Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  He told the quad 50 gunner, “See where that Chaffee down there is aiming them tracers? Sweep that area real good while I get the other quad repositioned.”

  *****

  From the artillery battery, the cone of brilliant white tracers streaking down from the quad 50s on Hill 142, stirring the ground before them into a dust storm, looked like salvation from on high. It wasn’t a minute too soon, either: the howitzers had done well against tanks but wouldn’t be much use against marauding personnel. They couldn’t even shoot high-angle airbursts against them; the attackers were much too close for that.

  And no matter how many Koreans the machine guns from the hill stopped, some, the artillerymen were sure, were bound to enter their perimeter. There just seemed too many attackers for it to be any other way. Their howitzers would be useless to them; it would become an infantry fight, with rifles, machine guns, grenades, and bayonets.

  Some of the artillerymen—perhaps an entire gun section or two—broke and ran when that one round from the T-34 sailed low over their heads. It impacted harmlessly well behind the battery, but to men gripped by panic, close calls offered no relief, only validation of their fears.

  The others held their ground, taking some small comfort that Colonel Miles was still with them, calmly organizing them into defensive strongpoints that used the steel shields of the howitzers as bunkers.

  To Jock, it was no different than those moments in the last war on Papua, New Guinea, Manus, or Biak, moments when he and his men were sure their life expectancy was being measured in seconds. But he’d never forgotten their lesson:

  As long as we can keep them from surrounding us, we’ve got a chance.

  And every second they continued to live made that life expectancy grow exponentially.

  But this night, as those seconds ticked down, the enemy never emerged from that cloud of bullet-stirred dust. Instead, they heard shrill blasts from countless whistles…

  And then the enemy evaporated into the night.

  When the sun came up three hours later, they counted over two hundred dead North Koreans on the gentle slope to the south.

  The one T-34 that had never been killed was just sitting there, silent, abandoned, yet untouched. After Sean examined it, he said, “The one bastard we couldn’t knock out broke down all by herself. Ain’t that some shit?”

  Chapter Eight

  Sunrise illuminated more than just last night’s battlefield. Division headquarters was finally back on the radio, asking 26th Regiment for a status report. The man on the Division end of the conversation seemed startled to hear the regiment was not only still intact but in the same position it was yesterday. Then he said, “Wait one.”

  The one stretched into five minutes before Division transmitted again: “You’ll have a visitor in two hours. Secure a suitable landing strip. Out.”

  Two hours later, as promised, a light observation aircraft began circling over Hills 142 and 127. The regiment had placed panel markers along the south highway to mark a runway. The pilot inquired nervously about the tanks scattered near those markers.

  “They’re all dead and can’t be moved,” Jock’s RTO told the pilot. “Wind is south at eight miles per hour. You’re clear to land.”

  Everyone in the regimental CP had the same unspoken thought: Speaking of dead, wait until they get a little lower and see a couple of hundred dead gooks lying all over the place.

  The little plane rolled to a stop. The division commander, a two-star general named Keane, stepped from her. As he looked around, he seemed startled by the scene greeting him.

  Keane’s first words: “It looks like there was quite a fight here. Tokyo will be very surprised to hear that. The word is that you couldn’t have possibly been hit as hard as the other regiments.”

  Jock replied, “Well, as you can see all around you, sir, that wasn’t the case at all.”

  The general’s nod of agreement seemed somewhat grudging. Then he asked, “How long do you think you can hold this salient of yours, Miles?”

  “Salient, sir?” Jock replied, surprised at the general’s choice of terms. “The patrols I ran at first light tell me there are no friendly units to my left, right, or rear. We’re not linked up with anyone, so this isn’t a salient. We’re an island in a sea of North Koreans at the moment.”

  “Call it what you will, Miles,” Keane said, “but Tokyo is ordering us to consolidate our lines. We need you to pull back immediately.”

  “How far back, sir?” he asked the general.

