Soldiers and Marines Saga, page 7
The General, of course, is MacArthur.
Talley couldn’t help himself—he got royally pissed.
“That may be the view in the rarefied air of Tokyo, Colonel. But it’s more than a little naive and you better drop that bullshit in a hurry. Here in the real world those are your officers and you’re goddamn lucky to have them, the one you’re complaining about in particular.”
This guy is really a pompous ass and therefore, more than likely a piss poor commander. I’m going to have to watch him closely.
******
What was left of our guys and the ROKs had retreated almost to the Pusan air field by the time I got back to the division three weeks later. When the plane landed, a couple of MPs in class A uniforms and shiny stainless steel helmets asked for my orders and tried to put me on a truck with everyone else. They’re headed to a replacement center.
But I was anxious to get back to Charlie Company so I told them I was a courier with an important message from MacArthur’s headquarters that I had been ordered by General Davis to personally hand to General Talley. So one of the MPs reluctantly calls Division to get approval and, to my surprise he got it. They steered me to a Jeep going that way and off I went. Somewhere there’s got to be a General Davis.
The MP manning the headquarters door gave me a snappy salute, love those bars, and sent me down a dingy concrete block hallway to a room with a handwritten sign with General Talley’s name on it taped up next to the doorway. I tried not to limp.
My welcome was almost embarrassing. General Talley himself came barreling out of the back room with a smile on his face to shake my hand. And he laughed when I admitted how I had gotten past the MPs at the airfield. Then he took me around to meet some of his staff.
As I was shaking a few hands, he mentioned the medals and told everyone that we may have been pushed back “but it sure as hell wasn’t Captain Roberts’ fault.” Stuff like that. I ate it up with a shit-eating grin on my face.
Jeez it’s nice to be recognized.
Afterwards the general walked with me to the officers mess and we stood at a makeshift table, a plywood plank on a couple of sawhorses, to enjoy a cup of coffee and a Spam and mayonnaise sandwich. I was so hungry I ate two.
While we munched on our food, I filled him in as best I could about the Korean attack and getting wounded. He said a couple of medals had already come through and the paperwork was being processed at MacArthur’s headquarters for a third and a couple of purple hearts. More medals. All I could think to say was thank you and hope he knows I mean it.
His response is terse and to the point.
“Don’t thank me. You earned every damn one of them.”
While we were standing there and eating, General Talley told me that if the radio intercepts and prisoner interrogations are accurate, and he thinks they are, since he had visited the ridge and seen the Korean casualties for himself, our 220 or so guys had virtually destroyed what was left of the 4006th North Korean infantry division. Their infantry divisions are smaller than ours, General Talley told me, about nine thousand men at full strength, but it was a hell of a defeat for them. Stopped them cold, he told me. At least temporarily.
Even better, according to General Talley, it took the North Koreans three days to get more troops to that part of the line and by then we had successfully broken off contact and retreated towards Taegu, and then to our current lines.
Our current lines, according to General Talley, are shorter and a lot more defensible. They are also, he says, holding firmly after some initial scares. The Marines, it seems, have been magnificent at running around and filling the perimeter gaps.
As we talked I increasingly got the impression General Talley thought the North Koreans were running out of steam, and that we’ll be counter-attacking and trying to retake Seoul—as soon as enough tanks and reinforcements arrive from Japan and the States.
What I didn’t know is that most of them will land at Inchon to cut off the Koreans and that MacArthur will disobey the President’s orders and bring the Chinese into the war by sending our troops north to the Chinese border.
What really interested General Talley was my comment that the North Korean tanks had quickly withdrawn as soon as we knocked a couple out. He obviously hadn’t heard that and quizzed me closely about it, particularly when I suggested it might mean that the North Koreans have fewer tanks than we think and are trying to save them.
What also piqued his interest is when I suggested that the North Koreans might be parading the tanks they have to encourage our men to bug out but leave the actual fighting to the mass assaults of their infantry. Had I known that they would not really commit all their tanks, I said, I would have asked for more machine guns and fewer of the useless old bazookas.
