Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  At dawn this morning—with Marine Corsairs lending support—the 2nd Battalion of the brigade had broken through to—a more honest phrase, Dunn thought, would be “saved the ass of”—Fox Company, but another try at breaking the roadblock of the MSR by the 3rd Battalion—with Marine Corsairs lending support—had failed again.

  But the 3rd Battalion would try again to open the roadblock just as soon as Dunn’s Corsairs had been refueled and rearmed and were back overhead.

  On the flight deck, after landing just now, Dunn had told Captain Dave Freewall—now commanding USMC Reserve Fighter Squadron 243, following the loss of its commander—to ask the steward to make him some fried-egg sandwiches and put them in a bag. He was going to have to see the air commander, Dunn said, and go by the photo lab, and it was either fried-egg sandwiches in the cockpit, or no lunch.

  Reporting to the air commander hadn’t taken as much time as he thought it would, and unless there was a problem in the photo lab, he would be out of there in two minutes, so he probably could have had a sit-down lunch, even if a quick one.

  The photo lab had what could have been a personnel problem. There was a Navy chief photographer’s mate in nominal charge, but under orders to make his facilities available to the Marines, which in fact meant to Master Sergeant P. P. McGrory, USMCR, who was not known for his charm.

  Surprising Dunn, the two had apparently gotten along from the moment they’d met. Dunn, however, always waited to see if the other shoe had fallen every time he went into the photo lab.

  He raised his hand in a gesture indicating they didn’t have to come to attention.

  “And how are things in your air-conditioned little heaven?” he asked.

  “Morning, Colonel,” they said, in unison.

  “The pictures from up north?”

  "They went to Pusan on the COD at 1020, sir,” Sergeant McCrory said.

  “Good, thank you very much. And now I will see if I can get something to eat before I go back to work.”

  “Chief Young’s got something I thought you ought to have a look at, Colonel,” McGrory said.

  I should have known lunch would be egg sandwiches.

  “What’s that?”

  McGrory went to a cabinet and came back with a stack of eight-by-ten-inch prints.

  “There was a photo mission this morning—Air Commander’s request—for pictures of a railroad bridge near Tageu,” McGrory said. “Near where that goddamn fool Pickering went down.”

  Dunn knew no disrespect was intended. In civilian life, McGrory was a member of the ASC and a bachelor. The American Society of Cinematographers are those people engaged in the filming of motion pictures who have proved worthy of membership by their experience and skill. Mc-Grory’s skill was in making beautiful women seem even more so on the silver screen. He was well paid for the practice of his profession, and maintained a beachfront home in Malibu, in which there often could be found an array of astonishingly beautiful women. And Captain Malcolm S. Pickering of Trans-Global Airways, who shared McGrory’s interest in really good-looking women.

  McGrory handed Dunn the aerial photographs.

  “Young saw this when he was processing the film, and made extra copies,” McGrory said.

  “What am I looking at, Mac?” he asked.

  McGrory pointed.

  Dunn looked again, and shook his head.

  “In the rice field, Colonel,” Chief Young said. “It looks like it was drained. They bombed the hell out of that bridge, and it looks like they broke the dam, or whatever keeps the water in.”

  Dunn looked again.

  “Have we got a magnifying glass, or whatever?”

  Chief Young picked the picture up, took it to a desk, laid it down, and set up over it a device on thin metal legs.

  “That’s stereo,” he said. “But it helps even when it’s an ordinary picture.”

  Dunn bent over it. With some difficulty, he managed to get the picture in focus.

  “I’ll be damned,” he said.

  “Yeah,” McGrory said. “That’s no accident. Somebody stamped that out in the mud with his feet.”

  Dunn bent over the viewing device again.

  And then he put his hand out to steady himself. The Badoeng Strait was turning sharply. She was turning into the wind.

  “All hands, prepare to commence launching operations,” the loudspeaker blared. “Pilots, man your aircraft. All hands, prepare to commence launching operations. Pilots, man your aircraft.”

