by Ian Slater
The soldier was too frightened to answer. Freeman left the hut. “Goddamn it, Banks!” he said. “I’ve been in this man’s army for over forty years, and the incompetence we harbor never ceases to amaze me.”
The shelling seemed to have subsided, or at least passed beyond the immediate area, the Humvee drivers taking the opportunity to brush off as much snow from windshields and windows as possible.
“Take a message,” Freeman told Al Banks. “Immediate and confidential. SACEUR.”
Is it necessary to compound the danger to our fighting men by the issuance of Technicolor rubbers, which can be seen by the enemy at a thousand yards in snow conditions? The resulting injury to our men from enemy fire would be far more hazardous than that which you seek to avoid.
The message puzzled both Supreme Allied Command Europe and Commander in Chief, Channel Forces, in Northwood, England, until it was explained by an American liaison officer that “rubbers” were not “erasers” but American slang for condoms.
“Oh—” replied a brigadier. “Oh!”
Mirth in the British officers’ mess aside, SACEUR realized that the American general had a point quite apart from the fact that over 12 percent of all casualties in all armies were due to venereal disease — often higher than the casualty rate suffered in combat.
In any event, the story of the general’s encounter with the battlefield lovers swept like wildfire through the decimated ranks of American X Corps and other contingents around the perimeter, including those among the American airborne who had not been blown off course into enemy territory beyond the drop zone. By the time the story had reached Dortmund, only fifty miles in the rear, it was attaining mythical proportions and was completely changed, the story now being that Freeman “comes across one of our guys humping a Fräulein and says, ‘What the fuck are you doing, soldier?’ Well, this dogface looks up at Freeman and says, “This little honey bee if she’ll let me, General.” So Freeman says to his aide, ‘Al, you’d better promote the son of a bitch. Any man that quick on all fours deserves a battlefield citation.’ So his aide says, ‘You want him made a sergeant, General?’ and old Freeman says, ‘You make him a lieutenant. And that’s an order!’ “
Back at his headquarters in Minister, Freeman was told the story and, though he smiled, was curiously ambivalent about it. On the one hand, he told his aide, the story would probably do more to raise Allied morale in the pocket than a dozen speeches. On the other hand, the distortion that the story had undergone in the retelling disturbed him, for it was as clear an example as you’d want, he told Banks, of how “screwed up the simplest verbal exchange gets as it’s passed down the line.” No matter how sophisticated the communications equipment, all the more vital in a war of rapid movement, it often came to naught when messages had to be relayed verbally. The general state of communication glitches that had been reported from Heidelberg, before it fell, was one of the reasons he was so determined to reestablish personal contact with as many units as possible within the chaos of the shrinking perimeter. He particularly wanted to rally the airborne, who had taken a terrible beating, many of them, like young David Brentwood, who had fought with him in Korea, now reported missing, apparently having come down on the wrong side of the drop zone. Well, there was nothing he could do about those out of reach.
In the rear, the media army, most of them safely across the Rhine, were clamoring for interviews with Freeman once they’d heard the Fräulein story. Freeman’s press aide suggested to the general that it might be prudent before he spoke to any of the reporters to “rephrase” his response for home consumption.
“Hell, no!” was Freeman’s response, too busy in any case with trying to figure out how he would meet what he was sure would be Yesov’s massive and final assault upon the perimeter. “Doesn’t matter what you say,” said the general as he held out his hand impatiently for his map case. “Newspapers screw it up anyway.”
Freeman placed his forefinger on Bielefeld and, moving the second finger to form a divider, checked the rough measure against the map’s scale. It was twenty-seven miles east from Bielefeld to the Weser River. If only there were some way he could push the Russians back to the river, to suddenly reverse the position, to buy time for NATO reinforcements to pour in from the convoys that he hoped were now unloading at the British and French ports. The Russians had damned good Leggo bridges, but if they were forced to withdraw, the crossing would slow them down, giving the Allies a vital pause so that RAF, USAF, and Luftwaffe fighters could bring all the firepower they still had from their fast-dwindling supplies to bear onto the smaller, concentrated areas of the bridges. With hopefully devastating results. “You know,” he told his press aide without looking up from the map spread out before him, “that James Cagney never said, ‘You dirty rat.’ “
“No,” said his aide, somewhat nonplussed. “I didn’t know that.”