Afterwards, when I had time to think about it a little more, I realized that it would have been stupid to ask for fewer of the old bazookas—Christ, they came at us with five T-34s and only two turned back. We didn’t use the bazookas but we damn well might have needed them.
Then General Talley introduced me to my new battalion commander, an immaculately turned out lieutenant colonel who came into the mess while we were talking. He was standing and eating at another door plank table and deep in conversation with several majors who were listening intently and nodding their heads. They all jumped to attention as Talley and I walked up.
“Pettyjohn, this is Captain Roberts, Charlie Company’s CO, he’ll ride out to your battalion with you.” Then a lieutenant hurried into the room waving some papers at him.
Over his shoulder on the way out the general gave me a little smile and says, “take care of yourself, Guns.” I nodded and said “Thank you, sir.” I wonder where he heard about my new nickname?
Pettyjohn gave me a look of disdain after General Talley walked away and then, with a rather dismissive wave towards the door, said “wait outside Roberts” and turned back to his conversation with the majors.
******
The Jeep ride out to battalion was both interesting and worrisome. Pettyjohn immediately asked me how it is the General knows me. He was clearly surprised when he heard I’m newly commissioned and don’t have a clue as to where the battalion’s officers had gone to school.
How would I know? I never met any of them.
All the way to the battalion Pettyjohn talked nonstop about all the senior officers he knows at MacArthur’s headquarters and all the important jobs he’s held since he graduated from the academy “just before the war.” The more he spoke the more it became increasingly obvious that the Third Battalion is his first command and this is his first time in combat—and he’s not looking forward to it.
Uh oh. It sounds like he’s here more to get his promotion ticket punched than to lead his men and take care of them. I’d heard a lot about such people when everyone was bitching at the Tokyo hospital, but I’d never met one before.
The Third battalion was in tents out past the airport. I didn’t know anyone at battalion headquarters. That was no surprise—I’d only visited the battalion HQ twice and that was when I reported in as a green private in the far distant past—a couple of months ago. In any event, as soon as we arrived the battalion staff began falling all over themselves reporting to Pettyjohn. No one paid any attention when I headed off to look for Charlie Company.
Sure enough. There was a hand lettered “Charlie Company” sign stuck up on the front of a squad tent. A corporal typing away looked up quizzically as I entered. Then he and a sergeant I’d never seen before jumped up to attention when they saw the bars.
“I’m Roberts,” I said. “How you guys doin?”
After they introduced themselves, I sent the sergeant, Adams according to the name on his fatigues, bustling off to call a meeting of the company command group.
******
A couple of second lieutenants had already arrived and had their hands shaken when Murphy shoved back the tent flaps behind them and came bounding in with a big grin and his unforgettable West Virginia mountain drawl.
“God damn Guns, yer back. I don’ hardly believe it.” We enthusiastically shook hands.
Damn it’s good to see a familiar face. It feels like I’ve come home.
Then a couple of more second lieutenants come in and a first lieutenant I sort of recognized, but couldn’t place, by the name of Jim Hart. Turns out Hart had been one of Symonds’ lieutenants and is senior to the others. He’d been commissioned right at the end of the big war and called back to duty for Korea; he’s from Dallas, Texas and as the senior lieutenant he’ll be Charlie's exec.
Then there was a whole lot of shouting and commotion outside. It was what was left of the whole damn company and for some reason they were shouting and yelling and raising a ruckus. I poked my head out of the tent and grinned, and then sort of teared up and flapped my hand up and down.
Well hell, now what will the guys think of me?
When the hullabaloo finally settled down and I’d shaken everyone’s hand, Hart and Murphy and I went back in the orderly room tent. I wanted to know who was left of the guys who had been up on the ridge with us and what happened to the others.
