Devotion

by Adam Makos

  Tom glanced left and saw Cevoli’s propeller cranking to life. To the right he saw Jesse, his propeller already humming. Jesse peered in Tom’s direction as he watched for Cevoli to roll.

  Jesse’s face looked uneasy and Tom felt it too. Darkness was falling and his heart pounded to escape this place—yet he felt reluctant to be running. His Corsair and the others could help defend the field, yet they had been ordered away to safety.

  A symphony of motor noise shook the frigid air—all sixteen Corsairs were ready to roll. Cevoli’s plane lurched forward. He steered down the taxiway and along the harbor, his tail bouncing on its small wheel.

  Tom checked his wingtips. Beyond the left wing stood the Marine who had urged him to dismount. The Marine saw Tom looking and raised a hand in farewell. Tom nodded in reply. He wanted to open the canopy and shout, “We’ll be back!” But he couldn’t be certain of that.

  Tom released the brakes and let the Corsair roll. He swung onto the taxiway and left his fellow Americans behind, to face whatever was out there, lurking in the dark.

  CHAPTER 32

  WHEN THE DEER COME RUNNING

  That same night, around 9 P.M.

  Ninety miles north, at the Chosin Reservoir

  BENEATH A FULL MOON, Red and Charlie shivered. A bitter wind howled and a lean-to “shelter half” flapped at their backs. Here in the northern reaches of Korea, it was twenty below zero.

  The duo huddled together on the floor of a frozen valley, Charlie on the left, Red on the right. They wore knit hats with small brims, hoods over their hats, and helmets over their hoods. Red wrapped a T-shirt around his face, and Charlie tucked his nose beneath his parka’s collar. The cold crept down their necks. The air smelled crisp and metallic.

  Thirty other shelters vibrated in the field but not a soul stirred. This was the encampment for sixty Marines, a third of Weapons Company. The 188-man company had been divided into three detachments and the other two had been dispersed to support units on the hills.

  Around the encampment, snow-covered hills glowed blue in the moonlight. Red and Charlie could see Marines moving up there, their bodies silhouetted against the clouds. All told, the division had sent 9,500 Marines into the valley. Now they camped on hills in every direction except to the east, where the shacks of Yudam-ni village stood near the silvery ice of the Chosin Reservoir. This land felt lifeless, even prehistoric, and led one Marine to wonder, “Maybe we’ll see a saber tooth tiger or dinosaurs?”*

  Red unzipped his parka and cringed as the cold raced in. He reached a gloved hand inside and yanked out a can of fruit cocktail, then hurriedly zipped back up. Red eyed the can. “Just warm enough!” he whispered.

  Charlie had given Red the fruit cocktail—the prized item from his C-rations—as a birthday present. In return, Red had given Charlie a tin of cocoa, because it was Charlie’s birthday too. By some twist of fate, both had been born on the same day and now Red had turned twenty-two and Charlie twenty-one.

  Red pawed open the can’s lid. For hours he had been warming the can near his armpit.

  He lowered his T-shirt from his nose, drew his Ka-Bar knife, and speared a chunk of fruit. Red’s shivering shook the blade as he raised it to his chapped lips. The fruit danced on the blade’s tip. Red clenched the fruit with his teeth, careful not to touch his tongue to the frozen steel, then chewed with contentment.

  He leaned closer to Charlie and offered to share.

  “All yours,” Charlie murmured beneath his collar.

  Red knifed up another chunk and ate between glances forward at a gap between two hills. The hill on the left stood a massive 1,403 meters above sea level and was occupied by Marines, who had named it “1403.” To the right, across the two-hundred-yard gap, the other hill was small and vacant.

  The gap was the gateway to the northern no man’s land, a place of endless mountains. Sixty miles beyond lay the Chinese border. A road ran through the gap, and if the enemy appeared, Red and the detachment were to serve as a roadblock. A mile behind them, the road passed the Marines’ headquarters tents in Yudam-ni.

  Charlie clutched his carbine against his chest, its sling clinking as he shivered. Red held his M1 Garand across his lap, closer than usual. That morning, the Marines had arrived from the American staging base at the foot of the reservoir. As they entered the valley, they observed herds of deer bolting from the woods, and radio men began picking up Chinese chatter. Then the Marines captured several Chinese deserters who confessed, “Two of our armies now surround you.”

