Combat- Parallel Lines

by William Peter Grasso

  Dorman was visibly relieved when the 155-millimeter battery’s FDC replied instantly, reporting his signal weak but readable.

  About what I figured, Papadakis thought, considering there’s this big mountain in the way of those radio waves.

  The lieutenant’s confidence bolstered, he called in the fire mission. Before transmitting the final segment, he stopped to ask, “Should we request splash, sir?”

  “Might as well.”

  When the call for fire was complete, Pop added, “But if we don’t hear those rounds fly overhead and then hear them impact, we’d better re-evaluate our map reading skills, Lieutenant. If they don’t land on our heads, that is.”

  Papadakis began the mental calculation: Okay…we’re about nine miles from the battery. From the time they tell us “shot,” it should take about forty-five seconds for the round to get here, shooting high angle.

  Thirty seconds later, the battery reported, “Shot, over.”

  Start the clock. In forty seconds, they should tell us “Splash.”

  He tried to keep his eyes on his wristwatch, but something down by the road caught his attention. A solitary man—a Chinese soldier by his quilted uniform—had materialized from the depths of the woods and was walking casually toward the edge of the tree line. He stopped, looked around, and then squatted against a tree, fumbling at the waist of his trousers.

  As Pop said, “Joe Chink picked one hell of a time to take a crap,” the voice from FDC spoke the hurried words, “Splash, over.”

  Seconds after that, the 155-millimeter adjustment round smashed into the edge of the woods, shattering trees and erasing the Chinese soldier from the face of the Earth.

  Lieutenant Dorman cried out softly. It could have been surprise, shock, or glee; Papadakis wasn’t sure which one. He told the FO, “Add one hundred, fire for effect.”

  “Are you sure we’re ready to do that yet?” Dorman asked.

  “Yeah, we are. Something’s back in those woods. Gotta be.”

  The fog of uplifted snow and flying debris was still settling as the FDC reported once again, “Shot, over.”

  As those six fire for effect rounds were whistling toward their destination, Papadakis and his men thought they saw ghostly movements deep in the woods.

  “They’re running for their holes like rabbits,” Captain Pop said. “This oughta be rich.”

  When those rounds landed seconds later, there was no doubt they’d struck more than trees. There were large, jagged objects in the air—torn metal, no doubt—tumbling through the roiling cloud of snow, tree fragments, and dirt thrown up by the explosions. Something round tumbled through the sky like a tossed coin, finally falling to the roadway: a vehicle’s wheel. It bounced several times before coming to rest just off the pavement.

  “Told you there’s something back there,” Pop said to Dorman. “Let’s shift it around now. Move it left.”

  “How much, sir?”

  “One hundred yards.”

  As the RTO called in the adjustment, a chain of new explosions thundered from the woods. Each one launched a fresh cloud of airborne debris.

  “Ammo cooking off?” Dorman asked.

  “Damn right,” Pop replied. “I believe we found ourselves one of those chink batteries.”

  They kept shifting the rounds to the north until the fire for effect volleys had covered a line through the woods almost a mile long. But none of those subsequent volleys had produced the pyrotechnic effect that announced a hit on military vehicles and ammunition. If the rounds were shifted any farther, the GIs wouldn’t be able to see their impacts anymore. They’d have no idea if they’d hit anything.

  Papadakis checked his watch. There was still about an hour before they needed to start back toward Wondang-ni and the helicopter that would—hopefully—pick them up there. He wanted to walk the recon by fire rounds farther north, toward a road junction suspected of being a major conduit for the Chinese moving south in the darkness of night. If they were using that road, there might be large numbers of troops bivouacked in the hills and woods around it, hiding in daylight from the American aircraft.

  I’d love to move up that way and take a peek, Pop told himself. But we couldn’t go far, because then we’re putting more distance between us and that eggbeater.

  But this is recon by fire, right? So what the hell…let the fire do the work.

  He told Dorman, “Give us one more shift left.”

  “But we won’t even see the rounds impact, sir. That ridge over there will block our view.”

