“Moving the Koreans over there without getting spotted is going to be tough, Killer,” Zimmerman said. “Taylor’s right. You can see a sail a long way off, and if they see two sailboats headed even for Taemuui-do, they’re going to know something’s up.”
“Your militia’s our second wave, Ernie,” McCoy said. “They won’t even put out from here until daylight. By then we should have taken Yonghung-do. They go ashore there and garrison it, and we head back this way, bypassing the little island, and take Taemuui-do. Then the Koreans garrison that, and finally we take the little island.”
“We leave just the Koreans on the islands?” Taylor asked.
“I think what Captain McCoy has in mind,” Major Kim said, “is that if the North Koreans counterattack from the mainland, and do so successfully, they would not find any Americans.”
McCoy nodded.
“When do we go, Killer?” Zimmerman asked.
“You got heavy plans for 0400 tomorrow that you can’t break?”
[TWO]
PHOTOGRAPHIC LABORATORY USS BADOENG STRAIT 35 DEGREES 48 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 129 DEGREES 91 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE SEA OF JAPAN 1105 24 AUGUST 1950
“Hey, Mac,” Chief Photographer’s Mate Young called to Master Sergeant P. P. McGrory. “Have a look at this.”
“What am I looking for?”
Chief Young pointed.
"RAD on one panel, I O on the other,” he said. “See it?”
“Yeah. Radio.”
“That’s the guys on that island Colonel Dunn dropped the radio parts to,” Chief Young said. “They probably broke their radio again.”
“He’ll want to see this,” McGrory said. “Right away.”
“They’re about to launch aircraft,” Young said.
McGrory grabbed the print from the table and left the photo lab on the run.
He was winded when he reached the flight deck.
“Where’s Colonel Billy?” he shouted, over the roar of starting aircraft engines.
The mechanic pointed.
Dunn was standing at the wing root of his Corsair, being helped into his flight gear.
“This just out of the soup, Colonel,” McGrory said, handing it to him.
Dunn took one look at the picture.
“Stick this in an envelope, give it to the COD driver, and tell him to get it to the Marine liaison officer as soon as possible. On the envelope, write Major William Dunston, Army Transportation Corps.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” McGrory said.
Dunn saw the look on his face.
"No, Mac,” he said. “Sorry, you can’t ask what that’s all about.”
[THREE]
THE DEWEY SUITE THE IMPERIAL HOTEL TOKYO, JAPAN 1525 24 AUGUST 1950
“I didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” Major General Ralph Howe said when Brigadier General Fleming Pickering knocked at his door. He was sitting in an armchair, feet on a bolster, reading the Stars & Stripes. “Come on in. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I didn’t want to come back at all,” Pickering said.
“Then why did you?”
“I’ve been asked to supper at the Residence,” Pickering said.
“You are already famous as the only man in Japan who dares tell El Supremo ‘Sorry, I have a previous engagement, ’ ” Howe said. It was an unspoken question.
“Two reasons, Ralph,” Pickering said. “I didn’t want him wondering what my previous engagement was, and second, I was following my father’s—now my own—advice about getting out of the way of the competent people who work for you, and letting them do their job.”
“Have you had your twelve o’clock snort already? And if so, is half past three too early for your five o’clock?”
“No, and no,” Pickering said. “Keep your seat, Ralph, I’ll make them.”
“Where’s our usual bartender?”
“Somewhere in the East China Sea. I hope to know precisely where in the East China Sea shortly after nine tonight,” Pickering said.
“What have you got him doing there?” Howe asked.
“Right now, he’s on the junk, headed for Tokchok-kundo, ” Pickering said. “It was the only thing we could think to do to find out what’s happened on the island, and, presuming McCoy and company are there, and the problem is a malfunctioning radio, to get another to them.”
“Why Hart?”
