by Pat Frank
Couzens unbuttoned his parka, snapped off his lighter, and lay down. He couldn’t get comfortable. There was a rock, or something, under him. He squirmed, and finally groped under the straw. His hand touched metal. He had found a gun. It was an M-1. He knew it from its contours, in the dark, as a man knows his wife. He brought it out from under him and flicked his lighter. The woman’s eyes rolled in apprehension, but he was really smiling now and she relaxed. The gun was loaded. He was armed again. He was whole again. The fuel in his lighter would soon be gone, and he looked around the hut, and saw what he was seeking, a primitive brass lamp, and lit it and put his lighter back in his pocket.
Under the lamplight he saw that the gun was like his gun. It was filthy, yes. It had been dumped into the street’s frozen mire, and fought over, and ground underfoot, and filthied. But wherever there was not filth, it shone like silver at a candlelit dinner party. Some Korean had found it after the fire fight of the previous night, and hidden it here. He found a rag hung on a nail, and a beer bottle half-filled with peanut oil, and went to work. The woman watched him in wonder, but at last her eyes closed, and she slept.
Whenever he touched the gun he thought of his home, for a gun was part of his home. A gun was what he remembered best of his father. It was before the dawn in Ko-Bong, so it would be yesterday’s evening in Mandarin, and his mother would be watering the azaleas and hibiscus around the pool, and trimming the Australian pines that formed its backdrop. Now that he was gone, she had the duty. She would have stale bread for the bream in the pool, and balls of meat for his pet bass. Of course she couldn’t catch frogs, and shiners, and live shrimp for the bass, as he had, but she would feed them efficiently.
Everyone agreed that his mother was a wonderful and brilliant woman, and a great beauty for her age. She played bridge like a man, with slashing bids of slam and double, and she was shrewd in real estate, and the price of fruit. She could speak fluently of the situation in Iran, and the new tax laws, and she called senators by their first names, but of her husband, who had killed himself with fine brandy, she never spoke at all. He was the blank in her life.
Raleigh Couzens wasn’t sure whether he loved his mother, or hated her. He knew that only in the Marines had he escaped her, as he suspected his father could escape her only with alcohol.
And he blamed her, somehow, although his logic was amorphous and muddy, because he had lost his girl, his woman, Sue. His mother was always subtly sniping at Sue. It was that, he believed, that had caused their breach, really, although Sue hadn’t said it that way. Sue had said, frankly and precisely, “Darling, when I want a toss in the hay I want it to be the real thing. And with us it isn’t. You get all tense.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes, you do, Raleigh. You feel guilty about something.”
And he’d protested, and called her dirty names, and Sue had been sweet to him, and told him to ask any good doctor. So he had. He’d asked several. They’d assured him it wasn’t uncommon. For men in his social stratum, particularly in the South, where boys are carefully taught that there is a great difference between “nice girls” and “bad girls,” it was more usual than unusual. He shouldn’t worry. He’d outgrow it. But he hadn’t, yet. He’d just joined up again, long before Korea. It had upset his mother, and she’d wept, and tried to bribe him with a trip to Europe. But once you volunteered, and were accepted, that was it.
And he continued to caress the rifle, and think of his home, and Sue, until the gray of the false dawn. It was better than thinking of the nightmare of his capture, and Colonel Chu.
When he knew there was sufficient light for him to be recognized—providing he got close enough to the outposts of Dog Company—he slipped out of the hut, and walked down the street of Ko-Bong. He passed the last house, and continued steadily until he knew he could be no more than two hundred yards from the line of foxholes, and knew that the machine guns, and the BAR’s, and the Garands would be trained on him. Now that he was almost back, he felt miserable. He didn’t give much of a damn whether they shot him or not, and he played with the idea of going straight in until someone said, “Fire!” But that wouldn’t be fair to one of his friends. He shouted, “Hey there!”
One word cracked back, “Halt!”
“This is Couzens! Lieutenant Couzens!”
