The Marines of Autumn: A Novel of the Korean War

by James Brady

  “Couple weeks ago this was all gook!” the pilot shouted. “Plenty of guerrillas still around, they say, shooting at planes as they land!”

  This was cheering news. They came in smoothly and there was a Marine gunnery sergeant waiting for Verity on the ground, reporting to Verity and welcoming him to Korea, introducing himself as Sergeant Tate.

  “Thanks, Gunny. Where’s the division?”

  “Well, that’s the thing of it, Captain. They went back to Inchon to board ship. You missed ’em.”

  That’s typical! Verity thought sourly but didn’t say so. He didn’t know this Sergeant Tate and you don’t rip the brass in front of enlisted men you don’t know, not even gunnery sergeants. Tate understood this and went on to explain.

  “I was left behind to meet you and fill you in, sir.”

  “I’m listening.”

  It was apparently another MacArthur brainstorm. While the American army and the ROKs pushed north by land, the Marines would sail all the way around the bottom of Korea from west coast to east, to be landed far north of the Thirty-eighth Parallel along the east coast of North Korea at the big port of Wonsan, catching what was left of the North Korean army in a giant pincer.

  “MacArthur pulled it off once at Inchon,” Tate concluded. “Why not twice . . . ?”

  “I’m sure,” Verity said, not accustomed to dealing with such global strategies only a week out of a Jesuit classroom. It was odd, too, being back in uniform and saluting people and being saluted. Even the old Smith & Wesson .38 hanging on his right hip felt strange. He’d worn side arms nearly four years in the War, which was what they called World War II, and still it felt strange. That’s how quickly a man becomes a civilian again.

  Tate had been in all the fighting from the very beginning with the Marine Provisional Brigade down south in the Pusan perimeter and then with the division when it came ashore at Inchon. He was cool and seasoned and he was a good radioman. That was part of the deal: Verity was to listen to the radio as they moved north, trying to pick up Chinese radio traffic if there was any and to make sense of it.

  It turned out Tate was not only a radioman; he was a radioman who spoke some Chinese.

  “Before the War,” he said, “I was Fourth Marines at Shanghai and later spent time in a Jap POW camp in China. Got to patter the lingo a bit.”

  “Good,” Verity said. He’d try Tate out later, to see just how much of the “lingo” he had. But anything was a bonus. They could share the monitoring.

  “And now, what about a driver?”

  One of them listening to the radio, the other riding shotgun, watching the country, watching for hostiles—they needed a third man at the wheel.

  “I’m not much of a driver,” Verity admitted. Elizabeth drove in their family; she just loved that little MG.

  He didn’t say that, of course.

  Tate was reassuring. “We’ll get a driver, Captain. One with savvy. Up ahead. This kind of disorganized grab ass with one army falling apart and the other army chasing, you come across all variety of unexpected and talented people. Rough diamonds of every sort. You’ll see.”

  The army that Verity was joining wasn’t one that sang when it marched, not much anyway. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t cheerful.

  The hard fighting in the Pusan perimeter down south was behind them. And the seawall at Inchon. And the tough house-to-house combat in Seoul that had killed so many. Now the North Koreans were whipped, well and truly, an army just falling apart.

  This wasn’t a retreat; it was a rout.

  “Nothing between here and China but hills and rice paddies.” That was how one Marine saw it.

  Most of the company grade officers saw it the same way. By now they knew themselves. They knew their men, what they could do. The men were good, the weapons, the air support. Maybe this was the best infantry division there ever was. People said that; you heard it. Three rifle regiments, the First, the Fifth, and the Seventh; the artillery men of the Eleventh Marines; an additional regiment of Korean Marines (“Hell, they’re almost as good as us, and why not? Didn’t we train ’em?”). The usual division had maybe fifteen thousand men. The First Marine Division, even after taking casualties in September, numbered more than twenty-two thousand in October as it moved north. And that didn’t count its own air wing. No army division had an air wing; that wasn’t how the army did things. This was a big, powerful, and very dangerous division of hardened, seasoned combat veterans that was heading north toward China.