  Boots crunched against the frozen grass. Red tensed and spotted a short silhouette approaching behind the lean-tos. The figure was bundled in a long parka that stretched to his knees and was cinched at the waist by a cartridge belt. Who the heck would be out for a stroll in this? Red wondered. The figure stopped and crouched beside Red.

  The cleft chin, upturned nose, and sleepy eyes of Sergeant Devans came into view.

  “You fellas staying warm?”

  The twenty-one-year-old sergeant’s voice quivered from the cold. Ice encrusted his shoulders and helmet cover. He was checking on the dozen men of his two antitank platoons.

  “Jesus, Bob,” Red said. “Quit playing mother hen and get to cover!”

  Devans grinned. “You’re drinking regularly?” His breath cast small clouds.

  “Yessir,” Charlie mumbled.

  Red nodded reluctantly—he hated the order to drink; he didn’t feel the urge and hated having to urinate in such cold. But the Marines had been warned to avoid dehydration.

  “No one’s eating cold rations, either?” Devans asked. He didn’t want his men to become constipated.

  “I’ve already got breakfast cooking,” Charlie said and patted his side, where he had tucked a box of rations beneath his parka.

  Devans chuckled. His eyes turned serious. “It’s no birthday without a cake, fellas, so let’s make up for it when we get home?”

  Charlie happily agreed whereas Red simply played along; he had no illusions of seeing American soil anytime soon. Of the homesick Marines in the antitank platoons, Devans had been pining for home more than anyone, recently. Red knew why his sergeant was in a hurry to get back to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Her name was Audrey Johns.

  Devans was in love with Audrey, his former high school classmate. She was perky, like the actress Doris Day, but had black hair that curled over her ears. They had met on the sidelines of the football field, where Audrey was captain of the band majorettes and Devans carried the flag in the color guard. But Devans was shy and he waited until their senior year to ask Audrey on a date. The two had then dated until Devans shipped off to join the Marines, his lifelong dream. Even from afar, he still loved Audrey. On the ship to Korea, he had confided to a Marine from the same hometown: If he survived, he would return home in his dress blues to win Audrey back, even if that meant leaving the Corps for good.

  Devans stood slowly, ice crackling on his parka. “One of you should be sleeping. The other, stay vigilant.”

  Red and Charlie nodded.

  Devans buried his hands in his pockets and hobbled down the line to check on the others.

  Red readied his knife to dip it into his fruit cocktail but stopped. His brow furrowed. “Dammit!” he said. The cocktail was frozen solid. Red chipped at the remnants, scowled, and threw the can over his shoulder.

  Charlie lifted his face from his parka like a turtle from its shell. “Could be worse, brother John.” He motioned to the left with his head.

  High on Hill 1403, dark shapes climbed in the cold. They were Marines from How Company hauling the last of their unit’s supplies to the crest. Red, Charlie, and their detachment were assigned to How Company as heavy weapons support. Word had it that the temperature was even lower on the hilltop.

  Red shook his head and pulled his T-shirt over his mouth. “Poor mucks,” he muttered.

  —

  Meanwhile, on the hillside, Ed Coderre climbed in misery. The bitter wind flung ice shards at his face
. He pried each boot from the snow and lowered it with a crunch. His shoulders sagged, his gloved hands carried heavy boxes of ammo. Beneath his helmet, his breath puffed from within the sides of his hood. Up here in the open wind, it was minus thirty degrees.

  Coderre crested the hill and ducked into a machine gun pit that faced no man’s land. A half-circle of rocks was piled chest high and packed with snow. Coderre dropped the ammo boxes and 250 bullets jingled in each box. How Company’s defenses stretched about a hundred yards across the hilltop. In the moonlight, one gun pit was visible to the left of Coderre’s position, another to the right. From each, covered gun barrels aimed down a rocky slope. A fourth gun lay at the right end of the line, but a rise in the ridge hid it from view.

  Coderre took a knee to catch his breath. He had just climbed Hill 1403 for the second time. As squad leader, he didn’t need to carry ammo, but this was the front line and he wanted his guys at the gun, ready to fire.

