by Adam Makos
The voice announced his call sign and said, “Calling all planes, there’s a break in the weather over the Chosin Reservoir—we’ll hold position over the spot, just home in on us.”
Beneath his mask, Tom grinned as he recognized Frank Cronin’s call sign. He wasn’t going nuts after all—he had been hearing Marty’s voice earlier.
“Okay, we’ve got visual on you!” the air group commander radioed. He broke from orbit and steered ’33’s Corsairs north. Cevoli rocked his wings to tell his flight, Form up! Tom assembled beside Jesse. Jesse caught up to Cevoli and the trailing Corsairs tucked close. Cevoli gave chase and the Skyraiders fell in behind them.
Tom scanned the sky ahead. Far in the distance, the dawn flight orbited above the clouds. Their original target had been socked in by weather, so instead of returning to the carrier, they’d come looking for the Chosin. One by one, they dived and disappeared into the clouds.
As the armada neared the opening, Tom glanced to the left of his plane’s nose. Sure enough, a small dark patch appeared like an island in the sea of clouds. The air group commander reached the patch first and led ’33 in a dive through, two by two.
“Okay, boys,” Cevoli radioed with excitement. “Let’s go downstairs!” Cevoli winged leftward and his wingman dived beside him.
Tom was next. From almost overhead, he saw that the dark patch was actually a tube-like hole through the storm. Far below flickered the silvery ice of the Chosin Reservoir. Tom reached over to a bank of switches and flicked on the navigation lights.
Jesse glanced over, his eyes calm. He nodded to Tom, then snapped his head forward, and his Corsair peeled leftward. Tom followed him down.
Side by side, Tom and Jesse dived through the tube in the storm. Tom kept his eyes fixed on the green light that glowed in Jesse’s wingtip. The cockpit turned dark around him. Nearby, Jesse’s prop spun like a buzz saw.
Flurries slapped Tom’s windscreen and gusts of snow slipped between the planes. Jesse’s Corsair vanished, then reappeared. The green light rocked in the turbulence. Tom held his breath—the dark cloud seemed endless.
The first time Tom had flown with Jesse, he had worried that Jesse would lead him into a flock of seagulls, a ship’s mast, or a low-flying Piper Cub.
But now Tom knew better. He could see Jesse’s eyes fixed forward, steady and certain. Once, Tom had thought Jesse was a danger to his spotless career; now, after nearly a year together, Tom would follow him to the end of the world.
In a blur, the snowy clouds slipped behind, and Jesse and Tom pulled out into a silvery world of ice and snowy hills. Tom unsnapped his mask and let it flap to the side. A smile cracked his lips. They had found the Chosin.
The armada raced in loose formation above the ice. In the distance, wisps of white smoke rose near the foot of the reservoir. Stoves were burning at the Hagaru base and bulldozers were repairing the American defenses. Marty Goode and the dawn flight had already vanished beyond the hills.
Ahead of Tom and Jesse, Cevoli’s plane began bobbing like a porpoise to signal—Trail formation! Cevoli’s wingman dropped back and swerved behind his tail. Tom cut back on the power and slid in behind Jesse.
The radio squawked—a Marine dispatcher was calling from the base: “That was some piloting, Iroquois flight! Way to get through that ceiling.”
The air group commander reported that the Leyte birds were ready to work.
“Good, we’ve got targets stacked up,” the dispatcher replied. He rattled off a target and set of coordinates for each flight. Calls for help were coming in from around the reservoir.
The air group commander’s four-ship left the formation first. Through his gunsight, Tom saw them peel left to pursue their target. The next four Corsairs banked right. Two more planes went left.
The dispatcher assigned the final target and Tom nodded with satisfaction. Cevoli steered the remaining planes rightward toward a gap in the hills where the icy reservoir met Yudam-ni.
—
Meanwhile on Hill 1542, Red hugged the slope as bullets snapped and splintered the rocks around him. At his side, Jack clutched his helmet with both hands. “Lord help us!” Red muttered. He wanted to rise and take a shot at the enemy but felt paralyzed. Spurts of green tracers zipped overhead so close that he swore he could reach up and snatch one.
