Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  “All shot to hell, Sarge. We’re all that’s left of a twenty-tank company. Eighteen KIA…I lost track of how many wounded.”

  Sean asked, “Got any officers left?”

  “Nope. All dead, Sarge.”

  “Well, my friend, you’ll have to do, then. Now, what the fuck is your platoon doing down on this road like sitting ducks? You looking to get them all KIA, too?”

  “Where the hell else are we supposed to be?”

  Sean asked, “Did the engineers bulldoze you any indirect fire ramps so you could at least lob some rounds over those hills?”

  “Are you kidding? The engineers have been all tied up fighting as infantry. What’s left of them, anyway.”

  “All right then, I tell you what you’re gonna do. Take your platoon down the road, where the terrain flattens out on both sides of the highway. I know it’s getting dark, but you’ll still be able to see the outlines of the hilltops for a while yet, so use them to get oriented. Put yourself in the best hull-down positions you can find off the side of the road.”

  The platoon sergeant asked, “What the hell good is that going to do?”

  “The first good it’s gonna do is keep you from going head to head with T-34s and getting your asses blown up right off the bat. The second good is that if any gook tanks do get through, you can ambush them with flank shots. You might stand a chance of actually knocking one or two out that way. The third good is that Second Battalion—the reserve battalion—will be all around you, covering your ass. And last but not least, should we actually beat off this next attack, you’re in position to pursue and exploit. Your radios do work, right?”

  “Affirmative. We’ve got good commo, but we can only talk to each other and Regiment. Frequency incompatibility with the battalion radios, you know?”

  “Yeah, I know all about it. Get with the infantry once you’re in position so they can be a relay for you. Now, what’re you still doing here? Get your vehicles moving.”

  Sean’s next task was to check on the four-gun platoon of 75-millimeter recoilless rifles. As head-to-head anti-tank weapons, they’d be useless; so, after some heated debate, he’d convinced the battalion commanders to deploy them at the pass through the hills where the highway crossed the regiment’s defensive line. Positioned high in those hills, the 75s would be able to engage tanks from the flanks rather than head-on. That would be the only chance they’d have of a kill, striking the softer armor of the sides and rear deck.

  The battalion commanders’ main objection: they’d be letting the tanks actually reach the regiment’s line before being able to engage them.

  Sean’s rebuttal: “The seventy-fives ain’t gonna stop them tanks before they get to us, anyway. At least with a flank shot, they’ve got a chance of knocking one out. And if the poor bastards miss, maybe they can get their asses to the other side of that hill before they get cut to shreds.”

  Satisfied with the recoilless rifle platoon’s positioning, Sean asked its sergeant, “What happened to this regiment’s other two reckless rifle platoons? Each battalion’s supposed to have one, right?”

  “Yeah, but we had to leave pieces behind like crazy every time we pulled back. Some of the guys couldn’t run away fast enough after they missed their shot, too. We cobbled together this platoon from the survivors.”

  “Figured it was something like that,” Sean replied. “These fucking things are too damn heavy for a moving fight. They’re only worth a shit when they’re mounted on a jeep. At least then they’ve got a chance to get out of town when it all goes to hell.”

  “I think there’s only about half a dozen working jeeps left in this whole regiment,” the platoon sergeant said. “The brass have them all tied up.”

  “Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Sean replied. “Is your ammo count still four rounds per gun?”

  “Affirmative.”

  As he turned to leave, Sean said, “Let’s hope you get to fire more than once.”

  *****

  It was completely dark now. Sean was glad he’d told the rocket teams to meet him at 3rd Battalion’s CP. They might never have found each other at a less prominent location.

  But something was wrong right off the bat. The three teams—each with four men—had brought the wrong weapons.

  “What’s with the little bazookas?” Sean asked. “I told your commanders I wanted nothing but three point five-inch rocket launchers for this operation.”

  “Nobody told us shit about that, Sarge,” a corporal named Dowd replied.