There was silence for a second, and then he recognized Sam Mackenzie’s voice. “Come on in, Raleigh, you damn fool!”
Chapter Six
THE CAPTAIN had slept four hours, and when his field phone woke him, just before first light, he was fresh. “Signal from Regiment, sir,” Ekland said. “Move out and join up at Hagaru. They’ve got a field hospital set up near the strip, and an air evac operating.”
“Good,” said Mackenzie. “Make a signal back. Tell ’em we can move at ten hundred hours. Tell ’em we’ve got twenty-four wounded.”
“Twenty-two, sir,” said Ekland.
Mackenzie knew that during the small hours two more had died. But those who lived would get out, if Dog Company got out. It was axiomatic, in the Marines, that you brought out your wounded. Sometimes it was costly. Sometimes it was not a fair trade. But it was a policy that helped make the Marines what they were. There was one certain thing in this world that a Marine could count on. He would not be abandoned by his buddies. “All right, twenty-two,” said Mackenzie. He had to ask: “Who went?”
“Lieutenant Travis and Cohane, the corpsman.”
“Too bad.” The casualties among his lieutenants and non-coms were distressingly high. This was always true. Always.
The captain rose, fully dressed, and picked up his carbine. There had been no new onslaught during the past night, and Dog Company was intact, but he hated to think of the good men he had lost. He suspected that the Chinese attack was a reconnaissance in force, or the objective may have been to capture the hydroelectric station. This they had done, although he had driven them out when daylight came. But they’d be back, and he was glad the move had been ordered. He could get the company out. He had sent a patrol into Ko-Bong during the night, and it was clear. Hagaru was only four miles to the south, and unless the Chinese had a block on the road, they’d make it easy. He might even punch through a block, if he could get air support, or an artillery barrage from the other end.
The captain checked his perimeter, and told his platoon leaders, and his sergeants, that the company was moving out. It was almost full light when he came to the Second Platoon, which had held the crucial point, the only road out, the night before, and had not been relieved since. It was just as he got there that the crew of a fifty-calibre machine gun swiveled the weapon, and waited, tense. On the road from the village, Mackenzie saw a figure walking, a figure with a rifle slung under his arm, insouciant as a hunter in the woods when the dogs range far.
“Nervy bastard, isn’t he?” said the man squinting through the sights.
“Give him a squirt,” said the loader.
“Naw. Wait’ll he gets closer.”
“You can knock him off from here. If you don’t, somebody else will.”
“Want to make sure.”
“Sure of what?”
Mackenzie, behind them, said, “Hold your fire.” He looked up and down the line of foxholes. Every gun was trained on this single figure. Mackenzie had a hunch that it might be a Chinese deserter, and deserters were valuable. “Hold your fire!” he called, louder. “Pass the word.”
It was then that Couzens’ first shout drifted down to the lines, and a minute later he had Couzens by the shoulders, and was beating him on the back, and shouting, “Where in hell have you been, you dope? Where’ve you been?”
“They jumped me in the village,” Couzens said.
“I know. When the fighting started your men went up there after you. They found your three men, dead. They figured you were captured.”
“I was.”
“Well, then—”
“They turned me loose. They took me to their Army HQ, and tried to questio
n me, and turned me loose.”
The men of Couzens’ platoon were now popping out of their foxholes, grinning, and crowding around them. “Get back where you ought to be,” Mackenzie ordered. “You start bunching up and they’ll lay a shell in here. They’re watching us, you bet.” He turned to Couzens. “They turned you loose? Why?”
“Beats me. Maybe they didn’t want me. You should see how they operate. You should see how they move at night.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Mackenzie. “We’re moving out of this place. We’re moving at ten hundred. You got back just in time. You better come up to the CP, and get some chow, and help me get the stuff rolling. Everything’s quiet this morning. It’s been quiet ever since they hit us, that one time.”
“What happened?” Couzens asked, as they walked along.
