Retreat, Hell!
Page 18
Captain MacNamara looked at the lines of vehicles in his pool, then at the signature of the President of the United States, then back at the lines of vehicles in his pool, and then at Major McCoy.
He came to attention, licked his lips, and said, “Not with orders like those. No, sir.”
“Good. May I have the orders back, please? And I won’t have to tell you, will I, that you are not to reveal anything connected with this?”
“No, sir,” MacNamara said, and then had a second thought. “But, sir, somebody will have to sign for the vehicles. ”
“That’s what I’m here for, Captain,” Dunston said.
“Sir, could I ask you for some identification?”
“Sure,” Dunston said, and handed him an Army Adjutant General’s Office photo identifying him as a major, Transportation Corps.
"Thank you, sir.”
[TWO]
DETACHMENT A 8119TH QUARTERMASTER COMPANY (FORWARD) INCHON, SOUTH KOREA 1020 30 SEPTEMBER 1950
Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, who was sitting beside Major Alex Donald, USA, and Major William Dunston, USA, on the floor of the cargo compartment of one of the H-19s watching Master Gunner Zimmerman supervise the loading of rations, and other items, into a GMC 6 × 6, turned to Major Dunston and asked, “Do you think we’d be pushing our luck to try to get something from over there?”
He pointed across the Quartermaster Supply Point to an eight-man squad tent, before which was a corporal with a rifle sitting on a folding chair and a small wooden sign reading, “Class VI.”
Class VI supplies are supposed to have—but usually don’t have—the lowest priority for shipment to a combat area. The highest priority goes to medical supplies, followed by ammunition, rations, and so on, based on the military’s best judgment of what is most essential.
Class VI supplies are bottled intoxicants, such as whiskey, gin, and rum. They are not issued, but purchased with “nonappropriated funds” intended for resale to officer and noncommissioned officer clubs. They are not subject to alcohol taxes of any kind. Their sale is rigidly controlled and only to “authorized entities.”
“Why not?” Major Dunston replied. “We seem to be on a roll.”
Captain MacNamara had given them every vehicle they had asked for, including a tanker truck and five tank trailers, as well as enough trucks, weapons carriers, and jeeps to make both Baker Company, 5th Marines, “the aviation detachment,” and the station fully mobile on the ground.
The officer in charge of the Quartermaster Supply Point had been even more dazzled than Captain MacNamara when three field-grade officers bearing orders personally signed by the President of the United States descended upon his unit in machines he had never heard of.
The men—the Marines and the Army Aviation people—in the bullet- and shrapnel-riddled hangar would that night have a hot meal prepared on field stoves, and everyone would sleep that night on a cot in a sleeping bag. The only thing they would not have was cold beer—a means of refrigeration was not available—but as Mr. Zimmerman pointed out, warm beer was far better than no beer at all.
“Mr. Zimmerman!” McCoy called out, and Zimmerman marched over to them.
“Yes, sir?”
“I’m going to need some of our discretionary funds,” McCoy said.
“I saw the sign,” Zimmerman said, taking an oilcloth wallet from his rear pocket. “How much do you want?”
“We don’t want to be greedy,” McCoy said. “Give Major Dunston two—better make it three—hundred dollars.”
Zimmerman opened the wallet, took from it a packet of money labeled “$500—Twenty-Dollar Notes,” and counted off two hundred dollars.
He handed what was left to Dunston.
“That should be three hundred,” he said.
“I guess I’m going to try to buy the booze?” Dunston said.
“Uh-huh,” McCoy said. “And into your capable hands, Major Dunston, I entrust the entire wagon train.”
“Where are you going?”
“Major Donald is going to take Mr. Zimmerman and me on a reconnaissance mission.”
“I’d like to go along,” Dunston said.
“I don’t think all three of us should go at the same time,” McCoy said. “If this flying egg beater should crash and burn with all of us on it, the entire war could well be lost.”
