by Larry Bond
He noticed a commotion around the situation board. The progress of the NK offensive was posted on a large map, updated by the intelligence officer. Pistol was taping up a message, which was being read with intense interest by other pilots and ground crew.
“Pistol, what’s all the excitement?” Tony wasn’t too tired to be curious. Besides, if it involved the war, it was his business to stay informed.
“Big raid at Kimpo, Saint. The gomers massed enough aircraft to get past the CAP and attack the field.”
Tony’s chest felt cold. Anne was supposed to be getting evacuated through Kimpo. “How much damage did they do?”
“Pretty bad. They bombed the runway and the main terminal, which was packed with evacuees. Worse still, they got four transports on the ground and shot down one that had just taken off. Total killed is going to be over five hundred. They’ve closed the airfield until further notice. I think they’ll start diverting stuff down here…”
Tony turned and walked away. There were enough people listening to Pistol so that nobody noticed his abrupt departure.
His office was mercifully close. He ignored several message slips and dialed two numbers. One was Anne’s apartment, the other the logistics office where she worked. There was no answer at either.
CHAPTER 29
Juggernaut
DECEMBER 29 — NEAR MUNSAN, SOUTH KOREA
Lieutenant General Cho stood by the roadside watching his troops march south down the thoroughfare the imperialists called Highway 1 or the Main Supply Route. He stood in the shadow thrown by a wrecked South Korean M-48 main battle tank.
The tank and its crew had been killed on the first day of the war as they tried and failed to stem the North Korean offensive. Its twisted gun barrel still pointed north along the highway. The three T-62s it had destroyed before dying were already gone, pulled off the battlefield back to rear-area repair shops. They would fight again. The M-48 would not.
The wind veered slightly suddenly, and Cho’s nostrils twitched as they caught the faintest smell of death rising from inside the tank. He was immediately thankful for the freezing temperatures that had delayed the onset of corruption and decay. Seeking fresher air, he stepped away from the M-48 and stood motionless again, silhouetted by the setting sun.
Cho clasped his hands behind his back and smiled. Tanks, trucks towing artillery pieces, APCs, and other vehicles jammed every lane on the highway, rolling steadily on their way to the front nearly twenty kilometers ahead. Columns of marching infantry paralleled the highway on both sides, pushing through the snow to leave the road to their mounted comrades.
Red Phoenix was working. The frozen ground and iced-over rice paddies were giving his men a mobility undreamed of in the warmer summer or spring months. And Korea’s harsh winter weather was playing its part by degrading the enemy’s air attacks on his columns — making it difficult for South Korea’s surviving F-16s and F-5s to find their targets.
Cho knew that the same weather hampered the North’s air forces even more, but he had never counted on their support to win this war. A draw in the air battle would satisfy him and leave the ultimate outcome in the hands of his tank and infantry commanders.
He lifted his binoculars and scanned the low hills rising at irregular intervals on either side of the road. Every elevation in sight was occupied by camouflaged ZSU-23-4s, 57mm flak batteries, and their associated radars — his backup defenses should enemy aircraft leak through the MiG-29, MiG-23, and MiG-21 interceptors loitering overhead. Heavier antiaircraft guns and SAM sites farther back provided added protection.
Cho knew that some of his units had been hit hard from the air, but his air defense commanders had assured him that the imperialists were paying a high price in planes for every attack. He knew their claims were almost certainly exaggerated, but even so the toll of downed aircraft had to be wearing away the American and South Korean squadrons — loss after loss that would eventually render them ineffective.
Satisfied for the moment with the apparent readiness of his air defenses, he turned on his heel and faced south, studying the heavy black smoke cloud roiling high into the sky on the horizon. A huge cloud formed by burning villages and hundreds of wrecked vehicles. And he could hear a dull, muffled, thumping noise as his artillery continued to pound the retreating enemy, sending still more smoke and dust into the air.