  “Has anyone seen this?” Dunn asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “Let’s sit on it until I get back,” Dunn said, and then asked a sudden question. “Which way is south on this?”

  McGrory pointed.

  “He’s going the wrong way,” Dunn said.

  “It looks that way,” McGrory agreed.

  “You haven’t told anybody about this?”

  “No, sir. I figure if the word got out, everybody in VMF- 243 would be out there looking for him.”

  “Keep it that way, please, Mac. Until I get back.”

  McGrory nodded, then appeared to be waiting for additional orders.

  And if you don’t come back, Colonel?

  “I should be back about 1500. If I’m delayed, give this to Captain Freewall.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McGrory said. “I’ll see you about 1500, then, sir.”

  “Right.”

  “How’s things over there?”

  “Would you believe a doggie regiment took the wrong fork on a road and wound up holding the wrong hill?”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  Dunn left the photo lab and rapidly climbed what seemed like endless steep ladders, ultimately reaching the level of the flight deck. He went, already starting to sweat a little, onto the flight deck itself, and saw that his Corsair, the engine running, was first in line to take off.

  He stood at the wing root as his airplane captain told him about the airplane, and simultaneously helped him properly fasten the personal gear—the Mae West inflatable life preserver, the survival gear pack, and a .45 ACP pistol—he had unfastened when he landed.

  He climbed up onto the wing, then into the cockpit. The airplane commander strapped him into his parachute, gave him a thumbs-up, handed him a small brown paper bag, and then got off the airplane.

  Then Dunn waited to take off.

  But he wasn’t thinking about flying the aircraft.

  It has to be Pick, he thought. Who the hell else would stamp out “PP” and an arrow in the mud of a ruptured Korean rice field?

  And who else but that dumb sonofabitch would be headed away from our lines?

  Not quite forty-five seconds later, he was airborne.

  XVI

  [ONE]

  ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE 37 DEGREES 44 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 59 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 1155 7 AUGUST 1950

  “That looks like a lighthouse,” Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, said to Lieutenant David R. Taylor, USNR.

  “God, you’re a clever chap, Mr. McCoy,” Taylor replied, in his best Charles Laughton Mutiny on the Bounty accent. “That indeed is a lighthouse, marking the entrance to the Flying Fish Channel.”

  Jeanette Priestly laughed.

  "That makes it three for Captain Bligh and two for Jean Lafitte,” she said.

  “A question, Captain, sir,” McCoy said. “May I dare to hope that we will soon be at our destination?”

  “I would estimate, Mr. McCoy, that we should be there within the hour, perhaps a little less.”

  The preceding twenty-four hours had passed slowly and uneventfully. The landmass of South Korea had always been in sight to starboard, but Taylor’s course was far enough out to see so the Wind of Good Fortune would be practically invisible to anyone on the shore.

  The flip side was that the people on the Wind of Good Fortune couldn’t see anything on the shore. It was quiet and peaceful, and Jeanette Priestly had observed that it was hard to believe a war was going on.


  They had seen a dozen small ships—probably fishing boats—but they had been far away, just visible on the horizon, and none had come close. They had seen no larger vessels, and if the naval forces of the United Nations Command were patrolling the Yellow Sea, there had been no sight of them, except possibly for four aircraft—flying, McCoy had guessed, at about 10,000 feet, too high to identify their types—none of which seemed to have noticed the Wind of Good Fortune.

  During the day, Taylor had wakened every hour to take a quick look around. Once satisfied with what he had seen, he’d gone back to sleep. McCoy had been so intrigued with Taylor’s ability to so easily and regularly stir himself that he asked him how he did it. Taylor had somewhat smugly held up his wristwatch and said, “Ding-a-ling.” His wristwatch was also a miniature alarm clock.