  Kate liked it when her father took her down Wisconsin Avenue to the old C.&O. Canal where donkeys (or were they mules? Verity was never sure of the difference) pulled canal barges from a path paralleling the canal. Kate loved the donkeys. You could rent those barges, for cocktails or a wedding reception, and in the spring and fall and even in the steamy summer there always seemed to be a pleasant breeze under the big trees, weeping willows and elms and cherry and oak and trees Verity did not know or even suspect.

  “Daddy! Look!”

  She was always seeing something. Elizabeth had been like that, curious about the world, enjoying every new sight, each fresh sensation.

  A donkey regarded them. And brayed. Kate clapped her hands and squealed. Verity had always considered a donkey’s bray shrill and off-key, a rude, ugly sound. No more, not when it could make a child squeal and clap.

  Coming back up the slope from the canal, he carried her on his shoulders, legs around in front of him, his hands grasping her ankles. It was a long walk for a child, and by then she was ready for a ride. Sometimes he took her into Billy Martin’s at the corner of N Street. She liked their lemonade and he would have a beer as they sat in a booth in the cool gloom of the bar on a summer afternoon and Kate informed him all over again of the wonders they’d seen on their walk. The same accounts would of course later be narrated to Madame, who, being French, occasionally lapsed into chauvinism:

  “Ah, Kate, but you must see one day the canals of France.”

  “I shall, Madame. Daddy will take us there.” She had no idea what or where France was.

  Most nights they ate dinner together, the three of them, Madame and Kate and Tom Verity. Kate had recently graduated from a high chair to what they called a youth chair, higher but without its own tray.

  “Will I cut my meat when I’m three?” she inquired.

  “It’s quite possible,” her father told her.

  “I want to, you know.”

  She even sounded like Elizabeth, arch yet confiding.

  Bedtime was the best time, when he read to Kate. One story a night, or one chapter of a book. He self-censored, skipping over some of the more gruesome details of the Brothers Grimm where it seemed to him appropriate, playing down some of the hardships meted out in Black Beauty. He thought his daughter was just about ready for Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, though not where poor, mad Mr. Brinker lurched around the cottage and set it afire. He was sure she’d love the part where the boys, including pudgy little Voostenwalbert Schimmelpennick, set off to skate to the Hague. Voostenwalbert’s name alone would set her laughing. She liked odd sounds, including names, as much as she enjoyed new sights.

  Another few years and she’d be ready for Huckleberry Finn. His own father, a long time before and in another country, had read that to him, and Verity had loved it since.

  She asked about her mother, where she was, and why. These were the hard questions. Compared to these, the Brothers Grimm were simple. But Verity tried. Without a real anchor of religion or alternate theory, it was very difficult to tell a child why her mother was dead. And what dead meant. Verity had his own problems with such questions. Why the hell was his twenty-one-year-old wife dead and why did he have to explain that to anyone—stranger or municipal authority, or a little girl?

  Or to himself, for he had no answers.

  Soon Kate would be old enough to understand and to accept such things, and he would be long home by then. A couple of weeks, a couple of months of listening to the Chinese on r
adios, that was all. That was what the Marine Corps said, a month or two and out. He didn’t know quite how to explain this to Kate, and in a war, of course, one never really knew.

  Verity’s orders were simple enough, once you fought through the official forms and poetry about “duty beyond the seas” and joining “Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, with all expedition.”

  He was supposed to report in to Gen. Oliver P. Smith as soon as he could. Except that General Smith was on board a ship rounding the Korean peninsula a few hundred miles at sea. Verity slid one haunch onto the jeep’s fender and pulled out a folded small-scale map of Korea he’d brought from Washington and had studied on and off inside the plane. Gunnery Sergeant Tate, as was right and proper, stood a few paces away, not at attention or anything, waiting.

