Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  There was a brief flash of red light just ahead of his jeep.

  A flashlight…

  And then the legs of two men walked through the tiny pool of illumination cast on the ground by the jeep’s blackout headlight.

  The red flashlight shone again, casting a momentary, ghoulish glow across the men’s faces…

  Their Asian faces.

  Now the flashlight illuminated the carbine Jock had leveled at them. The men began to yell, “KATUSA! KATUSA!”

  For good measure, they raised their hands high.

  A much larger man was running toward them now, speaking in unmistakable Brooklynese, “You two numbnutzes better shut the fuck up before I plug you one. That you, Colonel Miles?”

  “Yeah, Sergeant Moon, it’s me.” Then he slumped back in the driver’s seat and blew a sigh of relief. “How many KATUSA do you have with you?”

  “Six, sir. Been using them to set up those foo-gas tank traps I told you about. We’re heading over to do the last one now.”

  “You do realize I nearly shot these guys, right?”

  “Yeah,” Sean replied. “I’m surprised it ain’t happened already, sir. Nobody’s too crazy that they’re here. For openers, how the hell are we gonna tell them from the bad guys when the shit hits the fan? Whose bright idea was this, anyway? No, let me guess…MacArthur’s, right?”

  “Yeah, but we’ll talk more about it later. I’ve got a more pressing problem…I think I’m lost. Did I miss the turn to the CP?”

  “You sure did, sir, but it ain’t your fault. I told Patch I’d put out the signposts on this road, but it took a little longer than I thought to get to it.”

  In precise English, one of the KATUSA added, “Yes, those barrels of gas are quite hard to move. Very heavy!”

  “Did anybody ask you, pal?” Sean said. “You address this man as sir, you understand?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. And I am so sorry, sir.” He started to salute Jock.

  Sean battered his hand down. “Don’t you never salute nobody out in the field. That’s a good way to get your officers killed. You understand me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Good. Now shut the fuck up when me and the colonel here are talking.” Then he told Jock, “Sorry for the interruption, sir.”

  “No problem, Sergeant. As soon as I check in at the CP, I’ll need to see these tank traps of yours.”

  *****

  Jock was glad to find only a few of his staff at the CP, all of them hard at work on the radios and field phones coordinating the defensive preparations of the three battalions. The rest of his staff, he hoped, were equally hard at work with the units in the field. Colonel Lewis gave him the detailed picture of how the regiment was now emplaced exactly how Jock had directed.

  When he was done explaining the disposition of each battalion, Lewis said, “Note that there’s no artillery unit in our position. All batteries have been brought under Divarty’s control.”

  “Yeah, I heard,” Jock replied without enthusiasm. “Division did it to make the most efficient use of the little ammo they’ve got. Consolidation does have one other advantage, too, if the division gets hit from only one direction. We’ll be able to really mass fires on them.”

  “Do you think that’s what the KPA will do, sir? Put all its eggs in one basket?”

  “Not likely,” Jock replied.

  As they looked over the tactical map, Jock asked, “Do we really only have this one bridge across the Kum in our sector?”

  “That’s correct, sir,” Lewis replied. “But according to Sergeant Moon’s recon, the river’s fordable by tanks at the southern end of our sector.”

  Jock zeroed in on the map’s representation of that sector. The bank on the regiment’s side of the river looked like a series of tight ravines. Drawn near each of them was a symbol he’d never seen before: a flaming arrow.

  He asked Lewis, “These arrow symbols…they’re the foo-gas tank traps?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  “Can’t wait to see them.” Then Jock turned his attention to the other end of their sector, where the one bridge across the Kum lay, and asked, “Any evidence that this bridge blew up tonight?”

  Lewis seemed surprised by the question. “No, sir. Was it supposed to?”

  “General Keane ordered the blowing of all the bridges when I was up at Division. I think we would have heard if they did, don’t you?”

  “Affirmative, sir. What are they waiting for?”

  Before Jock could offer a reply, the night was shattered by a series of thunderous explosions. But they hadn’t come from the direction of the bridge; they’d come from the south, where the horizon had turned a brilliant crimson.

