Retreat, Hell!

by W. E. B Griffin

  Major Pickering stared at it for a long time, until he realized he was holding his arm where Mrs. Babs Mitchell had held it.

  Then he said, “Shit!” and went to his bedside table and took out a bottle of Listerine mouthwash, which he had had the foresight to fill with scotch in the Officers’ Club, and took a long pull, and then another.

  [SIX]

  THE PARADE GROUND MARINE CORPS BASE CAMP JOSEPH H. PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA 1710 2 NOVEMBER 1950

  Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, rose from his chair in the reviewing stand and walked to the lectern at the forward edge. He tapped the microphone with his finger, which caused the loudspeakers mounted on poles to pop loudly.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished guests, Marines,” General Dawkins began. “Two of the officers to be decorated today recently flew together off the aircraft carrier USS Badoeng Strait. One of them is here only in spirit. His decorations will be accepted by his widow.”

  There was a sudden, rapidly-growing-in-volume roar of aircraft engines.

  Three Corsairs in a V formation appeared low in the sky, and then three more, and then three more.

  They flew no more than five hundred feet above the parade ground and then began to pull up. The center Corsair in the third V applied FULL MILITARY EMERGENCY POWER, increased the angle of his climb, and changed course to the right, left the formation, and disappeared into the sky.

  General Dawkins again addressed the parade.

  “Marines to be decorated, front and center!” he barked.

  The band began to play “The Marines’ Hymn.”

  [SEVEN]

  THE OCEAN VIEW APARTMENTS 1005 OCEAN DRIVE SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1850 2 NOVEMBER 1950

  “Would you like to come in for a minute, Pick?” Mrs. Babs Mitchell asked as the Marine-green Chevrolet pulled into the driveway.

  I would gladly sell my soul to Satan, or whoever else would have it, to go up there with you and never come out.

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m a little weary. Call me?”

  “Of course.”

  The escort officer walked Mrs. Mitchell to the lobby, watched through the glass door until she got on the elevator, and then walked back to the staff car and got in beside Major Pickering.

  “You all right, sir?”

  “No. But I will be just as soon as we get to the bar in the Coronado Beach Hotel and I have a pick-me-up. Or three.”

  “Sir, my orders are to make sure you make it safely back to the hospital.”

  “Screw your orders,” Pick said. “If General Dawkins finds out—and I can see no reason why he should—I’ll take the heat. Sergeant, the Coronado Beach Hotel.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the sergeant driving said.

  [EIGHT]

  AIR CARGO TERMINAL TRANS-GLOBAL AIRWAYS LINDBERGH FIELD SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 2025 2 NOVEMBER 1950

  “I’m not sure about this, ma’am,” the assistant station manager said to Mrs. Babs Mitchell. “He said I wasn’t to let anybody in here.”

  “It’s all right,” Babs said. “We’re friends.”

  “If you say so,” the assistant station manager said, and put his key to the lock in the metal door in the hangar door.

  Babs stepped through it.

  There were lights in the hangar, but they were mounted high against the roof, and the hangar was crowded with pallets of air freight waiting for shipment—most of it, she saw, addressed to “Transportation Officer, 1st MarDiv, Korea”—and it was some time before she saw him.

  He was standing with his hands on his hips—looking oddly belligerent—before a coffin shipping case in a far corner of the hangar.

  She watched for more than a minute, and he didn’t move.

  She didn’t want him to hear her coming across the gritty concrete, so, standing on one leg at a time, she took off her shoes before she walked to him.

  And he didn’t sense her presence—which surprised her—until she touched his arm.

  “Hey, Pick,” she said. “How are you doing?”

  “How the hell did you find me?”

  “Well, I was worried about you, so I went to the hospital and you weren’t in your room, and you weren’t in the Officers’ Club, and then I remembered hearing on the radio that her . . . her . . .”

  “Jeanette’s body?”