  “I don’t give a damn if we see it or not,” Pop replied. “Just do it, for cryin’ out loud.”

  Dorman was right; they didn’t see the rounds impact, just heard the distant roar as they exploded beyond the obscuring ridge. They waited, hoping to hear secondary explosions, too. But there were none.

  “All right, let’s get outta here,” Papadakis called to his machine gun team.

  But the team didn’t move. The prone gunner gripped the bipod-mounted gun tightly, sighting on something down the road. The assistant gunner was waving frantically for Captain Pop to join them.

  “Whaddya got, Trent?” Pop asked the gunner as he lay down next to him.

  “There’s something moving over there, sir,” PFC Trent replied, cold fear in his voice. “There’s lots of something moving.”

  Papadakis could see it now: Chinese soldiers were spilling onto the road. It wasn’t an organized movement. They were fleeing the artillery fire in panic…

  And there were hundreds of them. Maybe more. He knew all too well from the last war that in close combat you rarely saw more than a handful of your adversaries. But you could usually bet that if you saw five, there were probably fifty. If you saw ten, it could be a hundred.

  But I’m already seeing hundreds, so there could be thousands of them around here.

  And they’re headed right for us…the nine of us.

  Dorman and his FO team had already started walking south, their backs turned, oblivious to the threat swarming onto the road. Pulling gunner Trent and his assistant, Bova, along by their web gear, he hustled after the artillerymen.

  “We ain’t done,” Pop told the FO once he caught up to him. “Keep moving, but shift the fire to the road. Make it airbursts this time. Try to put it about fifty yards south of where the Chinks are now, because that’s where they’ll be in about a minute.” Then he told Trent and Bova to lead the patrol south.

  Moving briskly down the ridge, they all watched over their shoulders as the first airbursts exploded over the road. But they’d detonated much too high. Very few Chinese were cut down by shell fragments.

  “The battery doesn’t have any VT fuzes left,” Dorman told Captain Pop. “They’re shooting time fuzes, so I’ll have to adjust them in myself.”

  “Okay, it looks like we should start with down fifty, Lieutenant. You agree?”

  Dorman didn’t argue. He called in Pop’s correction verbatim.

  The jogging RTO was halfway through the transmission when he tripped and sprawled onto his stomach. The long whip antenna on his backpack radio snagged a tree as he went down, snapping the slender metal tube in half. His radio was now useless for long-range communication.

  Sergeant Carsey—the man who’d questioned the need for taking two radios on the patrol—immediately understood the look Captain Pop was casting his way: Now do you see why we took more than one radio, numbnuts?

  The other RTO—Papadakis’ personal radioman—continued the interrupted call for fire. Carsey pulled the artillery RTO back onto his feet, and the GIs continued trotting along the ridge as fast as they could.

  They all glanced back when they heard the crack of the next airburst volley exploding. These bursts were lower and much more effective, sweeping a section of the road practically clean of CCF soldiers.

  But there were still so many more, swarming like ants, running away from the artillery fire.

  Something else Papadakis had learned in the last war: the te
ndency to overestimate your adversary’s numbers. But he didn’t think he was exaggerating now: There’s thousands of Chinese down there.

  *****

  They were still two miles from Wondang-ni. A light snow was falling, and the men of the patrol weren’t running anymore; the hordes of CCF soldiers in their wake were either dead along the road or had fled into the hills. The GIs could no longer see the area where recon by fire had become slaughter by fire.

  But they were all sure that many more Chinese soldiers were still very much alive. An urgent intel report needed to be radioed to Regiment immediately, and SOP required it be sent in code so an enemy listening in on the frequency wouldn’t be aware what you knew of their disposition and react accordingly. Papadakis had given up trying to encode the report, though. He wasn’t able to turn the pages of the codebook without removing his gloves. His hands, on the verge of frostbite, couldn’t take it anymore. The gloves would have to stay on; the message would have to be broadcast in the clear.

