Echoing now, the hill is ht with flame that flickers from above and below. Mortars begin to sound down near the Imjin and the call is taken up by those that he to the south behind C Company. Slowly, like a fire, the flames spread east and west around Castle Hill; and east again across the village of Choksong, as the enemy from Gloster Crossing, tardily launched at last, meets and is repulsed by D Company.
Now, almost hand to hand, the Chinese and British soldiers meet. Figures leap up from the attacking force, run forward to new cover and resume their fire upon the men of the defence who, coolly enough, return their fire, as targets come to view, as the attackers close with them. Occasionally an individual climax may be reached in an encounter between two men when, only a few feet apart, each waits to catch the other unawares, sees a target, fires, and leaps across to follow his advantage.
And now, to the defenders’ aid, the carefully planned defensive fire is summoned. The Vickers guns cut across the cliffs and slopes by which the Chinese forces climb to the attack. Long bursts of fire—ten, twenty, thirty, forty rounds—are fired and fired again: the water in the cooling jackets warms, the ground is littered with spent cases. The mortars and the gunners drop their high explosive in amongst the crowded ranks that press on to the hill slopes from the river crossings.
Such are the enemy’s losses that now and then there is a brief respite for the defence as the attackers are withdrawn for reinforcement. The weight of defensive fire is so great that the enemy has realized he must concentrate his strength in one main thrust up to each hilltop. As the night wanes, fresh hundreds are committed to this task, and the tired defenders, much depleted, face yet one more assault.
Mike commands D Company—Lakri is fuming in Japan, moving heaven and earth to get a plane to bring him back from leave. Victors of their first encounters, D Company are sadly weakened by the ceaseless blows rained on them. One of Mike’s platoons has been withdrawn right to the hilltop and they form a close defensive ring about the high ridge line which constitutes the vital ground of the position. Ever and again by weight of small-arms fire, by sorties, and as a result of many concentrations fired by mortars and guns, the assault waves are forced back. But still they reappear. For every casualty suffered by the enemy, two, three, four more Chinese will appear to take his place. Yet D Company is holding its ground.
From Castle Hill, the news is grave. John’s platoon, now decimated, has been withdrawn by Pat before they are over-run completely. Their officer dead, so many others of their comrades dead or wounded, they go back to Phil’s platoon position where they wait for dawn.
The Castle Site, the highest point of our defences forward, is taken after six hours fighting.
The dawn breaks. A pale, April sun is rising in the sky. Take any group of trenches here upon these two main hill positions looking north across the river. See, here, the weapon pits in which the defenders stand: unshaven, wind-burned faces streaked with black powder, filthy with sweat and dust from their exertions, look towards their enemy with eyes red from fatigue and sleeplessness; grim faces, yet not too grim that they refuse to smile when someone cracks a joke about the sunrise. Here, round the weapons smeared with burnt cordite, lie the few pathetic remnants of the wounded, since removed: cap comforters; a boot; some cigarettes half-soaked with blood; a photograph of two small girls; two keys; a broken pencil stub. The men lounge quietly in their positions, waiting for the brief respite to end.
“They’re coming back, Ted.”
A shot is fired, a scattered burst follows it. The sergeant calls an order to the mortar group. Already they can hear the shouting and see, here and there, the figures moving out from behind cover as their machine-guns pour fire from the newly occupied Castle Site. Bullets fly back and forth; overhead, almost lazily, grenades are being exchanged on either side; man meets man; hand meets hand. This tiny corner of the battle that is raging along the whole front, blazes up and up into extreme heat, reaches a climax and dies away to nothingness—another little lull, another breathing space.
Phil is called to the telephone at this moment; Pat’s voice sounds in his ear.
“Phil, at the present rate of casualties we can’t hold on unless we get the Castle Site back. Their machine-guns up there completely dominate your platoon and most of Terry’s. We shall never stop their advance until we hold that ground again.”
