Korean Winter

by Griff Hosker

  Behind me, I heard the American Regimental Sergeant Major shout, “Prepare to fire but wait for my command!”

  Lofting shook his head, “And I thought Sergeant Major Thorpe was terrifying!”

  Ashcroft laughed, “The Sarn’t Major is a pussycat! Isn’t that right, sir?”

  “Let’s just say that I would not like to prove the point. Cock your weapons and aim them but don’t fire.”

  The Chinese also had artillery but it was made up of lighter pieces. Someone must have been spotting for the American artillery for as the two tanks reached our lines the 155 mm began to fire in salvos. When the Chinese guns ceased firing, we knew who had won the battle of the big guns. We stayed in the trenches for two hours. Then it became obvious that the Chinese had stopped this particular attack.

  The RSM shouted, “Thank you, gentlemen, you may stand down!”

  We headed back to our tents. We had not had to fire our weapons yet we felt we had been in a battle. Some shells had fallen short and we saw medics attending to some wounded further down the line. Sergeant Major Thorpe said, “We had better make sure the lads eat, sir. This is going to be a long night and I suspect there will be more snow.” He gestured behind him with his thumb. “It will make crossing the wire much easier for infantry, sir.”

  “You are right and try to get them to sleep too.”

  That was easier said than done. I lay on my bunk and tried to close my eyes. The trouble was that I had slept too well the night before and an undisturbed night felt unusual. I sat up and rolled my legs off the bed. Morrison sat bolt upright. “You couldn’t sleep either sir?”

  “No, but you should get some rest, Jacob.”

  He laughed, “You sound like my mother, sir. She always used what she called my Sabbath name when she was telling me off.”

  “I am not telling you off. It is just sage advice.”

  “I am thinking about tonight, sir, that is all. They will be coming over. Today was just a push to see if we were defending the line. Tonight, will be another of their wild charges and it might succeed. We have, what, nine hundred men to defend just over half a mile? The Chinese will have ten times that number. We have to defend the whole line but they can throw their weight against any single point. Night-time means the artillery will not have spotters.”

  He had changed since he had first arrived. Then he had been fearful now his caution was derived from experience. His evaluation was a good one although flawed. “The Colonel and his senior staff will not be in the trenches with us; they will be in the command bunker and they can act as artillery spotters. They have the measurements and coordinates. You are right, the Chinese will come mob-handed but the very size of their army is a weakness because it is easier to hit. Now if we had no artillery support and we were surrounded then it would be a different matter. I can see General Ridgeway’s hand all over this plan. This is his army and he is trying to build morale ready for when we push north and we will push north!”

  “You are confident then, sir?”

  “About the ability of this army to hold off the enemy? Yes. Now if you are asking me if we can win this war then that is a whole different, as the Americans say, ball game. As soon as the Chinese and the Russians came in then they changed the rules. This becomes a battle between the east and the west. Our Communist friends will not wish to lose face. They will support North Korea come hell or high water. Neither Stalin nor Mao Tse Tung will worry about losing men; to them, face is far more important.”

  He was silent and I began to clean out my pipe. I used one of my precious pipe cleaners to remove all the tar from the stem. I took out my penknife and reamed the bowl. I could afford to use as much tobacco as I liked. The Americans had a good PX and I knew I could buy as much tobacco as I liked. I had just begun to fill the pipe when the Lieutenant spoke.

  “You know, sir, this has helped me clarify my mind. I joined up because, well, my brother was wounded and I just wanted to hit back at someone.”

  “And you have yet you have discovered it doesn’t help.”

  He laughed, “You are mind-reading, sir. This is a war we can’t win. You are right there, sir. The South Koreans are good people but this is now a battle between the Communists and the rest of the world. It is a battle which needs fighting but it is not my battle.”

  I struck a match and puffed on the pipe. This was an epiphany and he did not need me to interrupt him. I tamped down the end with my finger. The pipe was drawing well.

