Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  The lighthouse keeper that Kim had talked about had not been on Tokchok-kundo when McCoy and Taylor arrived, so to get it up and running the way it should be was out of the question, but there was plenty of diesel fuel available, and diesel fuel burns.

  Captain McCoy called an Officers’ Call of his staff. It convened in the captain’s cabin of the Wind of Good Fortune. Present were Lieutenant Taylor, Captain Hart, and Master Gunner Zimmerman.

  “I have reason to believe the North Koreans may come into port tonight, probably just before dark,” McCoy began.

  “Where’d you get that, Killer?” Zimmerman asked, curiously.

  My worst-thing-at-the-worst-time theory, Ernie.

  “I thought you knew, Mr. Zimmerman,” McCoy said. “God tells me things.”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ, McCoy!” Taylor said, half in disgust, half laughing.

  “And there have been two changes of plan,” McCoy said. “The first is that if they do come in, we’re going to have to kill everybody on board, or sink the launch, preferably both.”

  “Not just run them off, to come back and play later?” Taylor asked.

  “The minute they come in the harbor, they’re going to see the boat,” McCoy said. “So the first thing we shoot on the boat is wherever the radio is likely to be, and anybody who looks like he has a microphone.”

  “Why are they going to see the boat?” Hart asked.

  “Because the camouflage will be off it.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because you and me, Hart, the moment we finish with the NKs, are going to go to the lighthouse. Maybe, just maybe, if that’s lit up in the wee hours of the morning, they won’t lay naval gunfire on the islands.”

  “No, you’re not,” Zimmerman said.

  “What did you say, Mr. Zimmerman?” McCoy snapped icily.

  “Hart and me’ll go to the lighthouse,” Zimmerman said. “We’ll take two of the guys with us.” He paused, then went on: “Who do you want to be here if the general gets on the radio?” Zimmerman said. “You or me?”

  “Taylor will be here.”

  “He’s right, Ken,” Taylor said. “You can’t leave here. But I don’t think Ernie should, either. Hart and I can handle the lighthouse if you give us two men, and Ernie can work the radio.”

  “For what it’s worth, I vote with the Navy,” Hart said. “I’m a little uncomfortable with the idea of Killer steering me around in the boat in the dark.”

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “That’s settled. We just had a vote.”

  “A vote?” McCoy said. “What does this look like, Congress? ”

  “What I’d like to know, Ken,” Taylor said, ignoring him, “is how you can be so sure the NKs are going to suddenly show up.”

  “I’ve got a gut feeling,” McCoy admitted. “That’s all.”

  “That’s good enough for me, Killer,” Zimmerman said, matter-of-factly. “I will go alert the troops to prepare to repel boarders.”

  He got up and walked out of the cabin.

  Hart and McCoy looked at each other.

  “You stick by the radio, George,” McCoy ordered. “Tell Kim to turn the engine on and leave it running. Maybe, with a little luck, we’ll hear from the general, and none of this John Wayne business will be necessary.”

  Hart nodded, and then said,

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The John Wayne business proved to be necessary. Twenty minutes later, as Technical Sergeant Jennings was hauling the camouflage netting off the boat, the lookout posted on the end of the wharf suddenly started to run down the wharf toward the shore.

  Jennings waved at him to stay where he was, and after another half-dozen steps, the lookout jumped to one side of the wharf and concealed himself in the rocks.

  Jennings dropped the camouflage net and jumped ashore, and, bent double, ran into the alley between the closest two houses. He ran behind the houses until he came to the one where he thought Captain McCoy would be.

  He wasn’t.

  He ran to the next house.

  McCoy was there, taking up the squatting firing position with his Garand as if he were on the range at Camp LeJeune.

  “Captain!”

  “I see them, Jennings,” McCoy said.

  Jennings looked through the window, and for the first time saw the boat, and the North Korean soldiers in their cotton uniforms manning what looked like an air-cooled .50 on her bow.

  The partially uncovered boat caught their attention, and they fired a short burst at it.

  “Shit,” McCoy said. “I was hoping they’d try to capture it intact!”

  Then his Garand went off, and then again, and then again, and Jennings saw the two Koreans on the machine gun fall, one backward, as if something had pushed him, and the other just collapse straight downward.