  “Well, go get the goddamn launchers I asked for, on the fucking double. You shoulda learned by now that those peashooters you got won’t stop nothing. Load up with six rockets per weapon, too.”

  “But we’re not trained on the three point five, Sarge,” Corporal Dowd protested.

  “Well, then, you’re gonna have your first class right fucking now. Move it. You got three minutes.”

  “Six rockets per tube?” Dowd asked. “I don’t think we’ve got six rounds for the three point fives in the whole regiment, Sarge.”

  “Two minutes, fifty seconds, Corporal.”

  To Sean’s surprise, they returned with six seconds to spare. But they were hardly combat ready. The rocket launchers—two cylindrical sections that locked together to form a five-foot-long aluminum tube—hadn’t been assembled. The rockets themselves were still in sealed ammo boxes, which the GIs were dragging behind them.

  Sean asked, “While you muttonheads are screwing those things together, I gotta ask one question…they do have the shipping grease cleaned off ’em, don’t they?”

  In reply, he got nothing but blank looks.

  “Give me one of those fucking things,” he said, grabbing a launcher.

  He wiped his fingers over the spring contacts for the igniter wires at the rear of the tube. Satisfied they were dry, he then inspected the trigger housing with his blackout flashlight.

  “Okay, this one’s good,” Sean told the men. “Now check the other three the same way. We don’t want one of these babies hanging fire when the shit hits the fan.”

  That task done, Sean asked, “That’s all the rockets you’ve got? Nine?”

  “That’s all we could find, Sarge,” Corporal Dowd replied.

  “That stinks to high heaven, but three rounds per tube’s better than nothing. Unpack them.”

  “But Sarge, we’ve been told not to take a rocket out of its shipping container until you’re ready to fire it.”

  “Believe me, Corporal…you’re ready to fire it. Do it now.”

  As their crews unpacked the rockets, Sean told the section chiefs, “While we’re waiting, I’ll check you guys out on this baby’s sight picture.”

  *****

  The real shock for the 3.5-inch rocket launcher crews came when Sean told them where they’d be setting up: in the broad, flat rice paddies that lined the highway well in front of the regiment’s defensive line in the hills.

  Horrified, Dowd said, “We’re going out there? That’s Indian country!”

  “That’s where our best fields of fire are gonna be,” Sean replied. “And there’s a thousand places to hide from the Indians in those rice paddies, provided you don’t mind getting a little wet.”

  He let them process that for a moment and then added, “And I assume you’d rather be wet than dead, right?”

  “But it smells like shit something awful down in the paddies, Sarge.”

  “That’s because they use shit for fertilizer, dumbass. This whole fucking country smells like shit.”

  Chapter Five

  It was no surprise when they first heard the rumbling and creaking of approaching T-34s. Sean and his rocket launcher teams were waiting in a ditch alongside a trail through the rice paddies, out of range to hit moving targets on the highway. They’d move closer to the road—two hundred yards or less—once they were sure that North Korean infantrymen were not providing close support for the slow-moving tanks.

  Corporal Dowd said, “Let’s have the a
rtillery hit those tanks with HE.”

  “Oh, that’d be swell, wouldn’t it?” Sean replied. “Then we could just get the hell out of here, right?”

  Dowd nodded eagerly; that was exactly his intention.

  “Negative, Corporal,” Sean said. “It would take a direct hit with a one-oh-five round to knock out a T-34, and the odds of that happening while they’re lobbing rounds over them hills is about zip. Now pay attention, boys, because you’re about to learn something.”

  Keying the walkie-talkie, he called the artillery forward observer on his hilltop observation post. “Fire mission,” Sean told the FO. He gave the coordinates of a point on the road just ahead of where he estimated the tanks would be in one minute.

  His call for fire came with special instructions: “Shell illum, burst height fifty yards. I say again, burst height fifty yards.”

  Sean could hear the question in the FO’s voice as he requested, “Say again burst height.”

  After Sean repeated it yet again, the FO replied, “Roger. Relaying your fire mission now.”

