Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 3
“Quick…Hurry goddamn it. Hurry…That’s it, Ira…. Toss’em up.”
The climbing men instinctively formed a line to pass the grenades they were carrying to each other and on up to PFC Ira Smith of Kansas City. Ira stood just below the ridge line and under-handed them up to me with the pins still in; I pulled the pins and threw them as fast and as far as I could.
A steady stream of grenades reached out towards the Koreans in front of me and the depression beyond them. The roar of their explosions was continuous.
I didn’t throw all the grenades far enough to reach the men cowering in the depression. Some went short and fell among the wounded Koreans and the able-bodied men trying to hide among them. But in my desperation I got enough distance on half a dozen or so—they bounced and rolled into the depression where the rest of the Koreans were taking cover.
Dust and acrid smoke filled the area and slowly drifted down towards the road. Now the only refugees in sight were far off to the right, an elderly couple with straw hats. They were holding on to each other and hobbling down the track as fast as they could go.
It seemed as though everything was happening in slow motion and taking forever. In fact even most of the screaming by the wounded Koreans was all over in a couple of minutes.
But the grenades don’t immediately stop coming up. Got here just in time. I continued to catch and throw the grenades still being tossed up by the men below. I didn’t even feel it when a couple of them bounced off me. I picked them up and just kept pulling pins and throwing and throwing, even after the dust and smoke obscured everything in front of me. I must have thrown a couple of dozen altogether, maybe more.
“Gotta be sure. Gotta be sure. Gotta be sure,” I found myself saying as I threw them. It was sort of a crazy thing to say but, let’s face it, I was sort of crazy. I think it was what happened to Gomez that set me off.
He had been on his knees next to me trying to clear the jammed BAR when there was the sound of a splat, like you would hear if someone hit a watermelon with a baseball bat. Out of the corner of my eye, as I was putting another banana clip in the carbine, I saw Gomez drop face first straight down on the rocky ground. Shit. Shit. Shit.
Finally Ira and the guys down below ran out of grenades to toss up to me. At first, after the grenades stopped coming up, I kept desperately feeling around on the ground for more without even looking.
I didn’t stop until I somehow realized that there were no more grenades to pick up.
For a second there was a dusty and smoky silence—and then, as my ears cleared, I began to hear the agonized screaming that was coming from down the hill in front of me. That’s when I realized that I had a tremendous need to pee.
So I inched back behind the rocks and peed.
Why am I being so prissy? Damn. Poor bastard, his name tag said Gomez and he was our last BAR gunner. We didn’t know it at the time, of course, but it would be fifteen months before a graves registration team picked up his bones and the tattered rags of his uniform.
******
Charlie Company’s holes are still there along the ridge line where we’d dug them yesterday; and, wonder of wonders, so are the weapons and ammunition we abandoned. And so are the broken wooden ammo crates we had set up as distance markers when we carefully paced off the 500 yard, 1000 yard, and 1500 yard distances so we’d know when it would be okay to start shooting because the gooks had reached our kill zone.
Espe and Thomas are also right there where we left them, along with parts of two other guys, unknowns from another unit, who had briefly joined up with us during the retreat.
The two unknowns were totally unrecognizable as a result of a mortar round landing right between them. We couldn’t even find their dog tags when they got hit. All we’d been able to do was throw a few shovels of dirt on their body parts and stick a couple of rifles in the ground with helmets on them.
It was looking at them as the guys shoveled on the rocks and dirt that broke the lieutenant.
We gotta find out who those two guys are. That’s the thought that suddenly and somewhat disjointedly flashed into my mind. Then I turned and waved the four men cowering below to come on up.
“Good work, Ira, I yelled down to the man who had stood immediately below me and tossed the grenades up. Come on up but stay low.”
Damn, that was sort of fun.
Then I looked down at Gomez and the pool of blood around him. I should feel guilty because I made it and he didn’t. But I don’t feel guilty at all. To the contrary, it’s really exciting. I’m alive and most of my men are safe.
The men clambered up the slope and stood next to me. They just stood there using the outcropping for cover and looking at Gomez.
No one said a word until someone, I don’t know who, said “aw shit.”
There was still some calling and moaning out in front of us but it sort of tailed away and the smoke and dust drifted off. That’s when we were able to look around the edge of the rocks and see the North Koreans who hadn’t gotten away. There were a lot of them.
“Jesus.” … “Holy shit.” … “Must be fuckin hundreds of them.” … “Any left?” The comments and questions tumbled out.
I suddenly felt really exhausted and stumbled a bit as I tried to sit down.
I need to rest for a minute.
Chapter Four
We’re back on the ridge line. It’s a good position that looks down over a wide valley with farm land and a dirt road running through it in front of the ridge. It’s pretty much like the valley behind us, the one we’d rushed across to get back here. Beyond the road in front of us are higher hills covered by a mean looking rain cloud that is moving across the sky in front of them.
Off to the left a little beyond the close-in Koreans killed by the BAR and grenades are another smaller batch of bodies along the single strand of wire Charley Company put up two days earlier. I’d killed most of them when I was covering the company’s bug out this morning. It seemed like it was long ago in the distant past.