  “If you remember how to use that rifle, Sergeant,” McCoy said, “now would be a good time.”

  [TWO]

  ABOARD LST-450 37 DEGREES 11 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 125 DEGREES 58 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 1615 13 SEPTEMBER 1950

  LST-450 was now bobbling in a wide circle in the Yellow Sea about fifty miles off the lighthouse marking the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel. She was alone, in the sense that she was not escorted by—under the protection of—a destroyer or any other kind of warship, but there had always been some sort of aircraft more or less overhead since she had sailed from Sasebo, and the farther north they had moved, there seemed to be more ships just visible on all sides of her.

  Not a convoy, Captain Howard Dunwood, USMCR, had reasoned, although there certainly was a convoy out there someplace, surrounded by men-of-war. What he was looking at were ships of the invasion fleet who someone had judged did not need protection as much as some other ships—an LST was not as valuable as an aircraft carrier or an assault transport, obviously—and had been placed, for the time being, far enough from where the action was likely to occur to keep them reasonably safe.

  After reviewing with his men for the umpteenth time the role Baker Company was to play in the Inchon invasion, Dunwood turned them over to the first sergeant and went to the bridge. He would have a cup of coffee with the captain before the evening meal was called.

  The major sent to Sasebo from Division G-3 had been— as Dunwood expected he would be—a bullshitter, but the more Dunwood thought about what Baker Company was going to be expected to do, the more he came to believe the major had been right about one thing. Baker Company’s role in the invasion was going to be critical.

  You just can’t sail large unarmored vessels slowly past artillery, and that’s exactly what was going to happen unless Baker Company could (a) seize the islands, and (b) hold them against counterattack long enough for the Navy to get some cruisers and destroyers down the channel past them.

  And the more often Baker Company rehearsed its role, the more Dunwood was sure that Division G-3 had come up with a pretty good plan to do what had to be done, and that the plan—now changed by what they’d learned in rehearsal—was now as good as it was going to get.

  What was going to happen now was that during the hours of darkness—probably meaning as soon as it really got dark—LST-450 would end its circling and move to a position just off the lighthouse marking the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel.

  There, it would rendezvous with five Higgins boats put into the water from the USS Pickaway (APA-222).

  Starting at 0330 the next morning—14 September—after they had had their breakfast, Company B would begin to transfer from LST-450 to the Higgins boats. There would be twenty men and one officer on three of the boats, and twenty men under the first sergeant on the fourth, and twenty men under a gunnery sergeant on the fifth.

  The naval gunfire directed at the channel islands would begin at 0400 and end at 0430. As soon as it lifted, the Higgins boats would enter the Flying Fish Channel, move down it, and occupy, first, Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do Islands, and then, depending on the situation, other islands in the immediate vicinity.


  They would then establish positions from which they could defend the islands from enemy counterattack. That was the plan.

  What Captain Dunwood privately believed would happen was that when the Higgins boats appeared off Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, North Korean troops would come up from the underground positions in which they had been—successfully—shielding themselves from the naval gunfire, unlimber their machine guns, and fire upon the Higgins boats approaching their shores.

  Captain Dunwood’s experience had been that light machine guns (the Japanese rough equivalent of the U.S. .30 caliber) would sometimes penetrate the sides of a Higgins boat and that heavy machine guns (the Japanese rough equivalent of the U.S. .50 caliber) almost always would do so.

  With the result that if the projectiles did not immediately encounter a body inside the boat, they would often ricochet around the interior until they did.

  To take his mind off that unpleasant probability for himself and his men, Captain Dunwood called to mind again the face of that candy-ass “Marine” captain who’d dislocated his finger, and was at that very moment probably having a predinner cocktail with his wife, the general’s daughter, in the O Club at Sasebo. The sonofabitch had probably heard there were some real Marines on the base and been smart enough to make himself scarce while they were there.

  Lieutenant John X. McNear, USNR, waved Dunwood onto the bridge.

  “My orders are pretty open,” McNear volunteered. “ ‘The hours of darkness’ is a pretty vague term. I was thinking I’d wait until about 2100 and then start edging over.”

  “I was wondering,” Dunwood said, as he helped himself to coffee.

