by Ian Slater
Only a yeoman, first-class, who had been on the chopper deck astern, assisting the helicopter to land on the fifteen-degree-kiltered deck, noticed, while racing forward along the relatively undamaged walkway, that although the port quarter was a shambles of twisted railing, the decking about it buckled from the missile’s impact, the multimillion-dollar ship, though limping badly, was still afloat. He shouted at one man who was tightening his life jacket on the starboard rail not to jump, that their sister ship in the carrier screen, the Des Moines, must be coming for them. For a second, the yeoman couldn’t see the figure he was yelling at, a gunner’s mate still wearing his asbestos hood, looking strangely like a polar explorer, lost momentarily in the churning white smoke that was boiling up from the well deck. The wind shifted for a second, smoke clearing, but the mate was gone. Looking over the side, the yeoman could see several oil-slicked men striking out in an Australian crawl, others breaststroking, the noises of their cries remarkably like wounded seals, heading as best they could through the black scum of the debris toward one of the half dozen Beaufort life rafts that were now bobbing unconcernedly on the oil-smooth chop like huge, contented orange-glow igloos.
* * *
In the Uijongbu corridor it was still raining late in the afternoon, the monsoon seeming to set in for the rest of the wet season. As forty M-1 tanks fanned out into overwatch positions, two wingmen or flank tanks overseeing the advance of a middle tank, which in turn would pair up with one of the remaining two and watch over the advance of the third tank, Clemens took delight in watching them spreading out to encircle the PT-76s. The latter were now withdrawing across the paddies, heading for the foothills of the mountain range as fast as they could. Clemens cursed, being unable to move in for the kill in his disabled tank, but did his best on his radio from his defilade position on the reverse side of the hill to guide some of the M-1s through the thick, choking smoke that the fleeing North Korean tanks and infantry were laying down across the darkening green of the countryside and around the enormous flooded ditch that the NKA had blown out of the ground to serve as an antitank defense. Through the noise of the battle and that of his own tank’s motors Clemens could hear the American commander brusquely alerting all tanks to go around the ditch that Clemens had warned was not just another paddy. The commander also ordered the tank crews to ready their fording equipment in the event that any of the other normally waist-deep paddies, flooded by the monsoon, proved too deep to negotiate on tracks alone.
Within minutes of General Kim ordering the PT-76s to withdraw as fast as possible, the M-1s were in trouble in the paddies, as Kim knew they would be. It was the culmination of a plan he had fought so long and hard for in Pyongyang, arguing against all the norms of military logic for a monsoon offensive rather than a winter or spring attack, when the ground would still be hard enough to allow for a rapid armored advance. He knew, as did everyone else, that the Abrams M-1 was quite simply the Cadillac of tanks, that next to them the PT-76s appeared as “Model Ts,” in his aide’s description, the old 76s tough and reliable in their own way but with nothing like the speed, armor, or shooting power of the American tanks. The Americans had long known this, and what Kim had banked on was the Americans’ very willingness to engage the PT-76s. He knew the M-1s, like the 76s, were also capable of fording waterways with the huge flotation skirting, but he also knew something else, something that came from a simple mathematical equation in the art of modern war.
The Abrams M-1 had been designed to go up against the equally heavy Russian T-90s and T-80s, a strategy that had not bothered itself with the old “tin can” PT-76 and so was not prepared for the difference between the ground pressure exerted by the fifty-four-ton M-1 and the ground pressure exerted by the fourteen-ton PT-76s. The difference, the M-1 exerting a ground pressure of 210 pounds per square inch as opposed to the mere 150 for the PT-76s, meant that each fifty-four-ton M-1 now had to spend vital time once it was stuck in the soft flooded ooze of the paddies while its flotation skirting was unfolded. In those few minutes the much lighter PT-76s were still free to maneuver. This single fact proved deadly for the Americans as Kim closed the trap.