  “Wonsan?” Verity finally said, wanting to be sure he’d understood Tate’s account of the fleet’s destination.

  “Yessir, Wonsan. Up there on the east coast of North Korea.”

  It was clear enough on the map, which was little more than a Texaco road map. Maybe one hundred and fifty, one hundred and sixty miles north, north by northeast more precisely, from here on the west coast to Wonsan on the east. There were roads showing on the map; how good, it didn’t indicate.

  “Too bad they didn’t issue you a driver coming over, Gunny.”

  “They did, sir. Had one who wasn’t very good and then he got shot.”

  Tate didn’t look distressed about the driver having been shot, so he must not have been very good. Gunnies were notoriously difficult to please.

  Tate added, not as if it was important, “They said he’d live.”

  Verity was about to inquire who’d shot the driver, “us” or “them,” but bit it off. He didn’t know this Tate yet, not enough to try wit. Instead, he asked, “That radio of yours work at sea?”

  “No better than on land, Captain.”

  “OK, then,” Verity said, a finger tracing the route from Inchon to Wonsan on the spread map, “we’ll get up there by car and meet the navy coming in.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tate said, “like bar girls in Subic Bay welcoming the fleet.”

  Verity must have looked stern, because Tate rolled a tongue around in his mouth as if regretting humor.

  The two Marines were still feeling each other out. Officer and NCO. It was Verity who decided to bridge the distance between them before it became an obstacle. They would, after all, be working together. He didn’t need antagonism.

  “Well,” he said with a small grin, “I don’t know about you, Gunny, but I’m getting a bit old to be a very successful tart.”

  It wasn’t much of a joke, but it relaxed Tate. And that is what bad jokes are for, aren’t they?

  “Yes, sir,” Tate said, not attempting to top Verity. Gunnery sergeants know where to draw the line.

  While the two men talked, all around them was hubbub and expedition, much energy and some work, as a Casual Company left behind by Division finished dismantling what had days earlier been a promising small city. The Marines now taking it down and stowing it away for erection elsewhere were more carpenters and riggers and electricians than anything else, construction workers who happened to carry weapons. Four huskies at a time took hold of a neatly folded tent, a big package of green canvas weighing a few hundred pounds, and slung it into the bed of a six-by truck.

  “These trucks going by sea, too?” Verity asked.

  “No, sir, I believe they’ll move overland, meeting the division at Wonsan.”

  “Well, if they can do it we can.”

  Tate patted the radio paternally. “Would the captain like to put on the headset and start listening now? Try it out?”

  “What kind is this, Gunny?”

  “This is the best field radio we have, Captain. An SFR two-forty. Fine piece of equipment, single-sideband and amplification, sending and receiving, of course, and pretty good range. Only trouble is the weight. A man couldn’t carry it in combat.”

  “Heavy, is it?”

  “About ninety pounds. Just fine for the backseat of a jeep. Want to give her a try?”

  The gunnery sergeant beamed, proud of the radio, pleased that this new captain they’d imposed on his good nature would have the best equipment to work with, relieved that he wouldn’t have to apologize for the hardware the way Marine NCOs so often did what with the antiquated rebuilt junk they had, bought secondhand from the army.

  “Well, Gunny, the fact is I don’t know anything about radio. Don’t even know how to turn it on.” Verity smiled pleasantly at the gunnery sergeant. It was worth it to see Tate’s face.

  “Well, yessir, I must have gotten the wrong impression. I was told to come down here and wait for a Captain Verity that was going to monitor radio while we traveled about, seeing the country, so to speak, and listening in.”

  “That’s just what we’re going to do, Gunny. So tune in and I’ll start listening while we drive and you can sort of teach me how to run her as we go along. . . .”

  “Yessir.” Tate was back in control; it takes a lot to unsettle a Marine gunny. “Except there are a lot of bandits out there. . . .”

  Verity, remembering North China in ’45, took him literally. “You mean real bandits?”