“Indeed it could,” Dunston said.
“Where are we going?” Major Donald asked.
“Not far from Suwon,” McCoy said. “How well do you know the area?”
“I’ve flown over it. Not a hell of a lot.”
“One of the things we hope to do with your aircraft, Major, is locate and pick up a shot-down Marine pilot who’s down there somewhere.”
“I thought the Marines did that sort of thing themselves, ” Donald said.
“Yes, they do,” McCoy said. “But this is sort of a special case. I’ll tell you about it at The House.”
“The House?”
“Where we stay in Seoul,” McCoy explained.
“Do you have any idea where this pilot is?” Donald asked.
“We know where he was thirty-six hours ago.”
He took a map from his pocket, opened it, and pointed out the rice paddy where Pickering had last stamped out his arrow and his initials.
“Can you find that?”
Donald glanced at the map and nodded. “No problem.” Then he looked at McCoy. “You think he’s there?”
“He was there. He’s not now.”
“How do you know?”
“Because we were there,” McCoy said.
“That area’s not secure,” Donald blurted. “The whole NK army is trying to escape through there.”
“So Zimmerman told me,” McCoy said.
Donald digested that a moment, then asked, “Where do you think this pilot is now?”
“I have no idea. Maybe he’s heading east. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Whatever you say,” Donald said.
“Send the other helo back to Kimpo and have it put in the hangar,” McCoy ordered.
“Right.”
“We’ll see you at the hangar, Bill,” McCoy said. “And I think I should tell you this: I don’t know how it is in the Army, but in the Marine Corps, officers who fail to adequately protect their Class VI supplies are castrated.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dunston said.
[THREE]
TWO MILES NNE OF HOENGSONG, SOUTH KOREA 1115 30 SEPTEMBER 1950
Major Malcolm S. Pickering’s efforts to drain the rice paddy near Yoju the previous evening so that he could stamp out his initials and the arrow had failed.
It would have been a waste of effort to try to stamp the Here I am, for Christ’s sake, come and get me message in the dark, so he had waited until morning, hoping that the ground would still be wet and soft enough for the stamping.
The reverse proved to be true. When it grew light enough for him to see, he saw that the rice paddy was covered with water, only an inch or two deep, but covered with water.
He thought at first that he hadn’t kicked away enough of the earthen dam to completely drain the water. But a quick investigation of the site showed that the paddy was a natural depression in the hillside, and the only way it could possibly be drained would be to dig a trench and empty it across the dirt path into the next-lower rice paddy.
To dig a trench like that, he quickly saw, would require a pick and shovel, and he had neither tool.
This was not the first time he’d had trouble draining a paddy. Very much the same thing had happened to him three times before. This knowledge of itself was not very comforting.
He had put the A-Frame over his shoulders and climbed up and over the crest of that hill, then worked his way eastward.
He had risen at first light, and left the undrained paddy forty minutes later. By eleven-fifteen, he had moved, in his best guess, about ten or eleven miles. As the crow flies, about four.
He was at the crest of an
other hill—he hadn’t counted, but he thought it was probably the fourth crest—when he heard the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata of a helicopter.
His first reaction was fear. It was not the fluckata-fluckata -fluckata of any of the three helicopters he knew—the Bell, Hiller, and Sikorsky aircraft—all small two-man machines. This fluckata-fluckata-fluckata was louder, heavier, and different.
Since so far as he knew the only U.S. helicopters in Korea were those assigned to the 1st Marine Air Wing, and they were Bells, logic dictated that the aircraft making this fluckata-fluckata-fluckata were not American. It was entirely possible, he thought after a minute, that in the nine thousand years since he had been shot down, the Army or the Air Force had finally gotten its act in gear and gotten some of their own helicopters to Korea, and this was what he was hearing.
But then he thought that the only place the Army could get helicopters was from Bell or Hiller . . .