Freeman ordered the Dutch mobile infantry to close on what he believed would be the northernmost right-handed punch of the Russian armor. The Dutch had always been a concern for prewar NATO HQ. But recognizing the implications of being stationed farther away from the front line, they’d made up for it, developing a speed that had won the respect of even the Bundeswehr. “Well,” Freeman told his press aide, trying to boost morale with a little trivia, “Cagney didn’t say, ‘You dirty rat.’ What he did say was ‘Judy! Judy! Judy!’ “
When the press aide saw Al Banks walking toward the command bunker, the snow was falling heavily. As Banks took off his coat, the aide noticed he had a somber, pained look about him. The aide poured a mug of coffee for him and, handing it over, asked, “What the hell’s the general on about — Judy, Judy, Judy?”
“What—?” asked Banks, cupping the coffee mug in his bands. “Listen, we’ve just got Stealth infrared overflight photos that show the Russians are moving in three more tank regiments under this blizzard. Another two to three hundred tanks.”
“Jesus—”
“I think they’re just trying to frighten us,” said Banks, laughing. There was a hint of fatigue-craziness to it that unsettled the press aide.
“T-90s?” asked the aide.
“No. PT-76s apparently.”
“Well, that’s not as bad as the 90s.”
“Yes it is. I think the old man hates them more than the 90s. Nineties are like our M-1s. Great when everything’s going great, but one good bang and out go half the electronics. With the 76s, we’re down to VW Beetles versus Cadillacs. Sometimes the simpler the better — in weather like this.”
“Easier to repair,” said the press aide, eager to show he knew more than the usual media “flak.”
“Yes,” confirmed Banks, pouring more sugar into the steaming coffee. He could see Freeman at the situation board, a corporal, with a plug-in wire trailing from his headset, writing in the estimated strength and position of the Russian armored buildup with his marker pen. They had been using the small, magnetic block stickers, the kind civilians use for sticking messages on refrigerators, but they’d had a major foul-up near Heidelberg because the magnets on the big “tote” board had wiped a nearby computer disk clean. The result was a rifle company misdirected and lost. It was the sort of unpredictable screw-up that haunted all the commanders, Freeman especially, who confided in Banks that it was the “accidents of history” that worried him more than the enemy — the little things upon which great events can turn, despite the best-laid plans.
“Another thing about the PT-76s,” said Banks, “is they’re about half the weight of our tanks, Kraut Leopards and British Challengers included. Don’t get stuck nearly so easily in the slush. That’s why the North Koreans caught us with our pants down. Gave ‘em the edge.”
“This wet snow isn’t going to help them,” replied the press aide.
“Nope. What we need now is it to get a damn sight colder — drop well below freezing. That way we’d have hard ground.”
“That how we beat ‘em in Korea?”
“That and an uni
nterrupted supply line from Japan,” replied Banks, the worry lines in his face so deep, they made him look like a man twice his age. “If we don’t get a full NATO convoy through in three weeks — we’re sunk.”
“Jesus!” said the aide. “You really think we’ll lose the perimeter?”
Banks looked down at him. “Where’ve you been, Larry? We could lose the war. If I were you, I’d have a press release ready in case they bust through.”
The young press aide was visibly shaken. “Christ, I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“You’ve been reading your own press releases. No one else but the old man, our G-2, and those poor bastards right on the perimeter know. I’m just saying that meanwhile you’d better cover your ass. Not too much about our gallant boys at the front. If you pump up the public back home, they’ll turn on you if we get our butts kicked back behind the Rhine. Why do you think the old man won’t allow any TV cameras on the perimeter?” Banks drained the coffee cup. “It’s going to be the biggest attack since Fulda Gap.”