In the mutual slaughter that Kim had predicted to his “dear and respected leader,” the M-1s’ laser range finders and 105-millimeter cannons put out an awesome rate of fire, crippling the PT-76s. The latter, having served Kim’s purpose of drawing the Americans into the paddies, were now sacrifical lambs as crack NKA infantry, able to set their aim on the temporarily stationary M-1s, delivered the knockout blows with everything from the old but reliable inventory of wire-guided Russian Saggers to sophisticated one-shot, one-time RPG 18s and 22s and the AT-5 Spandrels, whose hit probability at five hundred meters exceeded 74 percent. Contrary to what those outside the military believed, Kim was well aware of the fact that tanks, even the most modern ones, advancing without infantry support were much more vulnerable than was generally supposed and were one of the easiest targets to destroy, providing they stopped long enough for you to sight them in. The M-1s were able to spot some of the RPG 18 launchers because of their back-blast, which in the paddies created an aerosol spray of water behind the launchers. Even so, the M-1s, the giants in the contest of armor against armor, were for these few minutes at their most vulnerable, standing still in deep, muddy water, many of them knocked out of action by the inflatable skirting catching fire and in effect baking the four-man crews, especially the drivers, whose positions forward of the turret offered them less protection, and many of whom were machine-gunned as they tried to escape fume- and flame-engulfed tanks. Many of the gunners on the left flank, from Clemens’s company, most of whom hailed from the San Diego area, were among the first hit. Some of them drowned as they fell badly wounded, “flopping around in the water like winged ducks,” as Kim wrote in his glowing report to Pyongyang.
Few of the M-1s were holed by the NKA’s antitank weapons, the crews killed by sparling, the ricocheting of equipment knocked loose inside the tank by impact, creating a deadly hail of shrapnel whizzing around inside the tank like a scythe amid chaff, many of the Americans blinded from shattered periscopes, others burned alive despite the automatic extinguishers, which could do little if any of the M-1s’ fifty-five rounds of high-explosive and armor-piercing shells were hit. A dozen or so of the American commanders who opened the hatch to snatch a quick look at the all-round situation were dead within seconds from the NKA’s hail of infantry and sniper fire, the Americans slumping over the hatch, from which they had to be either dumped quickly overboard before the hatch could be closed or dragged back down, bleeding, often blocking vital steering and gunnery controls.
Kim’s infantry paid heavily, as well as the PT-76s, thirty-four of his tanks destroyed outright by the deadly accurate M-1s, which, for as long as they lasted in their stationary, or near stationary, positions, delivered as much as they got. But there were many more PT-76s than M-1s, and soon, under the combination of the more mobile PT-76s and heavy infantry antitank rocket and missile fire, all the American armor, except for one platoon of three tanks, was knocked out of action.
Kim knew that if the Americans were allowed time to retake the ground by air strike, then their logistical genius for quick repair would come into play, and tanks that had now been taken out of the battle because crews had either been killed or their M-1s had lost a track could be in action again in six or seven hours. Kim had never forgotten his father’s stories of how North Korean commanders had stood, mouths agape at the incredible speed with which American Seabees had cleared rough-timbered ground and laid down mesh airstrips within twelve hours. Accordingly, Kim sent in mop-up squads of demolition experts, some of whom were cut down by the few remaining M-1 crews manning the commanders’ and the loaders’ machine guns before they, too, were silenced. The NKA squads placed plastique on the tanks with times fuses set for forty minutes, giving all NKA squads time to clear the area.
The Uijongbu corridor exploded in a roaring cacophony of black-orange balls spewing i
nto the dark and monsoon-riven sky as the plastique and rounds aboard the tanks exploded. Kim would have liked to use the tanks, but the NKA didn’t have the supporting ground crews for each tank that the American army had now instituted, or enough electronic experts to service the sophisticated equipment on board. Only two M-1s were spared so that when the day came that the South had been crushed, the tanks could be forwarded to Kaesong, where they would be airlifted by the big Russian Condor transport to Moscow for thorough dissection by the Russian army.
* * *
Seoul was Kim’s, and as tens of thousands of NKA regulars, reservists, and artillery closed in the ring of steel about the capital, it was an ashen-faced Cahill whose officers had given him firsthand observation reports of the carnage in the city above—”like tossing grenades into packed rooms,” one of them had said. Cahill was now confronted with the inevitable. By midnight Korean time the situation was so hopeless that, amid the shambles and smoke of what had been one of the most sophisticated electronic communication centers in Asia, the American general asked permission from Washington to surrender Seoul into enemy hands.
