Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 5
Big Joe Dombrowski, Charlie Company’s little medic with the strange raspy voice and profane sense of humor, and the three Easy Company medics, are working down around the aid station tent they’ve set up below the rock pile. They try to dig into the ground but, like everywhere else on the hill, it’s too damn rocky to dig out after the first two or three feet. So as best they can they pile up sand bags and a rock and dirt wall around the tent. It might keep shell fragments away from the wounded.
Before they started digging in the aid station, Big Joe and the three Easy Company medics dug their own holes and each loaded a couple of the captured North Korean weapons. A Red Cross armband doesn’t mean much out here.
Two hours after Easy Company arrived I could sort of relax as we wait. The men are basically as ready as Symonds and I can get them. We just don’t know how soon or how tough the fight is going to be. Until then we’ll keep digging.
We also didn’t know that Brigade has serious problems of its own and doesn’t have much of anything on my wish list of supplies and ordinance except some unpurified water it is drawing out of a little creek. We’re on our own.
******
Up and down I walk all morning, constantly checking everyone’s positions. Some of the guys are really frightened.
It's not surprising that the guys are worried; I’m more than a little spooked myself and trying hard not to show it. Overall, though, to my immense surprise, I’m enjoying this.
Every so often the wind changes and the smell of the dead North Koreans wafts up to us. It’s already seriously bad and getting worse. Maybe I ought to send some of the guys down to throw dirt on them. But then I decide the smelly bodies might be useful to discourage attackers and just leave them where they fell.
I figured it might be hard to be enthusiastic about moving forward to attack when you have to crawl over the bloated and smelly bodies of your friends and neighbors who already tried.
I was carrying one of the North Korean weapons and had a carbine slung on my back as I again went from hole to hole talking to the guys and making sure they have enough water and ammo and know where to pee and poop. I keep telling them things look good and that we’ll be okay, and they should let me know if they need anything.
Everything is really casual. They just need to know that someone actually cares about them and will try to help if they need it.
Whenever the men had North Korean weapons, and just about everyone had a couple, I had them show me how they work and load. To my surprise at least half the guys didn’t have a clue and had to be shown how to load the damn things and take the safety off. It’s really simple. These are damn fine weapons.
The North Korean stuff turned out to be a lot easier to use than our M1s and carbines. Then I got the idea of having each of the guys show me they know how to use their new weapons by firing a couple of rounds at the dead gooks below us.
Hopefully it will get them in the habit of shooting live ones.
By about my third trip along the line the guys are all addressing me as “Guns” and offering me smokes from their ration packs, which I turn down because I don’t smoke. I knew the men were settling in and getting more relaxed when they begin asking stupid questions.
“Hey Guns when we gonna get mail?”
Mail? Christ on a crutch. I’d settle for more ammunition and a chance for us to get out of here in one piece.
I just smiled and told them to write their congressmen and let me know if they found any cans of peaches in their C-rations—I’m willing to trade.
At every hole I told the guys it’s either them or us and that it is going to be a hell of a lot tougher for the gooks to climb the open slope in front of us than it is going to be for us to sit up here under cover and shoot them. I said that the bad guys having to climb up here to get us explains why it had been so easy for just a few of us to get all the gooks we’ve already killed.
I also tell them over and over again that everything will be all right so long as each guy shoots the gooks coming towards his hole and remembers to aim low, at their balls and belt buckles—because they’ll be below us and everyone shoots high when they are shooting downhill. I knew that from hunting for food in Alaska. I always end by reminding the guys to give me a shout if they need anything.
It’s probably just my nerves but I’m starting to get seriously worried that a lot of the guys will stay huddled in their holes when the gooks attack. So I tell Ira to take a break and walk along the line to pass the word “confidentially” that everyone has got to shoot gooks if we are to save ourselves—and that’s why the sergeants and I will be going along the line shooting anyone who isn’t doing the firing necessary to save his buddies.
They better believe it because I’ll sure as hell do it if that’s what it takes to keep us from being overrun and getting our asses killed.
Being worried that not everyone will be up and shooting is quite realistic. From what I had seen so far, it looks like less than half of our guys actually tried to shoot to kill. The rest just tried to stay down out of sight or, if they shoot, they shoot up in the air because they’re too low in their holes, or they see the gooks and deliberately miss because of some personal thing, maybe religion or something, about not killing.
Chapter Seven
A couple of hours later, right after noon, the missing Sherman and two more trucks came over the rise behind us and grind their way up to the terrace wall. A Jeep is leading the way. One of the trucks, thank God, is full of five gallon water cans and, according to the corporal driving it, there are more thirty caliber machine guns and a couple more of the old bazookas in the other truck.
Still no mortars.
The new arrivals come up as far as they can and then park next to the two three-quarter ton weapons carriers and the colonel’s radio Jeep at the stone terrace wall below the rock pile. The three-quarter tons and the Jeep won’t have much shelter except for the low rock wall if the gooks use mortars; but that’s all we’ve got so the wall will have to do. They’ll all be used to evacuate our dead and wounded if it becomes necessary.
Unless I can figure out how to get the Jeep and its machine gun all the way up here.