Thank God they began pulling back when I got that officer.
Everything is totally still except for the distant rising and falling rumble of guns up northwest under the clouds. The elderly refugee couple are long gone and the road is totally empty. All we can see that might be people are a few dots moving in the distance off to our right where there are even higher hills.
Wish I’d brought that pair of glasses the Colonel gave me when I came over here. I’d sure like to know who that is out there… we made it… Damn we made it. My guys are safe for a while.
Suddenly a cold chill caused the hair on my arms to prickle up. Where are the North Koreans who got away from the grenades and the gooks who drove us out of here in the first place? Did they really retreat? Are they gone? Is that possible?
Those are questions I’ll never be able to answer. But for some reason it stuck with me for days and days—long after it no longer mattered.
“Okay, listen up,” I shouted. “We’re staying here. The gooks think we’re here in force. They probably don’t even know we left.” I sure hope so.
“Ira, you run good so you get back to Sergeant Murphy fast as your feet can fly. Tell him to bring everyone back up here right now. Right fucking now. Tell him to bring the Jeep too and the glasses the colonel gave me.”
We’re gonna need that machine gun; maybe over by the rock, I think.
A few minutes later we watched as Ira moved over the terrace and down towards the dirt road they just crossed for the second time today. Suddenly we saw Ira stop. Then, hunching over as low as he could get and still run, he dashed back up the slope while all the time pointing down the valley running between us and the rest of the company.
“Trucks, Trucks” Ira was shouting as he scrambled back up to us and dove down next to the pile of rocks. He was so out of breath he couldn’t talk.
The men looked about wildly and so did I—as if somehow his shouted warning meant the North Koreans were all around us. We are really buggy and there’s no half way about it.
“How many trucks, Ira?” “Whose?” I asked with a shout.
The out-of-breath answer came immediately.
“Four....five… God I don’t know. Looks like a convoy. Sure don’t look like ours. Sweet Jesus, we’re cut off.”
Ira’s fear was contagious and we all began frantically looking up the little valley towards where Ira is pointing. We couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Where are they goddamn it?” I screamed at him.
“I saw them beyond that rise. Right there,” Ira said pointing—just as four ponderous trucks drive into sight about two miles down the road on the left. They were camouflaged with drab paint and have tree branches tied all over them to break up their silhouette. They are not friendlies.
Christ on a crutch.
“Down, everyone get the fuck down. Stay out of sight.”
Now what the hell are we going to do? And how the hell did they get there?
Five minutes later and our confusion became understandable. The dirt highway in front of us comes out of the northeast and zig zags back and forth as it moves south; sometimes going west and sometimes east as it wends its way southward through the mountain passes and down the mountain valleys.
After pulling the map out of the back of my sweaty shirt where I’d stashed it, I finally figured out that the trucks must have passed in front of us after we bugged out and then gone on up the valley in order to get around the ridge. Now, after going around the end of ridge they are coming back on the road behind us.
Maybe they took a wrong turn and got lost. I doubt it. They are more likely what they appear to be—an enemy convoy traveling the road that kept on going because it hadn’t run into any trouble. The convoy commander probably thought his own troops, the ones he is supposed to resupply or reinforce, are still somewhere out in front of him.
The road to our front curves around the ridge so now they’re coming in behind us and they don’t even know we’re here. I grabbed another quick look at the map.
Hmm. That’s got possibilities.
On the other hand, this place is crawling with trouble so if we do anything it’s got to be careful and fast.
Better we just wait and see how things shake out.
“Ira you stay right here. Stay low and watch the trucks. One way or another we’re gonna be in a fight real soon and we’re gonna need a lot more ammo than what we have now. So the rest of us are going down the hill and collect guns and ammunition from the dead gooks. We’ll have to pick up their guns too since their ammo’s not likely to fit ours.”
“So it’s guns, everyone go get their goddamn guns. Ammunition too. And their canteens. We need water.”
I watched as the men hurriedly spread and headed down towards the Korean casualties. Then I followed them down.
It was a terrible sight. The Koreans have been absolutely shredded by the grenades. At least one was still alive with his guts hanging out of a terrible stomach wound and the eyes of another with an obviously broken back are open and rapidly blinking.
I should have been merciful and shot them, but I couldn’t because it might have alerted the men in the trucks driving on the dirt road behind us.
Just about everyone else on the slope, and in the depression, was dead. Very dead, as in bits and pieces.
Probably threw too many grenades; couldn’t take any chances, could I?
******
We made trip after trip down to the North Koreans; first the new ones and then the ones I’d gotten earlier this morning. It took more than an hour. But by the time we’d policed up everything that might be useful we had a goodly stock of weapons and ammunition and enough water to last for a couple of days. Some of the wooden boxes from the North Korean supply column had grenades and there were even a couple with mortar rounds.
Too bad they weren’t carrying a mortar tube so we could use the rounds.
“Guns, go get more of their goddamn guns and ammunition.”
That’s what I kept saying all morning long.