He recalled then that the Navy had some helos to pick aviators from the drink if they missed a carrier landing or takeoff—he’d actually seen them while practicing carrier takeoffs and recovery off San Diego—but when he thought about that, he remembered the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata they’d made, and it wasn’t the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata he was hearing now.
. . . and he knew the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata he was hearing now wasn’t coming from a Bell or a Hiller, so it had to be made by something else. Like a Russian helicopter. The Russians had helicopters. Hell, the Russians had invented helicopters. Both Sikorsky and Piasecki were Russians before they came to the States.
What he needed was a cave to hide in.
There being no convenient caves, he did the next best thing. He put his back against the earthen wall of a rice paddy, then held the A-Frame over him. It would, he believed, break his human figure outline, shade his face from the sun, and make him difficult to see from the air.
The fluckata-fluckata-fluckata grew louder. Pickering pushed the A-Frame away from his head and glanced skyward, trying to get a look at it.
Where the hell is it? Jesus Christ, it sounds like it’s right here!
He leaned his neck back as far as it would go, just in time to see the shiny olive-drab fuselage of an enormous helicopter—the largest he had ever seen—hanging beneath an enormous rotor cone flash—fluckata-fluckata-fluckata-fluckata -fluckata-fluckata—not more than 100 feet over him. It headed down the hill, then turned to the left.
Pickering could see U.S. ARMY painted in large letters on the fuselage.
The helicopter turned right, rose above the crest of the next hill, and then dropped out of sight below it.
He waited for a long time to see—Please, God!—if it would reappear again, and maybe turn around and come back.
It didn’t.
[FOUR]
HEADQUARTERS, FIRST MARINE DIVISION SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 1225 30 SEPTEMBER 1950
Master Gunnery Sergeant Allan J. Macey, USMC, who looked very much like Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, backed through the canvas flap that served as the door to the office of Major General Oliver P. Smith, Commanding 1st MarDiv. He held a stainless-steel food tray and a mess kit set of spoon, knife, and fork in each hand.
“Chow, sir,” he announced. “Salisbury steak, for a real treat.”
He laid the trays on a simple wooden picnic-type table.
“I’ll get the coffee, sir,” Gunny Macey said, and looked at General Smith’s luncheon guest. “Canned cow and sugar, General?”
“No, thanks,” Major General Ralph Howe, NGUS, said. “Black’s fine. You’ll take care of Sergeant Rogers, right?”
“We old men have to stick together, General,” Macey said.
“I apologize for the scarcity of the fare, General,” Smith said.
“I’m an old infantryman, General,” Howe said. “If it’s warm and served inside, that’s all I ask, and I’m grateful to get it.”
Smith smiled and grunted. He waved Howe to a seat at the table.
“So what can I do for you today, General?” Smith asked.
“General Almond told me an hour ago about Mac-Arthur’s plan to move the division by sea to Wonsan as soon as Eighth Army cleans up the peninsula as far as Seoul,” Howe said.
Smith grunted again and said nothing.
“That was in the nature of a question, General,” Howe pursued.
Gunny Lacey came back through the flap with a white china mug of coffee in one hand and a canteen cup of coffee in the other. He set the mug before Howe and the canteen cup before Smith and then left.
“Why do I think he gave me your mug?” Howe asked, and reached for the canteen cup.
“That’s his mug,” Smith said. “I broke mine. I guess he likes you.”
“I’ve got a couple of spares in the jeep,” Howe said. “You can have them.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I would be very surprised if Macey didn’t have me one by supper. Probably before.”
“You’re welcome to them,” Howe said, shrugging.
“What you’re asking, General, is what do I think of the idea.”
“That’s what I’m here for.”
“I’m a Marine. Marines go where they’re ordered, and fight whomever they’re ordered to fight,” Smith said.
“In other words, you think it’s a dumb idea,” Howe said.
“Your words, General, not mine.”
