Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  She leaned back in her rattan chair, soaking in the polite applause. But when she scanned the approving faces of her guests, she saw the look on Jillian’s face; it was anything but approving. She wasn’t clapping, either.

  Mrs. Whitelaw stopped the applause with an annoyed wave of her hand. Fixing an iron gaze at Jillian, she asked, “I’m sorry, but I seem to have forgotten we have a newcomer from another land in our midst. Colonel Miles’ wife…it’s Jacqueline, isn’t it?”

  “No, it’s Jillian.”

  “All right, Jillian. So you don’t agree with my position?”

  “I don’t pay much attention to your American politics, but I do have some very clear memories of the last little Asian toy soldiers the Allies had to fight. It took us three bloody years to beat them into submission, didn’t it?”

  The American women might have been offended by the term bloody if they’d actually known what it meant in profane context. They’d just assumed she was describing the ferocity of combat.

  But what did offend Priscilla Whitelaw was the challenge to her authority. This insubordinate Aussie upstart had to be put in her place, and quickly.

  “I’m curious, Jillian…my husband spent some time in Brisbane during the war. He said it seemed that Australia didn’t even think there was a war on. You people disrespected MacArthur, who should be revered for the god that he is, disrespected your own king…and you even had labor strikes! Workers actually refused to contribute to the war effort. That all sounds like you Australians are a terribly unpatriotic lot. You ladies down under were having yourselves a little party with all those fine American boys while the rest of the free world was sacrificing so much to win the war.”

  “Actually, ma’am, I would’ve loved to have been invited to that party. But, you see, I couldn’t because I was a prisoner of the Japanese. So if you want to discuss actual sacrifice, I can tell you stories from now until Christmas.”

  In the hush that fell over the gathering, Priscilla Whitelaw refused to believe she’d lost the upper hand. Her sense of entitlement wouldn’t accept it. So, with all the false sincerity she could muster, she said, “Oh dear, one can imagine how terrible it was for you.”

  “No,” Jillian replied, “one cannot, I’m afraid.”

  This time, it seemed nothing would be capable of shattering the silence. But then a voice—one of the Whitelaw daughters—called out, “They’re ready, Mother.”

  As if handed a lifeline, Mrs. Whitelaw gushed, “Oh, wonderful! Let the parade begin!”

  The Stars and Stripes Forever began to blare from an unseen phonograph. The back door of the house sprang open and the children—all twenty-eight of them—marched into the yard in single file. Boys and girls alike, they were in costume: paper replicas of army green uniforms complete with overseas caps. Each child carried a little toy rifle at right shoulder arms.

  Jillian was the only one who didn’t begin to clap with delight. She rushed to her children, removed the mock rifles from their shoulders, took them by the hand, and started for the door.

  Before leaving the patio, she turned to face the rankled Mrs. Whitelaw and said, “My husband may be a soldier, ma’am, but my children will never be.”

  By the time they’d reached their station wagon, Jillian had removed the paper uniforms and torn them to shreds. She thought for a moment about picking up the scraps of paper now littering the Whitelaws’ lawn.

  Then she mumbled, “Bugger that…and bloody MacArthur, too.”

  She loaded her puzzled children into the car and drove away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  As Sean assembled his tank-killer patrol, one of the members arrived at the assembly point toting a .30-caliber machine gun. Belts of ammo were crisscrossed around his torso. Sean laughed when he saw him and said, “Who the hell do you think you are, Pancho Fuckin’ Villa? Get rid of that goddamn thirty. I said we’re going in light tonight, didn’t I, numbnuts?”

  “Shit, Sarge…this is light. I wanted to bring a fifty cal.”

  “And I would’ve beat your brains in with it. When I say light, I mean fucking light. These carbines we got are almost too damn heavy, with all the rockets we need to be carrying.”

  “But I thought maybe we’d want a little…you know, firepower, Sarge? In case we’ve got to shoot it out with some gooks?”

  Sean replied, “Let me ask you something, kid…you ain’t never fought house to house before, have you?”

