The tense voice of Trombone Leader burst from their headphones: “We’ve got bandits—lots of them—straight above. We’re getting out of here.”
Tommy could see the enemy aircraft. He counted twelve, well above the American ships, probably at 10,000 feet or higher.
They’re Lavochkins…LA-7s, he told himself.
They didn’t worry him. Not yet.
Tommy could see the four ships of Trombone Flight a few miles to the east, too. Not only had they made a rapid turn to the south—and the relative safety of American airfields—they were jettisoning their bombs on nothing in particular. The five-hundred-pounders looked like black specks falling toward barren mountains to be wasted.
How much you want to bet they unload what’s left of their rockets, too? Why the hell are they running so scared?
“Trombone, this is Banjo. Where the hell are you going? Those bandits can only come at us from one direction, and as long as we can see them, we can handle them.”
“Negative, Banjo. I’m not taking on the whole gook air force.”
Tommy’s thoughts: Twelve fucking ships…hardly “the whole gook air force.”
I wasn’t too impressed the last time we came up against their Lavochkins, either.
But if they want to come down and play, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
He kept an eye on the LA-7s overhead while watching Pete Sublette roll into his bomb run. Pete used the cover of a low hill for his approach to the artillery battery. Once he’d popped over that hill, his glide bombing run was over in a matter of seconds. His two 500-pound bombs fell right between the smoke markers Spectral One-Seven had put down. Several secondary explosions quickly followed the initial blast.
“I’m clear,” Sublette reported. “Feel those secondaries? I must’ve hit something good. Don’t think I took any triple-A, either. You still watching those bandits upstairs?”
“Affirmative,” Tommy replied. “No problems from them yet.”
Al DeLuca rolled into his attack run. He employed a different approach, passing between a gap in the hills to fly even lower over the target than Sublette had. His bombs fell just as accurately.
Tommy radioed, “You guys did so good, I don’t think you even need me. I’m going to hold on to my eggs for another target.”
Sublette asked, “Unless we get into a fight with those bandits, right?”
“Goes without saying, Pete.”
Spectral One-Seven came back on the air. “I’ve got what looks like another battery, south-southeast of last target, about two miles. They’re shooting, too. I saw their smoke and that’s about all. By the way, we’ve got no interceptors in the area, repeat—no interceptors.”
“Figured that,” Tommy replied.
As Banjo Flight regrouped and turned to the new target, DeLuca reported, “Ah…we’ve got action from our friends on high. Four of them are peeling off and heading downstairs. It looks like they’re going to come at us from the northwest.”
“Yeah, I see,” Tommy replied. “You know the drill. We’ll meet them head-on.”
“So you’re going to dump your bombs?” Sublette asked.
“Not yet.”
“You sure, boss?”
“Yeah,” Tommy replied. “The US Air Force already wasted enough ordnance this morning.”
He hoped Trombone Flight—now almost fifteen miles away—had heard his last transmission because it was meant for them.
The four LA-7s came at the F-51s spread wide in line formation. The encounter went exactly as Tommy expected: they closed head-to-head at frightening speed, exchanged poorly aimed gunfire briefly, and nobody was hit. Staying low, Banjo Flight turned hard left while the Koreans clawed for altitude.
“Dammit,” DeLuca said, “I’d love to be chasing their asses right now.”
“Yeah, but that’s not our job,” Tommy replied. “Let’s set up for a pass at this other battery. I’ll go in first and unload these eggs. You guys cover me and then follow up with a gun run.”
There was great urgency in Spectral One-Seven’s voice as he said, “You might want to reconsider that, Banjo. Looks like a whole bunch of Lavs are coming down. I’ve got to make myself scarce for a little bit.”
A quick glance over his shoulder told Tommy that the FAC was right: the eight LA-7s that had stayed at altitude were diving down now. The four that they’d just tangled with were turning hard to join their comrades.
Shit, Tommy told himself as he pickled the five-hundred-pounders away to fall on nothing but barren landscape. But I’ve got no choice now…got to lighten the ship up if we’re going to dance for real with those Lavs. Three against twelve are pretty shitty odds.