Hart told me that Symonds had been hit real bad and evacuated—“we think he made it but we haven’t heard a word.” Out of Easy’s original 141 men on the ridge there had been 19 KIA and 42 WIA serious enough to be evacuated, mostly at the far right end of the line when the Sherman blew. According to Hart, who had been commanding Easy Company’s first platoon, another old first lieutenant named Carol Jessup, who I barely remember meeting, has taken Symonds’ place as CO. The word is that he will be bumped up to captain any day now.
Easy and the Fourth battalion, Hart said, were already back on the line a couple of miles up the road. He didn’t think Easy had received any replacements other than their lightly wounded guys returning to duty.
The Third Battalion and Charlie, on the other hand, had been hit so hard they’d been pulled out of the line for a total reorganization and refit.
“We’re lucky—we’re still sitting around waiting for it to start,” he said with a wry smile.
The problem is pretty simple according to Talley. There aren’t any supplies for the refit and damn few replacements except for officers being flow in. All Charlie Company has gotten so far are the four new lieutenants I met earlier.
Murphy said he’d heard the new Battalion exec say Charlie would be getting a full complement of replacements, but only about half a dozen men had shown up so far and all of them were the lightly wounded guys from the ridge and earlier who were returning to duty. And some of them, he said, are clearly not ready.
One in particular, a guy named Ed Burke from Chicago, Hart thought, was “too nervous, talks all the time and makes the men anxious.” Murphy agreed and said we should try to send him back.
I promptly told Murphy to put a casualty tag on Burke, load him in the company Jeep, and drive him to the field hospital for reclassification. I told him to write “mandatory reclassification to non-combat duties due to severe mortar concussion resulting in dementia. Not to be given access to weapons” on the tag and sign it with an unreadable scrawl as Colonel Smith.
Burke’s one of my guys and a combat casualty for sure, and I damn well want him treated as such.
Then I stood dumbfounded and depressed as Murphy rattled off the names of Charlie’s dead and wounded. We’d taken another 46 casualties on the ridge bringing us down to 41 including five walking wounded who’d already returned to duty.
Christ, we lost almost three quarters of our men in a little more than a month.
I didn’t see Ira when the guys came around so I asked about him. He’s off running an errand and okay. Not a scratch. So I told Murphy I was real happy with Ira and want him to start carrying my radio and wearing a couple of more stripes. Murphy will handle it.
Then I asked the sixty four dollar question—when were we expected to be brought up to strength and go back up to the line?
Hart told me the Third Battalion is not considered operational but that things are looking so tough on the line that it could be anytime if the gooks attack again. Then I went off to visit with the old Charlies and to meet the new guys and talk to the new lieutenants.
Chapter Ten
Two days later truckloads of replacements began arriving. Most were cooks and clerks from our garrisons in Australia and Japan. There wasn’t a rifleman or anyone with a heavy weapons qualification among them. They were almost all regulars who’d stayed on after WWII, and mostly buck sergeants.
Murphy, Hart and I welcomed the new guys to the company and sent them off to their platoons. By then Hart and I had gotten to know the second lieutenants.
Amazingly, all the new lieutenants were newly commissioned Texas A&M graduates and all have last names starting with the letter L. They had obviously been carefully selected to join Charlie Company. Actually, they don’t seem all that bad for brand new second lieutenants.
Somewhere, somehow, they’d been properly counseled to rely on their senior noncoms until they get their feet on the ground. Our problem, of course, was that we didn’t have many non-coms, senior or otherwise, with combat experience, just Murphy and a heavy weapons sergeant from the Philippines named Justino Ortiz who’d been real steady on the ridge. We also had a couple of corporals and all the newly arrived clerks and cooks.
The lack of sergeants was a problem which I promptly solved by summarily promoting all of the remaining Charlies to sergeant, Ortiz and the two corporals to SFC, and Murphy to master sergeant. To my amazement, Pettyjohn signed the order without a quibble. I’m not sure he even read it.
We’re a company of sergeants and ready to go.