  “Yeah. Jeanette’s body would be formally received, or whatever they said, in the morning. And I thought that maybe it had come in early, and you might be out here. So I called up and asked for you, and he said you weren’t here, but I could tell he was lying, so I came out. Wrong move?”

  “What made you think I’d be out here?”

  “I just knew. I know how you think.”

  Jesus Christ, I hope not.

  He didn’t reply.

  “I’m surprised they let you in. You really don’t work for Trans-Global anymore, do you? I mean, you’re on military leave, right?”

  “I own the airline,” Pick said. “That probably had something to do with the station manager letting me in.”

  “You own the airline like I’m Marilyn Monroe.”

  Jesus Christ, she doesn’t know!

  “I slipped him twenty bucks from my poker winnings,” Pick said.

  Jesus, I can smell her.

  “What happened to your shoes? Blister?” he asked.

  “No. I didn’t want to startle you, so I took them off. How you doing?”

  “After twenty, thirty minutes of solemn contemplation, I decided that Jeanette is not really inside this Container, Human Remains,” Pick said. “So it doesn’t really matter that it’s not covered with the flag.”

  “There’ll be a flag tomorrow, won’t there?”

  “Probably. I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m not going. I said good-bye to her twice, once over there, and I’m doing it again now. Have just finished doing it, now.”

  She took his hand with both of hers.

  You don’t really want to do that, Mrs. Babs Mitchell. My high moral character is weakened in direct proportion to the amount of imbibed booze. The needle on the Moral Scruples Remaining indicator is already in the red.

  “I’m sorry, Pick.”

  “You shouldn’t be. Despite popular legend to the contrary, the real bastards of this world do get what is coming to them. Or don’t get what they would really like to have.”

  “I’m not sure I follow that.”

  “That’s probably because I am just a wee bit tiddly.”

  “I noticed,” she said matter-of-factly. “If you’re really finished, I’ll take you home.”

  By that, obviously, you mean home to room 39A in the loony ward.

  “I thought I’d catch a cab and go back to the Coronado Beach,” he said. “But I will take a ride as far as the passenger terminal, where I can catch a cab.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because that’s where the cabstand is.”

  “I meant the Coronado Beach Hotel?”

  “Because I have an apartment there, where I can have a few drinks in private, and thus not disgrace my officer’s uniform by being shitfaced in a public establishment, or run afoul of the hospital O Club regulations.”

  “You have an apartment there?”

  “Yeah, I have an apartment there.”

  “If you’re ready, I’ll take you there.”

  “That would be a very bad idea,” he said. “As a matter of fact, I will not, thank you just the same, take a ride to the passenger terminal.”

  “Why would that be a very bad idea?”

  “Because I’m having a hell of a hard time keeping from putting my arms around you while standing in front of Jeanette’s casket, and I know goddamn well what would happen in your car. Much less my apartment.”

  She looked into his eyes.

  “Okay. Now you know,” Pick said. “That’s the kind of a prick I am. And the sooner you get away from me, and the farther away you get, the better.”

  “Okay. I’m warned,” she said. “Let’s go.”<
br />
  “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you.”

  “But you don’t believe me? Is that it?”

  “I had a couple of drinks before I went looking for you,” Babs said. “Time to think very seriously about the dangers of someone like myself being desperate for another man in my life, of someone like you being especially vulnerable to someone like me.”

  “And?”

  “I had another drink and went looking for you.”

  “Jesus, Babs!” he said softly.

  “The drinks I had are wearing off, so if we’re going to do this, you’d better get another couple in me pretty soon.”

  “I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” he said.

  “Yeah, I do. Why not, Pick? Who are we going to hurt?”

  “The last thing in the world I want to do is hurt you, add to your problems,” Pick said.

  “I know,” she said. She put her hand on his cheek. “Likewise. Who knows? Maybe we can solve each other’s problems. It seems to me worth trying. What has either one of us got to lose?”

  “Jesus H. Christ!”

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said, and took his hand and led him away from the Container, Human Remains. Halfway to the hangar door, he freed his hand and put his arm around her shoulder. Six steps farther, he stopped, put both arms around her, and kissed her.