Push comes to shove, we can outrun them.
The bombs gone, Tommy led Banjo Flight in a tight turn to engage the LA-7s head-to-head once again. Watching the Koreans form for the attack, he told himself, Just like I figured…they formed a line straight across. Russian tactics all the way. But that’s good…spread out like they are, only a couple of them can even come close to getting their guns on us.
“Stay together, guys,” he told Sublette and DeLuca, “but leave us some room to bob and weave. Don’t go off by yourself to chase somebody.”
“No chance of that, boss,” Sublette replied. “Safety in numbers, right?”
Once again, the engagement was over with blinding speed. Sublette got lucky: an LA-7 pulled up too early, giving him a momentary look at her belly and a much bigger target. He pulled up, too, while spraying a quick burst for the LA-7 to fly through. The twinkles of bullet strikes along her lower fuselage were obvious. As Banjo Flight turned hard left once the encounter was done, they watched the LA-7 pitch up, stall, and then spin to the ground like a falling leaf. There was no parachute.
The line of Korean ships split apart, some turning north, some climbing; two turned south into the path of Banjo Flight.
“They’re making this too fucking easy,” Sublette said as he maneuvered for a deflection shot on an LA-7 almost directly in front of him. He fired off a long burst.
But the kill wouldn’t be his; his rounds never found their mark. DeLuca had the better angle; with three short bursts, he sent the Korean ship tumbling to the ground.
When he’d tried to squeeze off a fourth burst, nothing happened. His guns had gone dry.
After that long burst, Sublette’s guns were dry, too.
The Koreans, less their two downed comrades, were scattered across the northern sky. Maybe they were regrouping for another attack.
Maybe not.
Checking his counter, Tommy saw he was down to forty-eight rounds remaining, just twelve rounds each in his four inboard guns. The outer two were already dry.
It was time to go home.
That second artillery battery—the one that had just escaped being pummeled from the air—continued to pour its fire onto the positions of the 26th RCT.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Captain Don Gerard, flying FAC ship Spectral One-Seven, could tell Montana Six—Colonel Miles—was angry, even though his voice over the radio remained controlled and professional. But the colonel had good reason to be angry: North Korean artillery was pounding 26th RCT in broad daylight and the USAF was doing nothing to stop it.
Gerard tried hard to keep his own frustration from his voice as he explained, “All attack ships are dry and returning to base. There’ll be no flights on station for approximately six-zero minutes.” He didn’t dare mention that one flight of F-51s—Trombone Flight—had decided to flee the threat posed by enemy aircraft while still fully armed to attack ground targets.
Jock knew that in another six-zero minutes of this pounding, there was a good chance his regimental combat team might suffer so much destruction—and so many casualties—that it might cease to exist as a combat-effective unit. The only thing that would save his men was how deep they’d dug themselves into the ground.
In the absence of aircraft to direct, Gerard turned his attention to acti
ng as aerial observer for 26th Regiment’s artillery. But that effort came up empty, too. The Korean artillery—SU-76 assault guns—had parked themselves just beyond the maximum range of the American batteries. Even though the SU-76 fired smaller shells—76 millimeter versus the American 105 and 155-millimeter rounds—they could shoot them farther. Smaller shells, delivered with accuracy and in sufficient quantity, killed you just as dead as larger ones. Even though the FAC had pinpointed the location of the Korean guns, the American artillery commander knew that attempting counter-battery fire was futile; the Korean guns were simply a mile out of range, and in the confines of the mountainous terrain, there was no way to position the American guns closer. Until friendly attack planes reappeared, the only hope was that the Korean guns would run out of ammo.
“They gotta have an OP on one of them hills to the west,” Patchett told Jock as they scanned the surrounding terrain with binoculars. “We knock that out and we take their eyes away, at least. Maybe keep those guns from doing too much damage.”
“Yeah,” Jock replied, “and it’s got to be high ground that they can’t see our artillery positions from.”