Red’s eyes clenched with frustration. At last glance, he had seen the crest and neighboring ridge awash in gunfire, all of it aimed toward the Marine line. Red and the others had succeeded in drawing the enemy’s fury away from the column, but no one wanted to die like this.
One by one, the green tracers lifted. The spurts rose fifty feet above the Marines, then a hundred feet, then higher, as if the Chinese gunners had all drifted to sleep. Jack uncurled his hands from his helmet in surprise. Bullets stopped splintering the rocks, but gunfire still sounded.
Red raised his head and peeked uphill. The White Jackets were firing into the sky.
Whoosh!
A dark blur roared over Red and thunderous gunfire shattered the air. Red hit the dirt. Hot shell casings tumbled from above and thudded into the snow, sizzling. Casings clinked against Jack’s helmet and slapped Red’s back; Red shouted and squirmed in pain.
Another blur blasted over Red. He shielded his eyes and caught a glimpse of a W-shaped plane. Red hid his face as more casings rained down. He peeked in time to see a swath of orange tracers chew into the crest, tossing snow and dirt.
Another plane roared past and then another. Red buried his face in the snow and kept it planted. His arms began shaking, then his shoulders, then his entire body. Laughter slipped from his folded arms. “They’re Corsairs, Jack!” Red shouted.
As the planes’ purring softened, Red raised his face above the rocks. On the crest, the enemy was fleeing, their white hats dropping from sight. Against a backdrop of stormy clouds, four Corsairs were looping back around. White numbers stood out clearly on the planes’ dark noses. Corsair 210 was up there, flown by Marty Goode. But it was the tails that caught Red’s eye. Each sported a tall, white letter K.
Red and the others rose to watch the Corsairs.
“Well, that was close enough to part your hair,” Jack muttered. Red laughed and shook his young friend’s shoulder.
“It’s the Ks!” a Marine shouted.
“They’re Leyte birds!” added another.
At Crete, the Marines had watched these same planes fly too high and slow for their liking. But this was different. This was the best air show they had ever seen.
A rumble shook the valley behind the Marines. Red, Jack, and others whirled and glanced left as a new formation of navy planes raced over the column from Yudam-ni. The noise of fourteen engines filled the air. Corsair after Corsair thundered past at eye level, then Skyraider after Skyraider, each slung with ordnance, each wearing a white K on its tail, each in a hurry to free the embattled column.
Red took his rifle in his fist and raised it for the passing pilots to see. He shouted the first word that came to mind: “Hallelujah!”
—
Meanwhile, near the front of the column, Marines snapped off shots, then reeled back to cover behind their vehicles. They breathed heavily, beyond exhausted. The air smelled of gun smoke and diesel exhaust. Fifteen minutes had passed and no air support had come, only more White Jackets on the ridgeline.
The Marines glanced at the FAC officer behind a nearby jeep. As bullets pinged and dirt flung about, the FAC was just talking to the sky. With his handset over his mouth, the officer mumbled and looked to the dark clouds behind the column.
The Marines followed his eyes. The sky was blank.
Then a Marine lifted his helmet to hear over the gunfire. Others pried back their hoods and wounded men raised their faces from the ditch. The sky was buzzing. Everyone glanced down the line of vehicles to the snowy valley. The buzz grew louder, then louder still.
A flight of blue planes suddenly burst into view. They peeled up from the valley with a furious roar. The
re were Corsairs and Skyraiders, each with a white K on its tail. Lower than the hills, the planes raced alongside the column. A cheer rose from the men and several looked to the FAC. He had done it.
“No need for a dummy run, Iroquois flight!” the FAC shouted. “Enemy’s in the open!”
With a rightward flick of their wings, the Skyraiders banked toward the ridgeline. They were the flying tanks and the first target always went to them. The Corsairs kept following the road, bound for a target of their own. Marines had spotted Chinese troops ahead of the column, in a patch of woods, and the FAC had called it in. The enemy were hidden beside the MSR, just waiting to spring another ambush.
Tom peered through his propeller as he raced across the snowy landscape. Three planes ahead, Cevoli led the flight lower, almost even with the treetops. Tom fought back a smile. He had seen the Marines waving and knew that the Skyraiders behind him were chewing up the enemy ridgeline by now.
