weapons."

  "What about food?"

  "We moved the rations up the hill, including the rice the Koreans had. And a couple of their boats are left. They were starting to try to get them back in the water when we saw you. Major Kim says he thinks they can catch enough fish to feed them and us."

  "Anybody get hurt?"

  Zimmerman shook his head, "no."

  "I was thinking that maybe if we hit one of their is-lands-Taemuui-do is closest-maybe they'd have some diesel fuel," Zimmerman said.

  If they had diesel fuel in the first place, what makes you think they'd still have it? Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do got hit by the storm as hard as Tokchok-kundo did. And if we hit Taemuui-do now, and didn't hit Yonghung-do immedi-ately afterward, when we finally did hit it, they'd be expect-ing an attack, and certainly would have reported that right after the storm somebody took Taemuui-do. They'd be curi-ous as hell about that.

  Dumb idea, Ernie.

  "Do you think that diesel's going to run after being un-der water for hours?"

  "We'll have to take it apart and make sure there's no wa-ter in the cylinders. And then who knows?"

  "Let's hold off on getting diesel for a diesel engine we're not sure can be fixed," McCoy said.

  Zimmerman nodded.

  "There are engines in the lifeboats," McCoy said. "Can we use those to power the SCR-300?"

  "Wrong voltage, I'll bet," Zimmerman said. "But maybe we can rig something."

  "Okay. First things first," McCoy ordered. "Put people to work helping Taylor unload the lifeboats, and then drag them on shore and get them covered. Then get the Korean fisherman's boats in the water. Send Major Kim with one of them. Maybe he will see what the storm did to Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do."

  "And then what?"

  "Ernie, I don't have the faintest fucking idea," McCoy said. "Right now, it looks like we're stranded on this beau-tiful tropical island."

  [FOUR]

  THE DEWEY SUITE

  THE IMPERIAL HOTEL

  TOKYO, JAPAN

  1315 20 AUGUST 1950

  Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, was sitting in one of the green leather armchairs in the sitting room when the door opened and Brigadier General Fleming Pickering walked in, trailed by Captain George F. Hart.

  "
I let myself in, Flem," Howe said. "I hope that's all right?"

  "Don't be silly," Pickering said. "When did you get back?' He waved at Master Sergeant Rogers. "Hello, Charley."

  "After hanging around K-l most of last night waiting for a break in the storm, we finally got off, and landed at Haneda a little after eight," Howe said, and added, "where Colonel Sidney Huff was waiting for me, to tell me El Supremo would be pleased if I would join him at my earli-est opportunity."

  Pickering's lower lip came out momentarily.

  "What was that all about?"

  "I'm not sure I know," Howe said, "and I have been thinking about it ever since I was dismissed from the throne room. About the only thing I am sure about is that Willoughby is onto your Flying Fish Channel operation."

  "I suppose that was inevitable. Is that what he called you in for, to ask you what you knew about that?"

  "I don't know, Flem. Let me tell you what happened, and you tell me."

  "Will it wait until I have my twelve-hundred snort?" Pickering asked. He walked to the sideboard and picked up a bottle of Famous Grouse. "Would you like one?"

  "Why not?" Howe said. "God knows I deserve one." Then he asked," `Twelve-hundred snort'?"

  "I found that unless I went on a schedule, I was prone to keep nipping all day," Pickering said. "I think with a little effort, I could easily become an alcoholic."

  "I don't believe that for a minute," Howe said. "You've had a lot on your mind, Flem."

  "I have one at twelve," Pickering said, ignoring him, "another at five, a brandy after dinner, and sometimes a nightcap. That way, I can go to sleep reasonably sure of what my name is and where I am. Tell me about your ses-sion with El Supremo."

  "Well," Howe said, and chuckled. "It began, if you can believe this, with a fried-egg sandwich, just like Mommy used to make for him when he was at West Point, and Han-nibal's elephants..."

  "I don't know either," Pickering said when Howe had fin-ished. "It's entirely possible he wanted to hear what you might have to say about Korea. But more likely-now that I've had a minute to think about it-it was his back-channel response to the JCS message he showed you. I think it's sig-nificant that he showed it to you. He knows you report to the President, which means you'd report what he said, and what he said was that unless he is expressly forbidden to do so, he's going to ignore what Collins and the JCS think, and send two divisions ashore at Inchon on 15 September. He got his message to the President without sending the Presi-dent a message through channels."

  Howe grunted.

  "That's what Charley thinks, too," he said, and added: "You've heard me observe that the true test of another man's intelligence is the degree to which he agrees with you? I seem to be surrounded by geniuses."

  Pickering and Rogers chuckled.

  "You don't think-maybe in addition to the above-that he wanted to send you an ever-so-subtle warning that he was on to your Flying Fish Channel operation? He said he was concerned about its possible `impact' on Inchon. Maybe it's time for you to tell him about it?"