  Using food from the cases of 10-in-1 rations Sergeant Jennings had stolen from the Army warehouses on the pier in Pusan, and chickens, fish, eggs, pork loins, and vegetables Major Kim’s national policemen had bought in Tongnae, two of the Marines and two national policemen had prepared a surprisingly tasty lunch, an even better dinner, and an evening snack on the charcoal-fired brick stove in the forecastle. It had to be eaten from mess kits, of course, and after Zimmerman reminded the Marines how the vegetables had been fertilized, they lost their appeal, but aside from that, there was nothing whatsoever to complain about.

  Jeanette had spent most of her time with the Marines, shooting several rolls of film in the process. The Marines thought she was a willing passenger, along to chronicle their mission for her newspaper, and they were flattered by the attention of the press.

  Once darkness had fallen, there hadn’t been much to do except post lookouts fore and aft and sleep, and by 1900 there were sleeping Marines and national policemen stretched out wherever they could find room on the deck.

  Taylor took over the helm at nightfall, and shortly after 2000, McCoy had gone below to sleep.

  When McCoy woke, his watch told him it was 0600 and the rolling of the Wind of Good Fortune told him they were still at sea. He went on deck, expecting to find they were approaching whatever kind of a port Tokchok-kundo had to offer.

  He found instead that the South Korean landmass was now to port, and that the Wind of Good Fortune’s sails had been raised.

  “I thought Tokchok-kundo was that way?” McCoy said, pointing over the Wind of Good Fortune’s stern.

  “It is,” Taylor replied. “What I’m doing now is trying to figure out the tides. They’re not doing what the book says they should be doing. And running aground on the mudflats would be awkward.”

  “By when do you think you’ll be able to have the tides figured out?”

  “Never,” Taylor had said seriously. “But today, with the relatively shallow draft of this vessel, I think I can try to get into port about eleven.”

  “If we can see the lighthouse, they can see us,” McCoy said.

  “Another astute observation,” Taylor said, still playing Charles Laughton. “I am amazed at your perspicacity, Mr. McCoy.”

  McCoy was forced to smile.

  “You don’t think the lighthouse keeper might report that a strange junk loaded with more people than usual, some of whom don’t look very Oriental, just sailed past?”

  “That would be a real possibility if (a) there was a lighthouse keeper at the lighthouse, and (b) he had a generator to power a radio to communicate with somebody,” Taylor said. “But you may relax, Mr. McCoy. I have it from a reliable source that there is neither.”

  “What reliable source?”

  “Our own esteemed Major Kim,” Taylor said, pointing to Kim, who was leaning against the stern railing.

  Kim was wearing a baggy black cotton shirt and trousers. The last time McCoy had seen him, he had been in neatly pressed American khakis.

  “When I was last on Tokchok-kundo,” Major Kim said, “the lighthouse keeper was hiding out there,” Major Kim said. “He told me that he had removed the important parts of the generator and the radio and took off when he saw the North Koreans were in Inchon.”

  “You don’t think the North Koreans would try to get it up and running? What are they doing without a lighthouse? Taking their chances?”

  “The enemy isn’t running any deep-draft vessels into Inchon, Captain McCoy,” Kim said. “They are using their own ports, which are protected by antiaircraft weapons. They’ll wait until they have taken the Pusan perimeter to clean up this area. They have more important things to do than fix a lighthouse that right now would do nothing more than help guide South Korean fishermen home.”

  “But won’t our invasion fleet need it?” McCoy asked.

  “If they start down the Flying Fish at night, they will,” Taylor said. “And they’re going to have to do just that.”

  “So we have to think about getting it up and running ourselves?”

  “In the Dai-chi Building, the brass’s idea was, when they sent you Marines to take Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do on D Minus One, the landing boats would drop half a dozen men off at the lighthouse with either a generator or enough gas and oil to make a fire.”

  “So that’s why you didn’t say anything?”

  “I figured I’d wait to see if we got away with taking Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do,” Taylor said. “If we do get away with that, and if they don’t send people to take them back, there’ll be plenty of time to think about what we want to do with the lighthouse.”