  In the middle of the pit, the squad’s mechanical specialist, Wick, hunched over the .30-caliber machine gun. Bundled tight, he worked the weapon’s bolt repeatedly, to keep it from freezing solid. At Wick’s side, a six-foot-four, 250-pound Marine huddled with his arms folded, his thick neck sunk into broad shoulders. He was the squad’s gunner, Tex Burnett, from Tyler, Texas.

  Behind Coderre, an ammo bearer and assistant gunner stepped from the darkness and into the pit. They delivered their boxes of bullets and sank down against the wall. Along the line, men hid from the wind and the swirling snow. The neighboring gun crews were hunkered in their pits and eighty riflemen were interspersed along the line. In pairs, the riflemen lay behind piles of rocks. One man in each pair stayed awake, while the other dozed in a sleeping bag.

  Coderre removed a glove and quickly pulled a pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, then a lighter. The cold stung his fingers, but Coderre reminded himself he’d felt this before, back in Rhode Island, when he’d watched his father battle house fires in winter. Coderre turned his back to no man’s land and flicked the lighter to life. The flame stood sideways in the wind. He lit a cigarette and it glowed. A moment later, the wind whistled and the ember snuffed out.

  Tex feigned admiration. “Quickest smoke I ever saw.”

  Coderre chuckled and stuffed the cigarette and lighter back into his pocket.

  —

  Around 10 P.M., Coderre dismissed Wick and the ammo bearer so that they could get some sleep. Wick looped his pack over his shoulders and grabbed his bag of spare gun barrels. He and the ammo bearer plodded downhill on a trail. Forty yards below the crest lay a ledge where Marines were sleeping, shielded from the wind.

  Tex and the assistant gunner nestled behind the gun to take the first watch. Coderre shielded his eyes and scanned the terrain.

  An outpost lay ahead and the silhouettes of two Marines were visible. Their job was to provide early warning of the enemy. Farther to the right, a fire blinked in no man’s land. Its glow illuminated the silhouettes of two other Marines warming themselves. Coderre shook his head and wondered how some greenhorn officer had granted them permission to build a fire.

  How Company hadn’t seen a serious fight since Hill 891, and a sense of security had permeated the ranks. The men joked about watching for polar bears more than the enemy.

  Coderre turned to Tex. “If the Reds hit us, don’t forget about our outposts when you open fire.”

  Tex nodded, his teeth gritted. He didn’t seem worried.

  —

  Beside a windbreak of rocks, Coderre slid the snow aside with his boots and stretched out his sleeping bag. He was twenty yards behind the gun pit, close enough to keep an eye on it throughout the night.

  Coderre sat against a rock to unlace his boots. Now that he was stationary, the beads of sweat around his feet were turning to ice crystals. He began to remove the boots but stopped. Wait till daylight, he told himself. If he removed the boots now, they’d freeze, shrink, and take forever to put back on. Night was when the Reds often struck, when the Americans were denied the advantages of their long-range rifles and airpower.

  Coderre unlaced his boots so that his feet could breathe, then slid them into his sleeping bag. The bag smelled musty. It was a mountaingrade bag, and in extreme cold it could keep a Marine from freezing to death. Coderre zipped the bag partway to allow for an easy exit and lowered his helmet over his eyes.

  A scar now lined his forehead from the night that Lieutenant Reem had died by jumping on the grenade. After Coderre had rejoined the unit, he had written a statement about the lieutenant’s sacrifice and submitted it so that Reem might receive a medal. But nowhere in the write-up could Coderre answer the question that tormented him: Why? Why would a man jump on a grenade when he could have saved himself?

  The ground beneath Coderre was cold and rocky. As snow slapped his helmet, he shivered and blinked sporadically. He was afraid to close his eyes, having heard the rumor that a man’s eyelids could freeze shut.

  —

  Thump! The wind carried the sound. Coderre pulled back his hood and listened.

  Thump!

  It came from the right end of the line, beyond the rise.

  Coderre crawled from his bag and stood. Am I cracking up? With boots unlaced, he stumbled into the gun pit and found Tex and the assistant gunner beside the gun, their faces buried in their arms. “Ready the gun,” Coderre whispered.

  Tex and the other Marine lifted their heads. Coderre glanced to the right. In the neighboring gun pit, Marines were stirring.