  The gunner shook his head.

  “Then take it from me. The only bad guys you’re gonna shoot will be standing so close you can feel them breathing on you. And our job tonight is to kill tanks, not get into shootouts. You understand me?”

  “Yeah, Sarge. I understand…I guess.”

  “Good. Now be back here in three minutes or less with a suitable weapon. We gotta get this show on the road.”

  The gunner was back in two and a half minutes.

  Two 3.5-inch rocket teams comprised his patrol. Sean told the teams, “All right, let’s go over a coupla points before we head into Taejon. First, it’s a safe bet the gook tanks are gonna move south through the city during the night. They wanna get as far as they can from that fire torching the north side. That’ll put ’em in a better position to attack our line once the sun comes up. But if we can make good use of the darkness and the million hiding places the city’s gonna offer, we can knock out some of ’em tonight, when they least expect it, and fuck up their plans big time. Everybody with me so far?”

  Ten heads nodded as one.

  Sean continued, “Outstanding. Now, we’ll try to keep both teams in earshot of each other at all times.”

  A hand shot up. “So why are we lugging the walkie-talkies, Sarge?”

  “To save your ass if everything turns to shit, dummy. If you need artillery or quad fifty support, how’re you gonna call for it without a radio?”

  “But the walkie-talkies don’t have the range to reach the artillery, Sarge. They’ll be three miles away, maybe a little more.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself, pal,” Sean replied. “LP Charlie is gonna relay for us. We’ll never be more than a mile away from those guys. We’ll do a commo check with the LP on our way out, just to make sure everything’s working. We walk right by it. Any other dumb questions?”

  Nobody had another question, dumb or otherwise.

  “A coupla things to bear in mind,” Sean continued. “The tanks that ain’t on the move will try to hide themselves, maybe even inside buildings. Don’t waste time and rockets on ’em if the only shot you got is at their bow. The ones moving down the streets give us a couple of engagement options. But whether we hit ’em from the sides or in the ass, make damn sure you got your escape route all figured out. If you miss a tank with your first shot, forget it and get the fuck outta there. If you stay put, you’ll be dead before you get another shot.”

  *****

  Sean’s anti-tank patrol had taken a little over an hour to creep to the center of Taejon. It was 0130 hours now, and they’d yet to see or hear a T-34. As they huddled in the darkness in what looked and smelled like a butcher’s shop, Sean said, “The fire up north’s dying out. The damn wind ain’t spreading it too good, so I guess there’s no big rush for the T-34s to move south.”

  One of the gunners asked, “So what’re we going to do, Sarge?”

  “We’re gonna go find those bastards and see what we can do to fuck up their night.”

  “But if we go much farther north, we’ll be out of radio range with the LP.”

  “Yeah. Too bad about that,” Sean replied. “Now let’s get moving.”

  They’d crept a few blocks deeper into the darkened city when Sean suddenly pulled his men inside a building. “I smell diesel,” he said. “Only things in this whole fucking country that run on diesel are Russian-built armor. All of you, get real quiet and listen. If they’re fueling tanks around here, they gotta make a little noise eventually.”

  He moved to the far side of the buil
ding, across an interior space cluttered with crates, as if it might be some sort of warehouse. Crouching beneath a shattered window, he heard that little noise he’d expected: the shush-shush of a hand pump. When it stopped, he could hear voices speaking Korean and then the sound of a motor cranking up.

  Sean dared to take a peek through the window. Not more than thirty yards down the street, a small tractor was towing a fuel bowser. He could make out the silhouettes of the driver and three men walking beside it. When the bowser stopped, the men dragged the long hose connected to it into an alleyway. He couldn’t see what type of vehicle they were in the process of fueling.

  “Looks like maybe they got tanks parked between the buildings across the street,” Sean told his men. “We gotta figure out which way they’re facing.” He pointed to one of the loaders and said, “Mendoza, come with me. We’re going for a little walk. You’re gonna cover my ass. The rest of you hold tight right here.”