Cho slowly lowered the binoculars to his chest and looked again at the landscape around him. The smoke pall staining the sky had reminded him that war, however successful or necessary, carried a bitter price. He could see that easily enough in the shattered buildings along the roadside and in the twisted corpses and abandoned, burned-out tanks and vehicles, strewn across the countryside. He could read it in the weary, vacant-eyed troops huddled around small fires off the highway — the remnants of his two first-echelon infantry divisions.
According to his reports, both divisions had lost nearly seventy percent of their effective strength in four days of continuous fighting. But they’d inflicted equally heavy losses on the enemy units opposing them.
Cho made a mental note to see that they were refitted and brought back up to strength with reinforcements as soon as possible. He would need every man he could lay his hands on.
“Comrade General! A message from General Chyong at the forward HQ!”
He turned and took the message flimsy from his thin-faced aide-de-camp. He frowned. The young man would simply have to learn to work calmly and more quietly. War was too important for high-pitched voices.
But the frown vanished as he read Chyong’s message. Advance elements of the II Corps were nearing Pyokche — barely fifteen kilometers from the outskirts of Seoul. Soon his troops could begin veering southwest, aiming to cross the Han river at Kimpo. Excellent. In just five days they had breached the puppet government’s fortifications and driven more than twenty-five kilometers against heavy opposition.
His counterpart at V Corps was having a slightly harder time of it as his divisions pushed down the Uijongbu Corridor. But even so, his columns were reported to have captured Chon’gong — a village twenty kilometers south of the DMZ and right at the mouth of a long valley leading right to the heart of Seoul. Soon the V Corps would also begin to swing away from the puppet regime’s capital, moving at an angle to cross the Han to the east.
The offensive was going well. With luck and skill the People’s Army would soon be able to encircle the imperialist forces massing to defend Seoul from the attack they’d dreaded for decades. An attack that would not happen. Cho had no intention of throwing his troops into the kind of meat-grinder house-to-house fighting that would be necessary to take Seoul by direct assault. Instead, the war plan he’d helped develop envisioned using the city as bait to draw the enemy’s armed forces into a trap. They would be pocketed when his II Corps and V Corps arced around Seoul to the east and west and joined hands at Suwon, twenty-seven kilometers south of the enemy capital.
With the bulk of its forces cut off from supply and surrounded by the People’s Army, the Southern regime would have little real choice but surrender.
Cho came out of his reverie and snapped his fingers, summoning his aides and driver. He’d spent enough time playing the wide-eyed tourist. There was work to be done back at the main headquarters — reports to be written for Pyongyang and plans that had to be laid for the next day’s attacks.
Things were going to get more complicated as the follow-on troops of the III Corps moved into the attack in this sector. Once it was committed to battle, Cho would move up to command both the II and III Corps as Colonel General of the newly formed First Shock Army. The First Shock Army, Cho repeated silently to himself. Truly, Kim Il-Sung’s spectacled son had fulfilled his promises.
Now Cho would fulfill his. The South would fall.
SOUTH OF SHINDO, NEAR THE SOO ROYAL TOMB, SOUTH KOREA
The Main Supply Route was jammed bumper-to-bumper with canvas-sided, two-and-a-half-ton trucks, jeeps, fuel tankers, ammo carriers, a
nd military vehicles of every description — all moving south at a snail’s pace intermingled with carloads of frantic civilian refugees.
McLaren looked at the chaos on the road and knew he was looking at a beaten army.
His South Korean and American front-line units weren’t beaten yet. They were still fighting, surrendering ground reluctantly, meter by meter, and making the North Koreans pay in blood for every advance. But they were being worn down, submerged by the North’s superior numbers and massed artillery, and McLaren didn’t have much help he could send them.
The first reinforcements from the States — battalions of the 6th and 7th Light Divisions — were starting to arrive by air, but it would take them at least a day to organize and get up to the front. And McLaren wasn’t even sure how much they could do once they got there. Both the 6th and the 7th were basically light infantry forces; units designed for rapid transport overseas, with few of the heavy antitank weapons or artillery pieces needed to meet the kind of armor-heavy assault the North Koreans were making.