  “I didn’t follow my brother and uncle to Israel, well, there were lots of reasons but mainly because I was afraid. The new nation of Israel is taking on huge numbers of enemies but, you know what, sir? They are winning. What this has shown me is that if you are well trained and well-led then the odds don’t matter.” He shook his head, “Less than thirty of us held off modern tanks, artillery and over five thousand men for an hour! I think I would like to go to Israel and fight for something I can believe in. You probably thought I had some sort of chip on my shoulder when I first came, sir and you might be right. At school, until I went to a Jewish school, I was called names. Gangs would taunt us when we did go to our Jewish school. This section has shown me that most blokes are not like that and that a small group can be stronger than the component parts. When my enlistment is over, I will go to Israel. There must be an Israeli version of Sergeant Major Thorpe, thanks to you and the lads, I now have skills I can use there and with my uncle as a general I feel happy that I can ask him for a commission knowing I have got my boots dirty already!”

  I took a matchstick and loosened the ash at the top of the pipe, “But you know that you will lose some of those men with whom you intend to fight. That is inevitable. There are five good men in a yard in Seoul who are a testament to that. You might be one of them.”

  “But I would be dying for something worth dying for. You are right, sir, we can’t win over here, not with the Chinese against us but Israel? That is a battle we can win.”

  “Well if your mind is set then I will support you.”

  “What about you, sir?”

  “As long as this section is here then I am bound to be with them but I would rather be at home with my wife and family. This is my last war, Jake. I also suspect it is Sergeant Major Thorpe’s last one too but we will both stay here until the section is recalled. You are different for you are young.”

  “I won’t go until you do, sir!”

  I tapped the pipe out on the floor, “We will see, Jake, we will see.”

  The American RSM shouted, “Stand to!”

  We gathered our gear and left the relative comfort of our tents. The blizzard began again as we trudged to our gun pits. I saw that Lofting had made some fingerless gloves. He was a sniper and he needed touch. I decided I would try to get him some mittens. He could use those to keep his hands warm until the action began. Dad had told me that in the Great War women in England had all knitted such items for their men in the trenches. I doubted that any, except for those with husbands and sons fighting, would even know there was a war on. We were remote and they were safe yet the war we fought was for them. I had seen enough of Communism to know that it did not have tolerance as one of its virtues. It wanted the whole world to be red and the dead which still lay before us showed that they did not care for the individual in any shape or form.

  The blizzard made it hard to see anything. I knew there were men ahead of us, to the left and right, but I could barely see them. The cleverly designed defences meant that the machine guns behind us could fire over our heads and we could fire over the heads of the men in the trenches before us. We had the firepower of a whole battalion. That did not guarantee safety. They could still overrun us but, if they did so, then they would lose many men. Once the inevitable initial chatter of entering the trenches had ended silence fell. We all knew that there could be Chinese crawling over the snow in white camouflage. None of us doubted the courage of our enemies nor their fanaticism. They would happily charge knowing that they might die. It w
as one reason the Crusaders had failed in the Holy Land!

  Lofting used his telescopic sight to scan the ground ahead. He could see little more than we could but it kept him happy. I had stood many watches in the last war and I would fix my eye on one spot and look for movement before moving my eye along. The wire, in which the Colonel had placed such faith, was now invisible. It was covered by snow. It was no longer an obstacle. I was glad I was not one of those in the gun pits in front of us. One moment’s carelessness and Chinese could be upon them. I looked at my watch. It had just passed midnight. We had another six hours, at least, to watch. There were reinforcements for us if we were attacked. The men who had watched during the day were now abed and if there was any firing would race to join us. There was also a reserve battalion but that would be sent only when a breach had occurred and that would be a disaster. We had to fight with the men around us.

