The Run to Gitche Gumee

by Robert F. Jones

  “Luke, you better start pitching grenades!”

  He heard the spang of the spoon popping free and Luke’s long arm lashed past the corner of his eye. The grenade blew the first wave flat. More grenades followed. Steam rose from the barrel of the BAR. Ben spat on it while he was reloading. The spit exploded before it hit the steel.

  Chinese potato mashers whirled their way, trailing tails of blazing cloth from their wooden handles. Luke caught one in midair and flung it back. Another fell between them. They rolled away from it and the blast hammered Ben’s eardrums. A concussion grenade. He felt woozy, like he’d been coldcocked by Jersey Joe Walcott.

  Two Chinamen vaulted the retaining wall. Then three more. One of them stuck a bayonet into Luke’s shoulder. He lay there unconscious from the grenade blast and didn’t even wince when the steel slid in. A Chinese officer with a burp gun stood on the wall, staring down at Ben. Ben stared back. A police whistle dangled from a leather thong around the officer’s neck. A gust of wind made the pea in the whistle rattle tinnily. The Chinaman smiled at Ben and said, “Nobody lives forever.” He spoke perfect English. He shot Ben twice, bup-bup, in the chest.

  When he woke up, Ben wondered if he was dead and this the beginning of an afterlife he didn’t believe in anymore. He felt of his chest where the Chinese bullets had hit him. It was sore as hell but he couldn’t feel any blood. There were holes in the parka but not a trace of red on his palm. He unzipped his parka and field jacket, pulled the OD wool sweater up to his clavicle, unbuttoned his heavy wool shirt, and found the two burp gun bullets lodged against his longjohns. No wonder their gunpowder smelled like burnt hair. It had no oomph.

  Or had the Buddha saved him? Ben looked up at the statue. Its smug, peaceful smile seemed to affirm salvation.

  Luke was gone. So was the BAR, Luke’s M1, and the bag of grenades. Luke wouldn’t have taken off on his own, leaving Ben behind. The Chinese must have him. Ben looked over the parapet. Dead silence. Bodies littered the slope, hundreds of them it looked like. It was quiet out there except for the moans of the wounded and the whisper of night wind. Quiet on top, too. No Marine voices barking orders or whoops of exultation at having repelled the Red Menace once again.

  Ben stood up. His legs were wobbly but he could hear again. He had a hell of a headache and every time he took a deep breath his ribs grated high in his chest. He walked through the lopsided moonlight to the top of the ridge. Marine bodies lay in their foxholes and at first he thought the men were sleeping. They were dead. Arbogast, Fleming, little Rojas from West Texas huddled over his machine gun as if in prayer, Cotwinkle’s guts ripped open and his left arm lying ten feet away to the west, blown there by a mortar blast. The fingers were locked in the crusted snow as if the arm were trying to drag itself back to its rightful shoulder. Ben was looking for Doc Magnuson, or at least Doc’s B-1 bag. The medical kit might have some aspirin in it. Maybe those big yellow pills laced with codeine. But he couldn’t find the corpsman or his kit. Nor could he find Sergeant Stingley’s body. They must have pulled out, back down the reverse slope, when the Chinese overran the position. Along with the rest of the survivors. There weren’t enough jar-head bodies up here to spell Little Big Horn.

  Ben searched among the dead Marines for a weapon. The enemy would be out there in the night. All over the mountain-top. He could hear Chinese voices on the road that led to Hagaru. They were headed down through Toktong Pass toward the reservoir.

  The Chinese had taken most of the weapons, but in a foxhole over at the far western end of the perimeter he found an M1 pinned under the body of a marine from How Company. The jarhead was already stiff and Ben’s head whirled as he stooped over to pry the rifle loose from its owner’s grip. The clip had only one round left in it but he found a full bandoleer behind the foxhole. He reloaded, draped the bandoleer over his shoulders, and walked away.

  There was nothing more he could do here.

  Ben stayed to the shadows wherever he could. There were Chinese everywhere. He could hear their voices, singsong and far-carrying in the moonlight. The breechblock of the M1 was frozen and he thawed it with his breath, worked it a few times and replaced the eight-round clip, then carried the rifle with his gloved palm wrapped around the receiver. He’d taken a .45 pistol from Rojas and tucked it into the waistband of his windproof trousers. The spare magazines for the Colt he carried in his pants pockets to warm them. Frozen springs don’t feed bullets when you need them.