“Whatever you tell me will go to no one but the President, ” Howe said. “No. The President and General Pickering. We have an arrangement to share information.”
“Did they find his boy?”
“They think he’s still alive, somewhere around Suwon,” Howe said.
“That has to be tough for him.”
“It is.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“If there were, I’d ask. You know Major McCoy?”
“Killer McCoy? I’ve met him a couple of times. Is he in charge of finding Pickering’s son?”
Howe nodded. “And I think if anybody can get young Pickering back, McCoy can,” he said.
Smith grunted.
“In terrain like that of northeast Korea, General,” Smith said, “cohesion of your forces is critical. You can’t string them out, and, worse, you can’t outrun your logistics.”
“I know. I had a division in Italy. It’s hard to get ammunition—not to mention hot rations—up the side of a mountain in a snowstorm.”
“So, I understand General Almond had a division in Italy,” Smith said. “And in the presumption that General Almond learned what you did there, and will not issue orders requiring me to separate elements of the division, or order me to move so far or so fast that my ration and ammo trains will be strained, I have no objection to the Marines going ashore at Wonsan. Or anywhere else they think we can do the job.”
“Thank you,” Howe said. “That will not go further than Pickering and the President.”
“God, I hate canned peaches,” Smith said, holding a peach half aloft on his fork.
“I hate to admit this, but I’m getting to like the Salisbury steak,” Howe said.
“You’ve been here too long, General,” Smith said, chuckling.
“You ever see McCoy?” Smith asked.
“Frequently.”
“When you see him, ask him, please—tell him I told you to ask—what, if anything, I can do to help him.”
“I will, of course, but he will say, ‘Thank you, sir, I have everything I need.’ ”
Smith looked at him for a moment. “Why do I think something went unsaid, General?” he asked.
“General, does Baker Company, 5th Marines, ring a bell?” Howe asked.
“Yes. They’re the people who were the reserve for the clandestine operation on the Flying Fish Channel Islands.”
“They’re now at K-14, guarding a couple of secret Army helicopters.”
“Secret Army helicopters?” Smith parroted incredulously. “Almond asked me if he could have them for a couple of days. I said, ‘Yes,
sir.’ I didn’t know what they would be doing.”
“McCoy doesn’t have enough people,” Howe said.
“Is that what he’s doing now, guarding secret Army helicopters?”
“I meant for his intelligence activities, and looking for Major Pickering.”
“He tell you that?”
“That’s my opinion.”
“And he asked for these people?”
“No.”
Smith grunted, then raised his voice. “Gunny!”
Master Gunnery Sergeant Macey came through the canvas flap.
“Sir?”
“Baker Company, 5th Marines,” Smith said.
“They’re in Division Special Reserve, sir. They’re the people who were detached when we left the Perimeter—”
“I know,” Smith cut him off. “Tell the G-3 they are to remain in Special Reserve until released by me, personally.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And send a messenger to the company commander . . . Where did you say they were, General Howe?”
“In a hangar across from base operations at K-14,” Howe furnished.
“. . . that, until further orders from me to the contrary, he will take his orders from Major McCoy. He knows who he is.”
"Aye, aye, sir.”
[FIVE]
THE HOUSE SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA 1625 30 SEPTEMBER 1950
Major Alex Donald, who was in the act of extending his hand to take a crystal whiskey glass full of beer from a tray extended to him by a middle-aged Korean woman, was surprised when Majors McCoy and Dunston, Master Gunner Zimmerman, and Technical Sergeant Jennings suddenly rose to their feet and stood to attention as military men do when a senior officer suddenly appears.
This—“mansion” was the only word that fit—did not seem to be a bastion of the fine points of military courtesy and the customs of the service. And neither did its inhabitants. Technical sergeants do not normally sit around drinking with officers.
He took the glass of beer, then glanced at the door. A graying master sergeant in fatigues was coming through it. Then another man in fatigues came through, and there were two silver stars on each of his collar points.