“Because he made the point that he could be better spared—we both knew he meant ‘is more expendable’— than Dunston, my station chief in Pusan,” Pickering said, as he made their drinks. “Dunston was willing to go. George, with somewhat less than overwhelming tact for a captain speaking to his general, correctly pointed out that sending Dunston would be stupid.”
He handed Howe his drink, and they touched glasses. “What are you going to do if El Supremo asks you flat-out about this operation tonight? I suspect he’s going to do just that.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Pickering said. “I guess—”
The door opened, and Master Sergeant Charley Rogers came in.
“I didn’t know you were back, General. There’s a Major Dunston on that back-channel telephone line from Pusan.
When they couldn’t find you or Hart, he asked to speak to General Howe.”
“Can I take it in here?”
“I don’t think it makes much difference,” Rogers said, more than a little bitterly. “There’s a tap on all our lines.”
He walked to the telephone, picked it up, said, “Put my call in here, please,” and held the telephone out to Pickering.
“Dunston,” Pickering said to the telephone, “I don’t think this is a secure line.”
“Yes, sir,” Dunston said. “General, I’m looking at an aerial our friend Dunn sent us. It was taken early this morning. Can you guess where?”
“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Pickering said.
“The shot shows a panel on which someone has written ’Radio,’ ” Dunston said. “It also shows, faintly, what looks like a man in black pajamas.”
“Interesting,” Pickering said.
“I thought you’d want to know, General.”
“Thank you. Everything is ready on your end for 2100 tonight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know as soon as you know anything, will you?”
“Yes, sir, of course.”
“Thank you, Bill.”
“Yes, sir,” Dunston said, and the connection broke.
“Charley, is Sergeant Keller handy?”
“I’ll get him, General,” Rogers said, and left the room.
“Good news?” Howe asked.
“Very good,” Pickering said.
“About your son?” Howe asked.
“No. The best news I have about Pick is that Dunston says he’s pretty sure Pick is not a POW.”
“What was that call?”
Master Sergeant Keller came into the room.
“Yes, sir?”
“I need a message to go—it doesn’t have to be classified, but send it Urgent, Immediate Personal Attention of Lieutenant Colonel William Dunn, aboard the Badoeng Strait.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Message is, quote, Many thanks. Radio is on the way. Signature, Pickering, Brigadier General, USMC, unquote. Got it?”
“I’ll get it right out, sir,” Keller said.
Pickering turned to Howe.
“One of the aerials Colonel Dunn took this morning of Tokchok-kundo shows a panel on which the word ‘radio’ is written,” Pickering said.
“Then maybe—presuming Charley is right, and I’m afraid he is, and someone was listening to your phone conversation—El Supremo will think it had to do with looking for your son.”
“Oh, to hell with it, Ralph. If he asks me, I’m going to tell him,” Pickering said.
[FOUR]
ABOARD WIND OF GOOD FORTUNE 34 DEGREES 20 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE, 126 DEGREES 29 MINUTES EAST LONGITUDE THE YELLOW SEA 2050 24 AUGUST 1950
&nbs
p; Captain George F. Hart, USMCR, who was leaning on the railing on the aft of the high stern of the Wind of Good Fortune, next to the Korean sailor on the tiller, became aware that he could now see the light illuminating the compass in the small control compartment on the forward edge of the stern’s deck.
He looked at his watch, then pushed himself off the railing and walked across the deck to the captain, whose name was Kim, as were the names of two of the four Korean seamen aboard. The fourth seaman, the cook, was named Lee.
He touched Captain Kim on the shoulder and mimed— first by pointing at his watch, then pointing below, and finally by holding a make-believe microphone in front of his face—that it was time for him to report their position to their higher headquarters.
Captain Kim nodded, and either cleared his throat or grunted.
Hart took a chart from the pocket of his tunic. Surprising him, after a long, hot humid day, it had actually gotten chilly on the stern about half past five, and he had gone below to his cabin to get the tunic.