  *****

  Crossing an alleyway, Sean and PFC Mendoza snuck into the building on the other side. The moment they entered, they were struck by the strong odor of fermentation. They could make out the shapes of a dozen vats lined up across the floor, each like a giant wooden barrel with sides that came to a man’s chest. Sean took a look inside one; it was empty.

  “Looks like somebody beat us to sucking down everything in this brewery,” he whispered to Mendoza. “Too bad for us, eh?”

  Actually, Sean considered himself lucky. If they’d entered the brewery first instead of the warehouse, the smell of diesel might’ve been masked by the enticing aroma of Korean beer. Robbed of that clue, they might’ve blundered into the street—and right into the KPA tankers.

  They were about to move toward the side of the building facing the refueling operation when he heard more noises. These were coming from inside the brewery. They sounded very close.

  Too close.

  It was coming from the other side of the vats: the sound of men snoring.

  Even though Sean needed desperately to look out the window and see what was parked in those alleyways, he didn’t dare walk around the vats. There was no guarantee that everyone behind them was asleep.

  Grabbing Mendoza by his web gear, Sean pulled him back out of the building the same way they’d entered. Once outside, he whispered, “Let’s have ourselves a look from that next alley.”

  Entering that alley, they found it occupied by an empty flatbed truck. It didn’t have military markings, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t being used by the KPA. There were no Koreans around it, though, and the truck gave good cover for surveilling the opposite side of the street.

  From his perch on the truck’s running board, Sean realized three things. First, there were six T-34s parked across the street, each nestled in her own alley. Second, the bow of each tank was facing him. Third, there were KPA soldiers in the building to his left, too—lots of them—and they weren’t asleep like their comrades in the brewery to his right.

  Silently retracing their steps through the brewery, he and Mendoza rejoined the rest of the GIs in the warehouse.

  “Here’s the deal,” Sean told his men. “We got six T-34s across the street, parked with their bows facing us. We gotta get behind them. Be aware that every building from here north looks like it’s got gooks in it, so we’re gonna backtrack a little, cross this street, get behind ’em, and put a rocket up the ass of all six of them bastards.”

  He’d expected the uneasiness he saw in their faces, so he quickly continued, “Now, before you get your panties all in a bunch, this is how it’s gonna work. With only two tubes, we can’t kill ’em all at once, right? So we’re gonna start from the north end. Team Able will kill the tank on that end, then run like hell to kill the third tank in line while Team Baker kills the second tank in line. We leapfrog like that twice and then get the hell outta here. Just remember—if you miss, forget it and move on to the next target. But if you do miss, you gotta be the biggest fuckup in this man’s army, because we’re gonna be pretty fucking close. Everybody load their tube right now.”

  One of the gunners spoke up. “But if the tube’s hot, Sarge, and it’s dark and shit and I trip and fall, it just might—”

  “Then don’t fall down, numbnuts. Now hurry the fuck up. Let’s get this over with before sunup, okay?”

  *****

  Once in position behind the T-34s in the alleys, Sean’s gunners dispatched the first three tanks in just under two minutes. By the time Team Baker was lining up on the fourth tank, though, the initial surprise and confusion gripping the KPA troopers had worn off. They’d figured out where the tank-killing fire was coming from. They started shooting their rifles and submachine guns down the street from which Sean’s teams were staging their attack.

  Even though he was behind the cover of a building, Team Baker’s gunner was rattled by the gunfire. The rocket he launched at the fourth tank—less than a hundred yards away—sailed past her turret, crossed the next street, and struck the brewery.

  Stunned by the miss, the gunners seemed frozen in place. Sean yelled, “MOVE OUT, GODDAMMIT! YOU KNOW THE DRILL. NEXT TARGET.”

  The KPA gunfire slowed the teams’ leapfrogging from one firing point to the next. Just a minute ago they’d simply run down the street; now they were seeking cover as they moved, ducking through or around buildings. It took extra time. Too much time.

  The fifth tank was blown up just like the first three. But when the leapfrogging Team Baker got to the sixth and last tank, she wasn’t in her alleyway anymore. They couldn’t see her, but they could hear her bellowing engine beyond the buildings on the parallel street.

