Quite annoyed, the G3 asked, “Like what, Sergeant?”
“Like this, sir. We gotta make it sound like there’s been a huge fuckup in our line. For example, a big explosion you can hear for miles, capped off with a controlled fire you can see for miles. Then you can move around all the vehicles you want, making it sound like we’re in a headlong vamoose.”
His eyes wide with wonder, General Bryan asked, “You’ve done something like this before, Sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. And the Krauts fell for it just about every time. They’d come barreling into this big artillery ambush and get the shit blown out of ’em. We’d ring the kill zone with tanks, too, because the Krauts would always lead with lots of armor. The chinks won’t have much in the way of tanks, though, so the artillery’ll be blowing up personnel, mostly.”
Anxious to regain the spotlight, the G3 blurted, “I’ve got it! Since the weather’s going to be clear for at least the next few days, why don’t we get the Air Force to accidentally bomb our lines? After we’ve pulled back from the targeted area, of course. When the Chinese see that, they’ll say Thank you very much and come flooding in.”
Not one of Jock’s officers thought much of that idea. They all started to refute the G3 at the same time, creating a jumble of voices nobody could understand.
“Hang on, gentlemen,” Jock said. “Sergeant Moon’s been carrying the ball pretty well so far. Let him take it to the end zone.” Then he turned to General Bryan and asked, “If that’s okay with you, sir?”
“By all means, Colonel. I’d like to hear what the sergeant has to say.”
“Very well, sir,” Sean said. “Okay, here’s the problem…you’re giving the flyboys a little too much credit. The odds are pretty good they’ll drop some bombs right on friendly heads. Accidentally, of course…but that don’t make no difference to the casualties. Don’t get me wrong…I love our flyboys. One of ’em is my little brother. But they’re only human…and they’ll all tell you the same thing: everybody looks pretty much alike from up there.”
The officers thought Sean was finished, but then he added, “Do any of you gentlemen remember Operation Cobra back in Normandy in Forty-Four? Eighth Air Force managed to kill or injure better than a battalion’s worth of GIs. Killed a three-star, too—General McNair. So if you’re asking me, I’d say we stage our own pyrotechnics. The engineers got loads of explosives, and we got enough foo gas to make a fire the chinks’ll see in Seoul.”
*****
General Blackshear Bryan made Ridgway’s deadline with an hour to spare. Twenty-Fourth Division’s ops plan was presented to the 8th Army commander at 1900 hours. The only thing that worried Bryan: There’s an old saying among those of us who’ve worked for the man that goes like this: there are three ways to do things: a right way, a wrong way, and a Ridgway.
Let’s hope we’re in that latter category.
The 8th Army commander smiled as he read the name they’d chosen for the task: Operation Chain-Link. He asked, “I’m guessing it’s inspired by Come Yank My Chain?”
“Affirmative, sir,” Bryan replied.
“Good. I like it.”
But Ridgway did have some questions. Circling an area on the wall map with his fingertip, he asked, “This fire we’ll be setting…you’re putting it up on a plateau near the village of Yubang-ni?”
“Yes, General,” Bryan replied.
“Have you checked the wind forecast for tomorrow afternoon and evening?”
Bryan knew why he was asking, because Jock Miles had raised the same question. Joining his boss at the map, he began to illustrate his battle plan as he told Ridgway, “Yes, sir, we have. The wind will be from the west-northwest at fifteen knots. The staged fire and the explosion that precedes it will be on the plateau to the east of the village and Highway Seventeen. The wind will be carrying the smoke away from the trap area and our troops. Visibility of the battle area—even in the dark of night—should not be an issue.”
Then Ridgway asked, “You’ll be setting off this explosion and fire before the sun goes down. Why not wait until after dark?”
“In daylight, we can see well enough to be sure that their triggering is as spectacular as it needs to be, sir.”
Ridgway nodded approvingly. “Good point, General. Now let me ask you something else. That fire—it’ll be a great temptation for your troopers. They’ll want to leave their posts and huddle around it to get warm. What did you say the forecast temperature for tomorrow night is?”