  “Fifty-yard burst height for an illum round, Sarge?” a surprised GI asked. “Ain’t that a little low to pop the flare? It’ll be burning on the ground.”

  “That’s the idea, jughead,” Sean replied. “We’ll put a few flares on the ground around those gook tanks. It’ll blind the shit out of them and silhouette ’em real good for us. We used to do it to the Krauts sometimes when they had numbers on us.”

  “But what if a flare starts a grass fire?” another GI asked. “We could get caught in it. Get our asses barbecued.”

  “You don’t start grass fires in rice paddies, dummy. Too fucking wet.”

  But a whole minute had gone by since the FO acknowledged receiving the call for fire. It was taking much too long for the confirmation that rounds were on the way to spill from the radio: the words shot, over.

  *****

  The artillery battery commander—a captain named Swanson five years out of West Point—had missed WW2 entirely. But he was familiar with an expression from that war: If your infantry doesn’t like you, artilleryman, you did a crappy job giving them fire support.

  Captain Swanson had little doubt that, so far, the infantrymen of 26th Regiment didn’t think much of his battery and the fire support they had—or hadn’t—provided.

  He’d heard the gripes aimed at his gunners by frazzled riflemen who felt they’d been let down: Hey, you cannon-cocking sons of bitches! A day late and a dollar short again, dammit. Wanna switch jobs?

  But he’d vowed tonight would be different: If I have to supervise every gun crew myself, by God, I’ll do it if that’s what it takes…because that new regimental commander is looking to kick ass and take names.

  The first fire mission of the night, however, hit a snag right off the bat.

  “That FO is all fucked up, Captain,” his fire direction chief moaned. “The flares are going to be bouncing on the ground, dammit.”

  “But that’s what they asked for,” one of the chart operators said. “We’ve got to give them what they want. That’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

  “What’s it going to be, Captain?” the chief grumbled. “Are we going to shoot this the right way or are we going to waste rounds?”

  Swanson’s solution was a stall to mask his indecisiveness: “Tell the FO to give us the call for fire again.”

  An angry voice boomed out of the darkness: “We don’t have time for that, Captain. Give them something, dammit, and give it to them right now.”

  Then the man who’d spoken those words stepped into the dim light of the fire direction center’s tent. It took the battery commander a moment to recognize him: Colonel Miles. The briefing at 1800 hours had been the one and only time he’d ever seen the regimental commander, a man who’d only arrived that very afternoon.

  “Sir,” Swanson said, “there seems to be some discrepancy in the request for fire and—”

  “Bullshit, Captain,” Jock Miles replied. “Don’t second guess them. Just shoot what they ask for. You don’t know what they’re up against.”

  “But sir, this is a clear case of—”

  “There’s nothing clear about it, Captain, so give them what they say they want. And do it NOW, for the love of God. Lives are depending on it.”

  The lives of Sergeant Moon and his men, Jock suspected.

  “Well, it’s going to take a minute, Colonel,” the section chief said. “I’ll have to recompute the whole damn mission and—”

  “No, you don’t,” the chart operator interrupted. “I’ve already worked it out.”

  He called the firing data down the landline to the guns.

  Twenty seconds later, the words Sean had been waiting to hear finally spilled from the radio: “Shot, over.”

  *****

  Sean’s men were frantically counting the North Korean tanks, their dark outlines now close enough to be visible in the moonlight. “They’re keeping a good tactical interval,” Sean said. “Let’s see how long they can maintain it when the shit starts flying.”

  “There’s got to be fifty of them!” one GI whispered, his panic obvious even in those hushed tones.

  Sean replied, “Simmer down, okay? Ain’t no more than a dozen tanks on that road. Just looks like more because they’re spread out pretty good.”

  To the frightened troopers, a dozen might as well have been a thousand.