The trucks, both deuce and a halfs, were quickly unloaded and sent back for more supplies. I send what’s left of the Charlie troops down to unload them because most of the Easy Company guys are still digging in. And Jimmer, who’d seen the new Sherman coming, showed up and climbed on to ride with its commander to show him the position we’ve prepared for it at the end of our little line of scared shitless troops.
Jimmer and the sergeant commanding the new Sherman were waving their arms and talking heatedly as it lurched forward leaving a big puff of black smoke that had everyone standing behind it choking and coughing.
The second Sherman is exactly what we need at the other end of the line. It started out with Symonds's convoy but had engine trouble and had to stop for some kind of minor repair. But we knew it was coming so before it got here the Easy Company troops on that end of the line dug out, as much as possible, a hole to get its hull down a bit lower behind the ridge line. Just not low enough as it turned out.
The Jeep was driven by a Captain Hurlburt, a big shambling guy from Oklahoma. “Vern,” he said with a smile and handshake as he introduced himself. “Heard you might be thirsty so I brung you some water canteens.”
Vern said General Talley sent him to take a look and get a fast briefing about our situation. So Symonds gave him a quick tour while I supervised the unloading of the trucks and decided where everything was to go. Later, Symonds grinned when he told me Hurlburt threw up when he went down to take some pictures of all the North Koreans I killed.
They’re starting to really smell. We’ll have to do something about that if we’re gonna stay here much longer.
Hurlburt didn’t know anything about the trucks we’d sent back to get more supplies. Unfortunately what he does know is that the ROKs, our Republic of Korea allies, have been overrun by the gooks and are being pushed back everywhere. We’ve got to hold this ridge as long as possible.
Which will be about ten minutes if they hit us with tanks and the Shermans don’t take them out.
******
Symonds has a pair of good German binoculars, much better than the pair General Talley gave me. He says they are navy ships’ glasses he got in Germany right at the end of the big war and they cost him six packs of cigarettes. Just as Hurlburt and the trucks began pulling out, Symonds took another look out front, and promptly shouted out that he can see dust and what looks like a big bunch of troops about five miles out in front of us—and they seem to be coming this way, but no tanks or vehicles.
No tanks? If that’s true it’s the best news I’ve heard all day.
I borrowed Symonds’s binoculars and looked for myself. I don’t see any tanks or vehicles either. But from all that dust it sure looks like there are a lot people out there and they seem to be headed this way. Maybe not.
Unfortunately they were a lot closer when I looked again a few minutes later.
It figures. If the map is right they’ve got to have this ridge to keep the road open.
Then Symonds and I both made yet another run down the line to visit all the positions and tell the men to get ready. We ate C-rations as we moved along the line and tried to be reassuring. The men could see the big mass of approaching North Korean troops and were once again frantically digging their holes deeper and filling more sand bags.
When push comes to shove there was no way to tell who was going to hide and who was going to fight. But Ira must have gotten around before me—because an amazing number of guys assured me they would be shooting gooks and understood why it was necessary if we were to ever get back home in one piece. That’s the understatement of the day.
The sergeant commanding the new Sherman has a bunch of sand bags leaning against the front of his tank. He thinks they’ll absorb enough of an anti-tank shot that the Sherman’s front armor will hold even if the gooks have T-34s. He says that’s what he learned in tanker school so he and his crew and the nearby Easy Company squads are filling sandbags to beat hell and piling them up around the tank.
Hope to God he’s right because I’ve got an idea.
******
The two trucks which came with Captain Hurlburt dumped their loads and left in a hurry. Their drivers were so spooked about being up here on the line that they actually helped to unload them.
If you call throwing stuff off a truck unloading.
The trucks brought us mostly water and rations but, in addition to a couple of machine guns, we also got another one of the army’s new 105mm recoilless rifles and a couple more of those puny World War Two bazookas, along with about a dozen more rounds marked “armor piercing.” Got some medical supplies and plasma too. And a couple more sacks of sand bags and a big cardboard box of woolen long johns.
Jimmer grabbed one of the sand bag sacks for the tanks; I sent the other sack to Murphy and told him to walk the line again and pass them out and make sure they are used to protect the holes from attacks from both the front and the rear. I told him to have the men put two bags at the rear of each hole with a gap of a few inches so a rifle barrel could fit through and fire to our rear.
As it turned out, it was a damn good thing I did have them put the bags at the rear too.
Rumors spread through the men that the old WWII bazookas are useless peashooters that bounce off T-34s. Several of the men asked me if it’s true. I tell them that there was no problem, that they work real good if you use them to hit a tank on its side where the armor is thinner.
Do I know that’s true? Hell no. But that’s what Jimmer the tank commander told me. He was wrong and we lost a couple of guys proving it. They’re totally fucking useless against Russian-made tanks, even the old ones.
******
There’s a lot of movement out in front of us now and Symonds sent one of his guys to tell me that now he sees some tanks. So it looks like we’re about to find out about the bazookas. I gave one of them to Murphy and the other four to Symonds and the three Easy company lieutenants.