******
One of the battalion’s replacements arrived the same day I got back. He’s a master sergeant Pettyjohn found at the replacement depot. Apparently he impressed Pettyjohn with his ability to do paperwork and willingness to rigidly adhere to procedures and regulations. Little wonder, Sergeant Eugene Krupa spent his entire 24 year army career in a supply company behind the lines.
Krupa would still be in Japan except for the war. Unfortunately for him, his entire company strength was grabbed up and shipped to Korea as infantry replacements. He couldn’t get out of it. So now he’s the battalion’s senior NCO and will be its sergeant major despite his lack of combat experience.
Pettyjohn would have been better off with one my newly promoted sergeants.
Almost immediately Sergeant Major Krupa became a big problem. It started two days after I get back when Ira and Jim Bob Randall from Refugio, Texas rushed up to me and Hart in the battalion mess tent.
“Sergeant Major Krupa’s taking our weapons and ammo, Guns.”
******
Here’s what happened: Two days after the battle on the ridge, the guys who survived had withdrawn from the ridge with all their BARs, machine guns, Korean weapons, and everything else. The trucks dropped the Easy Company guys off at the Fourth Battalion with their original weapons and then went on to the Third Battalion with our 40-odd survivors and all the weapons—six deuce and a halfs jammed full of the North Korean weapons and ammo our guys picked up after the battle.
We have the Korean stuff because Murphy --I’m liking this guy more and more-- kept the men busy before the company was pulled back by carrying out my constantly repeated order to always pick up and keep all the enemy guns and ammo they can get their hands on. We are armed to the teeth and I have a nickname for the first time in my life— “Guns.”
The problem was that Pettyjohn told his new Sergeant Major he wants everything run by the book. And the “book,” according to the new Sergeant Major, says an infantry company is supposed to have two BARs for each of its three infantry platoons and two machine guns and two mortars in its heavy weapons platoon. Everyone else, except the officers, is to carry a rifle or carbine.
Apparently the Sergeant Major lined up some trucks and drivers from the Division’s transportation company, and they’ve come to get Charlie Company’s excess weapons. I rushed over to the company area and found them being loaded under the direction of a skinny transportation corps sergeant with weepy eyes. His name was Jessop, according to the name on his fatigues.
“Hold it,” I shout. “Unload those goddamn trucks. Those weapons and ammo belong to Charlie Company.”
“Sorry Sir, orders.” And he holds a transport order and motions the guys to keep loading. They had stopped when I shouted.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me Sergeant,” I snarled, “that was an order, not a suggestion.”
“Sorry sir, I gotta take them” and he motioned the guys to keep loading.
“You hear that noise,” I snarled again and gestured up towards the line where the background thunder of guns was coming from. This is a combat area and you just got a direct order not to disarm my men and you disobeyed it in front of my men.”
I was really pissed.
“You know what disobeying a direct order from an officer in a combat zone means I gotta do,” I said through clenched teeth as I picked up one of the Korean weapons on the truck bed and checked its load. Empty. So I picked up a clip off the truck, stuck it in, and ran the bolt to load a cartridge.
Jessop didn’t get it at first until the men around him started moving away and getting out from behind him.
“You can’t do that,” he said wide-eyed, finally getting worried. “I got orders. I got orders.”
“Let’s make this as easy as possible,” I snarled as I clicked off the safety.
“Why don’t you walk over by that wall. Best if you turn your head. You won’t feel a thing.”
Then I shouted at the men standing there to “get off your asses and help with the unloading, and be quick about it.”
The men frantically began to unload the Korean weapons. The rapidly gathering group of Charlies rushed to help and watch.
“You either help them unload the goddamn truck or stand over by that wall and light a cigarette,” I finally snarled. Jessop rushed to help.
Ira told me later that the guys really thought I was going to waste him. I told him that anybody, anybody, who does anything to endanger our guys is in deep shit and gonna get flushed. And then for some stupid reason I added “and that includes anyone sleeping on sentry duty.”
