Retreat, Hell! tc-10

by W. E. B Griffin

  When the North Koreans' Russian-built T-34 tanks attacked, they were en­gaged by Task Force Smith's 75-mm recoilless rifles. The projectiles bounced off the Russian armor. So did the 2.36-inch rockets. So did the shells from the 105-mm howitzers.

  On the morning of 6July, Colonel Smith was able to muster only 248 officers and men of the original 400. The artillery had lost five officers and twenty-six men and most of its cannon.

  And they had managed to delay—not stop—the North Koreans for less than seven hours.

  More troops were going to be needed, and quickly. The problem was, there were no more troops.

  The Marine Corps was ordered to furnish a division. There were two Marine divisions: The First, in California, was at less than half wartime strength, and the Second, on the East Coast, was in even worse shape. At Headquarters, USMC, Major Drew J. Barrett, Jr. (Barrett was an infantryman who began his combat service with the Marines as a lieutenant on the beaches or Guadalcanal. "The Corps" is dedicated to his son, Second Lieutenant Drew J. Barrett III, UoMC, who was fatally wounded in Vietnam while serving with the 26th Marines, then in combat be­side the 9th Marines, which was commanded by his father. While commanding the 9th, Barrett chose a young officer to command one of its companies, making him the first black officer ever to command Marines in combat. In May 2003, as this book was being written, that officer, later Major General and Ambassador Gary Cooper, attended Colonel Barrett's funeral, at which Marines of the 1st Force Recon, m dress blues, rendered full military honors and Barrett's remains were covered with the National Col­ors he had flown at Khe Sanh.) a junior G-l staff officer, marched into the office of the Commandant of the Marine Corps to report that there was no way the Corps could meet the requirements laid on it by the Commander-in-Chief except by mo­bilizing the entire reserve. This was done.

  The Eighth Army, under General Walton H. "Johnny" Walker, who had served with distinction under Patton in Europe, began a series of delaying actions—in other words, retreated—down the Korean Peninsula.

  On 4 August, the Pusan Perimeter was established. This was a small enclave at the tip of the peninsula. The alternative to the perimeter was being pushed into the sea.

  Reinforcements began to arrive from Japan, Hawaii, and the continental United States. By gutting the 2nd Marine Division on the East Coast, the Marine Corps was able to form from the 1st Marine Division the First Marine Brigade (Provi­sional) and send it to Korea.

  General Walker immediately made the Marines his "Fire Brigade," moving it around within the perimeter to reinforce whatever Army units seemed most vul­nerable to the continuing North Korean attack.

  MacArthur, meanwhile—while there was still genuine doubt that Walker could hold the Pusan Perimeter—was planning a counterattack. He was later to claim he'd first thought of it when he'd made his first quick visit to Korea.

  It is a matter of record that MacArthur, in early July, had ordered his chief of staff, Major General Edward M. Almond, to plan for a landing on the west coast of the peninsula.

  When he finally revealed his plan—to make an amphibious landing at Inchon, the port near Seoul—it was greeted with reactions ranging from "grave doubts" to mutters of "absolute insanity" from just about every senior officer made privy to it.

  It was the worst possible place to stage an amphibious landing. There was a long list of things wrong with the plan, primarily the "landing beach" itself.

  To get to the "landing beach" the invasion fleet would have to navigate the nar­row Flying Fish Channel, which was not navigable except at high tide, and then only for two hours. When the thirty-plus-foot tides receded, the landing area was a sea of mud.

  There was no beach. Men would have to climb a seawall when they left their landing barges.

  Army Chief of Staff Collins sent General Matthew B. Ridgway, recognized as one of the brightest officers in the Army, to Tokyo to "confer" with MacArthur about the Inchon plan. Everyone understood that Ridgway's mission was to talk MacArthur out of his plan.

  He failed to do so.

  President Truman was faced with the choice of listening to the senior officers in the Pentagon, who wanted him to forbid the operation, or letting MacArthur have his way.