Bryan replied, “Minus ten degrees Fahrenheit, sir, with a biting wind we’ve already discussed.”
“So how do you plan to keep your shivering troopers away from that fire?” Ridgway asked.
“My troopers will be well south of the fire, sir. Once the engineers set it off and rig the delayed fuzes for the follow-up explosions, they’ll be gone, too.”
Ridgway had no argument with that.
Then Bryan discussed the most critical aspect of the plan: how his forces would know, even in the darkness, when the Chinese were actually in the kill zone. He explained that there’d be a small tank force that would serve as an armored cavalry decoy, with the ability to make and then quickly break off contact with the approaching Chinese. Using hit-and-run tactics, these tankers would lure their foes deeper into the kill zone while still maintaining the mobility to escape once their quarry was in the trap.
This was the part that worried Ridgway the most. It was essential to sucker as large a Chinese force as possible into the trap and destroy them outright; otherwise, the exercise would fail to provide the void in the CCF lines he sought to exploit. The violent dance of deception the armored cavalry patrol would execute—amid the confusion of darkness and shots fired in anger—was not something to be left to anyone other than a proven combat leader. Without such a leader, it was doomed to failure.
When Ridgway asked who would be leading the patrol, Bryan replied, “We have very few experienced junior officers in our tanker ranks, sir…unfortunately, we have very few junior officers, period. But we’re in luck—there’s a very senior armor sergeant on Colonel Miles’ staff who fought with Patton against the Krauts and has executed operations like this before. That sergeant was instrumental in putting this ops plan together, so he knows precisely what needs to be done and has the experience to make it happen.”
Ridgway felt his worries melting away. “What’s this sergeant’s name?” he asked.
“Moon, sir. Master Sergeant Sean Moon.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Even though the GIs knew it was coming, the blast still scared them half to death.
It was just a few minutes past 1600 hours when the engineers set off that thunderous explosion on a cleared portion of the plateau near the deserted village of Tunjon-ni. It shook the snow-covered ground for miles in all directions. On the heels of the detonation came the planned fire: a huge, napalm-fueled blaze now flared near the blast site. As thick black smoke billowed into the late afternoon sky, there were high hopes this demonstration had been as attention-grabbing as the commanders planned.
“Look at that damn fire,” Sean told the crewmen of his four tanks as they watched the flames leap over a hundred feet into the air. “The engineers said they’d make the base of that son of a bitch about fifty yards in diameter and set out enough foo gas drums, satchel charges, and combustible shit on delay fuzes all around the perimeter to keep the blaze going for hours. They even threw in that captured chink ammo we ain’t got no use for…not until now, anyway. That shit’ll be cooking off for a while.”
His apprehensive loader said, “I hope to hell that fire don’t spread and fry us all.”
“Ain’t likely,” Sean replied. “Not with everything covered in snow and the wind blowing it away from us.”
They could hear the roar of a hundred GI vehicles behind them. Trucks and tanks were beginning the next step in setting the artillery trap: creating the aural illusion of an American withdrawal. Those vehicles wouldn’t travel far, jus
t a few miles south to the empty village of Yubang-ni, where they’d join the rest of 26th Regiment in their prepared defensive positions at the base of the U-shaped trap. The division’s other two regiments were already emplaced in the hills that paralleled Highway 17, the route of the anticipated Chinese advance. There, they’d form the sides of the trap; one regiment lay two miles east of the highway, the other two miles west.
The rumble and growl of the vehicles went quiet as the gray dusk darkened into night. Looking toward the low, frozen marshland the highway passed through, Sean and his tankers saw something neither they nor their commanders had expected: the decoy blaze, still burning ferociously, was casting a pale glow across the roadway. The flames showed no signs of subsiding.
“This is better than illum rounds,” Sean said. “Let’s hope it keeps up. But since they can see us as well as we can see them, let’s give ourselves a bigger margin for error, like an extra hundred yards or so.”