Talley couldn’t help himself—he got royally pissed.
“That may be the view in the rarefied air of Tokyo, Colonel. But it’s more than a little naive and you better drop that bullshit in a hurry. Here in the real world those are your officers and you’re goddamn lucky to have them, the one you’re complaining about in particular.”
This guy is really a pompous ass and therefore, more than likely a piss poor commander. I’m going to have to watch him closely.
******
What was left of our guys and the ROKs had retreated almost to the Pusan air field by the time I got back to the division three weeks later. When the plane landed, a couple of MPs in class A uniforms and shiny stainless steel helmets asked for my orders and tried to put me on a truck with everyone else. They’re headed to a replacement center.
But I was anxious to get back to Charlie Company so I told them I was a courier with an important message from MacArthur’s headquarters that I had been ordered by General Davis to personally hand to General Talley. So one of the MPs reluctantly calls Division to get approval and, to my surprise he got it. They steered me to a Jeep going that way and off I went. Somewhere there’s got to be a General Davis.
The MP manning the headquarters door gave me a snappy salute, love those bars, and sent me down a dingy concrete block hallway to a room with a handwritten sign with General Talley’s name on it taped up next to the doorway. I tried not to limp.
My welcome was almost embarrassing. General Talley himself came barreling out of the back room with a smile on his face to shake my hand. And he laughed when I admitted how I had gotten past the MPs at the airfield. Then he took me around to meet some of his staff.
As I was shaking a few hands, he mentioned the medals and told everyone that we may have been pushed back “but it sure as hell wasn’t Captain Roberts’ fault.” Stuff like that. I ate it up with a shit-eating grin on my face.
Jeez it’s nice to be recognized.
Afterwards the general walked with me to the officers mess and we stood at a makeshift table, a plywood plank on a couple of sawhorses, to enjoy a cup of coffee and a Spam and mayonnaise sandwich. I was so hungry I ate two.
While we munched on our food, I filled him in as best I could about the Korean attack and getting wounded. He said a couple of medals had already come through and the paperwork was being processed at MacArthur’s headquarters for a third and a couple of purple hearts. More medals. All I could think to say was thank you and hope he knows I mean it.
His response is terse and to the point.
“Don’t thank me. You earned every damn one of them.”
While we were standing there and eating, General Talley told me that if the radio intercepts and prisoner interrogations are accurate, and he thinks they are, since he had visited the ridge and seen the Korean casualties for himself, our 220 or so guys had virtually destroyed what was left of the 4006th North Korean infantry division. Their infantry divisions are smaller than ours, General Talley told me, about nine thousand men at full strength, but it was a hell of a defeat for them. Stopped them cold, he told me. At least temporarily.
Even better, according to General Talley, it took the North Koreans three days to get more troops to that part of the line and by then we had successfully broken off contact and retreated towards Taegu, and then to our current lines.
Our current lines, according to General Talley, are shorter and a lot more defensible. They are also, he says, holding firmly after some initial scares. The Marines, it seems, have been magnificent at running around and filling the perimeter gaps.
As we talked I increasingly got the impression General Talley thought the North Koreans were running out of steam, and that we’ll be counter-attacking and trying to retake Seoul—as soon as enough tanks and reinforcements arrive from Japan and the States.
What I didn’t know is that most of them will land at Inchon to cut off the Koreans and that MacArthur will disobey the President’s orders and bring the Chinese into the war by sending our troops north to the Chinese border.
What really interested General Talley was my comment that the North Korean tanks had quickly withdrawn as soon as we knocked a couple out. He obviously hadn’t heard that and quizzed me closely about it, particularly when I suggested it might mean that the North Koreans have fewer tanks than we think and are trying to save them.
What also piqued his interest is when I suggested that the North Koreans might be parading the tanks they have to encourage our men to bug out but leave the actual fighting to the mass assaults of their infantry. Had I known that they would not really commit all their tanks, I said, I would have asked for more machine guns and fewer of the useless old bazookas.