Phil looks over the edge of the trench at the Castle Site, two hundred yards away, as Pat continues talking, giving him the instructions for the counter attack. They talk for a minute or so; there is not much more to be said when an instruction is given to assault with a handful of tired men across open ground. Everyone knows it is vital: everyone knows it is appallingly dangerous. The only details to be fixed are the arrangements for supporting fire; and, though A Company’s Gunners are dead, Ronnie will support them from D Company’s hill. Behind, the machine-gunners will ensure that they are not engaged from the open, eastern flank. Phil gathers his tiny assault party together.
It is time; they rise from the ground and move forward up to the barbed wire that once protected the rear of John’s platoon. Already two men are hit and Papworth, the Medical Corporal, is attending to them. They are through the wire safely—safely!—when the machine-gun in the bunker begins to fire. Phil is badly wounded: he drops to the ground. They drag him back through the wire somehow and seek what little cover there is as it creeps across their front. The machine-gun stops, content now it has driven them back; waiting for a better target when they move into the open again.
“It’s all right, sir,” says someone to Phil. “The Medical Corporal’s been sent for. He’ll be here any minute.”
Phil raises himself from the ground, rests on a friendly shoulder, then climbs by a great effort on to one knee.
“We must take the Castle Site,” he says; and gets up to take it.
The others beg him to wait until his wounds are tended. One man places a hand on his side.
“Just wait until Papworth has seen you, sir——”
But Phil has gone: gone to the wire, gone through the wire, gone towards the bunker. The others come out behind him, their eyes all on him. And suddenly it seems as if, for a few breathless moments, the whole of the remainder of that field of battle is still and silent, watching amazed, the lone figure that runs so painfully forward to the bunker holding the approach to the Castle Site: one tiny figure, throwing grenades, firing a pistol, set to take Castle Hill.
Perhaps he will make it—in spite of his wounds, in spite of the odds—perhaps this act of supreme gallantry may, by its sheer audacity, succeed. But the machine-gun in the bunker fires directly into him: he staggers, falls, is dead instantly; the grenade he threw a second before his death explodes after it in the mouth of the bunker. The machine-gun does not fire on three of Phil’s platoon who run forward to pick him up; it does not fire again through the battle: it is destroyed; the muzzle blown away, the crew dead.
Before dawn, the Battalion Command Post had moved up the hill to the ridge between Guido’s platoon and Paul’s company headquarters. From here, in a bunker constructed under R.S.M. Hobbs’s supervision some days before, the Colonel could overlook the battle on the two hill positions north of us. The desperate nature of the struggle was manifest before the morning sun rose. By night, the calls for fire support, each fresh report from A or D Company Headquarters, and the Gunner wireless links had made it all too clear that this attack was in strength. If this was feinting, it was a costly, realistic feint!
Just after dawn, Walters, at his wireless, said that Pat wanted me on the set. I sat down on the reverse slope of the hill behind the bunker and spoke into the handset. Pat replied:
“I’m afraid we’ve lost Castle Site. I am mounting a counterattack now but I want to know whether to expect to stay here indefinitely or not. If I am to stay on, I must be re-inforced as my numbers are getting very low.”
I told him to wait and went back into the bunker. The Colonel was standing in the Observation Po
st at the far end. I told him what Pat had said and asked what he intended to do. He looked through his glasses at D Company’s hill and then said:
“I’ll talk to him myself.”
We both went back to the wireless set. I stood watching the Colonel as he spoke to Pat, the distant crackle of rifle and light-machine-gun fire in my ears, and the long tack-tack-tack of the Vickers mingling with the hollow boom of the mortars firing from just below us. The Colonel had stopped talking; from the headset came the buzz of Pat’s voice. Then the Colonel replied. He said:
“You will stay there at all costs until further notice.” At all costs.
Pat knew what that order meant, and I knew—and the Colonel knew. As he got up I saw that he was pale and that his hand shook a little as he relit his pipe.
I watched the Colonel go back to the bunker as I put on the headset to speak to Pat again. The next half-hour would tell how the day would go for us.