  The column of T-34s had slowed almost to a stop. Sean thought he knew why: “They’re waiting for some sign that their infantry is hitting our guys up on the hills,” he said. “They won’t try to run the pass until they get it, neither. Too much chance of shit getting dropped on their heads. Now where the hell are those illum rounds?”

  He’d barely gotten the words out when the first flare popped. Its parachute didn’t even have a chance to fully open before the brilliant ball of light was bouncing along the highway right in front of the lead tank. Each hop of the flare threw sharp-edged shadows that danced crazily across the paddies. The first few tanks in the column were silhouetted harshly in its glare.

  Then the second flare popped and dropped quickly to the ground. It took one bounce before coming to rest on the foredeck of the third tank in line.

  “Whoa,” Sean said. “The gooks in that tank ain’t just blind…they’re getting a hot foot, too.”

  With two flares burning at ground level now, it was like daylight on the road.

  All that illumination told Sean something he desperately needed to know: there was no North Korean infantry around the tanks. He called in his adjustment to the FO: “Left one hundred, repeat.” That would put the next two rounds one hundred yards farther down the column of tanks.

  He told his rocket teams, “Okay, you know the plan. Move out.”

  The plan: the three teams would spread out and close to within two hundred yards of the road. With their first rocket, the middle team would engage the third tank in the column; the right team would engage the second tank; the left team the fourth tank.

  They’d let the first tank go for now. As Sean explained, “Standard ambush practice. It adds to their confusion when the shit hits the fan.”

  If they got a second shot, Sean would call the targets.

  As they rushed through the rice paddy, he had only one worry: Those bastards better not shut their engines down so they can listen for a fight up in the hills. If they do that, they’ll be able to hear the whoosh of the rockets coming at ’em…and they’ll know exactly where we are.

  They’re already blind from the flares. Let ’em stay deaf, too.

  The tanks had stopped. That was a break Sean hadn’t expected; you could hit a target from farther away if it wasn’t moving.

  “Hold it up right here,” he said as he ran from team to team. “Range two hundred fifty yards. Take your shot, right fucking now.”

  Corporal Dowd asked, “Should we aim for those fuel tanks on the aft deck?”

  “Negative,” Sean replied. “Too small a t
arget…and they got diesel in ’em, anyway. Might not burn even with a bullseye. Go for the hull side, just below the turret, where all their ammo is.”

  Within seconds, the three rockets were ready to fire. In rapid sequence, each left its launch tube with a roar and a flash of flame.

  One rocket missed completely; it flew right over the second tank’s foredeck.

  Another rocket struck the edge of the third tank’s aft deck, rupturing one of the external fuel tanks. There was a brief flash as a spray of diesel fuel ignited for just a moment.

  But there was no sustained fire as the bulk of the liquid fuel refused to ignite.

  The rocket shot at the fourth tank found its mark perfectly. A heart-stopping instant after it penetrated her hull, she brewed up, with long tongues of flame spewing from her hatches.

  Then she exploded with a violence no one in those teams but Sean had ever known before. The shock wave passed through the prone GIs like a blow from a giant fist. When the startled men opened their eyes again, the tank was a turretless, flaming shell.

  A smoldering leg, still with a leather boot on its foot, fell back to earth just yards in front of them with a dull plop. The GIs stared at it in horror.

  “Stop gawking, for cryin’ out loud,” Sean told them. “Reload, dammit!”

  Just as the first two flares were nearly extinguished, the next two arrived and began their crazed dance along the ground near the middle of the tank column.

  The first T-34 in line began to move forward down the road, away from the rocket teams. None of the other tanks followed her. Sean told them, “So much for their tactical discipline…but forget her. It’s her lucky night. Take out the two we missed the first time around.”

  The second tank was still stationary, but her turret was slowly traversing toward the GIs, spewing machine gun fire blindly into the night…

  Until a rocket pierced her hull.

  She didn’t blow up like her sister but seemed stricken just the same. A series of muted explosions began from deep within her as ammo cooked off like corn in a popper. The GIs couldn’t tell if any of her crew escaped.