“We’ll lead in with napalm to stir ’em out,” Cevoli radioed, his voice unusually serious.
Tom’s face twisted. Napalm was the simplest fire bomb, just a spare fuel tank filled with jellied gasoline and sealed with a white phosphorous detonator. Tom had dropped it on enemy buildings and vehicles before, but never on troops.
The woods appeared ahead of Cevoli’s plane, a field’s length to the right of the MSR. The tree line looked cold, brown, and deserted.
“Don’t forget, the air’s thin up here,” Cevoli added as he barreled in. “So keep your speed up, and climb out in a hurry!”
Tom gripped the throttle more tightly. He leaned forward and squinted through his gunsight. His eyes widened with alarm.
White shapes began pouring from the woods. Two hundred White Jackets raced like ants into the snowy field and formed a firing line. Hundreds of flashes exploded—the enemy had come out for a clearer shot.
“Whoa,” Tom muttered as he reeled back in his seat. “Watch it, Dick!”
Cevoli’s rudder wagged furiously and his plane snaked through the air while bearing down on the Chinese. Tom held his breath—there were so many flashes. Just before Cevoli reached the enemy line, he released his napalm and climbed hard.
The egg-like napalm bomb tumbled end over end. In a bright flash, it cracked in front of the White Jackets and ignited. A three-thousand-degree wave of flame bubbled and rolled like an orange carpet over the middle of the Chinese line.
The enemy’s padded uniforms burst into flames. Men fell writhing, fully engulfed, while others stumbled from the fire. Explosions crackled within the flames as the enemy’s grenade pouches burst. A black cloud billowed from the boiling napalm.
At the ends of the enemy line, stunned survivors milled in circles, waiting for orders, but the bullets made the decision for them. Cevoli’s wingman opened fire first. Orange bolts slanted through the frozen air and flattened men. Tufts of dirt and snow leapt as .50-caliber bullets chopped across the field. Cevoli’s wingman burst over the enemy and through the black cloud, followed closely by Jesse.
Tom swooped across the field. A herd of White Jackets were sprinting for the tree line to the right, so Tom steered his glowing crosshairs onto them. Some soldiers tripped and fell, some stopped to fire up at him. Tom’s eyes tightened as the woods stretched in his windscreen and rose up beside him.
He clenched the trigger. With a roar, yellow shock waves burst from his gun muzzles. His crosshairs shook as orange tracers spurted three hundred yards forward and chewed a path through the scattering troops. Bullets stirred the snow and Tom lost sight of his targets. He blasted blindly into the black wall of smoke and was momentarily swallowed. A burnt, oily smell flooded the cockpit. Tom felt a surge of heat beneath his feet and his wings rocked.
The Corsair punched out the other side. Tom hauled back on the stick and climbed through the thin air. The woods and fire sank far behind.
He released a long breath.
—
Over the snowy hills, Tom caught up as the flight looped back around. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. That harsh, burnt smell clung to his nostrils; he knew what he was smelling, and his face scrunched with disgust.
“Passing the lead,” Cevoli radioed and broke from formation. Like a race car with a flat tire, he pulled off to the right. Tom and the others passed him on the inside.
Cevoli’s wingman assumed the lead, Jesse pulled into second place, and Tom took third. Two planes later, Cevoli slid into last place. On the next attack run, his wingman would drop the napalm.
As the flight passed parallel to the woods, Tom glanced beyond his left wing. The fire from the napalm had boiled down and revealed a long scorch mark through the field where the snow had melted. The enemy were dragging their wounded beneath the trees.
“Lead, what do I do if no one’s in the field?” Cevoli’s wingman asked.
“Well, then dump it on the trees,” came Cevoli’s reply.
The flight crossed over the MSR during the final turn to target. Tom glanced beneath his wings. Below, Marines were taking cover behind vehicles and in ditches. Some lay sprawled, probably wounded, screaming, bleeding out as their buddies held them.
Tom might have known them. They might be the same boys who had thanked Jesse for the bottle of wine in Cannes, or the ones Tom had given a tour of a Corsair in the hangar deck. They might be the same ones who had tossed their love letters from the Leyte into the waves, to hide their mail from their mothers, to save them any shame if their sons died in battle.
