by Gunther, Cy
They weren’t boys anymore. The dead had made sure of that.
“Where the hell do you think the commies got that damned chemical? The Russians?” Mason asked.
“Had to be. There’s no way that the Chinese would have been sitting on something like that, not with all the shit they went through with Chiang Kai Shek. You know that the gooks couldn’t have done that themselves. They’re getting half their shit from the Soviets, and the other half from the chinks.” Jones shook his head. “No, the Soviets probably made that shit up for’em. That’s probably why the Russians were down here.”
“So there were more than that first sniper?”
“Another one, an officer at the warehouse. I watched him die. Nicky took him out with the BAR.”
A rifle shot cracked through the morning air, one of the bodies across from Mason shuddering slightly from the impact.
All four of them hit the dirt.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Mason snapped. “Really? Some prick’s shooting at us now, after a night of the dead trying to eat us? The fuck they are,” Mason snarled, and started crawling towards the nearest tank. Jones slipped over to one side, peered out and saw nothing. Gordon and Boylan did the same, drawing no response.
Mason, however, drew a few more rounds as he peered out.
“Fucking great,” Mason sighed, bringing the BAR he had salvaged up.
“Just a few rounds, Mason,” Jones said. “If you hit them, fine, but don’t try too hard. Keep them pinned down.”
“Sure thing, Gunny, but why?”
“Look to starboard, Mason,” Jones said.
Mason looked over to the right and saw them, a group of ten or twelve of the dead moving at the hidden commies. A glance left showed a few more, and a sudden scream told him that there were some behind as well.
Half a dozen Koreans jumped up and tried to run, firing wildly, yelling and screaming.
Within a few minutes it was over, the dead feasting.
Mason straightened up, looked at Gunny and asked, “Mind if I look around for some smokes, Gunny?”
Jones shook his head and holstered his .45, walking over towards the puppy.
Gunnery Sergeant Warren B. Jones
They came out of the woods a little after sunrise. Dozens of them at first, then more, and more, until Jones finally lost count. Until he finally stopped caring.
The sound of the Marines’ rifles was nearly continuous, with weapons being loaded and reloaded, the dead piling up at the first wall, adding to it. Some required two shots, others three as the hours of tension and fear and exhaustion began to take their toll. During it all the puppy barked and snarled and yipped, racing from one Marine to the other, as if to encourage them, bolster their confidence.
Shell casings piled up around Jones and he was sweating, the heat of the day increasing. Still in the distance he could hear the sound of artillery, see the Corsairs flying.
Somewhere there was fighting going on, so he thought that maybe, just maybe, they weren’t forgotten, that they simply couldn’t be gotten to yet.
But Jones couldn’t believe it. There were too many of the dead, as if forces were turning them back towards the center, where it had all started. And Jones and his few men just happened to be there.
That, Jones knew, was utter bullshit. They were fucking Marines, and Marines never get left behind. Some Admiral or Army prick like MacArthur was forcing them to be left there, but Jones knew enough about the Old Man and General Smith to know that he and his wouldn’t be left to rot, not as soon as someone figured out that there were still Marines alive and fighting.
Jones suddenly realized that he didn’t have any other targets to shoot at.
He found that he was breathing steadily, no pressure, no rush. He looked at his watch.
37 minutes had passed since they started firing.
“Give me an ammo count,” Jones said, stepping back. “Then we’ll police the area. See if we can’t scrounge up any more weapons and ammo.”
Squatting down Jones gave the puppy a pat, and the dog wagged his tail.
“What’s this fucking dog’s name again?” he asked Gordon.
Gordon looked up from his count. “Lucky, Gunny.”
“Aren’t we all,” Jones murmured, patting the dog again.
“Hey Gunny,” Gordon said.
“Yeah.”
“’Bout seventy five rounds.”
“Sixty here,” Boylan said.
“Thirty,” Mason finished.
“And forty five for myself,” Jones said, standing up. “Okay,” he sighed, “let’s do this. Build up that outer wall, see what we can find, too.”
The Marines nodded and spread out, climbing over the tanks and the corpses, Gordon carrying Lucky in his blouse.
There was little to find this time. Most of the dead were civilians, with nothing more than the clothes that they had been wearing when they’d died. A few were North Korean soldiers, but they lacked even water, let alone sidearms and ammunition.
Boylan, though, Boylan did well.
He found a radioman, and that dead Marine had a flare gun.
Jones stood once more in the center of their gruesome perimeter, holding the flare gun. His Marines looked at him, Lucky looked at him. “Well,” Jones said, pointing the weapon towards the sky. “Let’s hope that someone sees this fucking thing.”
He pulled the trigger and fired the flare into the morning sky.
The Old Man
He hurried out of his command tent and looked into the sky.
There it was, a red flare, right from the area where they’d lost the armor and infantry. Right where Gunnery Sergeant Jones and his platoon had vanished amongst the nightmare that the North Koreans had imported from Russia.
“Get command on the radio!” he snapped to his communications man. “We’ve got Marines in there.”
He stormed back into the tent and took the radio from his man. “You’ve got to call off that run, I’ve got Marines in there.”
“There as good as dead, Colonel,” the voice on the other end said. “We need to nip this problem in the bud before it spreads any farther on the peninsula. The run will go as planned.”
Even as the voice ended the sound of Dauntless’ filled the air.
Gunnery Sergeant Warren B. Jones
As the flare finished its arc the sound of planes filled the air.
