COMBAT:
Parallel Lines
A Jock Miles-Moon Brothers
Korean War Story
Book 3
A Novel By
William Peter Grasso
Novels By William Peter Grasso
Jock Miles-Moon Brothers Korean War Story
Combat Ineffective, Book 1
Combat Reckoning, Book 2
Combat: Parallel Lines, Book 3
Moon Brothers WW2 Adventure Series
Moon Above, Moon Below, Book 1
Fortress Falling, Book 2
Our Ally, Our Enemy, Book 3
This Fog of Peace, Book 4
Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series
Long Walk to the Sun, Book 1
Operation Long Jump, Book 2
Operation Easy Street, Book 3
Operation Blind Spot, Book 4
Operation Fishwrapper, Book 5
Unpunished
East Wind Returns
Kindle Edition
Copyright © 2019 Grasso Joint Revocable Trust
All rights reserved
Cover design by Alyson Aversa
Kindle Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
COMBAT: Parallel Lines is a work of historical fiction, not a history textbook. Events that are common historical knowledge may not occur at their actual point in time or may not occur at all. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales or to living persons is purely coincidental. The designation of military units may be actual or fictitious.
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Dedication
To all those who could have gone home
but chose to stay and fight.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Novels by William Peter Grasso
Copyright
Author’s Note
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
About the Author
Upcoming Releases
More Novels by William Peter Grasso
Author’s Note
Often called the “forgotten war,” the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 remains overshadowed by the vastness of WW2. Yet it marked an escalation of America’s military misadventures on the Asian mainland, where US domestic politics continued to distort foreign realities, provoking disaster after disaster on the battlefield. In no way, however, does the fictional story presented here mean to denigrate the hardships and sacrifices of the individual American soldiers forced to fight an enemy they did not understand and for whom they were—at least at first—woefully ill-prepared.
Dialogue often uses derogatory terms for African-Americans and people of various Asian ethnicities. The use of those terms by the author serves no other intent than to accurately represent the vocabulary of some military personnel in the early 1950s.
It would take a host of maps to fully depict the locations visited in this novel. Since this novel focuses on the exploits of fictional characters and doesn’t intend to be a history textbook, I’ve chosen to include no maps. Those readers who wish to put the fictional action into a geographic context can visit a number of sources, any of which can provide far more useful maps than could be included in these pages. Here are a few helpful links:
Korean War Maps, Courtesy of Korean War Project
Korean War Maps, University of Texas Libraries
Chapter One
South Pyongan Province, North Korea
Late November 1950
The driving snow cut their visibility of the road ahead to a quarter mile or less. Perched in the commander’s hatch of his Pershing tank, Master Sergeant Sean Moon, US Army, told the driver, “Slow it down, pal. Keep it to ten miles per, okay? Let’s not get anybody strung out and lost because he couldn’t see the guy in front of him.”
There were a dozen M26 Pershings in column behind Sean’s tank, all replacements for vehicles that had gone unserviceable during 26th Regiment’s fighting withdrawal from the grasp of the CCF, the Communist Chinese Forces, who’d poured into the battle for Korea just weeks ago. It hadn’t been Chinese weaponry that knocked out those tanks, for the swarming hordes of the CCF possessed little in the way of anti-tank capability. The Pershings had gone out of action due to their inherent mechanical weaknesses; transmission failures had been the biggest cause.
I don’t imagine this new batch is gonna hold up much better, Sean told himself. They’re still underpowered and got the same damn transmissions. But maybe they’ll last until the M46s finally start showing up, whenever the hell that’ll be.
From what I’m hearing through the grapevine, though, the M46s—Pattons, they’re calling them—ain’t gonna be much better.
Well, they couldn’t have a better tanker’s name, at least.
The Chinese had hit hard at first, knocking the GIs of 26th Regiment south across the Chongchon River toward the North Korean capital of Pyongyang. They’d expected to be driven back across the 38th Parallel, perhaps to Seoul…
Or maybe all the way to Pusan, just one step away from being pushed into the sea, like they’d nearly been last summer.
But as quickly as they’d appeared, the CCF vanished, leaving behind nothing but fields strewn with their dead…and the numbing fear that they’d suddenly appear by the tens of thousands once again, washing across the GIs’ positions like an unstoppable tide. The retreating UN forces—five US Army divisions, nine South Korean Army light divisions known as ROKs, one division of US Marines, and the assorted brigades and battalions of Allied nations—had stopped to form a ragged defensive line across the width of North Korea, the center of that line rendered broken and discontinuous by mountain ranges. Twenty-Sixth Regiment was dug in thirty miles north of Pyongyang along the Taedong River.