  He was trying to make his way to Hagaru, navigating by the North Star. There was sporadic firing off to the southeast and he recognized the slow heavy chug of an air-cooled .50 caliber machine gun. Chinese burp guns chattered like firecrackers. The Fifth Marines were down there, guarding Toktong Pass, probably surrounded by now like his outfit had been. Topping a ridge, he found himself looking down at the western shore of the reservoir. Where the wind had blown the snow clear, the ice shone black in the moonlight. He saw hootches along the shores of an inlet. No lights in the windows, no smoke rose from their roofs. Abandoned. If he could get down to them, he could hide out until morning. With sunrise the Corsairs would be prowling the skies and the Chinese would be hidden in the hills. Maybe he could make his way across the ice to Hagaru and 1st MarDiv headquarters.

  He started down the slope toward the hootches but then thought better of it. The ground between here and the huts was open, treeless. In this moonlight, he thought, some Chink would certainly see him. Off to his right a ravine choked with shrubs and stubby pines snaked its way down to the reservoir. He hit for it, running hard in a low painful crouch. His headache was fading but his ribs still hurt where the bullets smacked them. From the grating sounds they made, they were probably cracked. He slipped into the shadows of the pines and sat down in the snow, catching his breath.

  A small stream had cut the ravine but it was frozen solid. He was thirsty now, his mouth tasted of stale gunpowder, and he walked down the ravine hoping to find an open riffle where the fast water refused to freeze. It was eerie in there in the pine-scrub. The moon cast shifting shadows on the snow and he stopped often, looking for human movement. Ahead of him, where the ground fell away even more steeply, he heard water lapping. Must be a small waterfall. He moved toward it, but the closer he got, the odder it sounded. An even, rhythmic, steady sound, like a thirsty dog lapping water from a bowl. He stopped again and searched the shadows.

  Something twitched down there. Something long and sinuous. And furry. It was a tail. It was striped. Then the lapping sound stopped and a huge white boulder, striated in moonshadows, raised up from the edge of the streambed and turned his way. The yellow eyes locked on his. The eyes were a handspan apart. His blood froze. For a long long moment they stared at each other. Then the tiger turned away and like smoke he was gone. Ben’s blood started flowing again.

  He walked down to the riffle and knelt in the tiger’s paw prints. His kneecaps didn’t quite fill them. He drank the racing water, ice cold. Then he backtracked the cat up the side of the ravine. Near the top he found what he’d hoped for, a fresh-killed red deer. He’d eaten nothing since morning. The tiger had consumed the deer’s guts and most of one haunch but there was plenty of meat left.

  With his K-Bar he skinned out the backstraps. He looked around. He was well concealed. He could risk a fire. He broke off a handful of dead twigs, gathered some pine cones for kindling, and kicked a clear spot in the snow. One flick of the Zippo and the fire was going. He skewered a slab of deer meat on the point of the knife and sat back, the rifle across his lap, while the meat seared. Fat dripped and sizzled in the flames. When the meat was half done, he wolfed it down, burning the roof of his mouth. The pain was worth it. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

  The meal warmed him inside and out but he knew he’d soon be cold again. He had no sleeping bag. He debated his moves. It was cozy in the ravine, away from the wind. He was getting drowsy. Should he wait out the night here and freeze his ass off or push on down to the hootches . . .


  The edge of a knife pressed against his throat.

  A voice hissed in his ear—“You die, Maliner!”

  Oh, Fuck! A Chink! Ben rolled away and grabbed for the M1.

  Then the voice continued in a lower register. “Cool it, pogue. I taught you better than this in boot camp.”

  It was Stingley. He sheathed his K-Bar.

  “Goddamit, Slater. I could smell that meat cooking halfway down the mountain.” He stomped out the flames and kicked snow over the coals.

  They headed downhill through the pines. Snow squeaked underfoot. A dozen Marines waited in a side gully. They were huddled together to share the warmth of their bodies. Sergeant Stingley slung the deer haunch to them. “Chow down, you pogues, before the meat’s froze solid,” he said.

  “But Sergeant, it’s raw!”

  “Oh, is it? Good. Maybe it’ll put some hair on your chest.”