  “About ten miles, Colonel, just north of Taejon. That’s where the rest of the division is regrouping, at the Kum River.”

  Regrouping…that’s a polite term to describe the aftermath of a rout.

  Keane continued, “I had a good look at the road south on the flight up here, Miles. It’s clear. You shouldn’t have any problem.”

  “Actually, sir, I have quite a few problems,” Jock replied. “Without an immediate resupply of ammo, food, and medical supplies, we won’t survive another fight.” He motioned to the spotter plane, adding, “And I could use some of those grasshoppers to airlift out about forty of my wounded, like I asked for two hours ago, once Division actually came back on the air.”

  Keane shook his head. “We don’t have those kinds of resources, Miles, and you know it. We can fly out a few, perhaps…”

  “But the Air Force can certainly drop me the supplies I need, General. I’ve already radioed in the requisitions. I trust the G4 made those requisitions top priority?”

  From the bewildered look on Keane’s face, it was obvious he had no idea what the state of those requisitions was. “Look, Miles, last night was pure chaos,” he said. “We had units getting thrown back, some overrun, all sorts of commo problems…”

  Jock knew then that pure chaos couldn’t adequately describe what had happened to 24th Division last night. Two regiments collapsed and ran; only his had managed to prevail on the battlefield. But the position they held now was an isolated bastion ill equipped to fend off one more assault.

  Another foreboding thought crossed his mind: When I was at KMAG, we always thought those initials really stood for “kiss my ass goodbye.”

  But this is even worse.

  Keane asked, “How about KIA, Colonel? What are your numbers from last night’s fight?”

  “Twelve KIA, sir. Five of them in one tank. Which brings up another question: when do we get the Shermans and Pershings we need so badly?”

  “Just as quickly as the boat from the States gets here, Miles.”

  “That can’t be soon enough, sir,” Jock said. “In the meantime, when my men get on the road, will they at least have heavy artillery support?”

  “Doubtful, Miles. There isn’t much heavy artillery to go around. Most of it is being pulled back to Taegu. What guns we’ve got left are very low on ammunition.”

  “Well, that seals it, sir. I’m going to have to come out by day, and I’m going to need plenty of air support to do it. Otherwise, it’ll be like bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

  “I already told you the road is clear, Miles. Are you doubting me?”

  “Will all due respect, sir, I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on what I’m up against here. We took a couple of prisoners last night, and they sang like birds to our ROK interrogator. They told him there are at least two KPA divisions between here and Taejon. They couldn’t believe how much ground they were able to roll up last night. Their plan was only to take these hills around Chongju, but we gave them a lot more. A hell of a lot more.”

  Keane replied, “It sounds to me that if the KPA got farther than they expected, they’ve probably overextended themselves.”

  “Not likely, sir. Our POWs tell us they’ve got plenty of Russian trucks at their disposal. Ten miles isn’t much of an overextension.”

  “You’re going to believe the fantasies of some little commie gooks over solid aerial intelligence, Miles?”

  “After what I saw last night, General, I’ve
got no reason to doubt their fantasies.”

  *****

  Major Tommy Moon didn’t think much of the weather forecast over the Tsushima Strait between Japan and South Korea. The heavily laden F-51 Mustang fighter-bombers he’d be leading couldn’t afford to fly so much as an extra mile. Having to skirt storms over the strait would eat up precious fuel…

  And maybe even get us good and lost. Not one of us has flown over Korea yet.

  He took comfort in the fact that the three other pilots in his flight—call sign Banjo—were, like him, combat veterans from the last war. Two of them even had considerable hours in F-51s, back in the skies over Europe when they were called P-51s by the Allies and a host of vile names by pilots of the Luftwaffe.