  Political considerations certainly influenced Truman to some degree. It was a given that if Truman supported the Pentagon and forbade the invasion, MacArthur would logically conclude that the President had no faith in him, and retire.

  If he did so quietly, fine. But that was unlikely. It was more likely that the "firing" ° of the legendary national hero would see MacArthur as the Republican can­didate in the upcoming presidential election.

  Whatever the reasons, Truman decided not to interfere with MacArthur's plan to invade at Inchon on 15 September.

  MacArthur gave command of the invasion force—X Corps—to Major General Ned Almond. He did not, however, relieve Almond of his assignment as his chief of staff. While this was perfectly legal, and certainly MacArthur's prerogative, the Pentagon establishment was outraged.

  Some of their rage, MacArthur's supporters claimed, was because they could not now give MacArthur a chief of staff who could be counted on to provide them a window into MacArthur's thinking.

  Eighth Army Commander Walker bitterly protested the loss of the Marines to X Corps. He said he could not guarantee holding the Pusan Perimeter without them. MacArthur was unmoved. The First Marine Brigade (Provisional) came off the lines in Pusan, boarded the ships of the invasion fleet, and en route to Inchon, reinforced at sea by a third regiment, became the 1st Marine Division.

  The invasion was a spectacular success.

  At 1200 29 September—two weeks after the landing—MacArthur stood in Seoul's National Assembly Hall and told South Korean President Syngman Rhee,

  ".. . On behalf of the United Nations Command, I am happy to restore to you, Mr. President, the seat of your government. ..."

  MacArthur then led the assembled dignitaries in recitation of the Lord's Prayer.

  The Eighth Army had broken out of the Pusan Perimeter. The North Korean Army was in full retreat.

  It was logical to presume that the Korean War was over.

  Chapter One

  [ONE]

  Near Chongju, South Korea

  0815 28 September 195O

  Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, whose appearance and physical condi­tion reflected that he had not had a change of clothing—much less the oppor­tunity to bathe with soap or shave—since he had been shot down fifty-eight days before sat between two enormous boulders near the crest of a hill.

  He thought—but was by no means sure—that he was about twenty miles north of Taejon and about thirty miles south of Suwon. Where he hoped he was, was in a remote area of South Korea where there were few North Ko­rean soldiers, lessening the chance that he would be spotted until he could at­tract the attention of an American airplane, and have someone come and pick him up.

  Those hopes were of course, after fifty-eight days, fading. Immediately after he had been shot down, there had been a flurry of search activity, but when they hadn't found him the activity had slowed down, and—logic forced him to ac­knowledge—finally ceased.

  He wasn't at all sure that anyone had seen any of the signs he left after the first one, the day after he'd been shot down. What he had done was stamp into the mud of a drained rice paddy with his boots the letters PP and an arrow. No one called him "Malcolm." He was called "Pick" and he knew that all the mem­bers of his squadron—and other Marine pilots—would make the connection.

  The arrow's direction was basically meaningless. If the arrow pointed north­ward, sometimes he went that way. More often than not, he went east, west, or south. He knew that he couldn't move far enough so that he wouldn't be able to see an airplane searching low and slow for him in the area of the sign left in the mud.

  He had left other markers every other—or every third—day since he'd been ·on the run. The fact that there had been Corsairs flying low over some of the
markers—logic forced him to acknowledge—was not proof that they had seen the markers. The Corsairs, when they were not in direct support of the Marines on the ground, went on combined reconnaissance and interdiction flights, which meant that they were flying close to the deck, not that they had seen his markers.

  It was too risky to stay in one place, so he had kept moving. He'd gotten his food—and an A-Frame to carry it in—from South Korean peasant farm­ers, who were anxious to help him, but made it clear they didn't want anyone to know—either the North Korean military or a local Communist—that they had done so. In either case, they would have been shot.