  At least we’ve got the coordinates of the CCF assembly area pretty damn close. The big stuff from Division Artillery—the eight-inchers and one-five-five Long Toms—can pound it all they like now. We did our job…we took out their artillery.

  Now all we gotta do is get the hell outta here.

  They were almost to the place where they’d have to leave the ridge, drop into the valley, and parallel the road into Wondang-ni. Machine gunner Trent was still leading the way. Suddenly he stopped and dropped to the ground. Despite the soft blanket of fresh snow, his machine gun clattered loudly as it came down with him. Pop felt sure that racket could be heard all the way to Seoul.

  Crawling up to his gunner, Pop asked, “What the hell’s the matter?”

  “Look,” Trent replied, pointing to the road below. “Chinks. They didn’t spot us. Not yet, anyway. They must be deaf or something.”

  There were four CCF soldiers visible. They were standing in the middle of the pavement, gesturing wildly as they spoke.

  “Ah, they’re fucked up,” Papadakis whispered. “They don’t know what the hell they’re supposed to be doing.”

  “Maybe they’re a patrol, sir,” Trent said, “and they’re looking for us. If the chinks were paying attention a little while back, it had to be obvious somebody was adjusting those rounds down on their heads.”

  “Nah, these clowns just look lost,” Pop replied. “And the word on the chinks is they don’t patrol, they just probe in force. From what I’ve seen so far, I think that’s true.”

  But lost or not, those Chinese soldiers were blocking their path to Wondang-ni. There was no way around them without being seen.

  “So what’re we going to do, Captain?” Trent asked.

  We’ve got thirty minutes before that eggbeater’s supposed to show up, and we’re still about fifteen minutes from the pickup point.

  If we start a shooting war around that village, that pilot’s gonna scram and we’ll all be dead before the sun sets.

  And those damn chinks are still standing there, arguing. The dumb bastards…

  Dorman low-crawled up to Pop. He repeated Trent’s question: “So what’re we going to do, Captain?”

  “We’re gonna wait fifteen minutes right here,” Papadakis replied. “You got the coordinates for where we are, navigator?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Outstanding. Call in an at my command mission. Target it right on the road down there. Have the rounds in the tubes, but don’t fire unless we give them the word. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir…but you really want to use artillery fire against four guys we could hit with rocks?”

  “It ain’t those four I’m worried about, Lieutenant. It’s the ones I can’t see that got my knickers in a twist. They could be waiting for some of their buddies. Maybe a lot of their buddies.”

  “Affirmative, sir,” Dorman replied. “But aren’t we…a little close? I mean, the rounds might be off a little and—”

  “Just pick out the biggest tree you can find, get your ass behind it, and roll the dice, Lieutenant.”

  Fifteen minutes passed. The four Chinese had stopped arguing but hadn’t moved.

  “Give them three more minutes,” Papadakis said.

  “Why’s that, sir?” Trent asked.

  “Just humor me, Private.”

  Captain Pop crawled among the men of his patrol, giving each a personal briefing; eight times he repeated, “If the chinks are still there in a couple minutes, Trent’s gonna cut them all down before they know what hit them. Then we all run like hell straight down the road to the village. Understood?”

  They were down to the last minute. Papadakis watched the second hand of his watch sweep toward twelve. It was on the nine when he heard the distant murmuring of a helicopter.

  He told himself, Don’t you love it when a plan comes together?

  His eyes met Trent’s. They both took a deep breath.

  “Now,” Pop whispered.

  A two-second burst from the machine gun knocked down three of the Chinese. The fourth started to run for the cover of the trees. But he didn’t escape Trent’s second burst.

  Then Papadakis and his patrol were running for their lives down the road to Wondang-ni. He knew it was tactically a dumb move; if there were more Chinese on the hills to either side, they’d be easy pickings. And if the helicopter pilot saw flashes of gunfire, he’d probably turn and fly away.

  But we ain’t staying out here in this icebox tonight. Not if I can help it.

  They reached the village unscathed. As far as they could tell, nobody had fired on them. Carsey set off a red smoke grenade in the clearing Captain Pop had designated earlier, marking the landing zone for the pilot.