  “I’m supposed to check in with ComNavForce—the Mount McKinley—when I leave here. I expect that I’d hear from them soon enough if they thought I should have left earlier.”

  “I’m sure you would,” Dunwood replied.

  “Bridge, Radio,” the intercom metallically announced.

  McNear pressed the lever beside his chair.

  “Go, Sparks,” he said.

  "Skipper, I’m getting an Urgent from ComNavForce.”

  “Well, then, when you have it typed up and logged in, why don’t you bring it to the bridge?” McNear said, and turned to Dunwood. “See, I told you.”

  Two minutes later, the radio operator, a nineteen-year-old in blue dungarees, came onto the bridge and handed McNear a sheet of typewriter paper.

  McNear read it and handed it to Dunwood.

  SECRET

  URGENT

  1530 13 SEP 1950 FROM COMNAVFORCE

  TO LST-450

  REFERENCE OPS ORDER 12-222

  PARA III B 6. IS CHANGED TO READ AS FOLLOWS:

  LST-450 WILL DROP ANCHOR AT POSITION 23-23 NLT 0400 15 SEPTEMBER 1950 AND RENDEZVOUS WITH LANDING CRAFT FROM USS PICKAWAY.

  REMAINER OF ORIGINAL PARA III B 6 IS DELETED AS IS ALL OF PARA III B-7.

  FURTHER AMENDMENTS TO FOLLOW.

  END

  SECRET

  “What’s it mean?” Captain Dunwood asked.

  “You saw where it said the fifteenth?” McNear asked. Dunwood nodded.

  “It used to read the fourteenth, tomorrow morning,” McNear said. “For reasons ComNavFor has not chosen to share with me, it means he has changed his mind. Or MacArthur himself has. Specifically, it means we don’t have to go to the mouth of the Flying Fish Channel until the day after tomorrow, and when we get there, you don’t have to get in the Higgins boats—that we just sit there until they make up their minds what to do with us,” the captain said.

  [THREE]

  ABOARD LST-450 37 DEGREES 36 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 53 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 0320 15 SEPTEMBER 1950

  As oceangoing vessels go, LSTs are not very large, and LST-450 was moving at steerage speed, so ordinarily she would not be thought to be posing much of a threat to other vessels operating in the vicinity of the mouth of the Flying Fish Channel.

  However, to the coxswain of one of the five Higgins boats bobbing in the water, the bulk of the LST approaching them, even barely moving, was a bit disturbing.

  “Fuck him,” the twenty-one-year-old coxswain of the nearest boat said to no one in particular, and then took action that he considered to be necessary and of paramount importance to the safety of his vessel and crew.

  He took a powerful searchlight from its compartment, turned it on, and shined it directly at the bridge of LST-450.

  “We’re dead ahead of you, you dumb fuck!” the coxswain said. “See us now?”

  On the bridge of LST-450, the sudden very bright light coming out of the blackness literally blinded the master, the helmsman, and Captain Howard Dunwood, USMCR.

  “Full astern!” Captain McNear ordered. “Keep your eyes closed until that fucking light goes out! Where the fuck were the lookouts?”

  “What the hell was that?” Captain Dunwood asked, his eyes tightly closed. He now saw an almost painful red ball, which took a long time to fade, even after the white light went out.

  “I think we were just about to run over the Higgins boats,” McNear said.

  In the next few minutes, it became apparent to Captain McNear that he had two choices regarding maintaining his position—three, if dropping anchor was included, something he did not want to do under any circumstances. One was to put his ship into reverse and try to hold it against the heavy tide now moving northward into the Flying Fish Channel. Backing any vessel is difficult, and backing an LST is very difficult. He elected his other option.

  He went to his flying bridge and picked up the bullhorn.

  “Ahoy, the Higgins boats, I am about to turn 180, into the current.”

  There was no reply.

  “Anybody out there?” Captain McNear called over the bullhorn.

  “We heard you, Captain,” a voice unaided by a bullhorn replied, faintly, but audibly.

  “Bring her around 180 to port,” McNear ordered, as he went back on the bridge, and himself took over the controls to quickly turn his ship around.

  “Hey, look at that!” Captain Dunwood called in surprise.

  “Not now, for Christ’s sake, Howard!” McNear said, angrily, disgustedly.