  When the men had eaten, Stingley divided the remains of the meat among them. “Okay, saddle up,” he said. “I reckon it’s about ten or twelve miles to the Hagaru perimeter. But it’s all downhill so the going should be easy.” He turned to Ben. “Slater, you take the point.”

  Twice on the way down the ravine Ben heard Chinese patrols moving through the snow, big groups of men. Grenades rattled on their belts. They were close enough for him to smell them. The Marines lay flat and waited until the patrols had passed, then continued their way down the mountain.

  They came to the end of the pines. Ahead the ground was open, bright in the moonlight. They could hear bugles and sporadic bursts of gunfire coming from Hagaru, the chugging blasts of Chinese grenades and the louder slam of 4.2-inch mortars replying. Illumination flares drifted down and columns of smoke rose from the scruffy little hamlet. The Chinese were hammering the place with all they had, wave after wave of them. They had plenty of troops to waste.

  “How the hell do we get in there without being killed,” somebody asked, “either by the Chinks or our own guys?”

  “Who’s got binoculars?” Stingley asked. A corporal from a How Company mortar crew produced a pair. Stingley scoped the scene. He fiddled with the focus. By the light reflected from the snow Ben saw that Stingley’s chin was bearded in dried blood. His left eye looked swollen shut. “Goddamit, I can’t see worth shit anymore,” he said. “Here, Slater, you take a peek.”

  “What am I looking for, Sergeant?”

  “The place where the gook lines are thinnest. They won’t be looking behind them. If we can sneak up close and open fire, we’ll have a chance of busting through.”

  Ben took the binoculars and scanned the Chinese lines. There seemed to be what looked like a command post behind them, a knot of officers in knee-high fur-lined boots carrying maps. He watched them for a moment as they dispatched runners to the front. Then his eye was caught by a group of men in Marine green field jackets, about twenty of them, maybe two dozen. They were squatting or lying in the snow, most of them, guarded by half a dozen Chinese with burp guns. Prisoners! He focused on their faces and saw Luke Darwin among them, lying among the wounded.

  “They’ve got a bunch of Marines down there, Sergeant. Right next to what looks like the Chink CP.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Fuckin’ A—I mean, yes sir. Luke Darwin’s one of them.”

  “Let me see.” Ben handed him the binoculars and pointed out the spot as best he could. Stingley looked for a long time.

  “You’re right.” He handed the binoculars back to the mortarman. “That changes our priorities. Okay, here’s the plan . . . .”

  The Chinese command post was behind a low hill that rose like a crusted scab on the southwest flank of Hagaru. On their map it was designated East Hill. Gullies trailed off the knob, draining toward the Changjin River, which flowed into the reservoir just north of town. Stingley’s men—about squad strength and armed only with rifles, grenades, and two BARs—bellycrawled across the snow to the nearest gully, taking advantage of the rolling terrain to keep out of sight. It took what was left of the night, and the sky to the east was brightening to dull gray by the time they were in position. It was 0500 by Stingley’s watch. East Hill lay three hundred yards to their south, the command post perhaps a hundred yards closer. Easy killing range for Marine marksmen armed with M1s and .30 caliber automatic rifles. And all of them were marksmen. You didn’t get out of boot camp until you’d qualified.

  “Make sure your actions aren’t froze,” Stingley told them. “We’re going to pick off as many Chink officers as we can. Rapid fire but accurate. Slater—you, Talia, and Holt are going to move up the gully till you’re almost on top of those guards with the burp guns. Kill ’em all. Kill ’em quick. Kill ’em dead. Then spring the prisoners. Bring ’em back down the gully, fast. We won’t open fire till we hear your shots. Don’t worry about a thing. When all the Chink brass is dead we’ll be covering your ass. Grab any weapons you can lay your hands on, grab ammo too. With those extra Marines we’ll be about platoon strength and if they’re all well armed, we should be able to fight our way to the top of that fuckin’ hill. We’ll hold out up there until help comes from town.”

  “Our guys must have that hilltop registered by now, Sergeant,” the mortarman said. “What if they take us for Chinks?”

  “Let’s worry about that when we get there,” Stingley told him. “Anyways, it’s better to be killed by Marines than by these rat-fuckin’ commie bastards.”