And now they were dying. Tom was seeing it happen.
The Chinese had attacked a column of tired, frostbitten, wounded men intent on destroying them. Before the battle began, their general had ordered: “Kill these Marines as you would snakes in your homes!”
Tom’s lip curled. The smell in his nostrils no longer bothered him.
Ahead, Jesse snapped his wings level to begin his attack. Tom could tell by the sharp, deliberate way that his friend was flying—Jesse was feeling the same way.
—
On the MSR below, a young black Marine and his buddies peeked from behind a jeep. The Marine was lanky and square-faced with a strong jaw. He and the others watched the Corsairs sweep over the snowy fields toward the woods, fifteen-thousand-pound machines sprinting so fast that the word NAVY was just a blur on their flanks.
The Marines shook their fists and cheered. “Come on, boys,” the black Marine shouted. “Make it count!”
Popping noises resounded from the woods and flashes burst from the shadows. The enemy forces were firing through the canopy of branches at the onrushing planes.
The lead Corsair skimmed across the treetops and pulled up as a napalm egg tumbled down. The egg burst and a wave of fire spread across the canopy and showered down. The Marines on the MSR flinched and shielded their eyes. The heat wave licked their faces.
In the woods in front of them, burning napalm dripped from the treetops. Screams pierced from the shadows. Cloaked in flames, a lone enemy soldier ran from the woods and fell in the field. The Marines cringed but didn’t look away.
Corsair after Corsair swooped down, six guns blazing, empty brass showering. More orange bolts zipped through the canopy. Bullets snapped branches and thudded into the trunks of trees and men. Tracers ignited flashes of leftover napalm.
A Corsair’s belly almost scraped the treetops before it pulled up.
“That guy’s a bachelor!” a Marine shouted. His buddies nodded. They claimed that they could tell if a pilot was married or not. The pilots who strafed longer and flew lower were bachelors; the married men supposedly played it safe.
Another Corsair strafed long and low. “There’s another bachelor!” a Marine asserted.
Another Corsair pulled into a whistling climb at the very last second. “Definitely a bachelor!” a Marine said, laughing.
Finally, the sixth Corsair climbed away to re-form for another attack run.
“Thank God,” a Marine said. “There’s no married men flying today!”
&n
bsp; —
On the high ground between snowy valleys, the exhausted Marines stood on the MSR and glanced around. The gunfire had ceased and the Skyraiders were purring off into the distance, to answer another call for air support.
Craters and scorch marks pocked the ridgeline beside the column. More than five hundred dead Chinese troops lay there, an enemy force “completely eliminated.” The Marines would later give the battle a title: “The Great Slaughter.”
Grunting and groaning, Marines pushed destroyed vehicles from the road. Trucks and jeeps crunched into roadside ditches. The men boosted the wounded back into trucks and the walking wounded fell into ranks. Everyone stood a little straighter. Snow-caked tires and treads began churning and the column rolled onward.
—
As the column passed the smoldering woods, the heat drew all eyes to the right. The woods crackled and trees shattered, showering glowing embers. Overhead, the Corsairs orbited to ensure that no enemy troops would emerge.
None did. No one ever entered the woods to count the dead, either, and Cevoli would later report the attack’s results as “unobserved.”
Cevoli broke from orbit and the others followed. A call had come to investigate troop activity on the eastern shore of the reservoir. Cevoli looped around, leveling his wings over the MSR. With five Corsairs following, he raced over the road, straight down the middle.
The Marines glanced over their shoulders. As the vehicles kept rolling, men stepped aside to watch. The Corsairs wagged their wings as they zipped overhead, and the Marines cheered and waved their helmets and gloved hands in reply.
The black Marine and his buddies waved as the first Corsair blasted overhead, followed by the second. A third Corsair approached, its wings wagging.
The black Marine looked up as the plane roared over him. Time seemed to slow. The plane’s wing dipped toward the road and the black Marine saw the pilot, as clear as can be. A white helmet, a black face. The pilot was smiling and waving down at him.
Time seemed to accelerate. The Corsair blurred past. The black Marine wheeled in place and watched the plane race down the road.