Before we finish Ira comes running part way down the slope to where we are picking up the Korean weapons and shouts that the trucks have moved on up the valley. Best of all, they didn’t drop troops off that might come this way.
I immediately sent him hightailing it back across to get the company.
“Tell Murphy to double time the company back over here,” I said.
“And tell him we got our ammo back and a lot more from the gooks and he’s to bring everyone over right now. Tell him the gooks are gone and he’s to come at the double and bring the Jeep and the glasses the colonel gave me.”
The guys need to know the gooks are gone and we’ve got the ammo, or they might just creep over and get here too late. They probably saw the trucks and are pissing in their boots. They better damn well have not run again,
“And tell him I want you to stay over there to guide the Colonel’s reinforcements and supplies to us.”
If they ever come. Maybe he didn’t make it.
Ira nodded. Then he tightened the chin strap on his helmet and took off running clutching his carbine. He had an extra banana clip stuck in his belt.
I wanted to look at the map again. So I decide to carry another load of guns and ammunition to the top of the ridge and do just that.
“Check the gooks again for canteens, guys. We need water too.”
******
Murphy and the rest of the surviving Charlies come huffing and puffing up the incline from the terrace wall about thirty minutes later. Before the rest of the company arrived, all five of us had gone down to the Koreans once again and to make sure we gotten all their arms and ammo. This time we found two of the North Koreans badly wounded and obviously dying. They’d played possum while we were stripping them of their weapons and supplies.
Nothing we could do for the Koreans except a bit of mercy. So I shot them.
Ending the lives of people who are dying in terrible pain really hurts if they are your friends; but it’s still the merciful thing to do. But it sure as hell didn’t bother me to kill these guys—they got hurt because they were trying to kill my guys.
Chapter Five
It was already dusk by the time the reserve company from the 4th battalion and the Sherman reached the rocky farmland and started up to where they hope to find whatever is left of Charlie Company. They were all more than a little nervous.
Jimmer, the tank’s commander, made it clear to everyone, without ever saying so, that he was seriously pissed at his tank being ordered to go first in the coming darkness. He only stopped his stalling, and ordered the Sherman’s driver to get going, when Captain Symonds hoisted himself up on the tank and pointedly told him to get his ass in gear and move out.
Jimmer was from rural South Carolina and couldn’t wait to get away from his no-future little farm town. He’d gotten in on the tail end of the big war and decided being in the army, particularly overseas where the dollar is king, beat the hell out of spending his life sweating on a tractor and chopping cotton. He liked being a sergeant and he really liked being overseas and in command of a tank. The German girls treated him right and didn’t mind his blotchy skin and missing teeth.
Then, goddamn it, that motherfucking personnel sergeant got mad at me on account of his goddamn girlfriend and sent me to Korea just in time to land in the middle of a goddamn war.
After a while the sky cleared and the truck drivers and Jimmer could see by the light of the moon as they slowly moved through the field toward the top of the rise. But, before they could get there, Symonds ordered them to stop. He had his company sergeant, a master sergeant named Ruskin, go back along the little convoy and tell everyone to turn off their engines and “shut the fuck up.”
The men in the trucks quickly dismounted and spread out on the ground around them. They were green troops, but their sergeants were smart enough that no one was allowed to light up a smoke and give away their position.
Ruskin and the company sergeants were veterans of an earlier war. They were taking no chances, and rightly so. Symonds could hear nothing except the muffled whispers of his own men. Dead silence.
Then they heard someone running and a voice in the dark. “Hey you guys. Who are you?”
Everyone tensed up and a lot of safeties clicked off until Ruskin called back “and who the fuck are you?”
A few minutes later, after a brief conversation in the dark with the man who had come to act as their guide, Symonds ordered his men back aboard their trucks and the column again started slowly up the slope of the farm towards the unseen top of the rise. The Sherman’s engine and treads seem extraordinarily loud as they moved slowly upwards without lights except for the constantly flashing brake lights of the deuce and a halfs.
Got to take them off or break them the next time we stop, Symonds thinks to himself; Christ, with all the flashing lights and noise everyone within ten miles around is gonna know we’re here.
******
Ira rode with the captain on the Sherman and tried to point in the direction the convoy needed to go. It was seriously dark and they had to stop for a few minutes in the pitch blackness whenever a cloud blocked the moon. Somehow being in the dark was both scary and comforting.
The tank commander, someone called Jimmer something or other with a big southern accent, was afraid. He’s riding with only his head sticking out of the turret of the slowly moving Sherman and constantly raising his hand to shield his eyes, as if that will somehow help him see ahead in the dark.
Ira had told the Captain and Jimmer about the land being relatively smooth, being a farm and all. But it was dark, too damn dark when clouds are in front of the moon, and Jimmer was more afraid of putting his tank in a hole or ravine and getting it stuck than he is of any North Koreans who might be prowling around in the dark.
Fuck the infantry captain. He ain’t my boss. I don’t want to lose my stripes because I got this piece of shit stuck in a hole.
******
What really worried Ira and Symonds and everyone else about moving forward in the dark is that the moon will suddenly come out and they’ll find themselves in the middle of the whole goddamn North Korean army.