“I dunno if I can keep the media off that,” said the press aide, shaking his head. “Those TV guys are pretty persistent. Already there’s a stringer on the loose. One of my guys said he put on a groundsheet — no press insignia showing. We’ve lost track of him.”
“What’s his name?” asked Banks.
“Rodriguez.”
“There’s a thousand Rodriguezes. You have his accreditation number?”
“Yes — why?”
“We don’t want him doing a Vietnam on us. Not now— when we’re down.”
“I don’t see how we can stop him, Al. He’ll be hard to spot. I mean those hand-held videos these days are no bigger’n a Hershey bar.”
“Never mind,” said Banks. “You get MPs out after him now.” Banks had a faraway look in his eye. “I haven’t had a Hershey bar for—” He couldn’t remember since when. “And a Coke,” he said wistfully. “Not that goddamned flat shit they pump into paper cups. I mean a bottle. Glass. No friggin’ plastic. Just turning to ice — not quite. I mean, just about to.”
* * *
Depression was not unknown to Gen. Douglas Freeman, but it was rare. He was a believer in seeing the glass half-full, not half-empty. As a British commander of submarines had told him, in the end the best equipment could not stand up to the best morale. Witness the outmanned, outgunned Vietcong in the Vietnam War and the outnumbered “outradared” Nazi U-Boats in ‘44-’45. Nevertheless, Freeman’s habitual optimism, with which he imbued his troops, like the young Brentwood boy in Korea, was sorely tried when all Stealth overflight photos of the enemy prepo sites were presented to him as his mobile Humvee command post headed out for another sector of the front north of Munster.
As the machine-gun-mounted jeep bumped around the bomb-cratered road, Freeman found it difficult to focus the 3-D overlay on the latest aerial photos just taken within the last two hours. Perhaps, he told Col. Al Banks, there were the ubiquitous extra fuel drums on the Soviet tanks in the photos, but he couldn’t spot any. They had definitely been there in the photos from the earlier overflights.
He ordered the Humvee to stop, to look more closely and steadily at one of the T-90 turrets that the Stealth had picked up by infrared through the low ceiling of pea-soup stratus. “A lot of skirting around this turret, Al. Looks like some kind of spaced or reactive armor. Soon as one of our shells hits it — blows itself up. Most they get inside is a headache. But damned if I can see any extra fuel drums on the back. You have a look.”
“No, General, no fuel barrels I can see.”
“Goddamn it! Russkies always carry extra fuel. Two things you know about Russian armor is, those bastards break down sooner than ours and their materiel support isn’t anywhere as good as ours.”
Banks said nothing, and the general did not speak for several minutes, confirming to Banks just how worried his boss was. The general got out of the Humvee and, pulling his lamb’s-wool collar high about his neck, walked ahead, slapping his leg with his gloves. As he turned back to the truck, Banks slowly keeping pace behind him, the look of disgust he’d had when he’d gotten out was still there. “Damn it, Al! I just got through telling my field commanders — damn it, my whole strategy was based on telling our boys to pull back to defilade positions. Suck Ivan into thinking we’re turning tail-conserve our ammunition. Get those Commie sons of bitches overextended till their spare fuel drums are empty, then we go on the offensive. Hit ‘em with everything we’ve got.”
“I don’t understand, General. I thought you’d be pleased they’re not hauling extra fuel tanks. Limits their range.”
“I know, I know,” replied Freeman, his hand in the air irritably brushing Banks’s observation aside. “Gas drums are normally their most vulnerable spot. But in this fight they’ll outnumber us, Al. Four of their tanks to every one of ours. There are only so many you can stop like that — then the rest are all over you. No — what worries me is that no auxiliary gas tanks means they don’t need auxiliary tanks. Means they’ve got lots of gas, more than we thought, stashed in that prepo site south of Hannover.”
The general climbed back into the Humvee. “I’ve got to think of something else. Fast.” He was looking straight ahead, three other Humvees behind him and an armored car in front, but Al Banks was betting that what the general was really seeing was a map of the DB pocket.
There was a whoosh of air somewhere above them in the low cloud, followed by the chatter and rattle of machine guns.