South Korea’s several-million-man reserve force was also mobilizing, but the nationwide mobilization had been slowed by the confusion caused by the North’s surprise attack and by the political disturbances that had preceded it. Many of the already assembled reserve units were tied down chasing North Korean commandos who’d infiltrated by sea and by air to attack U.S. and ROK rear-area installations.
And now this. McLaren clenched the stub of his unlit cigar between his teeth. Things were bad enough up at the front without this rear-echelon bug-out. He wasn’t sure who or what had started it, but it seemed like just about every supply unit, maintenance detail, field hospital, and Army paperchaser within earshot of the war had decided to retreat at the same time. They’d loaded up on anything with wheels and an engine and spilled out onto the MSR in a honking, panicked mass. The South Korean units that were supposed to control the roads had been totally swamped.
And they were blocking the goddamned road! Every friggin’ inch of it. Troops and supplies trying to get forward to where they were most needed were having to detour off onto little, winding country lanes or go off-road through the built-up snow and ice. This traffic jam was costing valuable time — and that cost lives.
“Doug!”
“Yes, General?” Hansen materialized beside him, notepad in hand.
“Get on the horn to Frank Collier and tell him I want this mess straightened out, pronto!” Hansen took rapid notes as McLaren outlined exactly what he expected the Eighth Army’s J-4 to do. “I want at least a company of MPs here to start these people in some kind of order. They won’t be able to stop them short of the bridges over the Han, but they can at least clear some lanes going north. Clear?”
Hansen nodded.
“Okay. I want more MPs on the other side of those bridges as a reception committee. They’re to stop these bastards and get ’em back in — ” Someone just up the road leaned on his horn and kept leaning, cutting McLaren off.
His temper snapped.
With Hansen tagging alongside, McLaren stormed up the road toward the offending vehicle — a jeep occupied by a heavy-jowled, sweating American lieutenant colonel and a slim, shaking, freckle-faced PFC driver. The bird colonel stood high on the jeep’s front seat, frantically and futilely trying to wave the stalled traffic ahead out of the way.
The driver saw McLaren coming and guiltily took his hand off the jeep’s horn.
“Damnit, Greene! Keep honking!” Spittle flew out of the lieutenant colonel’s mouth as he turned to yell at his driver.
“He’ll do nothing of the kind, Colonel.”
The man looked up angrily. “And just who the hell do you think…”
He noticed McLaren’s four stars for the first time and paled even further.
McLaren saw the crossed cannons on the man’s uniform collar and pounced. “What’s your unit, Colonel? And why aren’t you with it?”
The lieutenant colonel’s mouth opened and closed without making any sound.
“Son?”
The PFC stammered out his answer, “We’re with the Two Thirty-Sixth Artillery, General, sir.”
McLaren wheeled on the lieutenant colonel, who’d collapsed back onto the seat. “Your guns are back that way, Colonel, firing support for my forward battalions.” McLaren pointed north. “Now suppose you explain just why the fuck you aren’t up there with ’em.”
The man’s lips quivered as he tried to form a coherent reply, “Had to… had to report to HQ. Wanted to arrange more, uh, more ammo…”
“Bullshit! You were running, mister!” McLaren glared him into silence and turned toward his aide. “Captain Hansen!”
“Yes sir.”
“Place this man under arrest for desertion in the face of the enemy. He’s relieved of his command, effective immediately.”
Hansen stepped forward and led the shaking, teary-eyed officer out of the jeep toward McLaren’s waiting command vehicle. McLaren leaned closer to the jeep’s driver. He spoke more softly. “Now, son. What I want you to do is to wheel this jeep out of this mess and make your way back to your unit. Is your battalion’s XO still there?”
The PFC nodded. “Yes, sir. Major Benson’s in charge, sir.”
“Good. Okay, now you tell Major Benson what’s happened. And you tell him from me that he’s got the battalion now. Got it?”