He held the chart out to Captain Kim, who studied it a moment, and then pointed out their position with a surprisingly delicate finger. They were slightly southwest of the extreme tip of the Korean peninsula. They had, in other words, just begun to sail northward up the Korean Peninsula, far enough out to sea so it was unlikely that anyone on the shore could see the Wind of Good Fortune.
They weren’t, technically, sailing. The sails had been lowered as soon as they were out of sight of Pusan, and they had moved under diesel power since.
Hart went to his—the captain’s—cabin, closed the door and turned on the light. The SCR-300, still on a shipping pallet, was lashed to the deck. On top of it was a non-GI Hallicrafters communications receiver, also carefully lashed in place.
The radios had been installed in the wee hours of the morning personally by Captain R. C. “Pete” Peters, Signal Corps, USA, of the 8th Army (Rear) Communications Center. And he had personally supervised the installation of the antennae at first light in the morning. Then he had established radio contact with his radio room.
The radios had worked then, which did not mean, Hart thought, that they would work now, either because something was wrong with them, or more likely because he didn’t really have a clue how to work the sonofabitch, despite Captain Peters’s instructions, each step of which Hart had carefully written down in a notebook.
Hart laid the chart on top of the radio, then took a large sheet of translucent paper from his tunic pocket and carefully laid this on top of the chart. It was an overlay. The night before, “Major” Dunston had spent two hours carefully preparing overlays. There were two sets of them, one set for the waters offshore the Korean peninsula, and the other set for the islands in the Flying Fish Channel. The overlays in each set were identical. On each were drawn a number of boxes, each one labeled with numbers. The numbers were—intentionally—in no way sequential. “063,” for example, was surrounded by “109,” “040,” “101,” and “171.”
When he placed the overlay on the chart, Hart saw that the position Captain Kim had pointed out to him was inside the box numbered “091.” Hart wrote the number in his notebook, then carefully folded the chart and the overlay and put them back in his tunic pocket, with the aerial photo of the Flying Fish Channel islands and its overlay.
Then, carefully studying the first of the notes he had made during Captain Peters’s very patient orientation, he threw BOTTOM LEFT-HAND SWITCH on the Hallicrafter and was relieved and pleasantly surprised when the dials immediately lit up.
Three minutes later, all the dials and gauges on both the transmitter and the receiver were lit up, and indicating what Hart’s notes said they should.
He put on his earphones, and heard a hiss.
He picked up the microphone, pressed the PRESS TO TALK switch, and said, “Dispatch, Dispatch, H-1, H-1.”
H-1 was the radio call sign assigned to the chief of the homicide bureau of the St. Louis police department. When the question of radio call signs for the good ship Wind of Good Fortune had come up about 0300 that morning, H-1 had seemed be as good a call sign as any of the others suggested, and a lot better than some. And, Hart knew, he was unlikely to forget it.
He thought about this now, and of St. Louis, and its police department, and asked aloud, “What the fuck am I doing here?”
The hiss in his earphone vanished suddenly, and a voice so loud it actually hurt his ears said, “Dispatch. Go ahead.”
“Zero Niner One,” Hart said into the microphone, and then repeated it.
“Dispatch understands Zero Niner One, Confirm,” the too loud, very clear voice said in Hart’s earphones.
“Confirm, confirm,” Hart said into the microphone.
“Dispatch clear,” the too loud voice said, and the hiss came back to Hart’s earphones.
Hart put the microphone on top of the SCR-300, then carefully studied the front of the Hallicrafters, finally settling on a round knob. He moved it very carefully. The hiss in his earphones diminished. He started to leave the knob where it was, but on reflection—If I turn it too far down, I might not be able to hear him the next time—turned it back up.
Then, consulting his notes, he began to shut the radio down.
[FIVE]
TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 0405 25 AUGUST 1950
They had spent most of the previous day rehearsing how to get the boats into the water, and their equipment into the boats, and what ran through Captain Kenneth R. McCoy’s mind as he jumped from the wharf into Boat Two was that at least the boat part of the operation wasn’t going to cause any problems.