  “Tell Division we’ve got contact,” he told Lewis. “And get that damn bridge blown. I’m headed over to that blaze.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Jock took his driver this time, a buck sergeant named Yarbrough. He’d be far more than a chauffeur; Jock would need someone just to help handle the slew of radio traffic on the command net. The transmissions were continuous; the division was getting hit from several directions.

  When Jock returned to the jeep after checking a hilltop OP, Yarbrough told him, “Division just told the XO that the bridge in our sector has already been blown.”

  “What did Colonel Lewis have to say about that?”

  “He told them they were full of shit, sir.”

  “In those words, Sergeant?”

  “Pretty close, sir.”

  “Good,” Jock replied. Then he told himself, Maybe we’ll make a fighting XO out of Lewis yet. Actually, we’d better make him a fighting XO. We’ve got no choice…the talent pool is a little shallow right now.

  The crimson glow in the sky had faded considerably by the time Jock found Sean Moon’s makeshift bunker, which was dug into the front face of a hill overlooking the tank trap ravines. From there, he could see three T-34s still smoldering. Two blocked one of the narrow ravines completely. The third partially obstructed another ravine, channeling any further tank or vehicle traffic into a single-lane kill zone.

  “You nailed them with your foo-gas contraptions?” Jock asked Sean.

  “Yes, sir. Couldn’t see ’em all in the dark, but I figure there were at least six tanks that forded the river down this way. We set up foo-gas barrels in the three ravines in this sector, two per ravine. We smoked that first T-34, and then his buddy did us a favor and tried to drive around her. Smoked her, too. The two of ’em burning blocked the whole damn ravine. When that one over there tried to drive through the next ravine to the right, we torched her ass. Ain’t seen any more of them since then…but the night’s young.”

  “I think I understand the generalities, Sergeant, but give me a quick course in how these foo-gas things work.”

  Sean provided a down-and-dirty explanation: a sealed barrel of thickened, flammable liquid was dug partially into the ground like a mortar, its top aimed toward the kill zone. Napalm was convenient because it came ready-made in a jelly-like consistency, which ignited easily, burned prodigiously, and stuck to anything. If you didn’t have napalm, about twenty pounds of laundry soap could be stirred into a fifty-five-gallon barrel of gasoline. The result was a flammable agent of similar properties.

  An explosive charge was placed against the bottom of the barrel. When triggered, it hurled the flammable agent, now ignited, into the kill zone, which could extend as far as thirty yards from the barrel.

  “What effect does that have on a tank and the men inside?” Jock asked.

  “Like getting hit with a couple dozen Molotov cocktails, sir,” Sean replied. “That burning shit sticks to the hull and gets into viewing ports, vents, hatches...anywhere there’s an opening. The combustion can suck up all the oxygen, stalling the engine and suffocating the crew. Pretty soon, the ammo’s cooking off, too.”

  “That’s what happened to those T-34s?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did any of the crew get out?”
>
  “Maybe. Couldn’t tell too well, even with the flames lighting the place up like daytime.”

  Jock asked, “Any evidence of infantry attacking with the tanks?”

  “Yeah, we think so. Once the tanks started cooking, though, they beat it. Ain’t seen ’em since.”

  “What kind of explosive did you use to set the traps off?”

  “We were gonna use grenades…they work okay in a pinch. But then I was able to bum some C-3 off the engineers. Didn’t look like they had any plans for it.”

  “I see,” Jock said. “How much napalm do we have left, Sergeant?”

  “Well, sir, there are still three more barrels set up and ready to blow in the traps. I’ve got another four barrels in the deuce. But the airfield here at Taejon should be pretty cleaned out by now. The fighters they had flying out of there got pulled back to somewhere in a big hurry, so they had to leave a lot of shit behind. We split eighty cases of their fifty caliber with some scroungers from one of the other regiments, so the quads should be well-stocked for a little while, anyway.” He pointed to the shadowy outline of one quad fifty on the crest of the rise, covering all three ravines below.