“How do you figure that, sir?”
“Because if they could adjust fire on our gun positions, they would’ve hit them first damn thing. As it is, they haven’t come anywhere near the artillery yet.”
“I see your point, sir,” Patchett said, “but I’m getting worried about that forty-millimeter buggy of ours in Third Battalion’s sector. I’m betting the gooks can see it plain as day. Dug in or not, they chipped some paint off it a coupla times already. Want to move it? Get it behind this hill until we need it?”
“Yeah, Top. Get on the horn and do it.”
Jock went back to studying the hills for the likely Korean OP. I need something, some clue, he told himself. A glint of sunlight off a lens…an antenna…or maybe somebody moving around in the open.
He ruled out the two closest hilltops, sitting like the breasts of a woman lying on her back, a little more than two miles away. His GIs had come to refer to them as The Tits. Officially, though, they were known as The Twins.
Those hills have line of sight on our artillery, for sure, so the OP’s not there.
He shifted his focus to the hill farther north, rising above the western outskirts of Taejon. The GIs called this one The Balcony. It was a mile farther from 26th RCT and its elevation was lower than The Twins.
It seemed a likely location, high enough to get a good view of the front side of 26th RCT’s position but little, if anything, behind it. Anything not concealed on that front side would be in plain sight of anyone with even cheap optical equipment. It had more trees on its sides and peak, too, allowing troops to hide on it far better than on its taller but more barren sisters.
Patchett hung up the field telephone. They held their breath as the M19—with its deadly twin 40-millimeter cannon—backed quickly out of its defile and raced for cover, because anything moving in plain sight was a choice target.
But the M19 made it safely to the backslope of the hill. The few rounds that impacted the position during its dash came nowhere near it.
“It’s that one,” Jock said. “The Balcony.”
“Yeah, I was coming around to that myself, sir,” Patchett replied. “And it’s even inside a li’l ol’ one-oh-five howitzer’s range. Give ’em a dose of their own medicine?”
“Affirmative, Top. Good thing we’ve got those hills registered in. Go straight to fire for effect.”
As Patchett called in the fire mission, Jock kept his binoculars fixed on that hilltop. At first, he thought he’d imagined it: a glint of sunlight reflecting off something.
But then it happened again. A glint came and went as if someone was playing with a mirror.
Patchett’s binoculars were back to his eyes now. Seeing the flashes, too, he told Jock, “You sure called that one, sir.”
From the call of shot, over to the fire for effect volley’s impact, that intermittent glint continued, flashing out an indecipherable message like an Aldis Lamp in the hands of a drunk.
When the smoke and dust of the explosions settled on The Balcony’s peak, they could see through the shattered trees the smoldering carcass of a small utility truck, a type used by the KPA.
“That son of a bitch had been there all along,” Patchett said. “Just couldn’t see him through them trees, except for them reflections he was dumb enough to keep making. Want to give him another volley?”
“No, let’s save it, Top. We’re going to need it.”
A few minutes went by without another Korean artillery round landing in 26th RCT’s position. Patchett said, “I reckon we shot their eyes out, sir.”
“Yeah. Let’s hope it stays that way for a while, Top.”
Jock checked his watch; there were four hours until sundown and the inevitable attack the night would bring.
Patchett asked, “You heard anything from ol’ Bubba, sir?”
“Not a word, Top.”
Then Patchett said, “You know, sir, I told him if he don’t come back with them tanks, he’d better not come back at all.” He gazed off into the distance, and then added, “Even though I was just pulling that big Yankee’s leg, I wish to hell I hadn’t said it now.”
*****
It had taken Sean Moon almost three hours to drive the thirty miles to the village of Yongdong along the Taejon-Taegu highway, where he was to meet up with 1st Cavalry Division. Supply convoys running to and from Taejon and the ROK units east of that city had clogged the highway; if he’d been driving anything larger than a jeep, he wouldn’t have been able to leapfrog the slow-moving vehicles. But he’d made it by late afternoon, knowing that if he hadn’t arrived at Yongdong until after dark, his chances of finding 10th Tank Battalion would’ve been little better than zero.