  [NINE]

  APARTMENT A THE P&FE/TRANS-GLOBAL SUITE CORONADO BEACH HOTEL SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 0830 3 NOVEMBER 1950

  “I think this is what your friend Dr. McGrory would call ‘postcoital depression,’ ” Babs Mitchell said to Pick Pickering.

  They were having a room-service breakfast; both were wearing hotel-furnished terry-cloth robes. The robe concealed all the curvature of her body.

  It doesn’t matter. I can see her face. Even without makeup, she’s beautiful.

  Okay. Here it comes. You knew goddamn well it would.

  “Now that I’ve thought it over . . .”

  “Something bothering you?”

  “I had too much to drink last night,” she said. “You must think I’m really a slut.”

  “No I don’t,” he said.

  “You don’t?”

  “I don’t.”

  “I wish I could believe that.”

  “Believe it.”

  “Oh, God, what have we done?”

  After a moment, Pick solemnly said, “If that question was addressed to the Deity, I’m sorry to have to tell you He’s not available at the moment. But—as one of His favorite people on this particular planet—I feel confident in telling you that when He finally gets around to answering your query, He will say something like ‘Nothing wrong.’ Or ‘Good for you.’ ”

  “ ‘One of His favorite people’?” Babs parroted incredulously.

  “I have the proof,” Pick said. “He put us together, didn’t he? Just when we really needed each other. Would He have done that if He didn’t like us?”

  “Oh, God, I’d like to believe that.”

  “I told you, He’s not available at the moment. But you can believe it.”

  She stood, walked around the room-service cart, and put her arms around his neck from behind.

  “Oh, God, I really hope this works,” she said.

  “For the third time, I’m sorry to have to tell—”

  “I’m going to have to stop saying that, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t know. He’ll probably wonder why you stopped talking to Him.”

  She pulled on his ears, and he twisted in his chair, and somehow his face wound up inside her bathrobe. And then, somehow, the bathrobe became completely unfastened and fell from her shoulders.

  He had just picked her up and thrown her over his shoulder and announced, “Me Tarzan, you Jane! We go make whoopee-whoopee, okay?” when the door chimes sounded.

  “Come back next year,” Pick called loudly.

  “It’s Captain McGowan, sir.”

  “Oh, shit,” Pick said softly. Then he raised his voice. “Be right with you, Art.”

  He carried Babs into the bedroom, dumped her unceremoniously on the bed, and went to answer the door.

  “Got a message for you, sir,” Captain McGowan said.

  “From General Dawkins?”

  “No, sir. From Japan.” He handed it to him, then said, “Sir, when you go back to the hospital . . . The general told them he’d asked you to spend the night, and didn’t think he had to ask their permission. They were about to send the Shore Patrol looking for you.”

  “My compliments to the general, Captain, and please relay my appreciation for his understanding of the situation.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll do that. Good morning, sir.”

  Pick tore open the envelope.

  UNCLASSIFIED

  URGENT

  OFFICE OF THE CIA DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR ASIA TOKYO

  0305 3NOVEMBER1950 TOKYO TIME

  TO MAJOR MALCOLM S. PICKERING, USMCR

  DETACHMENT OF PATIENTS

  US NAVAL HOSPITAL SAN DIEGO

  VIA BRIG GEN C W DAWKINS, USMC CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

  PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DDCIA TOKYO TO MAJ PICKERING BEGINS

  MAJOR AND MRS KENNETH R. MCCOY, USMCR, ANNOUNCE THE BIRTH OF THEIR SON, PICKERING KENNETH MCCOY, IN TOKYO JAPAN AT 0215 3NOVEMBER1950. MOTHER AND CHILD ARE DOING WELL.

  END PERSONAL MESSAGE FROM DDCIA TOKYO

  Pick went to the bedroom door.

  “What was that all about?”

  “One more proof that He likes me, sweetheart,” Pick said, and sat on the edge of the bed and handed her the message.