There were two questions in the Colonel’s mind as he stood at the open end of the bunker, viewing the action fought by his two forward companies: would the Chinese continue to press their attack in daylight with the threat of intervention by our aircraft; and, secondly, how long would it be before the Chinese discovered that both our flanks were completely open—that the ROKs were two and a half miles to the west, the Fifth Fusiliers two to the east—and encircle us? Yet, whatever the answer to these questions, his orders were to hold the road between Choksong and Solma-ri. Very well, the Battalion would hold it. And the Battalion would remain disposed as at present just as long as each sub-unit retained its integrity; for our present disposition was unquestionably well-suited to fighting an action designed to hold the road firmly.
I began talking to Pat again, discussing the prospect of reinforcements, and telling him that his ammunition replacement was already going forward in Oxford carriers under Henry’s supervision. We spoke only very briefly and he ended by saying:
“Don’t worry about us; we’ll be all right.”
I said: “Good luck.”
I did not speak to Pat again; he was killed a quarter of an hour later.
There were no planes that day; there were targets and more elsewhere. The Gunner Colonel spoke to me twice, and I knew from his voice how desperately he wanted to help us. So the Chinese were pushed unceasingly over the Gloster and Western Crossings. The guns and mortars fired all day but the Rifles and Fusiliers—to say nothing of the brave Belgians—needed support too. There were so many of them. Really, for a force reputedly bent on “imperialist aggression” we must have seemed pathetically thin on the ground to the Chinese Commissars.
At about half past eight it became apparent that the positions of A and D Companies had become untenable; little by little they were being swamped by a tide of men. Each minute was widening the gaps between the little fighting groups—as yet still organized platoons and companies. The time had come when the advantage of holding the ground forward would be outweighed by the loss of much or all of two rifle-company groups. The order to withdraw was given over the wireless.
Watching from the Command Post, I saw the men withdrawing, step by step, down the reverse hill slopes: D Company and A Company leaving the ground they had fought for so well, that had cost the enemy such a price.
I went down the hill a little later and there, by the ford, the survivors of the night battle were coming in: a long, straggling line of men; for all were heavily laden with arms and ammunition. To me they looked cheerful, though tired—but something more than that: they looked surprised. I think, above all, it was a surprise to many of them that they had been withdrawn—grave though they had known their position to be, and dangerous their surroundings. Unquestionably, it was difficult for them to understand that, in holding their ground for so long, they had made a priceless contribution to the battle: but a soldier engaged in a fight that may be to the death has no time for the appreciation of such things. He is, to say the least, otherwise engaged.
Just north of the ford, along the roadsides, around the cook-house and the Regimental Aid Post, they rested now, as Watkins issued tea as fast as he could make it, and all the bread, bacon and sausages he had to hand. Comrade passed mess tin to comrade, who drank and passed in turn to his next neighbour. Men lay back, without removing their haversacks, their heads resting in the ditches, smoking, talking quietly, resting. Yes, it had been a long night.
The Colonel came down the hill. He had just moved B Company back fifteen hundred yards to the very base of Kamak-San to conform with A and D Companies’ withdrawal. He had now to fit the latter two into the revised defence disposition. With Mike and Jumbo he looked over the map and pointed out their new positions on the ground. Jumbo was to take the much-reduced A Company to man the key ridge to the west which Spike’s Pioneers now held. Behind, looked down upon by this long feature—marked Hill 235—was a small, square, almost flat-topped hill, where Mike would deploy D Company. As Mike and Jumbo went outside again, Henry was marking the map afresh. The old, blue lines that circled Castle Hill, Choksong, the hill D Company had held, soon vanished from the shiny talc. Now two new rings marked their positions; the symbols were completed by the moving chinagraph. The operations map was fitted back into its place and Henry soon descended to correct his own in the Intelligence Office. I put out my hand to the telephone to tell the remainder of the Battalion how our new line stood, taking it from its rest without looking down. For I was looking at the tiny group of marks upon the talc; and as I looked I realized that this was what the Chinese would attack next—to-night!
When I recall that day, it rises in my memory as a series of incidents, clear in themselves, but joined by a very hazy thread of continuity.