  Tex pulled the cover off the barrel. The assistant brushed away the snow that had accumulated on the ammo belt. Tex cranked back the bolt and released it as quietly as he could. The gun was loaded. Tex and the assistant looked at each other with confusion. Coderre moved to Tex’s right and leaned over the lip of the pit. He turned an ear to no man’s land and heard only the howling wind.

  On the right end of the line, flashes burst behind the rise in the hill. Grenades cracked. Chinese! Coderre thought. He couldn’t see the end of the line but knew an attack was under way.

  Beyond the rise, screams pierced the frozen air. Marines were trapped in their sleeping bags, their zippers frozen by their breaths, and the Chinese were bayoneting them.

  A Marine appeared on top of the rise. “They’re inside the line!” he shouted, then turned back to fire his rifle.

  “Son of a bitch!” Tex said, eyes transfixed. The machine gun on the right end of the line wasn’t even firing.

  They took the gun! Coderre thought.

  Along the line, Marines squirmed from sleeping bags and tugged feet into icy boots. Some fumbled with their weapons; the bolts of their BARs and carbines had frozen. Other Marines rushed to the rise to stem the breakthrough. With their backs to Coderre, they fired down on the enemy, their rifles spitting fire in the dark.

  A bugle blared from no man’s land like the signal for a cavalry charge. Coderre, Tex, and others turned forward and searched the moonlit fields. Another bugle wailed the same tune. Then another and another as a dozen horns bled a haunting symphony.

  A chorus of a thousand high-pitched Chinese voices arose: “Sha! Sha! Sha!” Kill, kill, kill! Cymbals began clanging and whistles began shrilling. The noise blended into a terrifying cacophony. Tex glanced to Coderre with wild eyes.

  A deeper sound emerged from the dark distance, the pounding of countless feet on the frozen ground. Men were sprinting. Vibrations coursed through the soil and the earth seemed to shake.

  Whoosh! From behind the Marines, mortar shells arced overhead, trailing red streaks. The shells popped above no man’s land and turned night into an eerie shade of day. They were star shells, flares that dangled from parachutes and showered bluish light onto the earth. Coderre’s eyes opened wide. “My God!” he groaned.

  Two hundred yards away, Chinese troops stretched the field and stampeded toward him. Hunched over burp guns and rifles in their puffy white uniforms, they looked like thick, muscular animals. Earflaps bounced from their c
aps and their bodies cast short, inhuman shadows. The White Jackets poured down from the opposite hill. Coderre’s voice felt choked, his feet heavy. Tex and the assistant stared with horror at the sight of three thousand enemy soldiers of the Chinese 89th Division.

  The neighboring machine guns erupted to Coderre’s left and right. Long streaks of flame leapt from their muzzles and red tracer bullets zipped into no man’s land. Along the line, riflemen took cracks at the enemy horde. Coderre turned to Tex: “Fire!”

  Tex hesitated. “What about our outposts?”

  “They’re already dead!” Coderre roared.

  In no man’s land, the outpost warming fire had vanished; the men had been bayoneted.

  Tex centered his body behind the gun, braced, and squeezed the trigger. Thump, thump, thump. The gun fired slowly, nowhere near the usual six shots per second. Tex released the trigger and the flames vanished. He slapped the gun and cried, “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

  Green enemy tracers snapped overhead from the opposite hills. The stampede was closer—a hundred and fifty yards, then a hundred, then seventy-five. Tex squeezed the trigger again, but still the gun fired sluggishly.

  “It’s frozen!” Coderre shouted. “Give it time!”

  Tex resumed firing, rhythmically, inching the gun across his field of fire. As the gun warmed, the firing rate climbed and the ammunition belt slipped across the assistant’s hands faster and faster. The gun bucked and hot tracers zipped into the onrushing stampede. Chinese soldiers clutched their wounds as bullets knocked them backward and spun them sideways. Across the Marine line, the firing tempo was building, too.

  Spent shell casings amassed beneath the gun. Coderre shifted to Tex’s left and opened new boxes of ammunition. He fed the belts up to the assistant, who fumbled to load them with gloved hands. Wick! Coderre thought. Where the hell is he? Coderre glanced over his shoulder but only saw rocks bathed in flashes.

  The fury of the Marine line roared louder and louder. Blinding light poured from the three machine guns and the dozens of rifles. Coderre covered his ears, certain his eardrums were about to burst. Smoke floated through the frozen air carrying the burnt smell of gunpowder.