  Tommy had racked up his wartime flying hours in the P-47 Thunderbolt— affectionately known as the jug—a sturdy, powerful aircraft that excelled at ground attack and wasn’t a bad dogfighter in the right hands, either. Every man who ever flew that ship only had one complaint, though:

  It’s a good thing she can out-dive anything in the air because she sure as hell can’t climb worth a damn. The late-model ones are a little better, but still…

  At least the F-51 could climb, even ones as old and tired as theirs were. Tommy had never been impressed with them as fighter-bombers, though: the enormous coolant radiator slung beneath the fuselage was far too vulnerable to ground fire during low-altitude attacks. Once that radiator was punctured, the remaining life of the liquid-cooled Merlin engine was reduced to mere minutes. Those minutes had rarely been enough to get a pilot back to friendly lines in Europe, and they certainly would not get him back to Japan—over two hundred miles away—if he was hit over South Korea.

  Banjo Flight were all volunteers, pilots who’d answered the call for experienced combat pilots in these early days of this sudden and confounding Korean Conflict. Tommy had been flying the F-84, a straight-winged jet fighter that, if the war still raged, would be posted to Korea as soon as sufficient logistical and maintenance support for turbine-powered aircraft in that country was in place. He’d liked that aircraft from the first time he’d climbed into her cockpit; like the P-47, she was manufactured by Republic Aviation, and even though he’d traded that throbbing radial engine and huge four-bladed propeller of the jug for a shrieking jet powerplant, he could feel that Republic lineage in her rock-solid handling with every movement of the stick.

  Transitioning to the F-51 hadn’t been quite as uplifting. Tommy didn’t understand why his beloved Thunderbolts—now designated F-47s—weren’t being sent to Korea despite still being in the USAF inventory. Nobody had any doubt they were the superior ground attack aircraft. But some general had mumbled something about insufficient spare parts for F-47 combat operations and no money in the budget to buy them. Ground attack aircraft hadn’t been a priority for the brand new USAF in the post-WW2 era. That distinction went to the nuclear bomber force and the fighters to protect it. The F-51s, though well past their prime, had squeaked past the congressional red pen in that latter category.

  Tommy’s head was still deep in mission planning when the squadron operations officer told him, “Got something hot off the press for you, Major. Once you depart on this mission, don’t come back.”

  That sounded like a bad joke, and Tommy wasn’t in the mood for jokes—even good ones—at the moment.

  “Hey, I didn’t mean that like it sounded, sir,” the ops officer said, genuinely contrite. “It’s just that your flight plan has gotten changed by Tokyo. You’re to terminate this mission at K-9.”

  “K-9,” Tommy said, checking his map. “That’s Pusan, right?”

  “That’s a big roger, sir. Ground support for the ’tangs just showed up there. You’ll be welcomed with open arms.”

  “What about our personal gear? How’s that getting there?”

  “Just stack it up here in Ops, sir, and we’ll red tag it right over to you. It might even beat you there.”

  “That’ll be the day,” Tommy mumbled.

  From a tactical standpoint, the rerouting had just improved the mission greatly. The fuel they would’ve needed to get back across the strait to Itazuke Air Base could now be burned loitering over the target area. As originally planned, they would’ve only had enough fuel for seven minutes of time over target. Now they’d have nearly forty minutes.

  His big brother Sean had always told him how good it was for the ground-pounders to watch their air support loitering overhead, ready to swoop down and help at a moment’s notice.

  And for all I know, Tommy thought, Sean’s over there, somewhere. Last I heard he was with KMAG…and knowing him, he’s got himself right in the middle of the shit.

  He asked the ops officer, “Nothing else in the order has changed?”

  “Negative, sir. Proceed to the Taejon area, where target data will be provided by forward air control ships. Intel’s saying there was a big fight around there last night. The area should have targets galore.”

  *****

  At 1000 hours, Jock would assemble his commanders and staff to organize the regiment’s pullback. Lieutenant Colonel Eliason, however, was ordered to report to the CP thirty minutes before that meeting.

  Jock stopped him as he entered the van, leading him instead to a place where they wouldn’t be overheard. Then he asked, “Colonel Eliason, why did you ignore Sergeant Moon’s request for mortar fire on those KPA who were assaulting the artillery battery?”