  The wheels of the Sikorsky didn’t even touch the ground. It hung inches above the frozen turf while the men of the patrol hurled themselves into her cramped cabin.

  As the helicopter started to climb away, a string of green tracers arced across her nose, trying to find her range. They seemed close enough to touch. Every GI who could point his weapon out the door of the cramped cabin began firing wildly toward their point of origin on a hillside, without effect. Then Trent elbowed them out of the way. Grasping the machine gun by its jury-rigged handle, he began to spray the hillside with .30-caliber bullets, sweeping the weapon back and forth until the Chinese stopped firing. The Sikorsky hadn’t been hit.

  Trent shouted to Captain Pop, “Next patrol, can I load tracers? Would’ve been a hell of a lot easier to hit those chinks if I’d had them.”

  “Negative,” the captain replied. “Not for a mission like this. Remember what I told you?”

  “Yes, sir. You said tracers work both ways.”

  “Damn right…and you just taught that to the chinks, too.”

  The helicopter didn’t fly directly to 26th Regiment’s CP; instead, she flew east a few minutes before turning south for home.

  “We’ve got to get clear of this artillery box, pronto,” the crew chief told Papadakis. “There’s big stuff in the air. Don’t want to get knocked down by friendly fire.”

  “Yeah, I know all about the big stuff,” Pop replied. “I’m the guy who called for it.”

  Fourteen minutes later, the helicopter deposited the patrol next to Jock Miles’ CP on Northeast Airfield. They even had time to clean themselves and their weapons before the supper meal.

  Later, as darkness fell, Theo Papadakis stretched out in his covered bunker, stoking the fire in the makeshift oven that struggled to keep the temperature inside above freezing. Nestled in his sleeping bag, he waited for the shriek of incoming Chinese artillery.

  But it never came. He went to sleep with a smile on his face.

  When he awoke a few hours later, he found ten $1 bills stuck in the strap of his Thompson submachine gun. Patchett had paid off their bet.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By next morning, the snow had stopped and the skies had cleared to only scattered clouds. With airborne visibility restored, the ground support pl
anes of the Air Force were in business again. At 26th Regiment’s CP, the sights and sounds of tactical airpower pummeling the mass of Chinese just ten miles to the north were most welcome.

  But it didn’t change the fact that 8th Army was preparing to pull back once again. “With all those flyboys knocking the hell out of them chinks, you’d think that maybe we’d be staying here a while,” Patchett said.

  “Our new boss has a different idea, Top,” Jock replied. “General Ridgway thinks this MLR is in the wrong place. He’s afraid we’re going to end up in a street fight in Seoul…and he’s probably right. It’d be another pointless bloodbath, just like the Marines got into after the Inchon landings, and we’ll end up withdrawing south of the city, anyway.”

  Patchett added, “I’m kinda liking the way this General Ridgway thinks, sir. It seems like he’s making plans based on what’s actually going on…instead of some fairy tale they cooked up in Tokyo.”

  “You’ll get to tell him that in person, Top. He’s visiting all the frontline regiments today, before we all hit the road south. I figure he wants to give everyone a chance to hear his game plan from the horse’s mouth.”

  Then Jock addressed the staff manning the CP: “Has anybody ever worked for General Ridgway before?”

  Nobody had.

  But Sean Moon said, “Never worked for him, but I heard a lot about him when we were all fighting the Krauts. Tough son of a bitch—a paratrooper. Commanded the Eighty-Second Airborne until Ike gave him the whole damn airborne corps.”

  “I don’t reckon he’ll be doing a lot of parachute jumping in these parts, Bubba,” Patchett said.

  “Yeah…but he’ll still be a tough son of a bitch, Patch.”

  *****

  General Ridgway’s visit to 26th Regiment was scheduled for 1300 hours. He’d arrive by helicopter; if he tried to come by jeep, he’d be bucking the traffic jam of GI vehicles already headed south to the new MLR. If he planned to visit every line regiment on this day—his first on Korean soil—he’d have to fly.