  "I don't think the Flying Fish operation is going to have, any impact on the Inchon invasion at all," Pickering said.

  "I don't like what I think I'm hearing," Howe said.

  "We have not heard from Zimmerman for four days,"

  Pickering said. "Since his 0730 call on the sixteenth. You know how that works?"

  Howe shook his head, "no."

  "We transmit a code phrase at a predetermined time. Zimmerman's radioman, who is monitoring the frequency, responds with a two-word code phrase, repeated twice. The idea is to reduce the chance of the North Koreans hearing a radio transmission at all, and if they should get lucky and hear it, not to give them time to locate the transmitter by triangulation."

  Howe nodded his understanding.

  "There has been no response from Tokchok-kundo since 0730 on the sixteenth," Pickering went on. "This morning, we got the code word message `Egg Laid 0430' from HMS Charity. At the time we coined the code word, we thought it was rather clever for the meaning: `McCoy, Taylor and all hands have been successfully put over the side at half past four.' It should have taken them no more than an hour to make Tokchok-kundo. On their arrival, Zimmerman was to transmit a code phrase meaning they had arrived. There has been no such transmission."

  "The storm could have knocked out their radio," Howe suggested.

  "That's a possibility. The other possibility that has to be considered is that the North Koreans discovered our people on Tokchok-kundo,- took the island, and McCoy and Taylor sailed into the North Koreans' lap."

  "You don't know that, Fleming," Howe said.

  "We set up another message, an emergency message, a phrase meaning change your frequency to another and be prepared to communicate. George and I just came from the commo center, where we watched Sergeant Keller send that code phrase every ten minutes for an hour and a half. There was no response."

  "Which proves, I suggest, only that Zimmerman's radio is out again. There was trouble with it before, wasn't there?"

  "You always look for a silver lining in situations like this," Pickering said. "What I'm hoping now is that if the North Koreans went to Tokchok-kundo and discovered our people there, they will think that it was nothing more than an intelligence-gathering outpost, and won't make a con-nection with the invasion of Inchon."

  The first thing Howe thought was that Pickering was be-ing unduly pessimistic, but then he remembered that this wasn't the first covert operation Pickering had run, and that his pessimism was based on experience.

  "Goddamn it," Howe said, and then asked, "What are you going to do?"

  "For the next twenty-four hours, I'm going to hope- pray-that you-and George-are right, and that the only problem is Zimmerman's radio."

  "And then?"

  "I'm going to Pusan to see what my station chief there thinks about sending the Wind of Good Fortune back up there."

  [FIVE]

  EVENING STAR HOTEL

  TONGNAE, SOUTH KOREA

  2105 23 AUGUST 1950

  "Oh, shit!" Captain George F. Hart said, as the headlights of the Jeep swept across the courtyard of the hotel.

  "Oh, shit what, George?" Brigadier General Fleming Pickering asked.

  "Pick's..." Hart said, and stopped.

  "Pick's what?" Pickering said.

  "I was about to say Pick's girlfriend is here," Hart said. "Or maybe it's somebody else with a war correspondent's Jeep. At the corner?"

  "I don't need her right now," Pickering said. "But I'm afraid you're right."

  "Maybe Major Whatsisname..."

  "Dunston," Pickering furnished.

  "... Dunston's got a Jeep like that," Hart said, as he pulled the nose of the Jeep, which had been more or less cheerfully furnished to them-along with directions to the hotel-by Captain James Overton, the Marine liaison offi-cer at K-l.

  "Could be," Pickering said. "I really hope it's not her." "She was a little excited the last time we saw her, wasn't she, boss?" Hart asked.

  "It has been some time since I have been called `a treacherous sonofabitch,"' Pickering said. "Especially with such sincerity."

  "I think her exact words were `you miserable, treacher-ous sonsofbitches,' plural," Hart said. "She seemed to be a little annoyed with me, too."

  "Well, I couldn't let her go back to Tokchok-kundo, even if the English would have let her get on the de-stroyer."

  "No, you couldn't," Hart said seriously, as he pulled the nose of the Jeep up to the wall of the hotel. "And I don't think you could have explained that to her."

  Before they reached the door, other headlights an-nounced the arrival of another Jeep at the hotel.

  "That must be him," Hart said. "The Killer said he looked like an Army Transportation Corps major."

  "Ken also said he struck him as very bright," Pickering said. "Keep that in mind."

  "Major" William Dunston walked up to them. "General, I'm Bill Dunston, your station chief here. I'm sorry you got here before I did
, and delighted that you could find the place at all."

  "George is a cop when he's not working for me," Picker-ing said. "He's good at finding things."

  "Bill Dunston, Captain," Dunston said, offering Hart his hand. "I understand you've been with the general a long time."

  "Yeah, we go back a ways," Hart said. "How are you?

  Who's the war correspondent?"

  "Jeanette Priestly," Dunston said.