  " ’If’?” Jeanette quoted. " ’If’? What do they call that, ‘confidence’?”

  “Facing facts,” Taylor said. Then he pointed. “There it is. To port?”

  McCoy saw a rocky island, with what looked like thatch-roofed stone houses at the water’s edge.

  “Where’s Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do?” McCoy asked.

  “You can’t see them from here; you can, just barely, from the other side of Tokchok-kundo. But from here in, I think we’d better get everybody below. That includes you, Jeanette. If you’re going to stay up here, McCoy, put on a Korean shirt.”

  He pointed to Major Kim’s floppy black cotton clothing.

  “My Korean stuff is below. I’ll go get it,” McCoy said.

  Major Kim touched his arm, and when McCoy turned to look at him, handed him a black cotton shirt and trousers.

  “Thank you,” McCoy said.

  “With your permission, Captain,” Kim said, addressing Taylor, “I will have my men prepared to deal with whatever we find when we tie up.”

  “Like what, for example?” Jeanette asked.

  “We have had no communication with Tokchok-kundo Island, Miss Priestly,” Kim said. “The North Koreans may have decided to occupy it.”

  “Have at it, Major,” Taylor ordered.

  “And if they have, then what?” Jeanette pursued.

  “Then we hope we have more men than they do,” Taylor said. “Please get below, Miss Priestly.”

  [TWO]

  The landing plan was simple. Taylor would sail the Wind of Good Fortune into Tokchok-kundo’s harbor—actually nothing much more than an indentation in the shoreline with a crude stone wharf jutting out into it—and “see what happens.”

  In case “what happened” was a detachment of North Korean soldiers, he would have the diesel engine running, so if McCoy decided retreat was the smart thing to do, they could move quickly.

  There was a strong possibility, however—depending on McCoy’s assessment of the strength of the enemy force, if there was one—that the smart thing to do would be to take the detachment out before retreating.

  If there was a North Korean detachment on the island, they would probably have a radio, with which they could call the mainland and report that an attempt by white men (read: Americans) was trying to take the island. That might send North Korean patrol vessels after them, and it would certainly tip the North Koreans that the Americans were showing an unusual interest in Tokchok-kundo.

  Taking the detachment out would prevent that. If there were prisoners,
they could be taken to Pusan. Any bodies could be buried at sea. By the time someone investigated why Tokchok-kundo hadn’t been heard from lately, the Wind of Good Fortune would be far at sea.

  And the plan for taking out the North Korean detachment—if there was one—was also simple. Major Kim, hoping to look like a sailor, was to stand on the deck to starboard just aft of the forecastle. His national policemen would be in the forecastle itself, ready to move onto the deck on his signal.

  Captain McCoy would be aft on the deck to starboard, sitting on the deck, where he hoped the solid railing would keep him from being seen by anyone on the shore. He didn’t look much like a Korean sailor.

  Neither did Lieutenant Taylor, even though he was now also wearing a black cotton shirt and trousers, and had his hair and forehead wrapped in black cotton. He was in the best position to see what was on the wharf and shore, and was also in the worst position to try to pass himself off as a Korean sailor.

  The Marines were to be in the passage below the bridge on the stern, ready to move at McCoy’s order.

  That order would come when either Major Kim or Lieutenant Taylor decided that it no longer mattered if someone on shore could see that McCoy was not a Korean seaman and would call his name.

  McCoy would then stand up, have a look himself, and decide what was the smart thing to do.

  A flash of reflected light struck the solid railing behind which McCoy was concealing himself. He looked and saw Jeanette Priestly, on her hands and knees, crawling toward him from the door to the passageway under the stern. Her Leica, its case open, hung from her neck and dragged along the deck.

  “Okay?” she asked when she reached him, and was sitting on the deck, her back against the stern bulkhead.

  “Fine. With a little luck, when the shooting starts, you’ll catch a bullet.”

  “You don’t mean that,” she said.