A gunner asked, “You really think they’re just going to come strolling down this road, Sarge?”
“If they want to get here fast, they will,” Sean replied. “And if all this noise and flames fooled ’em good enough, they’ll definitely want to get here fast.”
“But what if they don’t come, Sarge?”
“Then all we wasted was a little time and a little gas, pal. All right, before we mount up, let’s go over this shit one more time…”
Sean led his men through a final review of the plan: the four tanks would split into two pairs, each pair roaming its own side of the roadway while providing mutual protection from sappers. He’d picked Shermans for the task. His reasons: They ain’t so likely to break down, and they can haul ass a hell of a lot quicker than a Pershing.
The crews were not rookies; they understood the goal of the exercise was not to engage but to lure the Chinese forward into the kill zone. This would require quite a bit of movement on their part—some of it at great speed—with a great deal of fire discipline.
Sean asked, “You’ve all got a canister round in the tube, right?”
The three other tank commanders nodded yes.
“Just remember, if they start swarming you, button up and spray that canister around good while you’re getting the hell outta there. Use the MGs as emergency backup if you gotta, but don’t waste your time firing HE from the main gun, because there ain’t gonna be nothing out there but chinks on foot. It’d be like driving a pin with a sledgehammer. Wrong damn tool for the job.”
It had been difficult to come up with the canister rounds. Army tactical doctrine considered using the main guns of tanks as gigantic shotguns a waste of tactical assets, so few of those rounds had been shipped to Korea. The division ordnance section claimed they had none on hand, but Sean wouldn’t take no for an answer. He located twelve rounds in their dump that had been overlooked and never logged into inventory. Those crates were promptly loaded into his jeep trailer. When the ordnance officer tried to stop him on the way out, saying, “You’ve got to sign for them, Sergeant,” Sean replied, “Sign for what, sir? You didn’t even know you had ’em, so the way I see it, it’s finders keepers.”
Sean was right. In the minds of Army bean counters, you couldn’t be charged for losing something you never had on your books in the first place. The flustered lieutenant decided not to argue.
Back at the tank park, Sean distributed three canister rounds to each of his four tanks.
A TC had a question: “What if the chinks got T-34s with them, Sarge? Canister won’t do shit to a tank. I’d rather start out with HEAT in the tube.”
Sean replied, “Negative. If you see a chink tank, don’t engage the son of a bitch. That’s not what you’re here for. Just back off and don’t make yourself a goddamn target. You read me, all of you?”
Again came the affirmative nods. But his tankers seemed more wary this time.
“Everybody keep talking to each other, too,” Sean added. “Radio silence is only gonna get you cut off and in deep shit. Okay, let’s mount up and move out.”
*****
The night was only half an hour old when they saw them coming. In the faint glow the blaze on the plateau was still providing, the Chinese infantry moving toward the tankers materialized as a bizarre apparition: a moving graveyard, each man the shadowy silhouette of a walking tombstone.
I seen this movie before, Sean told himself. The Krauts in the Ardennes looked like walking tombstones, too, trudging through fields of snow just like these chinks are doing right now. I put ’em about five hundred yards away…
“All Temptation units, this is Temptation Six,” he radioed his teams. “ Let ’em close about half the distance to us, then we back up until they look about as small as they look now. If you can’t dope out how far that is, set your gunsight for two-fifty yards and use its picture to guide you.”
“Six, this is Three. Remember the T-34 we were wondering about? Well, she’s here. Looks like she’s trying to climb up the plateau and get to that blaze.” Temptation Three was Sergeant Rocco Micelli, the leader of the team on the east side of the highway.
“Just one, Rocky?” Sean asked.
“Affirmative. That’s all I can see right now. I got a five-spot that says she don’t make it. Too steep, too slippery.”
“Keep an eye on her, Rocky,” Sean replied as he fixated on the approaching infantry.