Afterwards, when I had time to think about it a little more, I realized that it would have been stupid to ask for fewer of the old bazookas—Christ, they came at us with five T-34s and only two turned back. We didn’t use the bazookas but we damn well might have needed them.
Then General Talley introduced me to my new battalion commander, an immaculately turned out lieutenant colonel who came into the mess while we were talking. He was standing and eating at another door plank table and deep in conversation with several majors who were listening intently and nodding their heads. They all jumped to attention as Talley and I walked up.
“Pettyjohn, this is Captain Roberts, Charlie Company’s CO, he’ll ride out to your battalion with you.” Then a lieutenant hurried into the room waving some papers at him.
Over his shoulder on the way out the general gave me a little smile and says, “take care of yourself, Guns.” I nodded and said “Thank you, sir.” I wonder where he heard about my new nickname?
Pettyjohn gave me a look of disdain after General Talley walked away and then, with a rather dismissive wave towards the door, said “wait outside Roberts” and turned back to his conversation with the majors.
******
The Jeep ride out to battalion was both interesting and worrisome. Pettyjohn immediately asked me how it is the General knows me. He was clearly surprised when he heard I’m newly commissioned and don’t have a clue as to where the battalion’s officers had gone to school.
How would I know? I never met any of them.
All the way to the battalion Pettyjohn talked nonstop about all the senior officers he knows at MacArthur’s headquarters and all the important jobs he’s held since he graduated from the academy “just before the war.” The more he spoke the more it became increasingly obvious that the Third Battalion is his first command and this is his first time in combat—and he’s not looking forward to it.
Uh oh. It sounds like he’s here more to get his promotion ticket punched than to lead his men and take care of them. I’d heard a lot about such people when everyone was bitching at the Tokyo hospital, but I’d never met one before.
The Third battalion was in tents out past the airport. I didn’t know anyone at battalion headquarters. That was no surprise—I’d only visited the battalion HQ twice and that was when I reported in as a green private in the far distant past—a couple of months ago. In any event, as soon as we arrived the battalion staff began falling all over themselves reporting to Pettyjohn. No one paid any attention when I headed off to look for Charlie Company.
Sure enough. There was a hand lettered “Charlie Company” sign stuck up on the front of a squad tent. A corporal typing away looked up quizzically as I entered. Then he and a sergeant I’d never seen before jumped up to attention when they saw the bars.
“I’m Roberts,” I said. “How you guys doin?”
After they introduced themselves, I sent the sergeant, Adams according to the name on his fatigues, bustling off to call a meeting of the company command group.
******
A couple of second lieutenants had already arrived and had their hands shaken when Murphy shoved back the tent flaps behind them and came bounding in with a big grin and his unforgettable West Virginia mountain drawl.
“God damn Guns, yer back. I don’ hardly believe it.” We enthusiastically shook hands.
Damn it’s good to see a familiar face. It feels like I’ve come home.
Then a couple of more second lieutenants come in and a first lieutenant I sort of recognized, but couldn’t place, by the name of Jim Hart. Turns out Hart had been one of Symonds’ lieutenants and is senior to the others. He’d been commissioned right at the end of the big war and called back to duty for Korea; he’s from Dallas, Texas and as the senior lieutenant he’ll be Charlie's exec.
Then there was a whole lot of shouting and commotion outside. It was what was left of the whole damn company and for some reason they were shouting and yelling and raising a ruckus. I poked my head out of the tent and grinned, and then sort of teared up and flapped my hand up and down.
Well hell, now what will the guys think of me?
When the hullabaloo finally settled down and I’d shaken everyone’s hand, Hart and Murphy and I went back in the orderly room tent. I wanted to know who was left of the guys who had been up on the ridge with us and what happened to the others.