General Gray replied that any delaying action would help the reserves on the way from Japan, while SATINT suggested the NKA were pausing to ford the Han across pontoon bridges. Approximately a half hour later Cahill received more reports that thousands of NKA regulars, wearing normal peasant and worker garb, had, hours before the last bridges were blown, infiltrated the columns of refugees and were now causing further chaos and thwarting South Korean artillery batteries trying to reach the Han from the South.
At 1:00 a.m. the U.S.-ROK command, in effect Cahill, was given an ultimatum: seven hours to surrender or “answer for all the consequences.”
To the rest of the world now watching, to America holding its breath, the seven hours granted Cahill to make up his mind-Washington’s mind — was puzzling. In Europe it was being touted by commentators, especially in the Eastern bloc, as a “generous” act of humanitarianism in modern war; obviously Kim was giving time for as many civilians to escape over the few remaining bridges as possible. In fact, Kim had given Cahill seven hours for one reason only: By that time it would be dawn, the usual time for the U.S. and ROK flags to be raised, so that Kim and his troops, as all the world looked on, could be photographed in full light as the American and South Korean flags were taken down. He could see no reason why Washington would prolong his artillery’s systematic destruction of the city. He was correct.
* * *
The flags were hauled down, furled, and General Cahill, but not General Lee, was instructed to hand the American flag personally to General Kim. Without looking at it, Kim peremptorily handed it to an aide, who set the Stars and Stripes on fire, lifting it high on a bayonet, waving it joyously for the cheering NKA army and the world to see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“If we do nothing, it will be interpreted as weakness. Confidence in our treaty obligations in Europe would be seriously under—”
“I agree, Comrade,” said the premier. “But our Far Eastern Fleet has already put to sea. Is that not message enough?”
“No,” answered the defense minister, a stocky Georgian leaning back in one of the leather-backed chairs in the premier’s extraordinarily long, rectangular office, trying to compose himself. It was no use; he was leaning forward again, his impatience and anxiety evidenced by his nicotine-stained fingers fiddling unconsciously with a thick glass ashtray. He looked across at his comrade from the ministry of the interior, then left at the premier in his seat at the top of the T-shaped conference table, and spread his hands on the green baize in a gesture of accommodation. “What I wish to point out, Comrade Premier, is that sending our Eastern Fleet out of Vladivostok is standard procedure whenever the American Seventh Fleet enters the Sea of Japan. The Americans know this. Our Warsaw allies know this. It does not send a strong enough message, in my opinion.” His fingers tapped hard on the table. “We need to take a step which will send a strong message that the Sea of Japan cannot be used as an American lake, as — as an operational area from which to bombard North Korea. As it was last time.” The defense minister turned and pointed at the Pacific Rim map. “It would be the same as if we sailed into California waters. Can you imagine?”
“I understand this, Comrade,” put in Premier Suzlov, “but I think a strong enough message is being sent to everyone with the deployment of our Eastern Fleet. The public in the Warsaw Pact countries don’t know it is standard practice. They will see it as a very strong measure on our part. So will the American public. The important thing, Comrades, is that we know the Pentagon understands it is normal procedure.”
“But the Pentagon suspects us of being in collusion with North Korea,” answered the defense minister, undeterred.
Suzlov looked about the table for an informal poll. “Our dear comrades in Pyongyang have made a grave error by invading South Korea. They did not consult us. Nor inform us of the time—”
“They never consult us,” grumbled the marshall of the air force. “They are a law unto themselves.”
“Law?” skoffed Admiral Doldich.’”They have no law. They are ruled by an overfed ego in a Mao suit. He has placed us in a very dangerous position, Comrades. If we do not support him, we are seen as deserting a socialist brother, an ally. If we do support him, we risk widening the conflict. We have enough trouble now with every republic from here to Turkey clamoring for semiautonomy.”