  He was, of course, discouraged. Logic forced him to acknowledge that sooner or later, he was going to be spotted by North Koreans, or by someone who would report him to the North Koreans. And if they found him, he would be forced to make a decision that was not at all pleasant to think about.

  It wasn't simply a question of becoming a prisoner, although that was an un­pleasant prospect in itself. Three times since he had been on the run he had come across bodies—once, more than thirty—of U.S. Army soldiers who, hav­ing been captured and after having their hands tied behind them with commo wire, had been summarily executed and left to rot where they had fallen.

  If the North Koreans spotted him, and he could not get away, he was going to die. Not with his hands tied behind his back, but very probably by his own hand, unless he was lucky enough to go down with .45 blazing, a la John Wayne. Logic forced him to acknowledge that was wishful thinking, that he couldn't take the risk of going out in a blaze of glory, that he would have to do it himself.

  Major Pickering's father was Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, USMCR, who was the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency for Asia. For obvious reasons, young Pickering could not allow himself to fall into North Ko­rean hands.

  It was sort of a moot question anyway. With only five rounds left for the .45, he couldn't put up much of a fight with two North Koreans, much less a platoon of the bastards, or a company.

  The hilltop was bathed in bright morning sunlight, the rays of which had finally warmed Major Pickering—it had been as cold as a witch's teat during the night—but had not yet warmed the ground fog in the valley below enough to burn it off.

  That meant that Major Pickering could not see what he was looking for, even through the 8x35 U.S. Navy binoculars he had somewhat whimsically— if, as it turned out, very fortuitously—"borrowed" from the USS Badoeng Strait just before taking off.

  The rice paddy in the valley where he had stamped out the last marker in the mud was covered with ground fog.

  He set the binoculars down and went into the bag tied to the A-Frame. There was what was left of a roasted chicken carcass and the roasted rib cage of a small pig. Surprising Major Pickering not at all, both were rotten to the point where trying to eat any of it would be gross folly.

  After thinking it over carefully, he decided he would bury the rotten meat before breakfast. He dug a small trench with a K-bar knife and did so, and then went back into the A-Frame bag and took from it three balls of cold rice. The smell they gave off was not appealing, but it was not nausea-inducing, and he popped them one at a time into his mouth and forced them down.

  That was the end of rations, which meant that he would have to get some food today. That meant tonight. What he would do was come off the hill, very carefully, and look for some Korean farmer's thatch-roofed stone hut. When he found one, he would keep it under surveillance all day and go to it after dark, entering it with .45 drawn and hoping there would be food offered, and that the farmer would not send someone to report the presence of an American the moment he left.

  So far, food had been offered and North Korean troops had not come looking for him at first light. So far, he had been lucky. Logic forced him to acknowledge that sooner or later everybody's luck changed, most often for the worse.

  When he drank from his canteen—he had two—he drained it, which meant that when he found a Korean farmer's house and more or less threw himself on their mercy, he would have to stick around long enough to boil water to take with him.

  He picked up the binoculars and trained them again on the rice paddy below. The fog had burned off somewhat in the area; he could see the dirt path—it didn't deserve to be called a road—leading to it, but not the rice paddy itself.

  "Oh, shit," he said aloud.

  Two vehicles were just visible on the path.

  They had to be North Koreans. It was entirely possible that these were the first two motorized vehicles ever to move down the path used by ox-drawn carts.

  "I'm losing my fucking mind," he said softly, but aloud.

  The two vehicles were a jeep and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. A large American flag was affixed to the tall antenna rising from the rear of the jeep.

  He took the binoculars from his eyes, then squinted his eyes and rolled them around, and then raised them again, hooking the eyepieces under the bone at his eye sockets.

  The jeep and the flag it had been flying . . .

  Jesus Christ, did I really see an American flag?

  . . . were no longer in sight in the ground fog, but the rear of the weapons carrier was visible.

  There were men holding rifles standing at the back of it, in what looked like U.S. Army uniforms—but he couldn't be sure—

  Jesus, they're gooks! What that is, is a captured weapons carrier, with gooks driving it.