  Captain Dunwood, more than a little embarrassed, fell silent, and then after a moment left the bridge and stood on the flying bridge.

  And then, Captain McNear, as the bow of his ship finished its turn, said exactly the same thing Captain Dunwood had said.

  "Hey, look at that!”

  All along a quarter of the horizon, to port from dead ahead of LST-450, there were white flashes, immediately followed by fiery red glows. Ships—and in some cases, their naval cannon—appeared momentarily in the blackness, and then a moment later, the sound of projectiles passing overhead became continuous.

  He turned to see Captain Dunwood’s reaction. Dunwood was nowhere in sight.

  Goddamn, now what? Did he fall overboard? Did I collide with one of those fucking Higgins boats?

  “Take the wheel,” McNair ordered. “Hold what we have!”

  “Hold what we have, aye, aye, sir,” the helmsman said.

  McNear found Dunwood leaning on the aft rail of the flying bridge, looking down the Flying Fish Channel.

  “Howard, I guess the naval gunfire has commenced,” McNear said, dryly.

  “Yeah,” Dunwood said. But then he added what he had been thinking—this was not the first time he’d heard naval gunfire passing overhead—“but it’s not landing on my islands. It’s landing way the hell and gone down the channel.”

  “Yeah,” McNear agreed thoughtfully.

  “And that light over there, the fire, whatever. What’s that?” Dunwood asked, pointing.

  McNear looked.

  “Unless I’m a hell of a lot more lost than I think I am, that’s the lighthouse that was supposed to be leveled yesterday by that massive naval gunfire barrage we heard so much about that didn’t come until just now.”

  “I thought lighthouse lights went, you know, on and off,
” Captain Dunwood said.

  “They rotate,” Captain McNear said. “That one’s not rotating. But that’s the lighthouse. Come back inside, Howard, I may need you.”

  Three minutes later as LST-450’s chief boatswain (actually a petty officer second class) reported to Captain McNair that the Higgins boats were tied alongside, and McNair had been debating with himself whether he should make another 180-degree turn so that he would be pointed down the Flying Fish Channel again, the radio operator came onto the bridge with a new Urgent Message from ComNavFor.

  McNair read it and handed it to Dunwood.

  SECRET

  URGENT

  0335 13 SEP 1950

  FROM COMNAVFORCE

  TO LST-450

  ON RECEIPT YOU WILL IMMEDIATELY DEPLOY FROM USMC LANDING TEAM ABOARD AND LANDING CRAFT ATTACHED AS FOLLOWS:ONE HIGGINS BOAT WITH MARINES ABOARD TO FLYING FISH CHANNEL LIGHTHOUSE PURPOSE OF GARRISONING ISLAND, MAINTAINING EXISTING LIGHTHOUSE FIRE UNTIL DAYLIGHT, AND EVACUATING USMC PERSONNEL PRESENTLY HOLDING LIGHTHOUSE.

  TWO HIGGINS BOATS WITH MARINES ABOARD TO TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND PURPOSE OF GARRISONING ISLAND, AND EVACUATING USMC PERSONNEL PRESENTLY HOLDING ISLAND.

  USMC PERSONNEL EVACUATED WILL BE TRANSPORTED TO USS MOUNT MCKINLEY.

  COMNAV FORCE WILL BE ADVISED MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS OF DEPARTURE OR LANDING CRAFT; LANDINGS ON LIGHTHOUSE AND TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND, AND ETA EVACUEES MOUNT MCKINLEY.

  END

  SECRET

  “What the hell is this all about?” Dunwood asked.

  “Howard, I haven’t a clue,” Captain McNair confessed. “But it looks like somebody beat you to those islands.”

  Dunwood considered that.

  “Yeah,” he said, finally. “Maybe all we were was a backup force, in case something went wrong.”

  “Could be,” McNair agreed.

  They could have told us that, the sonsofbitches, Captain Dunwood thought, instead of giving us the whole-invasion -depends-on-you-grabbing-those-islands bullshit.

  Goddamn the Marine Corps!

  Dunwood felt a little better after he told his Marines about the change of orders. After he went through the “Any questions? Anything?” business, Staff Sergeant Schmidt raised his hand.