  It was, in the end, my words to the Colonel which alerted us. Unbeknown to me he had listened to me and booby-trapped the wire. The wire itself was neutralised but one of the booby traps was triggered some hundred yards to our right. The sky was lit up and I saw bodies flung in the air. Then a Very Light soared in the air. The sight before us was terrifying. Less than thirty yards from the slit trenches before us was a wall of white-coated Communists. They had not used their trumpets and gongs. I cocked and fired my Thompson as Lofting’s first bullet struck an officer who had his hand raised. Our whole front erupted in a wall of bullets and mortar shells began to drop into the Chinese ranks. Their front ranks were scythed down but there were more to take their place. Ashcroft used his rifle like Lofting and picked off leaders. Hall’s Bren gun sent short bursts towards the enemy.

  Inevitably guns jammed or men fired too many bullets at once. It was easy to understand, for some of the American infantry had not fought in a battle before. A few of the forward trenches were overrun. I saw deadly battles. Lofting showed his cool by aiming his gun to hit the Chinese head which was so close to the American he was fighting that the American was covered in bone, brains and gore but he cleared the trench which was under attack in six bullets.

  “Well done, Lofting!”

  Then the artillery kicked in and we heard the shells screaming from behind us. They were ranged to fall three hundred paces from the wire. With our bullets slaughtering the ones close to the wire so the pressure diminished. The Colonel must have called a halt to the artillery after fifteen minutes and we saw that the attack had failed.

  From the trenches, before us, we heard the cry, “Medic!”

  My three medics did not hesitate but raced forward to tend to the wounded. Behind us, the Colonel sent stretcher-bearers and a Very Light soared into the night sky to make it day. It was like a scene from Dante’s Inferno. Other medics did the same. I watched an American Corporal kneel next to a machine gunner who had been hit in the head. As he did so an apparent Chinese corpse rose and raised his rifle. Lofting had been watching and a single shot ended the killer’s life.

  “Ashcroft, come with me. Let’s make certain these Chinese are dead. Lofting, keep watch.”

  “Right sir.”

  I left my Thompson in the gun pit and took out my Colt. “Hall, cover us!”

  “Sir!”

  We walked past the grisly gun pits. In one all of the men were dead. A Chinese grenade had exploded in the bottom and the men were shredded by the shrapnel. The Chinese who had thrown it also lay dead. He was obviously dead as his face had been torn away but all the ones who did not have the clear marks of death we kicked. One grunted and I hauled him to his feet. As I did so a second one, just ten feet away, rose and raised his rifle. Ashcroft shot him and the man I had hauled to his feet slashed at me with a dagger. It did not connect; my Colt hit him in the face and took away the back of his head.

  I heard the Regimental Sergeant Major shout, “Shoot the Chinese corpses!” As bullets poured into the dead some of the apparently dead Chinese leapt to their feet. Hall and Lofting helped us while Ashcroft and I shot another three and then it was all quiet. Men were sent to the edge of the wire to throw grenades in case any were lurking there.

  Sergeant Major Thorpe came for us, “The Colonel has ordered you back to your gun pit, sir. He is worried about you. All the wounded have been evacuated and replacements are here.”

  “Right Ken. The men?”

  “Not a scratch!”

  We had barely been in our trench for fifteen minutes when the gongs and trumpets sounded and the Chinese and their allies launched another massive attack. The attempted attack on the medics had not only hardened all of the defenders it made them impervious to the trumpets and gongs. As the mortars and artillery decimated their attacks the men who made the wire were mown down by rifle and machine-gun fire. Rifle grenades were used to ensure that men did not shelter behind the mounds of snow driven into drifts by the blizzard which raged on, unabated. When dawn broke the attacks were over and the white snow was covered in a sea of bloody bodies.

  When we were told to stand down, we left our trenches and made our weary way back to our tents. The sun came out and a short while later we heard the scream of Sabre jets as they roared overhead. We had air cover once more. We could smell the bacon and eggs. We would forego the shower until we had eaten. We had had a victory and the food would be a celebration.

  Chapter 14

  The Colonel sent for me just after one o’clock. He and his officers were in the command tent. “Just wanted to thank you, Major. I am putting you in for a citation, that was damn brave.”

