Combat Ineffective

by William Peter Grasso

  “Damn right, Top. How’d you do it?”

  “Put those GIs on the ammo detail. They started crying that they’d take their dollar back and dig their own holes…anything not to haul ammo. But I told them a deal’s a deal, so pay up and start fetching. Don’t reckon we’ll be seeing much of those shenanigans again.”

  “Excellent. What’s next?”

  “Got all the artillery registration points along our stretch of the Naktong fired in, sir. It’ll be a simple shift to the bridges if them gooks try to come across.”

  “Very good. Are we absolutely sure the river’s not fordable anywhere along our front?”

  “Absolutely, sir. I put Corporal Potts and his recon squad on it. They confirmed it—that water’s too damn deep for men and vehicles.”

  “Potts is working out okay, then, Top?”

  “Affirmative, sir. He’s the best recon man we got in this regiment…besides me, of course. Kinda reminds me of that good ol’ Cajun boy we had with us back in the last war. Potts has all the right instincts for sniffing things out, just like ol’ Bogater Boudreau. Only darker. And Potts is from Loosiana, too. Don’t that beat all? I reckon it’s about time to hang another stripe on him.”

  A runner came into the CP and handed a message to Patchett. As he read it, Jock could see the anger building in his face. Without saying a word, he handed it to Jock.

  The message was a communiqué from 8th Army HQ, ordering all Negro troopers to be immediately reassigned to segregated battalions being formed at Pusan.

  “I’m a little confused, sir,” Patchett said. “I thought we done de-segregated the whole damn military back in Forty-Eight.”

  “Yeah, Top…that was the policy officially. But they never said it all had to be done right away.”

  “Right away, sir? We’re talking two fucking years here, ain’t we?” He threw up his hands and added, “I been thirty-two years in this man’s army, and if there’s one thing I learned for sure, it’s this: if you expect men to fight just because you asked ’em to, you better not keep changing the rules on ’em. A man’s gotta know where he stands, no matter what shade of skin he’s in. This one minute, we’re all one color—Army green—and then the next minute, we’re back to ol’ Jim Crow…that shit just ain’t gonna fly, sir. Them coloreds will never trust us again.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Top. But there’s something else I’m sure your thirty-two years have taught you: there isn’t a damn thing you or I can do about it right now.”

  “I’ll give you a real big amen to that, sir.”

  As Patchett headed out of the CP, he added, “Oh, by the way, sir, ol’ Bubba Moon’s a l’il bit put out with me. Turns out one of our new KATUSA is named Moon, too. I asked Bubba if they were kin. Just joking, of course…but he didn’t see no humor in it.”

  “I assume you smoothed it over, Top?”

  “Didn’t get the chance, sir. He high-tailed it down to Pusan to get us some more armor. Hitched a ride on that helicopter with Colonel Brand, in fact.”

  *****

  It was just after 1200 hours when Major Tommy Moon and Banjo Flight returned to K-9 at Pusan. They’d just flown their second mission of the day, another strike against the Taejon-Taegu railroad line, attacking trains resupplying the KPA forces arrayed against the Pusan perimeter. “Better we wipe out their logistics along the main route—the railroad—before it gets distributed to the trucks that’ll supply the individual divisions,” they were told at the pre-mission briefing. “As you can see, the Pusan Perimeter’s pretty big, so the more we can consolidate our interdiction efforts, the better off Eighth Army will be.”

  That seemed to be exactly what they’d been doing. They’d found six trains along a fifty-mile stretch of track leading to the perimeter and left each one in flames. “Kind of surprising to find so many of them moving in broad daylight,” Tommy said at the debrief. “Makes you think the KPA’s getting pretty desperate for their beans and bullets. Or maybe I should say rice and bullets.”

  As the debrief wrapped up, the squadron commander arrived with startling news. “Major Moon, you need to pack your bags. You’re going to Yokota.”

  “Tokyo, sir?” Jock asked. “What the hell for?”

  “Your jets should be arriving in the port of Yokohama as we speak, Moon. They’ve got to be unboxed, reassembled, and test flown. They need an experienced F-84 jockey to oversee all that. You sound like just the man for the job, so you’ve been volunteered.”