  “Nosir, guerrilla bands some, but mainly broken North Korean units, battalions, and regiments wandering around out there after being whipped, trying to get home. Couple of Marines in a jeep driving through run into a regiment, doesn’t matter how beat up the regiment is; it wins. Pitches a shutout.”

  Tate was like that, sensible, competent. Did things well. In that, the gunny reminded Verity of his wife.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked Elizabeth.

  “Can’t dance. I’m a klutz.”

  But she was fluent in French.

  “I attended a French boarding school for the unruly children of the rich,” Elizabeth said.

  And in consequence, she sang to Kate this little song:

  “Sur le pont d’Avignon,

  On la danse, on la danse.

  Sur le pont d’Avignon,

  On la danse, tout en coup.”

  Once when they were in Paris and Kate was just a year old, Tom and Elizabeth, having dined well, actually did dance on one of the Seine bridges by midnight.

  “We’re not exactly Fred and Ginger,” she admitted, laughing, and he agreed, “Yes, Jailbait, you are a klutz.”

  After she died he took up the practice of singing “Sur le pont d’Avignon” to his daughter Kate and promising one day he would dance with her on Paris bridges.

  They came across their driver late that same day. In an army brig.

  The provost told Captain Verity and Gunny Tate they’d caught a Marine stealing.

  “They call a brig a prison,” the prisoner complained. “No wonder the army is so screwed up, Captain, sir.”

  His name was Izzo.

  “Important people in South Philadelphia,” he said, “a respected family. We had a barbershop, a beauty salon. The bus for the racetrack left every day from our front door. Civic responsibility, pillars of the community. I had a cousin became a priest. Didn’t work out. He chased skirts and left after a few years. But the good intentions were there. You can tell people from their good intentions, Captain.”

  “I’m sure,” Verity said, measuring the man.

  Izzo was a reservist called back into the Corps in July from a pleasant and constructive (he said) civilian life.

  “I myself, Captain, independent of family connections, have a career marketing previously owned automobiles—”

  “You sell used cars,” Tate interposed.

  “—at fair market value with all warranties in order, working on pure commission at rates previously and amiably agreed upon by management and me. The neighborhood could vouch; they could give testimonials. If Izzo sells it, the car runs.” He never dealt a car that wasn’t “glorioso.”

  The army said Izzo stole a jeep.

  “It was there, Captain, aba
ndoned, key in the ignition. All about me roving bands of North Korean soldiers in headlong retreat north, plus guerrillas and irregulars. I am to leave a taxpayer asset like this where the enemy steals it? I was looking for its rightful owners when the MPs came upon me.”

  “You a good driver?” Tate asked.

  Izzo looked pained even to be asked. “Gunny, any year now they will invite me to drive the pace car at Indianapolis. Briefly as a lad I got in with bad company in South Philadelphia and drove for evil companions. I was in several major stickups, highly publicized in both the Inquirer and Bulletin, as wheelman. It was how I got to join the Marine Corps in the first place back in ’42. It was that or serve time. I was seventeen and wise beyond my years, so I enlisted in the Corps. After Peleliu I knew I’d make a mistake; I should have gone to friggin’ jail for life.”

  Izzo was small and skinny and said his nickname was Mouse.

  “Mouse. That’s what they call me, being small.”

  Ferret, Verity thought, more vicious than a mouse. Mice were soft and gray and issued little warning squeaks. This Izzo was neither soft nor colorless; all sinew and bone, no bulk. Cunning was his muscle.

  Well, they were going to the wars. “Can you fix it, Gunny?” Verity asked.

  “We’ll try, sir.”

  Tate arranged things with an army master sergeant, a fifth of Verity’s scotch and some of Verity’s cigars changing hands, and they had Izzo released into Captain Verity’s custody.

  “I was in the first wave at Inchon,” Izzo claimed as he got into the driver’s seat, running hands admiringly over the care-polished wheel.

  “What outfit?” Tate inquired.