There, they’d wait as politicians around the world engaged in cautious debate as to what their next move should be, a
lthough on one point there was no need for discussion: nobody—save the American high commander in Asia and his admirers in Congress—was willing to risk an escalation of this small cold conflict in Korea into World War III.
But that didn’t mean they’d be willing to yield a win to the communists, be they Korean, Chinese, or Russian.
Sergeant Moon didn’t need much visibility to know where he was; he’d been on this highway more than a few times. The railroad tracks that paralleled the road on its east side had just crossed over to the western shoulder; that put them less than ten miles from 26th Regiment at Sunchon. “See if you can raise Regiment on the radio,” he told his loader. “Ain’t no mountains in the way from here. Just give me a second to make sure the antenna base is clear of snow. Don’t need to be shorting out a brand new radio right outta the box.”
As he leaned aft from the hatch to dry the antenna mount, the driver’s voice filled the crew’s headsets: “We’ve got company coming the other way like a bat out of hell, Sarge. Some deuces all bunched up.”
Sean had a pretty good idea what he was looking at: That’s a bug-out, plain and simple. Ain’t no other reason for a regular convoy to be driving like that in this weather. The only question is whether they’re GIs or ROKs.
And there’s only one way to find out.
It wouldn’t take much to transform his column of tanks into a roadblock. There’d be no driving around it; the snow had made the terrain on either side of the highway impassible for wheeled vehicles.
“Form a wedge on me,” he radioed to the other tanks. “It looks like we gotta save some scared and confused boys from themselves.”
When confronted with this wall of steel, the drivers of the deuce-and-a-halfs—bunched up and barreling as they were—couldn’t stop fast enough. The lead truck slid into Moon’s tank, bouncing off her bow and then sliding backward until quickly shuddering to a stop. Two deuces foolishly tried to leave the highway and bypass the roadblock; they stalled twenty yards off the pavement, their wheels hub-deep in the snowdrifts. Five more trucks emerged from the veil of blinding snow; with little traction to stop, they collided with each other nose-to-tail in sequence.
Men leapt from the beds of the deuces and tried to run off-road around the Pershings. Finding themselves bogged down in knee-deep snow, they didn’t get far as tanks plowed effortlessly through the drifts to encircle them. Sullenly, the hundred-strong mob milled about, their hands deep in the pockets of their parkas. None of them were carrying a rifle. All of them were Koreans.
A ROK lieutenant climbed from the cab of the deuce that had bounced off Sean’s tank. He approached the Pershing, waving his arms imperiously while calling out in excellent English to clear the road for his trucks.
“I don’t think so, my friend,” Sean replied, peering down from his seat on the turret hatch ring. “And you got a little explaining to do. For instance, how do I know you and this great unarmed rabble of yours ain’t KPA infiltrators?”
“We are ROKs, not KPA,” the lieutenant indignantly replied. “There is no more KPA. The North Korean Army is finished. Everyone knows that.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Sean said. “And those trucks you’re driving…they got GI markings all over ’em. Second Infantry Division, in fact. Where’d you steal ’em from, pal?”
“They are not stolen. They were reassigned to us.”
“Bullshit,” Sean replied. “As bad as the Second got beat up on the Chongchon, they ain’t in a position to be giving nothing away. Admit it…you found these vehicles sitting around somewhere and figured they’d be a quick way to bug out. Pretty typical scenario…throw down your weapons and run, like you decided that you ain’t part of this war no more.”
“We are not bugging out,” the lieutenant insisted. “We have orders to…”
Before he could finish the sentence, two more deuces emerged from the curtain of snowfall. With two dull thuds, they added themselves to the daisy chain of trucks nestled nose-to-tail along the roadway.
Sean’s radio had no trouble establishing communications with the regimental command post. It only took a few minutes for the CP to confirm with 8th Army what he’d suspected all along: the ROKs were, in all likelihood, from several companies that had bugged out that morning from the regiment on the right flank of the 26th. A platoon of ROK MPs was looking for them at that very moment.
“I just got the word that those orders you’re talking about are bullshit, too,” Sean told the lieutenant. “You got two choices. You can get on those deuces, turn them around, and go back to your unit. We’ll follow along behind you just to make sure you don’t get lost or nothing. With a little luck, this motor movement of yours just might get written off as a big misunderstanding.”
“And the other choice?”
“I hold you here until those MPs come and lock your asses up. From what I’ve seen of how your MPs operate, though, I’d say the first option looks much more promising.”