  “Shit. When do I leave, sir?”

  “Your flight’s in four hours, Major.”

  *****

  Four hours in combat would seem an eternity. But when you had only four hours to find your brother in the mayhem that was the five-thousand-square-mile Pusan Perimeter, it seemed like mere seconds. But Tommy had to try.

  Surprisingly, it took him only ten minutes to get through to 26th Regiment’s CP on the landline. They gave him some encouraging news: his brother Sean was actually at the port of Pusan, picking up tanks for 24th Division.

  The port was just a few miles from K-9, a quick drive in a jeep. He changed into khakis, packed his kit bag for the trip to Japan, and set out to locate Sean.

  It took less than an hour to find him, directing a team of GIs who were checking out tanks just unloaded from the ships.

  “I figured you was around here somewhere, Half,” Sean said as he wrapped his little brother in a bear hug. “But I ain’t had time to look for you yet. Just got here this morning, in fact. You look a lot better now than the last time I saw you, after that crash landing at Taejon.”

  “I feel a hell of a lot better, too, big brother. I don’t have much time myself, though. I’m going back to Japan to pick up some jets in a couple of hours.”

  “Jets, eh? You think that’s part of MacArthur’s big thing?”

  “What are you talking about, Sean? What big thing?”

  “You mean you flyboys ain’t heard? MacArthur’s got something cooking. Something real big. Nobody seems to know exactly what it is yet, though.”

  “This is all news to me, Sean.”

  “Maybe you’ll get the lowdown when you’re in Japan, Half. If you ask me, I’m betting we’re gonna drop the big one on the gooks.”

  “Are you talking about the atom bomb, Sean?”

  “Yeah, whaddya think I’m talking about?”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. There aren’t any targets concentrated enough to waste an atom bomb on in that whole damn country.”

  “Oh, pardon me, sir,” Sean replied, bowing irreverently. “Didn’t realize you got promoted to G2.”

  “Cut the shit, Sean. If MacArthur’s really got a big thing in the works, I’ll bet it has something to do with all this armor you’ve got here.”

  “Yeah, maybe, Half…but I’d hate to think that’s true because they’re sending us the wrong vehicles.” He pointed to a tank that had just been hoisted from a ship to the wharf. “See that monster? That’s an M26—a Pershing. You ever seen one before?”

  “Yeah, back in Europe, I think. But they all look pretty much alike from the air.”

  “Yeah, you told me that a long time ago. We didn’t use Pershings in Third Army when they showed up in late Forty-Four. Patton didn’t want ’em. From what I’ve seen of ’em since, he was right. They got problems, especially in a place like this.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, the ninety-millimeter gun’s real good and the armor’s the thickest we got, but the thing’s too damn wide for a lot of the roads around here. And as heavy as they are, they’re underpowered as hell. We’ll have a fuck of a time getting ’em up hills.”

  Tommy pointed to a line of Shermans across the wharf. “So you still like the Zippos better, Sean?”

  “They may be old as hell now, but at least we know what we got with a Sherman. Won’t be too many surprises. They got half a chance against a T-34…as long as you get the first good shot. Hey, you hear anything from Mom and Pop lately?”

&
nbsp; Tommy shook his head. “I haven’t gotten a stitch of mail since I’ve been in this damn country. I guess that part of the admin chain isn’t up to speed yet.”

  “So you ain’t heard nothing from that French girlfriend of yours, neither?”

  “Hey, Sylvie’s an American citizen now. Works for Uncle Sam, too.”

  “Yeah, I know that, Half. But what’s she been doing for you lately?”

  “Not a whole lot, Sean. She’s been posted to Vietnam the last few months.”

  “Figures,” Sean replied. “That’s Frenchy territory, right? She’ll fit right in.”

  Tommy had no doubt that’s why the CIA had sent her there. The agency couldn’t ask for a better liaison with the French.

  Sean continued, “That ain’t too far from here, right? You got a plane…why don’t you pop in and say hi?”