Jones looked up and saw them coming. Four Dauntless dive bombers.
Jones blinked once, then screamed, “Incoming!”
And the bombs were released.
Corporal Robert E. Boylan
Boylan felt hands pulling at him and he swore.
“Jesus Christ! Corpsman up! We’ve got another one!”
Boyland didn’t recognize the voice, and he tried to open his eyes, but he couldn’t.
He struggled to speak, then, croaking, said, “Why can’t I see?”
A second voice took the place of the first. “Don’t worry about that right now, Corporal. Just relax.”
Something punched him in the thigh.
“Fuck,” he muttered. “Morphine.”
“Just to make sure that I can work on you without you moving too much. How many of you were in here?”
“Four.” Boylan felt sleep pull at him.
“Corporal. Corporal!”
“Yeah?”
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Who were they?”
“Gordon, Sergeant Mason, Gunny Jones…and the dog. The puppy, Lucky.”
“You guys had a puppy?”
“Gordon did…found it, I guess.”
“Corporal, we’re going to move you now, you may feel some pain, but we’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Okay. Get me out of here. I want to go home, anyway. Korea sucks.”
Lance Corporal Jacob M. Gordon
“Where the fuck is my dog?” Gordon asked, leaning up against the remains of a tank.
A pair of corps
men were tying off the stubs of his legs.
Lucky came trotting out from behind one of the corpsman, splattered with gore and dirt. He barked and wagged his tail.
Gordon smiled. “You are a lucky motherfucker, Lucky.”
Sergeant Jack C. Mason
All Mason could smell was rotting flesh, and the stench of the bombs. How he could even think after the bombing he didn’t know. It was fucked up.
He was fucked up. But at least he was still breathing. Still going.
It felt as though the world was crushing him, and he realized that the weight he felt were bodies. Who knew how many.
Grunting, Mason began to push them aside, pulling on some and forcing his way out towards a small bit of daylight he could glimpse.
As his hands broke free of the pile of dead flesh he heard shouts and the sound of running feet.
Someone grabbed his hands and started to pull, and within a few moments he found himself breathing fresh air, and looking upon a scene of destruction. Their small perimeter was gone, replace instead with shattered tanks and the torn and mangled remains of the dead walls which Gunny had so carefully had them construct. Boylan was being evacuated, and Gordon was petting his dog, even though the lance corporal was missing both of his legs below the knees.
Jones stood beside the Old Man, both of them smoking pipes, both of them with their hands in their pockets.
Mason smiled, and passed out.
Gunnery Sergeant Warren B. Jones
Jones had spent the last three days on an unknown ship.
None of the crew, outside of the doctors, spoke with him. The only person who had spoken with him had been the official historian of the ‘Event,’ as the higher ups were calling it. That man had at least left Jones a fifth of whiskey each day after their question and answer session.
The whiskey was the only way that Jones could sleep. Especially after the three gunshots which had been fired the day before.
According to the historian all three of the other survivors had succumbed to their wounds, and reanimated. They were subsequently put down.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” Jones said, looking at the fifth the historian had brought earlier and petting Lucky.
The door opened and the Old Man walked in, chewing on his pipe stem. He took two pieces of paper from his breast pocket. One was a set of orders to return to stateside immediately, destination unknown. The second was a simple order. Jones read it and looked up at the Old Man.
“They’re going to keep you for testing,” the Old Man said simply. “There’s nothing that I can do about that. But that order,” he gestured at the second piece of paper with his pipe, “that order’s going into the files of the First Division, and someone, someday, will carry that order out.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The Old Man nodded, and walked out.
Jones took down the whiskey, opened it, and took a long hard pull. Lucky nibbled at his hand, and barked at the shadows on the wall.
Appendix
Fort Junger research facility in New Hampshire reported the death of one Gunnery Sergeant Warren B. Jones due to natural causes on 15 August, 1973 shortly after the expiration of his dog Lucky, which had survived the Operation CHROMITE incident, Inchon Landing, September 15th, 1950. Within two minutes thirty two seconds (2:32), at 17:53 hours, Gunnery Sergeant Jones reanimated.
This facility had exactly three days with the test subject before members of the United States Marine Corps First Division arrived at the facility. An investigation is still ongoing as to how exactly the United States Marine Corps first learned of the Fort Junger research facility.
Entrance into the facility was forced, and researchers were physically forced to inform the Marines as to the whereabouts of test subject Gunnery Sergeant Jones. A written order was presented to the lead researcher stating: Gunnery Sergeant Jones was not to be tested upon, nor was his term of service to his country be extended beyond his natural born life, the order signed and dated September 19th, 1951. The United States Marine Corps, the researchers were informed, was taking responsibility for putting down the reanimated Gunnery Sergeant Jones, per orders of one Colonel Lewis B. Puller.
This order was carried out in spite of the lead researcher’s emphatic denial of the order, and his rigorous protestations.
It must be noted that the lead researcher was hospitalized for treatment of multiple contusions and abrasions following this encounter.
Once the order was carried out, the Marines left the researchers to dispose of the body, and removed themselves from the facility. The facility is still undergoing repairs, and estimating the amount of damage done to the facility following the Marine Corps’ departure.
At this time there are no longer any test subjects at the Fort Junger facility, though the researchers are eagerly awaiting the arrival of new test subjects as soon as possible.
19 August, 1973