He pushed the starter button on the control panel, and the lifeboat’s engine, after a few anemic gasps, came to life.
The rehearsals for getting the boats into the water had been sort of fun, although smiling at the men’s activities would have been inappropriate.
He had begun the exercise by explaining that they weren’t actually going to remove the camouflage netting over the boats—because the boats might then be seen— they were going to mimic uncovering them, and getting them into the water, and getting the equipment into them once they were in the water.
Everyone seemed to agree that was a logical approach to the problem.
As the boats when they were really put into the water would have to be carried there, they started with that. They were heavy, and would require eight men on each side to carry them.
The men were assigned numbers, Left #1 through Left #8, Right #1 through Right #8.
After Boat One was in the water, Boat Two would be uncovered and put in the water. Whereupon Left #7 and Left #8 would remain in Boat Two, Right #7 and Right #8 would move to Boat One, and everybody else would form a line to the now-roofless house where their weapons, ammunition, and everything else they were taking with them had been laid out in a precise pattern. Then, first each individual weapon would be passed from man to man down and into the boats, and then each man’s equipment.
Setting the system up and running through it, even in mime, had taken all morning, and through the lunch break, and then they had rehearsed how they would assault Yonghung-do.
About 1700, McCoy had gathered everybody together and gone through what Major Kim had learned of the disposition of the physical characteristics of the island, the location of the North Korean troops on the island, and the plan: Yonghung-do was about three miles long, north to south, and shaped something like an hourglass. Each end of the island was about a mile wide, and each had a 250- to 300-foot hill in its center. About in its middle, the island narrowed to a few hundred feet.
“That’s where we’ll land,” McCoy said, pointing to a drawing he’d made of the island in the now-dried mud. “They won’t expect us, and we can land there without being seen. We’ll leave a four-man team there—the .30 Browning machine-gun team plus one BAR and one rifleman—plus eight of Major Kim’s men, under Mr. Taylor. Their job will be to keep the NKs in the village at the north end of the island, Nae-ri, from coming to
help the NKs in the village, Oe-Ri, on the south end of the island.
“With a little bit of luck, the people we leave on the beach won’t have anything to do. If we can move that mile over the hill quietly—no one fires a round by mistake, or Mr. Zimmerman doesn’t fart—”
He got the expected laughter, waited for it to subside, and then went on:
“They won’t expect us, and we can take them without firing a shot. ‘Them’ is their lieutenant, one of their machine guns, probably the ammo supply for all the islands, and their radio, with maybe a generator we can use to power ours. We’re not going into that village shooting. If there’s a radio, or diesel fuel, I don’t want it full of bullet holes. There’s also about two hundred civilians. I will really have the ass of anyone who pops a civilian.
“Okay, once we have secured the southern village, we leave Major Kim’s people there, go back to the landing beach, pick up everybody except the machine-gun team and Mr. Taylor, head north, go over the other hill, and secure the other village, Nae-ri. Once we do that, a volunteer will run happily back over the hill to the beach and tell Mr. Taylor, who will then bring the boats to Nae-ri, and haul us—less Major Kim and his policemen, who will be staying until we can get the militia in there—out. Any questions? ”
There had been no questions.
“Well, in that case, before it gets really dark, I think we ought to have one more—maybe even two more—dry runs of the boat launching,” McCoy said.
There were groans. Once the system had been set up and tried and it worked once, and then twice, and then three times, it had become a flaming, stupid, pain-in-the-ass chickenshit exercise.
He waited until they had subsided.
“On the other hand,” McCoy went on, straight-faced, “maybe it would just be easier to put the boats in the water now, load the gear in them, put the camo nets over them, and then all we’d have to do in the morning would be get in them, take off the nets, and take off.”
There was a moment’s shocked silence, and then murmurs.
Under Fire Page 64