  It sounded as if she was moving south, intent on cutting off the GIs’ escape.

  “She’s gonna turn down one of these alleys and come straight at us,” Sean said. “We gotta cross the street and get behind her, or at least broadside to her.”

  As he marshaled his teams for the dash across the street, he did a quick headcount. It came up two men short.

  Sean asked, “Where the hell’s Mendoza and Culp, for cryin’ out loud?”

  Nobody had an answer.

  But there was no time to wait, no time to search for them.

  Sean and his men bolted across the street. Despite the KPA’s random gunfire, they all made it safely and kept going down the alley toward the next street. They were halfway there when they heard another roaring engine; the T-34 they’d shot at and missed was moving down that street they were running toward.

  The tank rolled past the alley and then braked to a sudden stop. Her commander, high in his turret hatch, had spotted the GIs.

  As he shouted orders to his crew, the tank began to back up as her turret slowly traversed toward the alley.

  Dumb move, pal, Sean thought. You should be pivoting her on her tracks instead of trying to spin that turret around. Takes too fucking long. In the meantime, you’re showing me her bad side.

  “Take her,” he told Team Baker’s gunner. Then he yelled to the men bunched in the alley behind the tube, “Clear the backblast, dammit!”

  The rocket struck low on the center hull between two road wheels. There was that agonizing split second when nothing seemed to happen.

  Don’t tell me it’s a fucking dud…

  Then there was a dull thud from within her. Flames shot from every hatch. No one got out.

  She was dead and so was her crew.

  But the tank still alive was at the other end of the alley now. She hadn’t made her late sister’s mistake and driven past it.

  Instead, she’d turned right into it, her two machine guns blazing.

  The GIs had already slipped into an adjacent building. They raced through a near pitch black maze of machinery and rubble in what seemed to be a textile mill. There was only one clear path they could take: straight across the building to the opposite side.

  When they reached it, they could find no way out. No doors, no windows. Just a solid brick wall.

  “Ain’t this some shit,”
Sean said in frustration. “We’re in the middle of a wooden city, trapped behind the only brick wall in the whole fucking place.”

  In the alley, the T-34 had come to a halt, but the GIs weren’t sure exactly where. They could only hear her, not see her.

  A few seconds later, the mystery of her location was solved by the snapping sound of wood being torn apart. The muzzle of her main gun was suddenly inside the building, protruding through the shattered wooden wall, swinging slowly toward the GIs. In a few seconds more, that gun would be pointing right at them.

  Team Baker—the team who’d just killed the tank in the street—was frantically trying to reload their tube.

  Team Able’s 3.5 was ready to fire. But her gunner wasn’t.

  “Where the hell do I aim, Sarge? I can’t see shit!”

  There was no time to reply. The T-34’s main gun was almost on them.

  Sean grabbed the rocket launcher from the gunner’s hands, stood straight up for a better angle through the splintered wall, and fired right where he felt sure her turret ring would be.

  The cloud of dust and debris that resulted reduced visibility in the mill to almost nothing. But there was no doubt he’d hit the tank. With a shriek of torn metal, the turret’s traverse ceased abruptly.

  Congratulations for the fortuitous shot would have to wait. Damaged or not, the tank was still blocking their only path of escape from the building.

  And she wasn’t dead; the clatter of grinding gears made that obvious. The driver, at least, was still able to function and trying desperately to shift the transmission into reverse. But her main gun was still jammed through the wall. It would have to tear through the rest of that wall to free itself.

  From the sound of the tank’s screaming engine, the extrication wasn’t going well.

  Sean tossed the empty 3.5 back to Team Able’s gunner. Then he yelled to Team Baker, “Knock a hole in that fucking brick wall. Everybody else, hug yourself some floor.”

  Heeding his own order, he threw himself prone, thinking, Let’s hope that with that fucking tank trying to rip down one wall and us shooting out another one, this whole shitty building don’t fall down on top of us.