  Jock asked, “You set those traps up just using the KATUSA?”

  “Not exactly. Had a couple of GIs helping out, too. But those KATUSA will dig all night for a pack of cigarettes. They’re good laborers, I guess….but as soldiers?” His thumbs down gesture expressed his assessment of their military abilities.

  “Good to know, Sergeant. Now tell me where our mortars are.”

  “Right behind these hills, sir. This is Third Battalion’s sector, so we’ve got all their tubes. They’re gonna be busy, too, because just between you and me, sir, I ain’t expecting a whole lot out of the artillery. I wouldn’t be surprised if the whole damn Divarty bugs out on us. They were looking pretty antsy when I passed them back by the airfield.”

  *****

  Satisfied that all three of the regiment’s battalions were positioned as well as the darkness of night allowed, Patchett returned to the CP. Lieutenant Colonel Lewis had a new mission for him the moment he stepped into the van: find out why the bridge across the Kum was still standing.

  “I can tell you that right off the top of my head, sir,” Patchett said. “Seventeenth Regiment has a big chunk of its Second Battalion missing. Don’t know whether they’re captured or they bugged out. Most of the division engineers got farmed out to be infantry replacements for them. So if you’re looking for someone to blow that bridge, sir, we’re gonna have to do it our own damn selves.”

  Lewis pounced on that suggestion. “So I take it you’re volunteering for that task, Sergeant?”

  Patchett made a face like he was sucking lemons. “I’ve been in this man’s army more than long enough to know never to volunteer for nothing, Colonel. But I’m assuming you’re giving me a die-rect order?”

  “You assume correctly, Sergeant.”

  “Very well, sir.”

  *****

  Patchett had formulated a plan by the time he walked the few steps from the van to his jeep. He knew 2nd Battalion had scrounged up the hardware to mount one of its 75-millimeter recoilless rifles on a jeep. It could be easily driven to the riverbank, where it could shoot out a section of the arch bridge. The 75s might not have been successful against the frontal armor of T-34s, but they could certainly tear apart a bridge’s stone and concrete structure.

  The recoilless rifle gunners were less than enthusiastic about being ordered so close to the North Koreans just across the river. The crew chief whined, “Why can’t the artillery do it, Sarge?”

  “We ain’t got artillery rounds to waste trying to land one square on some li’l ol’ bridge,” Patchett replied. “Saddle up, son. For once, we’ve got ourselves a job that’s perfect for that lame weapon of yours.”

  One thing Patchett was sure of: as soon as they fired, they’d have to move to a different location—and quickly—because the muzzle flash would spoil the secret of their location. No doubt, KPA mortar and machine gun fire would rain down on them if they were foolish enough to stay put. He knew of three good firing positions for the recoilless rifle on the high ground near the riverbank. He told himself, If we can’t knock the bottom out of that bridge with three shots, we’d better start running and never stop.

  At the first firing position, the gunner asked, “Where do you want me to hit that thing, Sarge?”

  Patchett replied, “You see that center arch? Shoot the keystone right out of the top of it.”

  “What do you figure the range is?”

  “Just a pinch over four hundred yards, son.”

  “And the second we fire, we’re hauling ass to the next firing point, right?”

  “Damn straight,” Patchett replied.

  The driver of the jeep with the mounted 75 millimeter already had the vehicle in gear, with the clutch pedal to the floor.

  “Whoa, son…let’s not jump the gun,” Patchett told him. “Put her in neutral and let out the clutch. You’ll have a second or two to get yourself clear. Don’t you dare mess up his shot and start moving before you feel that whoosh.”

  Then he told the gunner, “I’ll be waiting for y’all at the next position. Fire when ready, boys.”

  Patchett’s jeep was halfway to that next position when he felt the whoosh of the recoilless rifle’s shot. He was driving as fast as he dared in the darkness, which wasn’t very fast at all.

  Don’t need to be in no hurry and drive myself right off this damn cliff.