I kept one of the recoilless rifle for myself and sent the other up to Symonds for Ruskin to use. Ira did real good tossing me the grenades and guiding Symonds’s company to us so he’s going to be my loader on the recoilless. Right now he is digging his heart out making our hole deeper. If we get out of this he deserves some stripes.
The guys are now openly calling me “Guns” and “Boss.” I think they’re confused about my rank. I sure as hell am.
There’s now a lot of dust out front and it’s clearly heading this way. So it’s about time to call home and see if we can scare up some artillery or air support. I started to amble over to Symonds's Jeep but turned around and came back before I even got there when he pointed at the phone and shook his head in disgust.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t sound like there’s much hope—a few minutes later Symonds’s radioman was on the Jeep radio and the dumb son of a bitch just scared the shit out of me and the troops by shouting over to Symonds that it sounded like everyone in Korea was screaming for air and artillery support and we might not get any.
The bastards really caught us with our pants down. Hell, they caught us without any pants on at all.
I decided to go with a couple of the ugly North Korean assault rifles—but I’m keeping my carbine and banana clips just in case.
******
Sporadic mortar rounds started landing about thirty minutes ago. One every minute or so. Probably just one tube. They were not very accurate. Even so, they did manage to drop a round close to an Easy Company fox hole at the far end of the line. Two guys got shaken up real good. One of them out for sure with a really serious concussion. He keeps trying to stand up and then his eyes roll around and he falls down.
After a quick discussion with “Big Joe,” Charlie’s little medic with the big raspy voice, he reconfirmed where the wounded were going to be stashed; the Easy Company’s medics have him lying down in the back of one of the trucks.
Joe told me that’s where he wants to stash the wounded so they’ll be already loaded if we have to pull out in a hurry.
It wasn’t easy helping our first casualty. Big Joe finally gave him a couple of shots of morphine to calm him down. Then he tied his feet together with surgical gauze so he’ll stop trying to get up and move about. Big Joe says he thinks the poor guy may have a fractured skull and needs to get to a surgical unit as soon as possible. Damn.
About thirty minutes later Symonds ran over to my hole for a visit. I was trying to nap so I could stay awake if the gooks attack tonight, but he was worried and needed to talk. So I sent Ira to check the line between mortar rounds and invited Symonds to jump in and share a can of C-ration peaches.
Symonds rambled a bit about how he got to Germany after the shooting stopped, and that no one ever shot at him before and it is making him nervous. I said “join the club” and told him to pass the word that the mortars are no big deal, that the gooks are just trying to keep us from digging in while their infantry moves up to where we can waste them.
Of course that’s all bullshit about them trying to keep us from digging in. The bastards are trying to kill us. Their mortar guys are either just lousy shots or, more likely, are saving their rounds for when they make their push. Or maybe they can’t see us yet and aren’t sure where we are.
I told Symonds he should tell the men the gooks waited too long, that we’re already dug in and we’re gonna be okay because they’re the ones who are going to get chopped. But then I told him to forget it. I’ll go tell the men myself. His job, I tell him, is to stay in my hole with Ira and mind the recoilless rifle until I get back.
He’s too damn nervous. He’ll spook the men.
So I crapped in a c-ration can, tossed it as far out in front of our positions as I could, and then started going along the line to visit the men once again. They seemed pleased by my visit, desperate to know that someone cares about them. I didn’t tell them we were still not having any luck getting artillery or air support coming our way. Our chances of getting support aren’t looking up. It’s a good thing we got all that ammo from the gooks and the last minute resupply and second tank from brigade.
But hell, with all our ammo, the two Shermans, and the Korean weapons, we just might be able to pull this off, even if we don’t get any air or artillery support.
******
We can see the North Koreans out in front of us. There appeared to be thousands of them and they were in plain sight, acting like they don’t give a shit whether we see them or not. Jesus. Look at them. They know we’re up here and they’re forming up out there like they were going to hold a goddamn parade.
Shit. They’re about four miles out. And we don’t even have a mortar to tickle them with when they start moving this way.
On the other hand, I don’t think they can see exactly where we are. I damn well hope they can’t. Our guys are dug in pretty good and Symonds and I must have laid down a hundred times to make sure our holes are just below the edge of the ridge where they can’t be seen by anyone climbing the ridge.
What we’ve done is a little sneaky—shallow firing trenches are dug out in front of each of the two man holes so the men can hustle up on their bellies and shoot down the slope in front of them. They’re about thirty inches deep and just wide enough for two men, side by side, to load and fire.
My idea is simple. We’ll stay huddled down in our holes until the gooks’ assault bombardment quits. Then we’ll lean or crawl up into our shallow two-man firing trenches when their infantry gets within range. If I’ve figured it right, each man will have a clear line of fire down the slope and still only expose a few inches of himself towards the on-coming gooks. Christ I hope so.
The beauty of the plan is that if the gooks get in behind us we can drop back into our fox holes and shoot in the other direction. Which, since there are so many of them, is sure as hell going to happen; we don’t have enough troops to cover the whole ridge. I figure that’s likely to be the case since we only have about two hundred men on the line with another dozen or so bent around at each end to protect the tanks and our flanks.