  Christ, she doesn’t even know who the Killer and Ernie are.

  She handed it back to him.

  “Friends of yours?” Babs asked.

  “Yeah. You’ll like them,” Pick said.

  “If you’re happy,” Babs said, “I’m happy.”

  Afterword

  I was an X Corps sergeant/combat correspondent in Korea shortly after the events fictionally chronicled in this book took place. As such, I was able to read the official version of what happened in the X Corps and 1st Marine Division After Action Reports.

  What follows are the facts as we now know them, from our own sources and from those of the Communist Chinese, more than half a century after the conflict.

  On 3 November 1950, Major General Charles Willoughby announced to the press that there “possibly” were from 16,500 to a maximum of 34,000 Red Chinese soldiers in Korea.

  There were, in fact, 180,000 Chinese soldiers facing the Eighth United States Army on the west of Korea, and about 120,000 facing the X United States Corps in the east. They had begun crossing the Yalu River and entering North Korea in October 1950, each carrying a personal weapon, eighty rounds of ammunition, sometimes three or four “stick” hand grenades, and a week’s supply of rations, dried fish, rice, and tea. There were some machine guns and some mortars, all hand-carried.

  They moved in at night, halting two hours before day-break to prepare camouflaged positions. They then slept through the day. Anyone seen moving was shot on the spot, and his body hastily concealed from American aerial observation.

  Red Chinese and American historians are generally agreed that the first battle of the Chinese intervention was the attack by the Communists’ 124th Division on the 3d ROK Division, which was then advancing near the Chosin Reservoir. The 3d ROK retreated thirty miles south. The 7th Marines counterattacked, killing more than 1,500 Chinese and virtually destroying the 124th Division in a three-day battle.

  The Chinese pulled back to plan, and it was decided then that the primary mission of their Ninth Army Group would be the destruction of the U.S. 1st Marine Division.

  Misinterpreting this inactivity of the Chinese—and still grossly underestimating the size of the enemy forces— General of the Army Douglas MacArthur ordered X Corps and Eighth Army to stage attacks designed to, as MacArthur said, “end the war by Christmas.”

  The attacks didn’t. />
  On Friday, 25 November 1950, preceded by a heavy and lengthy artillery barrage, General Walton Walker’s Eighth Army began its march to the Yalu.

  Initially, there was very little resistance. But on the night of 25-26 November 1950, the Chinese struck with overwhelming force. By morning, they had broken through Walker’s lines, and the Eighth Army’s right flank was exposed. The Turkish Brigade was sent to plug the hole, and was virtually destroyed.

  By nightfall, Walker had ordered the beginning of what has been called the longest retreat in the history of the U.S. Army: 275 miles in six weeks, during which the Eighth Army suffered 10,000 casualties.

  In the east, on 27 November 1950, Major General Edward M. Almond’s X Corps—about 100,000 men, including the 1st Marine Division—began to strike for the Yalu.

  The 1st Marine Division commander, Major General O.P. Smith—who openly disliked his orders from Almond and MacArthur but had nevertheless begun to comply with them—positioned about 7,000 Marines to lead the fight.

  They were unaware that three Red Chinese divisions, about 30,000 men, were in the mountains on either side of the Yudam-ni Valley, ready to attack, and that the rest of the Chinese Ninth Army Group was moving to cut the main supply route in many places once that attack began.

  Nor had they heard about the beating the Eighth Army had taken the day before, and was taking as their attack began.

  General Smith’s 5th and 7th Marines had some initial success, destroying one Red Chinese division and mauling another. But by the end of the second day, the Chinese plan to chop up the main supply route was also meeting success.

  And on the Chosin Reservoir’s east shore, the Chinese, in division strength, for all practical purposes wiped out the hopelessly outnumbered 7th Infantry Division’s 31st Regimental Combat Team, including a reinforcement by just over a thousand men of the 1st Battalion, 32d Infantry (Task Force Faith, so named for its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Don Carlos Faith).