I remember Colour-Sergeant Buxcey organising his Korean porters with mighty loads for the first of many ascents to their new positions. Nine, I think, he made. Nine times up the hill; and so, poor devils, nine times down a path at once precipitous and rough. On coming down, one wished for the easier journey of the upward climb; and upwards, sweating, breathless, weary, one envied those who went the opposite way.
When Buxcey’s anxious face has left my mind, I can see Bob working at the Regimental Aid Post, one hand still wet with blood as he turns round, pausing for a moment to clean himself before he begins to minister to yet another wounded man. The ambulance cars are filled; the jeep that Bounden drives has been out time and again with the stretchers on its racks. Baxter, Brisland, Mills, the whole staff of the RAP, is hard at work with dressings, drugs, instruments. This is the reckoning they pay for basking in the sun down by the stream when times are quiet. It is a price they pay willingly and to the full.
I remember watching the slow, wind-tossed descent of a helicopter that came down for some casualties to whom the winding, bumpy road back south would have meant certain death. I saw Bob and the Padre standing back as the plane lifted, their hair blown wildly by the slipstream from the rotors as she lifted into the sky.
Shaw and Mr. Evans, the Chief Clerk, went off to Seoul in my jeep. I watched them until they disappeared round the road-bend down by Graham’s mortar pits. Richard was down by the ford, and Carl, the Counter-Mortar Officer.
“I’m sending my vehicles back, except for my jeep,” said Carl. “I’ve decided I’ll stay with you to make up your number of Forward Observation Officers. I’ve seen the Colonel.”
The lumbering half-tracks disappeared along the road and Carl settled down to chat to Guy on Gunner matters. I wondered what the Gunner Colonel was going to say on finding that his radar specialist had stayed with us. And I thanked God that the latter was a real Gunner as well as a boffin.
We were certainly going to discover that he had not forgotten how to shoot.
Donald, the Assistant Adjutant, came into the Command Vehicle. We had various things to discuss—welfare cases—two men had to go from the Battalion on a Field Hygiene course—there were messages from Freddie, who had thought of them as he rode back to B Echelon after his visit earlier in the day.
Afterwards, we had some coffee and over it I told him that he had better stay forward to reinforce A Company, just for the time being. He went off happily to climb the slopes to Jumbo’s Hill, as pleased as Punch that he could take command of a platoon—if only for the forthcoming engagement—before he was packed back to Rear H.Q. and his Assistant Adjutancy.
Jumbo had come forward that morning to find Pat and two of his platoon commanders, John and Philip, dead; only Terry left to lead fifty-seven fit men out of the original body nearly one hundred strong. The arrival of Donald would give him two platoon commanders. I put the phone back after telling him the news, and walked out on to the grass to get some sleep.
That morning the Padre said a funeral service for Pat, whose body had been sent back from Company Headquarters on the ammunition-laden Oxford Carrier which Henry had driven through a hail of fire descending on the pass to Choksong. Pat’s body was the only one to which we could pay our last respects—but we did not forget the others. Three of us stood by while the solemn words were quietly said; then we saluted and walked away, each busy with his own thoughts.
Pat lay at rest beside the soft-voiced stream, quiet in the morning sunlight, the noise of last night’s battle gone forever in the wind.
“The Second-in-Command is here, sir,” said Judkins, my batman. “And are you going to have anything to eat?”
I opened my eyes to blue sky and huge white clouds. It was afternoon; I had slept for two hours. Judkins stood on the grass by the edge of my blanket, a mug and plate in one hand, a knife, fork, and spoon in the other.
I hated getting up; and I was a fool to refuse the hot stew Watkins had cooked. How little one learns by experience! I asked Judkins for some tea and had a cigarette with Digby, the Second-in-Command. He had come forward from Rear H.Q. some time before but had been unwilling to awaken me.
“The Colonel has told me to go back in view of this attack on Rear H.Q.,” he said. We settled a point or two before he got into his jeep and drove off with Bainbridge at the wheel, for all the world as if he was on his way to a dinner party. They were going to a party all right. Four hours before a sizeable force, which had circled us, had attacked Rear H.Q. The road was cut, and the route forward that might bring us relief or reinforcement was—at that very moment—closing.
The Edge of the Sword Page 3