  “It’s over two thousand miles, Sean.”

  “So what? You ain’t walking it.”

  “You’ve got a point, big brother. Believe me, if the opportunity presents itself, I’ll take advantage of it.”

  “Love’ll find a way, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Something like that, my aching ass, Half. You been in love with that tomato for the last six years.” A devilish smile crossed his face as he added, “Still ain’t figured out what a split-tail commando like her sees in a choirboy like you, though.”

  “I guess European women just know quality when they see it, Sean.”

  “You are so fulla shit, Half.”

  The brothers talked about everything under the sun for another hour, neither wanting their time together to end. But the clock kept its relentless progress toward the departure of Tommy’s flight to Tokyo.

  As they said goodbye, Tommy said, “You don’t really believe all that shit about dropping the A-bomb, do you, Sean?”

  He just shrugged. “Why not? Nothing about this war makes a lot of sense. The way I see it, anything’s possible. I ain’t alone thinking like that, neither…and you can take that to the bank, brother.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  As darkness fell over that first night on the perimeter, the music began. A symphony was blaring from loudspeakers on the far bank of the Naktong, drifting across its waters toward the men of 26th Regiment. Some might have considered it beautiful if it hadn’t seemed so eerily out of place.

  “What on God’s green Earth do you make of that, sir?” Patchett asked Jock. “This ain’t the evening’s entertainment, is it?”

  “I doubt it, Top. Maybe the KPA are using it to signal instructions to their units like they do with those damn whistles. Or maybe they’re trying to use it to mask some other noise they’re making.”

  “Yeah,” Patchett said, “like the noise of vehicles moving up to the far bank.”

  “Who’s leading the recon teams across the river now that Potts is gone, Top?”

  “A sergeant named Karpinski, sir. He’s the best I could come up with on short notice.”

  “What’s he telling us?”

  “Not a damn thing yet. I reckon he’ll get real talkative, though, if vehicles do start moving toward the river.”

  Jock said, “I just hope his guys can hear anything at all over that damn music. It must be pretty loud on the other side. I’d hate for them to get jumped because they couldn’t hear the gooks coming. They did take some KATUSA with them as translators, right?”

  “Negative, sir, and I’m real pissed off about it, too. I didn’t find out until after they left, but Karpinski had hisself a fit when he found some of them gooks chowing down on some roast dog. We GIs like our dogs, you know, sir? Shit like that ain’t making it any easier to work with them Koreans. Maybe we oughta outlaw the consumption of canines?”

  “Yeah, Top, I’ll get the doc on it. That way, we can say we’re doing it for hygienic reasons.” He paused and then added, “But you’re right. He should’ve taken a KATUSA or two with him, anyway, dammit.”

  *****

  The music stopped abruptly at 2345 hours. Within seconds, automatic weapons fire erupted in 2nd Battalion’s area on the regiment’s left flank. As Jock drove toward a sky filled with tracers and the flashes of explosions, he could hear that battalion’s artillery FO calling in a fire mission over the radio.

  Don’t tell me they’re shooting an FPF, Jock thought as he fumbled for his map. But the location of the fire mission’s target—left two hundred from Registration Point George—plotted on the river itself, a narrow but unfordable stretch of water nowhere near a bridge. And it wasn’t an FPF; the target description was vehicles in the open.

  That puzzled him: The North Koreans can’t possibly be crossing the river there…or are they?

  When Jock reached 2nd Battalion’s CP, he found the battalion commander—Major Harper—in a whirlwind of activity, a commo handset pressed to each ear. Harper was a study in controlled fury, not letting his anger with being taken by surprise impede his ability to deal with it.

  “They’re driving gun trucks right across the goddamn river, sir,” Harper told Jock. “All our intel says the river’s not fordable. Something’s wrong somewhere. At least the artillery seems to be stopping any more from coming over.”

  “Where are they hitting you, exactly?” Jock asked.