Hart told me that Symonds had been hit real bad and evacuated—“we think he made it but we haven’t heard a word.” Out of Easy’s original 141 men on the ridge there had been 19 KIA and 42 WIA serious enough to be evacuated, mostly at the far right end of the line when the Sherman blew. According to Hart, who had been commanding Easy Company’s first platoon, another old first lieutenant named Carol Jessup, who I barely remember meeting, has taken Symonds’ place as CO. The word is that he will be bumped up to captain any day now.
Easy and the Fourth battalion, Hart said, were already back on the line a couple of miles up the road. He didn’t think Easy had received any replacements other than their lightly wounded guys returning to duty.
The Third Battalion and Charlie, on the other hand, had been hit so hard they’d been pulled out of the line for a total reorganization and refit.
“We’re lucky—we’re still sitting around waiting for it to start,” he said with a wry smile.
The problem is pretty simple according to Talley. There aren’t any supplies for the refit and damn few replacements except for officers being flow in. All Charlie Company has gotten so far are the four new lieutenants I met earlier.
Murphy said he’d heard the new Battalion exec say Charlie would be getting a full complement of replacements, but only about half a dozen men had shown up so far and all of them were the lightly wounded guys from the ridge and earlier who were returning to duty. And some of them, he said, are clearly not ready.
One in particular, a guy named Ed Burke from Chicago, Hart thought, was “too nervous, talks all the time and makes the men anxious.” Murphy agreed and said we should try to send him back.
I promptly told Murphy to put a casualty tag on Burke, load him in the company Jeep, and drive him to the field hospital for reclassification. I told him to write “mandatory reclassification to non-combat duties due to severe mortar concussion resulting in dementia. Not to be given access to weapons” on the tag and sign it with an unreadable scrawl as Colonel Smith.
Burke’s one of my guys and a combat casualty for sure, and I damn well want him treated as such.
Then I stood dumbfounded and depressed as Murphy rattled off the names of Charlie’s dead and wounded. We’d taken another 46 casualties on the ridge bringing us down to 41 including five walking wounded who’d already returned to duty.
Christ, we lost almost three quarters of our men in a little more than a month.
I didn’t see Ira when the guys came around so I asked about him. He’s off running an errand and okay. Not a scratch. So I told Murphy I was real happy with Ira and want him to start carrying my radio and wearing a couple of more stripes. Murphy will handle it.
Then I asked the sixty four dollar question—when were we expected to be brought up to strength and go back up to the line?
Hart told me the Third Battalion is not considered operational but that things are looking so tough on the line that it could be anytime if the gooks attack again. Then I went off to visit with the old Charlies and to meet the new guys and talk to the new lieutenants.
Chapter Ten
Two days later truckloads of replacements began arriving. Most were cooks and clerks from our garrisons in Australia and Japan. There wasn’t a rifleman or anyone with a heavy weapons qualification among them. They were almost all regulars who’d stayed on after WWII, and mostly buck sergeants.
Murphy, Hart and I welcomed the new guys to the company and sent them off to their platoons. By then Hart and I had gotten to know the second lieutenants.
Amazingly, all the new lieutenants were newly commissioned Texas A&M graduates and all have last names starting with the letter L. They had obviously been carefully selected to join Charlie Company. Actually, they don’t seem all that bad for brand new second lieutenants.
Somewhere, somehow, they’d been properly counseled to rely on their senior noncoms until they get their feet on the ground. Our problem, of course, was that we didn’t have many non-coms, senior or otherwise, with combat experience, just Murphy and a heavy weapons sergeant from the Philippines named Justino Ortiz who’d been real steady on the ridge. We also had a couple of corporals and all the newly arrived clerks and cooks.
The lack of sergeants was a problem which I promptly solved by summarily promoting all of the remaining Charlies to sergeant, Ortiz and the two corporals to SFC, and Murphy to master sergeant. To my amazement, Pettyjohn signed the order without a quibble. I’m not sure he even read it.
We’re a company of sergeants and ready to go.