“If she shows me a soft side, you want me to take her, Sean?”
“Negative. What’d I tell you already?”
“Copy,” Micelli replied.
Sean figured the approaching Chinese infantrymen were close enough to hear the Shermans’ idling engines. Their pace seemed more rapid now…
And over that raucous clatter of his own engine, he could hear bugles, blowing a pattern that sounded like an A in Morse Code repeated over and over: ta taaah…ta taaah…ta taaah…
Looking up to the plateau, he could see the T-34 clearly; she was backlit by the flames. But she was having trouble scaling the slope. Like Sisyphus trying to roll that rock up the hill, the heavy tank would begin to slide backward every time she neared the top. Then she’d regain traction and begin the slow climb all over again.
“Why the hell does that chink even want to go up there?” Sean’s gunner asked.
“Because if he gets on top, he can hit anything within a coupla square miles real easy, that’s why.”
“Including us, Sarge?”
“Yeah, including us. You got your scope on that infantry?”
“Roger,” the gunner replied. “They’re at three hundred yards.”
“Close enough,” Sean said. He keyed the radio and ordered, “All Temptation units, pull back now. Repeat, pull back now. Acknowledge, over.”
Temptation Two and Four replied. But after repeated attempts, there was still no acknowledgment from Three, Rocco Micelli’s vehicle.
“Four, this is Six,” Sean said. “You got eyes on Three?”
“Negative. He was moving east last I saw him.”
“Toward the plateau?”
“Affirmative. Toward the plateau.”
Shit. What does that dumbass think he’s doing?
Sean looked to the plateau again. The T-34 was sliding down the slope even farther this time, pivoting uncontrollably, presenting her vulnerable stern to the Shermans. He could guess what Micelli had on his mind: He’s gonna take a shot at her now that she’s got her drawers down. Just like I told him not to.
I gotta find him.
Sean told his driver, “Sully, shift to forward and turn hard right.”
“Why, Sarge? That’s going to put us awful close to the chinks, isn’t it?”
“It might. Just do what the hell I tell you.” Then he told his gunner, “Tube left, toward the chinks.”
The gunner was just as skeptical as Sully over what seemed a blatant disregard of Sean’s own plan. But he did what he was told without saying a word.
There was a ripple of explosions from atop the plateau, like a barra
ge where each round impacted a split second after the one before…
And then the fire went out.
It had never seemed so dark.
“Musta been the chink ammo them engineers laced the fire with,” Sean said. “When it went up, it blew the fire out, dammit.”
As it rumbled east, Sean’s tank crossed paths with Temptation Four, which was backing briskly away from the approaching Chinese, her engine turning high rpms in reverse.
“Still no Micelli?” Sean asked Four’s TC over the radio.
“Negative,” came the reply.
“Okay,” Sean said, “but you better ease off the gas. You’re throwing one hell of an exhaust flare with all them revs. That T-34 can see you from a coupla miles away. Make it a little harder for her to kill you, okay?”
“Roger…but how much farther back do we have to go until the trap gets sprung?”
“Another half mile,” Sean replied.
“How far ahead of the chinks are we now?”
“Far enough, pal. Just keep it moving.”
*****
Sean saw the flare from a Sherman’s exhaust a few hundred yards ahead, but the vehicle producing it wasn’t moving.
That’s gotta be Micelli. What the hell is he doing so far east?
But there was still no answer on the radio.
He sensed the heavy round coming before he’d heard a thing. Its detonation shattered some trees just beyond Micelli’s tank.
That son of a bitch chink in the T-34 musta seen that exhaust flare, too.
As Sean’s tank got closer, they could see Micelli’s problem: her right track was down in a ditch. Their attempts to drive her out were doing nothing but slinging clods of frozen earth behind the stuck Sherman.
There were more bugles. They sounded really close.
In the distance, he heard the dull pop of a Sherman’s main gun.
Temptation Two is shooting canister at the chinks.
A quick radio check indicated Two was still okay and on the move.
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