  But he was startled when he arrived at the next firing position with the gun jeep right on his back bumper. They’d wasted no time evacuating that first position.

  It took another five seconds before a KPA machine gun began to riddle where they’d just been.

  “See?” Patchett said, “Like I said, no need to rush. Now let’s see what y’all did.”

  As the dust and debris settled, the center span of the bridge appeared still intact, standing defiantly in the moonlight reflected off the water beneath.

  The gunner protested, “But I hit it dead on where you told me, Sarge!”

  “I’m sure you did, son. Now settle yourself down and hit it again in the same damn spot. I’ll meet y’all down the road apiece.”

  Once again, the gunner did exactly what he was told. But as they gazed at the bridge from the third—and last—firing position, its structural integrity seemed to be mocking them.

  “What the hell?” the gunner wailed. “I swear I hit it right on the fucking keystone! Twice!”

  “Probably did, son,” Patchett replied, as the KPA machine gun fire shifted to the last place from which the 75 had shot. “Now do it one more time and then meet me just over the top of that next rise.”

  They didn’t get a chance to shoot again. A T-34 had ventured onto the bridge, the first in what seemed a long column of tanks. When she got to the center arch, the structure seemed to hold for a few seconds. But suddenly, it began crumbling beneath her. The tank teetered as if on a seesaw for an agonizing moment, and then the roadbed gave way completely. Her bow rapidly pivoted downward and she joined the cascade of falling stone, plummeting headfirst into the roiling water below.

  The center arch was now a gaping chasm. A second T-34 had rolled a short way onto the bridge. She stopped and then was quickly thrown into reverse, pulling back to the far bank.

  “I guess I got it after all,” the gunner said, sounding more amazed than certain.

  “You got it started, that’s for damn sure,” Patchett replied. “Then a couple dozen tons of gook tank finished it off.”

  The gunner asked, “Did you know it was going to happen like that, Sarge?”

  “Never doubted it for a minute, son. Now let’s get you back to your platoon. This ain’t near over.”

  As he drove through the darkness, Patchett laughed as he told himself, Never doubted it for a minute… You’re about as full of shit for these gray eyes of yours to turn brown, Melvin Patchett.


  *****

  There were three other bridges across the Kum above Taejon. Only the bridge leading into 33rd Regiment’s sector—the unit holding the center of the division’s line—was blown by the engineers. The remaining two, which led into 17th Regiment’s sector on the left of the division’s line, were essentially intact, despite a last-minute, ineffective attempt to demolish them with artillery fire. It was across these two bridges that the North Korean armor made its breakthrough, pouring across in seemingly endless columns that the GIs’ sparse anti-tank weapons couldn’t stem. Just after midnight, 17th Regiment collapsed. Its troops were in a headlong, chaotic retreat toward the city of Taejon.

  Within minutes, the radio was blaring with reports of KPA armor and infantry swarming behind 33rd Regiment’s sector, threatening to encircle both that unit and Jock’s 26th Regiment. If the Koreans could succeed in doing that, the division’s mission to delay them at Taejon would disintegrate, as would much hope of slowing their rush to Pusan.

  “We’re being ordered to block the North Koreans from reaching the city,” Jock told his staff. “If we can move our reserve battalion into a position to start doing that, we’ll have the KPA vanguard wedged between us and Thirty-Third Regiment.”

  Then he asked Colonel Lewis, “That force that broke through Seventeenth Regiment…what’s their estimated strength?”

  “Division suspects it’s several battalions of infantry,” Lewis replied, “with a company or two of tanks. But we all know how wildly wrong those estimates can be in the dark.”

  “Yeah, they’re usually inflated like crazy,” Jock said. “But speaking of the dark, moving our men rapidly at night is going to be one hell of a challenge, so let’s keep the plan real simple. Major Appling, how long until your vehicles will be ready to roll?”

  Appling, who’d succeeded the stricken Colonel Bryant as 1st Battalion commander, replied, “We can be ready in thirty minutes, sir.”

  Jock shook his head. “Can you make it fifteen, Major?”