******
One of the battalion’s replacements arrived the same day I got back. He’s a master sergeant Pettyjohn found at the replacement depot. Apparently he impressed Pettyjohn with his ability to do paperwork and willingness to rigidly adhere to procedures and regulations. Little wonder, Sergeant Eugene Krupa spent his entire 24 year army career in a supply company behind the lines.
Krupa would still be in Japan except for the war. Unfortunately for him, his entire company strength was grabbed up and shipped to Korea as infantry replacements. He couldn’t get out of it. So now he’s the battalion’s senior NCO and will be its sergeant major despite his lack of combat experience.
Pettyjohn would have been better off with one my newly promoted sergeants.
Almost immediately Sergeant Major Krupa became a big problem. It started two days after I get back when Ira and Jim Bob Randall from Refugio, Texas rushed up to me and Hart in the battalion mess tent.
“Sergeant Major Krupa’s taking our weapons and ammo, Guns.”
******
Here’s what happened: Two days after the battle on the ridge, the guys who survived had withdrawn from the ridge with all their BARs, machine guns, Korean weapons, and everything else. The trucks dropped the Easy Company guys off at the Fourth Battalion with their original weapons and then went on to the Third Battalion with our 40-odd survivors and all the weapons—six deuce and a halfs jammed full of the North Korean weapons and ammo our guys picked up after the battle.
We have the Korean stuff because Murphy --I’m liking this guy more and more-- kept the men busy before the company was pulled back by carrying out my constantly repeated order to always pick up and keep all the enemy guns and ammo they can get their hands on. We are armed to the teeth and I have a nickname for the first time in my life— “Guns.”
The problem was that Pettyjohn told his new Sergeant Major he wants everything run by the book. And the “book,” according to the new Sergeant Major, says an infantry company is supposed to have two BARs for each of its three infantry platoons and two machine guns and two mortars in its heavy weapons platoon. Everyone else, except the officers, is to carry a rifle or carbine.
Apparently the Sergeant Major lined up some trucks and drivers from the Division’s transportation company, and they’ve come to get Charlie Company’s excess weapons. I rushed over to the company area and found them being loaded under the direction of a skinny transportation corps sergeant with weepy eyes. His name was Jessop, according to the name on his fatigues.
“Hold it,” I shout. “Unload those goddamn trucks. Those weapons and ammo belong to Charlie Company.”
“Sorry Sir, orders.” And he holds a transport order and motions the guys to keep loading. They had stopped when I shouted.
“Maybe you didn’t hear me Sergeant,” I snarled, “that was an order, not a suggestion.”
“Sorry sir, I gotta take them” and he motioned the guys to keep loading.
“You hear that noise,” I snarled again and gestured up towards the line where the background thunder of guns was coming from. This is a combat area and you just got a direct order not to disarm my men and you disobeyed it in front of my men.”
I was really pissed.
“You know what disobeying a direct order from an officer in a combat zone means I gotta do,” I said through clenched teeth as I picked up one of the Korean weapons on the truck bed and checked its load. Empty. So I picked up a clip off the truck, stuck it in, and ran the bolt to load a cartridge.
Jessop didn’t get it at first until the men around him started moving away and getting out from behind him.
“You can’t do that,” he said wide-eyed, finally getting worried. “I got orders. I got orders.”
“Let’s make this as easy as possible,” I snarled as I clicked off the safety.
“Why don’t you walk over by that wall. Best if you turn your head. You won’t feel a thing.”
Then I shouted at the men standing there to “get off your asses and help with the unloading, and be quick about it.”
The men frantically began to unload the Korean weapons. The rapidly gathering group of Charlies rushed to help and watch.
“You either help them unload the goddamn truck or stand over by that wall and light a cigarette,” I finally snarled. Jessop rushed to help.
Ira told me later that the guys really thought I was going to waste him. I told him that anybody, anybody, who does anything to endanger our guys is in deep shit and gonna get flushed. And then for some stupid reason I added “and that includes anyone sleeping on sentry duty.”