  And they're right at the paddy when I stomped the signal in the mud!

  Jesus Christ, they're looking for me!

  How the hell did they know I was here?

  Well, if I have trouble seeing them with binoculars, they can't see me, and that s a hell of a distance away.

  In what direction did I point the arrow?

  South, I pointed it south! I'm north. Maybe they won't even look this way.

  And maybe they will.

  He took the binoculars from his eyes again and did the eye exercises, and then put the eyepieces back to his eyes.

  Another man was now standing at the back of the weapons carrier, a rifle slung from his shoulder. He was at least a foot taller than the others.

  Jesus, that's a big gook!

  Gook, shit, that's a white man!

  Look again. Don't do anything stupid!

  He exercised his eyes without removing the binoculars from his face.

  When he focused them again there was one more man at the back of the weapons carrier, not quite as tall as the first one but conspicuously larger than the Orientals.

  And white. That's a white man.

  Those are U.S. Army soldiers.

  Or maybe Russians? The Russians would love to grab a downed aviator. And if they are Russians, that would explain the jeep and the weapons carrier.

  Shit, those are Americans! I can tell, somehow, by the way they stand.

  So what do I do now?

  Signal them, obviously. There's no way I can get down this fucking hill in less than thirty minutes. It took me nearly an hour to climb up here.

  I could fire the . 45.

  If they could hear it, which I don't think very likely, they won't be able to tell from which direction the sound came.

  If I fire three shots—supposed to be the distress signal—that'll leave me two rounds. And if they can't hear the three shots, they won't be able to recognize the distress signal, and I'm down to two shots.

  The signaling mirror!

  Where the hell is that?

  Jesus, I didn't toss it, lose it, did I?

  A frantic search of the bag on the A-Frame turned up the signaling mirror. It was an oblong of polished metal, maybe three by four inches. There was an X-shaped cut in the center of it, presumably to be used as some sort of aiming device—he had never figured out how that worked—to reflect the rays of the sun, and the dots and dashes of the international Morse code were embossed on one side. He had never figured out how you were supposed to be able to send Morse code with the mir
ror, either.

  But the basic idea of the mirror, reflecting the rays of the sun to attract some­one's attention, seemed simple enough, and he tried to do that. He was quickly able to focus the reflected light on boulders farther down the hill, and, en­couraged by that, tried to direct the light all the way down the hill into the val­ley, to the rear of the weapons carrier.

  He couldn't see the light flashing anywhere in the valley.

  He put the binoculars to his eyes again with his left hand and tried to aim the mirror with his right.

  He couldn't see a flash of light that way either.

  But he saw the two tall guys, the two Americans, vanish from sight, and then the gooks with them . . .

  Who the hell are they?

  . . . crawled into the bed of the weapons carrier.

  And then the weapons carrier backed off the ox path into the edge of the rice paddy. The jeep reappeared . . .

  That is an American flag, goddamn it!

  . . and headed the other way down the ox path. The weapons carrier fol­lowed it.

  In a moment, they were out of sight.

  Jesus H. Fucking Christ!

  Major Pickering, close to tears, in a frustrated rage, threw the signaling mirror down the hill.

  He lay on his back between the rocks for a full minute, and then heaved himself erect.

  Then he went down the hill and started looking for the mirror.

  [TWO]

  The jeep—its bumper markings identified it as belonging to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 7th Infantry Division—had a pedestal-mounted .30-caliber Browning air-cooled machine gun, and the backseat had been replaced with a rack of radios.

  There were three men in it, two Americans and a South Korean. One of the Americans was Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, a lithely muscular, even-featured, fair-skinned thirty-year-old. He was driving. The other American was Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC—a stocky, round faced, tightly muscled, short, barrel-chested thirty-five-year-old. Zimmerman rode with his right foot resting on the fender extension, the butt of a Thompson .45-ACP-caliber submachine gun resting on his muscular upper leg.