  Harper dropped one of the handsets and pointed to an arc on the map. “They’re here, sir, in Easy Company’s position. About half a dozen of those gun trucks busted in while that fucking music was still playing and started spraying machine gun fire all over the place. My guys couldn’t hear the trucks until they were right on top of them. It looks like we got chewed up pretty bad for a minute or so, but then we got the twin forties zeroed in on them. Blew half those trucks to kingdom come right away. We’re trying to track down and kill the rest before they can get behind us. Thank God we haven’t seen any gook tanks yet.”

  Jock asked, “What’s your reserve company, and where is it?”

  “That’s How Company, sir.” Harper pointed to the map again, adding, “They’re on Topeka Trail, moving to block anything trying to get behind us. They’ve got a quad fifty with them. That should cut the KPA trucks to ribbons. I’ve told them to stay on the east side of the trail so maybe I won’t have my companies engaging each other by accident.”

  “Good plan,” Jock said. “I’m going down to the river to try and figure out how the hell they got across. If they did it here, they can do it again someplace else.”

  “I know how it happened, sir,” Harper replied. “Our recon guys didn’t do a very good job scouting the river. The intel they provided was for shit.”

  If that was true, it was a condemnation hurled at Corporal Potts, the man who’d led the recon effort and was now abruptly gone from the 26th, reassigned to a colored battalion.

  And if it was true, it would be the first time Jock could ever recall Patchett’s assessment of a soldier’s abilities to be in error.

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions, Major. The night plays tricks on all of us.”

  “I know, sir,” Harper replied. “But are you sure you want to be going down to the river right now? My men are really on edge. Walking around in the dark sounds like a great way to get the wrong guy shot.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, Major. Just swear to me that all your guys know the password.”

  *****

  Jock figured he was halfway to the river when he heard the whoosh of a rocket. He never heard the subsequent explosion that knocked him and his RTO off their feet. They landed in a fighting hole occupied by two GIs and a .30-caliber machine gun. The men might not have known Jock’s name, but they had no trouble identifying the silver eagle on his collar in the dazzling light of the fire now blazing about thirty yards to their left.

  “Hell of a way to drop in, Colonel,” one of the men said. “Are you guys hit?”

  “No, we’re okay,” Jock replied, “and sorry about that entrance, but can you tell me what the hell just happened? I heard a rocket, and tha
t’s all she wrote.”

  “A bazooka beat us to it and wiped out one of those gook gun trucks, sir. Even with all this racket going on, we could hear that truck coming. Have a look for yourself.”

  Peering over the edge of the hole, Jock could see the vehicle, aflame in a pool of burning gasoline. The silhouettes of several heavy machine guns mounted on the truck’s bed were plainly visible. They all looked like Russian weapons.

  “Keep an eye on that truck, men,” Jock said as he dropped back into the hole. “The ammo from those machine guns on its bed will probably start cooking off pretty soon.”

  Then he began to crawl out of the hole. His RTO—a PFC named Baum—was right behind him.

  The machine gunner asked, “Where the hell are you guys going, sir? You just said it ain’t safe out there.”

  “We’ve got more important business someplace else, I’m afraid. Thanks just the same for the hospitality.”

  “Can I ask you one thing before you go, Colonel?”

  “Sure, but make it quick.”

  “You are going to get us out of here, right, sir?” He asked it with all the youthful sincerity of a child seeking reassurance from a parent. In the gunner’s voice, Jock could hear his five-year-old boy asking that same question.

  “I’m doing my damnedest, son.”

  Reaching the bunkers overlooking the river, Jock exchanged challenge and password with a jumpy lieutenant who kept shining a flashlight in their faces.

  Jock said, “Point that light at me one more time, young man, and you’ll be prying it out of your ass. Now tell me what the hell’s going on here.”

  Before the lieutenant could say a word, a flare arced across the river, illuminating for a few seconds the strange scene beneath it: a tank, its turret askew at a crazy angle, was sitting in the middle of the river as if walking on water. Only the lower half of her road wheels were submerged.

  “I believe that tank took a direct hit from the artillery, sir,” the lieutenant said. “But how could she be sitting up there like that? We watched one of her crewmen struggle onto her foredeck and jump over the side. He went down like a rock, like the water was over his head. We never even got a chance to shoot at him.”