“Which means autonomy,” chimed in the minister for defense. “This is precisely why, Comrade Premier, I urge a tougher stand here. Comrade Doldich is quite correct that everyone in our fifteen republics is watching us. If we falter, if Moscow fails, appears weak-kneed on this, it will only fuel divisive elements from Estonia to Mongolia. To make matters worse, Beijing is being foolish again about their borders.” The minister meant Damansky Island and the far eastern border along Outer Mongolia, which fronted the Soviet Union’s back door and laid claim to more than a million Soviet troops permanently stationed there. Particular knowledge of this area lay with Kiril Marchenko, a colonel in the service of the STAVKA, the general headquarters of the Soviet Supreme High Command, one of the specialist advisers invited on occasion to Politburo meetings. It was to him that Suzlov now turned for his opinion. The STAVKA suspected that Doldich’s dispatch of the Soviet Far Eastern Fleet had less to do with sending messages to the U.S. Seventh Fleet and more to do with Doldich wanting to have the fleet “at sea” rather than risk having it bottled up, the fate of the German surface fleet in both world wars. But it had been STAVKA’s intelligence reports suggesting the USSR show its muscle to China that had caught the premier’s attention. He favored giving a clear signal to Beijing that, despite the post-Gorbachev rapprochement between the two countries, Moscow would not yield to “unrealistic” demands for more territory on the far eastern border. If China became obstreperous, which it seemed to be doing, as it had done in the sixties and seventies, then the Russian navy was there, ready to pulverize anything that moved against the vital Soviet security zone between the Manchurian border and the USSR’s huge year-round ice-free port of Vladivostok.
Marchenko was about to begin speaking when the defense minister put up his hand, his rows of “Afghanistan service” ribbons catching the early morning light from the wood-paneled beige walls and the portrait of Lenin directly behind him. “If I can return for a moment to the matter of our European allies. If we do not take stronger measures, if we do not come quickly to the aid of our North Korean comrades…” He held up his hand like a traffic cop to stop oncoming objections until he was finished. “Despite their rashness, if we, as the leaders of the socialist world, do not come to their aid, our Warsaw Pact comrades have every reason to doubt our commitment to them in the future — to socialist solidarity all over the world. And if, God forbid, there is ever an attack against our Soviet Motherland and we need them to aid us, and quickly, then our reactions now to our comrades in North Korea will decide the issue.” N
o one stirred or even raised an eyebrow at the defense minister’s use of “God forbid”—Gorbachev had used it all the time during his years in office. “The question for them, Comrades,” continued the minister, “will be, why should we fight to protect the Soviet Union’s borders? Why should we be the buffer zone in Eastern Europe if the Soviet Union does not move to aid one of our brother socialist countries in North Korea?”
Colonel Marchenko made eye contact with the most powerful man in the Soviet Union, though he knew that as colonel he was not entitled to speak at such a high-level meeting unless specifically invited to do so. STAVKA not only supported the premier’s position regarding the Eastern Fleet and China but also shared the defense minister’s concern. Marchenko’s intelligence sources had painted an even more frightening picture of the spread of underground dissident movements within the republics. Gorbachev and his precious perestroika had lifted the lid from the can of worms. Encouraged by his call for reforms, the underground, indeed everybody, from the decadent rock and roll stars—”Bye-bye, Miss American Pie”—to literary professors quoting the leftist traitor Orwell, had started yelling about freedom. Freedom for what? Marchenko wanted to know. Freedom to be degenerate — sex, drugs, and mayhem in the streets? The KGB had over three million files on “latent dissidents” who had surfaced in the Gorbachev years, in addition to those already known as “dubious characters,” all of them just waiting and watching like delinquents for the first sign of the parents’ discipline weakening. But even this was as nothing compared to the threat posed by the clique of “delinquent generals” on overcrowded Taiwan. Agents who often sent in conflicting assessments were as one in their reports that the Taiwan clique were positively drooling at the prospect of a Soviet-U.S. conflict and/or Chinese preoccupation in a Sino-Soviet conflict over Far Eastern borders. And the present North/South Korean War was a prime time, one that would not come again, for Taiwan’s American-equipped navy, vastly superior to Mainland China’s, to retake some of the offshore islands.