  Eliason seemed insulted by the question. “I didn’t ignore anything, Colonel,” he said to Jock. “I made a decision as to what was more important to my unit at the time.”

  “Define your unit, Colonel.”

  “My battalion, of course, sir.”

  “I see. And since you received this request by way of a runner, I assume you knew Sergeant Moon had lost radio communications?”

  “Yes, I knew that, sir, but what does that have to do with anything?” He pronounced sir in a way that imparted little, if any, respect.

  “It has to do with this, Colonel: you don’t have any feel for how a battalion functions within a regiment. You’re not an independent unit. In a position like this one we’re in right now, what threatens one unit threatens us all. You had two choices—one good, one bad. The good choice was you could have passed that request over your working radio so the various needs for fire could be delegated among the several fire support outfits this regiment possesses. The bad choice was what you chose to do—ignore it. If it hadn’t been for the initiative of another NCO—Sergeant Patchett—the artillery battery would have been overrun and, quite possibly, the rest of this regiment along with it.”

  “You don’t know that, sir,” Eliason replied. “That’s merely conjecture.”

  “I beg to differ, Colonel. I know it too well—too damn well—because I was at the battery during the attack.”

  If that revelation surprised Eliason, he didn’t show it. He replied, “Who’s in charge of this regiment, Colonel? You, or some senior sergeants who seem to think they have license to run everything?”

  “Let me guess, Pete,” Jock said. “You were on MacArthur’s staff in Tokyo before you took over this battalion, correct?”

  “Yes, I was,” Eliason replied with defiant pride.

  “I figured. But let me answer your question now, Colonel. I’m in charge here, so I’ll be the one relieving you of your command as of right now.”

  Disdainful but distressed, too, Eliason replied, “You can’t do that. Not now…”

  “I just did, Colonel. Major Harper, your XO, will take command of Second Battalion, effective immediately. You’ll remain on regimental staff, performing duties as I see fit, until we get back to Taejon. Then I’m cutting you loose. And one last piece of advice…try listening to your experienced combat leaders, whether they’re officers or NCOs. You’ll probably live a lot longer if you do. That’s something you’ll never learn as one of MacArthur’s errand boys.”

  Eliason started to say something, but Jock cut him off
with, “You’re dismissed, Colonel.”

  *****

  Jock had few delusions about the air-dropping of supplies: If you end up with fifty percent of the stuff they kick out of the airplanes, you’re lucky.

  He’d seen it too often throughout the Southwest Pacific campaigns of the last war. The aircrews meant well; they were brave men who took great risks to deliver the goods. But the dynamics and uncertainties of the process usually ensured a high error rate, with large amounts of the ammunition and supplies the receiving unit needed so desperately being dropped into the enemy’s lap instead. Jock’s men had done their part of the job, setting out the smoke markers delineating the drop zone.

  Now all those flyboys have to do is hit the damn thing.

  From his perch atop Hill 127, he was encouraged when he saw the size of the aerial armada headed their way; by quick count, there were at least fifty aircraft, mostly the ubiquitous C-47 Gooney Birds making up for their limited load-carrying capability with sheer numbers. The fact that the plane’s crew had to kick the individual packages out the loading door one at a time guaranteed a strung-out line of parachuted supplies, even when that crew worked at peak efficiency. Hopefully, your unit’s position lay somewhere along that line.

  As he watched the first wave of C-47s approach, Jock asked Sean Moon, “Did you ever do much air-dropping in Europe, Sergeant?”

  “Not really, sir. Pretty much everything came by truck. If it did come by air, the plane usually landed to unload. I’m guessing you did a lot of it in the jungles, though?”

  “More than I care to remember, Sergeant.”

  Sean noticed them first; at the tail end of the aircraft formation were four much larger aircraft, strange-looking craft with twin booms supporting the tail and a boxy pod for a fuselage. He asked, “Are those things in the back what I think they are, sir?”