And Mackenzie told him what had happened. A detachment of Chinese had crossed the ice, using the white dress of Koreans as camouflage in the snow, and had fallen upon the squad bivouacked in the hydroelectric station, comfortable in their sleeping bags in the office on the ground floor, and probably not keeping a proper alert. “The gunnery sergeant was with them,” Mackenzie said. “I didn’t tell Kirby to take that detail, but he always picks a good, comfortable, dry place to sleep.”
“What happened to Kirby?”
“He’s dead.”
“No!” It didn’t seem possible that Sergeant Kirby would get killed in war. He was too old, and experienced, and careful.
“He couldn’t get out of his sack. His zipper stuck. They bayoneted him, maybe twenty times.”
“And the others?”
“One boy’s alive. They shot him through the legs. He played dead.”
“What happened then?” Couzens asked.
“It was more of a raid than anything else, as if they were after prisoners. This business across the ice wasn’t much more than a diversion, and then they hit us frontally. Your platoon did real good. Your platoon counter-attacked. But when we went after that bunch in the plant, they were dug in, and we lost pretty heavily. Travis, Krakauskas, Phillips, and Scalpe dead. Simmons and Players wounded.” All those he named were lieutenants, or sergeants. “Altogether, seventeen dead, twenty-two wounded.”
“And prisoners?”
“You were the only prisoner.”
Couzens didn’t like the sound of it. He reviewed his interrogation by the commissar. He wondered what he had said that was wrong. If what he’d said was right enough, from the Chinese viewpoint, then it must have been wrong from the viewpoint of his own country. He was worried, and a little frightened. Some time he’d have to tell Mackenzie the whole story, and he was afraid it wouldn’t sound right. He didn’t think he’d be reprimanded or anything. After all, the important thing was that he was back in the line. But suppose he lost Mackenzie’s confidence, and friendship?
Couzens, in the tent, began to gather up what he could take with him. Then he went out to check on the loadings for the Second Platoon, and the Third Platoon also, that had been the platoon of Travis. He relayed Mackenzie’s orders that all vehicles be combat-loaded. Everything else would burn. He told the motor pool sergeant to start distributing gasoline for the burning.
Mackenzie sat at the table, and found the folder that contained the company records, and went over his roster, and carefully marked KIA, and the date, after the names of Travis and Cohane. And he scratched out the MIA he had written after the name of Raleigh Couzens. He’d heard rumors of the Chinese releasing prisoners, for propaganda purposes, or because of obscure oriental or Communist reasons that nobody could fathom. But Raleigh Couzens wasn’t one to fall for propaganda, and he wondered what had really happened. He also wondered when he’d have time to find out. It would be necessary to report the incident to Regiment. It was something for Military Intelligence—intelligence on a fairly high level. Raleigh was going to have to do a lot of talking, and perhaps some explaining.
He looked at the roster again. Seventeen dead, twenty-two wounded. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his fault. He had fouled up. Oh, sure, the colonel had approved his dispositions. But whatever bad happened to a company, that was the responsibility of its captain, just as whatever happened to Regiment was the responsibility of the colonel. It was something you couldn’t duck. He should have figured the Chinese would sneak across the ice, and hit the plant on the edge of the reservoir, and he should have had more men there.
Seventeen dead. Seventeen letters to write, when he got a chance. You couldn’t be very original in those letters, because there always seemed to be so many of them, and everything that could be said in them, he had said before. He knew exactly what his pen would say. “Your husband was a fine officer, and an inspiration to his men. . . . I feel great personal loss. . . . Your son was liked by everyone in the company who knew him. . . . Your son was shot during a Chinese attack. He died painlessly.” What a lie. Nobody died painlessly, not when you were twenty years old, or twenty-five, or even thirty, as he was. When you are young it always hurts to die.
A corporal, one of the cooks and the only fat man in Dog Company, entered the CP. “What about the turkeys, sir?” he asked. “They’ve thawed. They’ve thawed fine, sir.” In the fighting of the day before, of course, no one had thought of the turkeys.