The whole time this discussion was taking place, the encircling tanks had been inching steadily forward, forcing the ROKs into an ever-shrinking circle. The creeping forward progress of Sean’s tank forced the ROK lieutenant to keep backing up. In a few more feet, he’d have to jump sideways to avoid getting crushed between the Pershing and his deuce.
For added menace, the tanks’ turrets slowly traversed through narrow arcs, as if putting groups of deserters in their sights.
“Can we shoot them, Sean?” the commander of Number Two tank asked over the radio.
“Only if they shoot at us. But it ain’t likely they’re gonna do that unless they wanna get turned inside out by a bunch of thirty cals. Just don’t let no asshole climb up on your deck. He could have a grenade on him.”
“You still think these clowns might be KPA?”
“Nah,” Sean replied, “they’re just scared shitless gooks from down south.”
A Pershing made nose-to-nose contact with one of the snowbound deuces and was pushing it backward toward the road, the muzzle of its long main gun hovering over the cab as if ready to smash it. Thinking the tankers might be intent on flattening him along with his vehicle, the deuce driver panicked; in his hurry to exit the truck, he slipped on the icy running board and fell to the ground. Quickly pinned beneath the front wheel of his vehicle as it came to a stop on top of him, he disappeared into the deep snow.
“YOU ARE KILLING MY MEN,” the lieutenant shrieked. “I’LL SEE TO IT YOU ARE COURT-MARTIALED FOR THIS, SERGEANT.”
Casually, Sean replied, “I don’t think so, pal. He ain’t dead yet, probably…just pushed down into the snowbank. But if we don’t get him out real soon, he’s gonna suffocate.”
He signaled for the Pershing driver to shove the truck back a little farther. No longer trapped beneath the wheel, the driver was pulled from his airless captivity by two ROKs. He was gasping for breath but otherwise unhurt.
Sean told the lieutenant, “See? What’d I tell you? He’s gonna be okay. Just a little accident. Happens all the time. The snow saved his ass from getting crushed. Like falling into a big soft cushion.”
After letting the Korean officer sulk for a moment, he added, “So what’s it gonna be? You going back of your own accord? Or are you gonna let the MPs do a little dance on your head?”
The lieutenant said nothing. He just stared into the distance, as if the surrounding mountains held the answer to his plight.
“What the hell are you running from, anyway?”
“The Chinese. They’re coming.”
“Nobody in Eighth Army’s seen a chink in over a week,” Sean replied. “According to that patch you’re wearing, you’re from ROK Sixth Division, right?”
His gaze still miles away, the lieutenant nodded.
“You’re telling me your outfit got hit?”
He shook his head.
“Then what the fuck are you running from?”
“The Chinese have no choice now. They’re coming.”
“Yeah, and so i
s Christmas. You’re telling me you ain’t even been up against the chinks yet, but you’re running anyway?”
Another nod.
“In other words, you’re just yellow.”
He hadn’t meant yellow as a racist pun, but his crew took it that way. They found it hysterically funny.
“It’s not what you think, Sergeant,” the lieutenant said.
“Then maybe you’d better hurry up and fill me in. I’m wasting gas here.”
The lieutenant took a moment to compose himself. Then he said, “If I surrender to the MPs, they will kill me.”
“Figured that already. So I guess you’ve gotta turn around and get your asses back to your unit, right?”
With a slow shake of his head, the Korean replied, “If I order these men to return, they will kill me. Perhaps not here, not now. But in time…”
The cordon of tanks had squeezed all the ROKs back onto the road. In the process, they’d pushed the two mired deuces back onto the pavement, as well.
“Tell you what I’m gonna do for you,” Sean said. “I’ll be the bad guy here. I’m placing your men under arrest. They’re my prisoners now, got it? I can’t arrest you, you being an officer and all, but the rest of ’em are fair game.” He winked, hoping the lieutenant understood the favor he was doing him.
“You can do that, Sergeant?”
“You bet your sweet ass I can,” he replied, tapping the six stripes on his sleeve with a gloved finger.
“But they’re not even in your army.”
“I beg to differ, pal. You’re all part of Eighth US Army and so am I. If I catch them breaking regs…and being deserters, they sure as hell are breaking regs right now…I can take them into custody. Now go tell your men what I just did, get ’em back on the deuces and outta this damn snowstorm before the stupid bastards die of exposure. We’ll escort you back to Sunchon. If they give you any shit, blame it on me. I don’t figure they’ll argue much with a bunch of tanks.”
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