  I shook my head, “No need, sir. I have enough fruit salad as it is. Are the Chinese likely to attack again tonight?”

  “That, as they say, is the $64-dollar question. I thought that after the first attack was repulsed then they would have given up but they came again.”

  His officers nodded and I said, “Without tanks.”

  They stopped and stared at me. “Say again, Major? What do you mean?”

  “The last attack was made by infantry and damned little artillery. The air force and artillery knocked out the tanks that they intended to use before they got here. I noticed was that there were no tanks. If they had had them, they would have used them. I think they either have no petrol, sorry, gas, or they haven’t the tanks. We all know that the roads in Korea are awful and it is a long way from China. They have not captured any South Korean ports. Ipso facto, they are having supply problems.”

  I had set them thinking and we debated for a couple of hours. It was a tiny chink of light but a chink nonetheless. The bodies on the battlefield had been cleared and buried and the burned-out tanks blown up and destroyed. We went out on a chillingly cold January afternoon and used field glasses to view the battlefield.

  “The trouble is, Major Harsker, that we have no eyes on them yet. The Sabres which were sent out this morning were just shooting up their artillery and tanks and their pilots did not have the opportunity to look at their dispositions. The Chinese are masters at disguise and their men were hidden. We just don’t know their situation.” The Colonel smiled, “You have given us a dilemma. You and your men can stand down tonight. If we are attacked then you will be our reserve but you and your men fought like lions last night and after what you did at Seoul you deserve time to recover.”

  “But…”

  The Colonel came over to me and spoke quietly so that only I could hear, “I am not sure yet if last night was sheer courage or the actions of a man who was close to the edge and had a death wish. I would be happier if you took a couple of days off.” He smiled, “And that is an order!”

  My men were delighted to have a night in their beds but, like me, they slept dressed, and with their guns close to hand. The Chinese did not come. We heard that there were attacks, further east towards the British and Australian units and that Wonju had fallen. There were no attacks that night, nor the next night on our sector. The American defences had held. The bad weather, however, had returned and aerial reconnaissance could not deliver effecti
ve results.

  I was summoned again after four days of silence from the north. This time the Colonel and I were taken well south to the headquarters of the 1st Corps and its commander, General Frank W. Milburn. Also there, was Colonel David Hackworth. His regiment was known as Raiders, similar, I think, to Mosby’s Raiders of the American Civil War. His men, the 27th Infantry had a good reputation. I learned all of this in the jeep ride south. Colonel Coulter was a mine of information.

  There were just six of us in the room, A stenographer and an officer from General Ridgeway’s staff made up the numbers. I never did discover his name but when he spoke, I heard authority in his voice. “Gentlemen, I am General Ridgeway and General MacArthur has given this command a mission. We are to probe north and discover the positions occupied by the Chinese.” I later learned that he was a blunt man who liked to come directly to the point. It was an attitude I liked. He lit a cigar, “Now if like me, you wonder why the Air Force can’t do this then the answer is simple. The Chinese and North Koreans have air defences which are too great a risk for our pilots and we have too few of them. In addition, the Chinese are masters of disguise. Hell, they spirited this whole army through Manchuria at night! They came as a helluva shock to the 8th Cavalry. Operation Tomahawk will be a reconnaissance in force. However, Mrs Milburn did not raise any dummies! I do not intend to send ninety thousand men north into what might be a gigantic Chinese and North Korean trap so I have my own operation. In honour of Colonel Hackworth and his men, it will be called Operation Wolfhound!”

  “Thank you, sir! That is an honour.”

  The General shook his head, “Only if you bring your men back alive.” He suddenly swivelled, “And you, Major Harsker, will also go north. While the Wolfhounds head northeast towards Yangpyong you and a company of Lieutenant Colonel Coulter’s men will head for Seoul. Now I am pretty damned certain that the Commies will be there but we need to know the numbers and what sort of defences they have.”