“Burn ’em,” Mackenzie said. He thought for a moment, and then amended this order. “On the way through the village, maybe you can drop off a case or two for the civilians.”
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal, his voice dreary, and he left, and Mackenzie was alone again.
He replaced the company roster in its folder, and shoved it down into his musette bag, alongside the bottle of Scotch, and the few personal possessions he carried there. There was an envelope stuffed with snapshots, and Mackenzie riffled through them, the way he often did when he was unhappy, or depressed. He came to a photograph of Anne, and Sam, junior, and himself, all united in a clinch at Hamilton Field, with a big Military Air Transport Service C-54 in the background. He examined its smallest detail, as a man often will when he possesses a picture with special meaning. The focus had been sharp, and Anne’s clean features and the splendid line of her body seemed so alive that she’d move any second, although all you could see of the baby was a blob of nose and cheek, and his mop of blond curls.
It had been taken in the spring of 1948, during that thin slice of time when there was no fighting, and many people still spoke with confidence of peace, and everybody was getting on with business. In the photograph everybody was smiling, and nobody, not even Anne’s mother, had guessed they’d had quite an argument at breakfast.
He had been ordered to Parris Island, to train boots, and Anne wasn’t going with him. At first she’d said she couldn’t go because of the baby, and then she’d said, “Sam, I’m just damn sick and tired of moving, and trailing you around the country. Why don’t you get out of it?”
“Get out of what?”
“The Marines.”
“I thought you liked it?”
“I did. I don’t any more. I want to settle down. We’re always moving, moving, moving. I want a home of our own. I’m tired of renting. I want some security. We owe it to the baby. You can make more money, outside.”
“Doing what?”
She set down her coffee cup and said, “Well, for one thing, writing.” An article on firepower had been printed in the Marine Corps Gazette, and he’d sold an eight-line piece of verse to The Saturday Evening Post, and he’d written a short story which had been rejected by eight magazines, but by three of them not very emphatically.
Sam laughed. “Well, if what you want is security, we’d better keep on taking the King’s Shilling. Anne, this is a welfare state. Understand, I’m all for the welfare state. I think it’s the greatest invention since sex. Look at what we get out of it. Medical care free, or almost, and cheap cigarettes and whiskey, and you can buy stuff from ships’ stores at just about half price. But it isn’t available to writers. When they make i
t available to writers, I’ll quit the Marines, and be a writer.”
“Stop being silly, Sam. I’m serious.”
“I’m not being silly at all. Look at this egg.” He pointed his knife at his breakfast egg, cozy in its cup. “I just read in the paper that for every egg eaten at breakfast the government buys another egg that nobody wants to eat. The government buys these eggs by the billions, powders ’em, and buries ’em underground, like the gold in Fort Knox. Who pays for that egg nobody eats? Taxpayers. Writers.”
“You are too being silly, Sam.”
“I am not either. The government has to buy eggs, transport ’em, pulverize ’em, process ’em, package ’em, and bury ’em. That costs a lot of money. Then there must be overhead, like a Bureau of Unwanted Eggs, or something. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“Well, then, don’t eat the darn egg!” Anne said, angrily.
He decapitated his egg with a butter knife, and dug into it. “That wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “If I didn’t eat it, then the government would just have to buy one more egg.”
“Sam, you majored in literature, not economics.”
“It doesn’t take an economist to see what’s happening. Look at potatoes. Up in Aroostook County, Maine, they’re paying planters sixty-five millions a year to dig up potatoes, and paint ’em blue, because nobody wants to eat them.”
Anne looked at him suspiciously.
“Now, if the government would just treat sonnets like potatoes, I’d quit the Marines and be a writer. I don’t see why the government doesn’t. What’s a potato got that a sonnet hasn’t got, if nobody wants to buy either sonnets or potatoes?”