  Ben and the others bellycrawled up the gully. Talia was a big-shouldered, hawk-eyed Croat from northern California, a retread who’d served with the Old Breed—the Fifth Marines—on Peleliu and Okinawa during World War II. He was a CPA in the real world, but he hadn’t lost his military skills. During the fight at the pass, Ben had seen him kill a Chinese sniper at nearly half a mile, and with iron sights at that. Holt was a tall, cool, lanky PFC from Chicago, a goof-off in most respects but a serious Bears fan. On the cruise from Inchon to Wonsan he and Ben had nearly duked it out one afternoon during an Armed Forces Radio broadcast of a Bears-Packers game. Green Bay had just scored on a forty-yard TD pass and Ben was inspired enough to exult out loud. But when Holt, his face gone red then white with outrage, clenched a fist and threatened to come across the messdeck table, Luke Darwin had told him to cool-breeze it. “Save that shit for the gooks, man.” Ben hoped he’d saved some.

  Near the top of the gully Ben signaled the others to wait and crawled to the lip of the berm. He took off his helmet before peering over. Then he slid back down. “Okay,” he told Talia and Holt, “the guards are in pairs, two men to the right, two to the left, and the others on the far side of the prisoners. Holt, you take the left-hand pair, Talia the ones on the right. I’ll pop the far pair, then run in there and roust those jarheads. The healthy ones can carry the wounded and whatever weapons and ammo we can find. You two cover us. With all this gunfire going on, maybe the other Chinks won’t pick up on us right away.” He looked from one to the other. “Questions?” They shook their heads.

  “Okay, lock and load.”

  Bellydown behind the berm, they laid their sights. “On three,” Ben whispered. “One, two, three . . . .” The M1s banged in unison, two quick shots each. The guards were down in their tracks. Ben slipped over the top and ran toward the Marines. They gaped at him, wide-eyed.

  “Drop your cocks and grab your socks, jarheads, we’re getting out of here. Grab those burp guns and ammo belts, whatever grenades you can find too. Everyone not carrying a weapon, help some of these wounded guys. We’ll rally at the bottom of the draw. Down there.” He pointed the way.

  Then he ran over to Luke, who stared at him with a wide grin. “Fancy meeting you here, dude.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Yeah, but slow.”

  No counterfire yet. Ben could hear Stingley’s men shooting and saw that most of the Chinese officers were down. A few Chinese in white quilts were running lumpily from the front line, their feet wrapped in burlap, babbling and firing occasional bursts in their direct
ion.

  “Here, hook your arm around my neck.”

  They made it to the gully just as a machine gun opened up. Bullets spanged the frozen ground, throwing shards of permafrost that stung like shrapnel. Ben felt blood running down into his eyebrows. He brushed it away. Can’t let it get in my eyes. Not now when every round counts.

  He felt Luke flinch and stagger beside him, the arm around Ben’s neck clenched tight. He looked over. Luke’s eyes were glazing.

  “You hit?”

  “Just a stitch in the side,” Luke said.

  His knees buckled. Ben saw blood darkening Luke’s field jacket just above the kidney.

  Ben stooped and swept him up in a one-armed fireman’s carry. The bastard was heavy. Carrying the M1 in one hand, Luke with the other, he staggered back to where Stingley was waiting.

  “You got ’em all?”

  “We’re the last ones,” Ben said. “But Darwin’s hit too hard to go up any hill. He caught a round from that m.g. right when we dropped in the gully.”

  “That’s okay,” Stingley said. “Change of plans. No way we can get through those gooks now that we stirred ’em up. We’re going back down the gulch, then up into the pines again and wait. Maybe the Chinks will pull back to cover when the airdales get here. Then we can march into Hagaru unopposed.”

  Stingley looked around at the freed Marines. “Any of you guys a corpsman?”

  A grizzled old guy stepped forward. “I’m Morgan, Pharmacist’s Mate One,” he said. “The Chinks took my B-1 kit, but I hid some sulfa and a few morphine ampules.”

  “Check this Marine, Doc.”

  A squad of Chinese charged the gully, most of them carrying nothing but grenades. But the rifles and BARs stopped them out of throwing range.

  “They’re testing our firepower,” Stingley said. “Next time they’ll send a whole lot more Chinamen. We’ve got to mount up, boys, and run for it. Right quick now.”

  Morgan stood up from beside Luke and stepped over to Stingley. “It’s through and through,” he said. “It may have nicked a kidney. No way I can stop the bleeding for long without at least a yard of gauze.”