Asking directions from any American around the village, even officers and NCOs, had been an exercise in futility. Nobody seemed to know the location of any unit other than his own, and a number of lower-ranking enlisted men weren’t even too sure of that. By the time an MP sergeant had steered Sean toward 10th Tank’s bivouac, he had four of that unit’s lost and confused troopers hitching a ride with him. The only indication he’d arrived at the battalion’s area was the unit markings on the vehicles. The CP had to be the tent surrounded by all those jeeps with antennas; they were obviously command and staff vehicles.
He hadn’t taken two steps inside the CP when the voice of the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Roy Parker, boomed, “Well, holy shit! Master Sergeant Sean Moon! If you ain’t a sight for sore eyes. How the hell are you doing, Crunch?”
Sean winced when he heard the nickname Crunch. He’d hated it when it got hung on him in France back in 1944. During the Normandy breakout, he’d sometimes found it necessary to run his Sherman down trenches and roadside ditches full of German soldiers. Some smart-ass NCO thought it a fitting name.
He’d promptly put a stop to enlisted men calling him that, by his fists if necessary. Nobody had dared call him Crunch to his face in six years.
But I guess the colonel here is kinda swept up in the moment. We haven’t seen each other since Forty-Five, and he’d just made major then. I’ll just ask him real nice to knock it off if he fucking says it again.
As they shook hands in the middle of the tent, Colonel Parker announced to his staff, “I want you all to meet the finest fighting NCO in Patton’s Third Army. So what brings you here, Sergeant?”
Sean wasn’t sure if that question was meant to be funny or not. Not being in the mood for jokes, though, he asked, “You mean you don’t know, sir?”
Parker had never been much of a poker player, so the look of confusion on his face had to be genuine.
“Know what, Sergeant?”
“Your battalion has been detailed to Twenty-Sixth Regimental Combat Team, sir—my outfit—at Taejon. We need armor support in the worst way.”
“You mean you don’t have any tanks, Sergeant? How can that b
e?”
“We got two Chaffees left, sir. Never had more than a platoon to begin with.”
Shocked, Parker asked, “What the hell happened to them? Did they break down or…” His voice trailed off, not wanting to say the other possibility out loud.
“It’s mostly the or, Colonel,” Sean replied.
Parker said nothing, but he looked like a man grasping at straws, wanting desperately to believe the orders to join 26th RCT were anything but real. While he knew from hard experience that Sean was a champion bluffer, this wasn’t a poker game. Sergeant Moon was dead serious.
“Look, sir,” Sean said, “you and me have been in this army long enough to see plenty of fuckups like this. Now I know you need orders before you can roll, but I’m here to tell you what those orders are gonna be. We need to get this sorted out, because we gotta get rolling real damn soon. If we don’t, the 26th might not be there no more. I know the way to Taejon like the back of my hand, so I’m here to lead you there because the route’s pretty damn tricky in the dark.”
Much to Sean’s surprise, Colonel Parker issued a warning order to his commanders and staff on the spot, before he’d even confirmed his new orders with Division. “This is your lucky day, Sergeant Moon,” Parker said, “because we were fixing to move north a ways tonight, anyway. We might as well just follow you all the way to Taejon. We’re all fueled and loaded up. I just need the magic word from my boss.”
*****
It took almost three hours to get 10th Tank Battalion on the road to Taejon. An hour of that was confirming the order attaching the battalion to 26th RCT. Another hour was spent briefing the company-level leaders on the details of this new mission. The final hour was clearing the colossal traffic jam that developed on the Taejon-Taegu highway just north of Yongdong as the battalion column became ensnarled with a ROK convoy moving—Sean referred to it as fleeing—south toward Taegu. Unable—or unwilling—to understand the commands of the American MPs attempting to direct traffic, the ROKs refused to yield right-of-way until Colonel Parker ordered a tank platoon to force their lead vehicles off the road.
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