“Holy—” began the Humvee driver, his voice drowned by the feral roar of an AA missile hitting an Apache gunship, the bug-nosed chopper momentarily visible in the orange ball of flame engulfing it. The Humvee driver put his foot down, swung the truck away from the deep pothole, and straightened it, oily smoke curling toward him. They hit the Humvee in front of them hard on its left rear fender and rolled.
By the time the men in the Humvees behind reached them down a steep embankment whose vegetation hid a drainage ditch, the driver was bleeding badly from multiple lacerations to the face. Al Banks was dead, his neck snapped, apparently in a swing blow from the barrel of the Humvee’s swivel.50 machine gun. Freeman was unconscious, his left arm looking as if it was broken.
“Watch it!” one of the soldiers cautioned. “Don’t move him.”
“Are you serious? I think he’s bought it,” answered another.
“General!” the sergeant was shouting, “General, can you hear me?”
“He’s dead,” said one.
“No he isn’t.”
“Close enough, Frank.”
“C’mon. Where’s that fucking medic?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Outside Kaesong, ROK
Major Tae jumped over the irrigation ditch, burst through the thinning smoke, his squad automatic weapon spewing flame, its tracer tattooing the NKA machine-gun position twenty yards from the ditch wall, the U.S. cavalryman giving him supporting fire, spraying the paddy to their right, the rice stalks trembling under the hail of the 7.62-millimeter bullets.
When Tae reached the machine-gun post, he saw it was abandoned, one NKA dead, the top of his skull blown off, the Soviet-made RPK 7.62 gone. Tae felt several spent casings. They were still hot, and he waved for the six-man squad from his Huey to advance.
“Where the hell have they gone?” asked the cavalryman, relieved but surprised. “Hot damn, those bastards can melt away onya!”
Tae saw one of the cavalrymen off to his left prod a dead NKA down by the irrigation channel.
“Don’t touch him,” cautioned Tae.
The cavalryman by Tae’s side was signaling the other sixty-odd troops behind him on the search-and-destroy mission. He turned to Tae. “They wouldn’t have had time to booby-trap their dead, Major.”
Tae was down on one knee, clipping a new magazine into his SAW, surveying the paddy field, wisps of cover smoke still obscuring his view.
“Where the hell have they gone?” repeated the cavalryman. “Underg
round?”
“Not unless they’ve got scuba suits,” said a sergeant, moving up to join Tae and the other cavalryman. “Nothing but flooded paddy out there.”
“They’re using reeds,” said Tae. “They wait till we pass.”
“Then we’ll go around it,” suggested the sergeant.
“They could’ve rigged sticks,” put in another, referring to the camouflaged pits of spikes so often set by the NKA.
“So what do we do, Major? Get our feet wet? Sitting ducks or do we risk ‘sticks’?”
The major ordered a fifty-fifty split, half the force — about thirty men — in a broken line to go across the paddy, the remaining thirty to sweep the flanks beyond the paddy, requesting an air strike ahead of them to clear.
Within ten minutes an F-4 Phantom came in low over the hills, strafing the bush area beyond the paddy a quarter mile away and dropping two napalm canisters, which turned the jade-green countryside to orange-black, leaving the once bushy area denuded. A swarm of insects had started to bother the men while they had been waiting, and several in the paddy pulled on head nets over their helmets before they moved forward, still tense but feeling better now that the air strike had pummeled the area before them.
The major was moving cautiously but was so far out front that one U.S. cavalryman dubbed the once shy major “Hound Dog.” Every one of them now knew the story of his daughter being raped before his eyes and sympathized with his obsession for vengeance on the NKA, but they weren’t keen to be part of it. Tae’s obsession was making him altogether too dangerous, in their eyes.
They slowed as they approached a second area, where they saw the remains of four NKA, one man’s limbs charcoal, two of the faces black jam already seething with insects. Tae was annoyed the napalm had burned off all unit patches or any other kind of identification that might have confirmed they were against one of the units led by Students for Reunification traitors like Jung-hyun.