The PFC nodded again, even more vigorously this time.
“Great. Okay, son, get on your way. And good luck.” McLaren stepped away as the driver snapped him a quick salute and started pulling the jeep off the highway onto the shoulder.
He watched the young private disappear north up the side of the road past the stalled traffic toward the battle line. Then he turned and headed back toward his waiting aides. He had a lot more to do to try to unscramble the situation he and his troops faced.
SOUTH OF PYOKCHE, SOUTH KOREA
Captain Lee watched Pyokche burn.
An ROK mechanized infantry battalion had held the town for nearly two hours against overwhelming numbers of North Korean tanks and infantry. Dug in among Pyokche’s tile-roofed houses and small shops, they’d tossed back wave after wave of attackers — buying time for Lee’s combat engineers to dig defenses south of the town.
Now, though, the resistance inside Pyokche was collapsing. The surviving North Korean attackers had pulled back from the open fields surrounding the town and called on their artillery to finish the job. The heavy guns had responded, and after a brief, blessed lull, shell after shell had screamed down into the town — smashing houses, collapsing trenches, churning even the rubble into a sea of unrecognizable debris.
Lee had listened to the frantic screams of the defenders over the radio, and he’d known that they couldn’t hold much longer. No one could be expected to last long in the inferno the communist barrage had created. So he’d left the radio to spur his engineers on.
Some were using the bulldozer blades on their mammoth CEVs — combat engineering vehicles — to scrape out firing positions for the mixed bag of South Korean and American tanks left to block the North Korean advance. Others were scattered across the open ground behind the town, laying a thin screen of antitank and antipersonnel mines.
Satisfied that they were working as fast as was humanly possible — and perhaps a bit faster — Lee had come back to the M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as his command vehicle. Infantry squads were desperately digging in on either side of his APC. Dig fast, he thought, you haven’t much time left.
A voice on the main tactical net confirmed his unspoken thought. It was the battalion commander inside the town calling his brigade commander farther back along the highway. In the background Lee could hear shells crashing on Pyokche, an uncanny echo of the same explosions he could hear with his own ears. “Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Alpha Charlie Two Three. Enemy columns forming up for attack. My strength at thirty percent. Repeat, three zero percent. Request permission to withdraw. Over.”
Lee waited while the brigade commander acknowledged the message and gave his permission. It wasn’t long in coming. No battalion that had lost more than half its strength in such a short time could possibly fend off another determined attack.
He switched to the frequency assigned to his own engineering company. “Bravo Four One to all Bravo Four units. Withdraw to main position. Repeat. Withdraw to main position. Acknowledge.” He wasn’t going to leave his men out in the open.
The South Korean combat engineer listened to his platoon leaders confirm his order and then switched back to the main net.
“Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Charlie Two Three. Request smoke to cover our withdrawal. Over.” Lee nodded to himself. A sage request. Even a thin artillery-laid smoke screen would make it safer for Pyokche’s surviving defenders to evacuate their positions.
“Charlie Two Three, this is Alpha Foxtrot Four Four. Negative your smoke request. Say again, smoke is unavailable. Over.” Listening, Lee swore to himself. Nothing was working right. Ammunition expenditures for all weapons had been far above prewar estimates, and he knew that supplies weren’t getting forward the way they were supposed to. Now the remnants of the mechanized infantry battalion in Pyokche faced a kilometer-long retreat across open ground without cover.
Minutes later, Lee stood high in the M-113’s commander’s cupola watching his engineers filter back through the thinly held foxholes and firing positions that marked the new front line. He shook his head wearily. There weren’t enough infantry, tanks, or heavy weapons here to hold a determined North Korean attack for more than half an hour. It hardly seemed worth the sacrifices Pyokche’s defenders had made and were still making.
Lee lifted his binoculars and focused on the town, watching through the smoke and dust as rubble fountained skyward under the enemy’s barrage. Suddenly the barrage stopped. An eerie silence descended across the landscape as the smoke and dust drifted away from the ruined town.