Combat Reckoning, page 7
part #2 of Jock Miles-Moon Brothers Korean War Story Series
Signaling his driver to get moving, Bishop replied, “I don’t need to be schooled on the current situation by you or anyone else, Colonel. I’ll be across when I feel the time is right. I’ve got two other regiments to worry about besides yours, you know.”
The jeep turned an about face and headed away from the river. As Jock watched it go, his injured leg—the wounded limb that had plagued him throughout the last war—nearly gave way. Fighting through the pain and sudden immobility, he hobbled to his jeep, trying in vain to disguise his limp. As he struggled, he told himself, I don’t need to be known as “The Gimp Colonel.” But at least I’m in better shape than that guy. I don’t imagine he’s going to last too long. Who knows? We might not ever see his face again.
Chapter Six
According to the press releases streaming from MacArthur’s Tokyo headquarters, the Inchon landings were the most brilliant achievements in the history of amphibious warfare. Those news flashes conveniently ignored the Marines who had died needlessly trying to clamber over seawalls that stood in their way on some sections of the landing beaches. Some found it necessary to climb ladders directly from the boats to the tops of the walls, like trying to scale castle battlements in a macabre re-creation of medieval combat. It was a slow and deadly way to come ashore; a veritable shooting gallery for the handful of KPA defenders as they picked off Marine after Marine coming over the top.
None of the Army planners in Tokyo had thought mere walls would pose much of a problem. After all, they’d been thoughtful enough to include those ladders in the logistical preparations, hadn’t they?
That thoughtfulness brought little comfort to the Marines, who knew something about amphibious landings. A flat beach—without walls—where armored vehicles could accompany the infantry would’ve been so much easier to assault…
And cost far less in human lives.
But MacArthur’s staff was basking in self-congratulations: We’ve brilliantly deceived the North Koreans into thinking our invasion would be much farther south at Kunsan. They only have a skeleton force defending Inchon.
But that skeleton force was composed of hardened veterans who put up a very potent fight.
Yet somehow, the Marines—whose cadre was equally hardened in the war against the Japanese—kept coming ashore. They managed to push back that handful of defenders until nightfall forced them to hold their positions and consolidate their gains. When the sun rose on the next day, the Marines began to clear the city of Inchon, their right flank protected—however tenuously—by GIs of the Army’s untested 7th Infantry Division, who were tasked with blocking KPA units approaching from the south.
It took a few days of fierce fighting to conquer Inchon; the outnumbered North Koreans slowly fell back, leaving the city—with the old American military headquarters known as Ascom City and the critical Kimpo Airfield—in Marine Corps’ hands.
The press releases from Tokyo continued to make it sound like the war was as good as over: The KPA was reeling, their destruction imminent.
Nobody had bothered to tell that to the North Koreans who were gathering twenty miles to the east, preparing to defend the much larger city of Seoul from the Americans.
*****
Sean Moon proudly fiddled with the dials of the shortwave receiver he’d appropriated. “It was sitting around the depot,” he explained to Patchett, “and nobody had a ticket for it. The supply warrant’s an old buddy of mine from back in Third Army, so…as they say, the rest is history.”
“In other words, Bubba, you swiped it.”
“Damn right I did.”
“I’m proud of you, my boy,” Patchett said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Like I always say, an NCO gotta have a bit of larceny in him if he’s gonna be worth a shit. Now maybe we can hear firsthand what’s going on in the rest of the world.”
Sean kept spinning the dial. “We should be able to listen to all kinds of great shit at night, once the skip gets good. Maybe even shows from home. Hell, when we were in France, we could pull in WLS from Chicago in the early morning, just like clockwork. It used to really bang in, too. We figured it got the call sign L-S because it was the loudest station.”
They wouldn’t be listening to Chicago tonight. The only English-language broadcast they could find was from Brisbane, Australia. The presenter was reading a dispatch from MacArthur’s Tokyo headquarters describing the amazing successes at Inchon.
As he listened, Patchett stood at the map of Korea on the wall of the CP tent, using a pencil to measure distances between the places mentioned in the broadcast. As the segment ended, he shook his head angrily and said, “I don’t see what the big deal is about Inchon. You’ve got a division of gyrenes and a division of GIs sitting there. Between ’em, they moved about four fucking miles in three days, with the—”
He stopped talking as Jock walked into the tent.
“Who moved four fucking miles?” Jock asked.
“Them Marines at Inchon, sir.”
Jock joined him at the map. “So where does that put them?”
When Patchett drew an arc with the pencil, Jock said, “That’s it? That’s as far as they’ve gotten?”
“Yes, sir. And to hear Tokyo talk, them gyrenes just won the whole damn war single-handed.”
“Are you surprised, Top? You know as well as I do that every time The Great Man breaks wind, they alert the media. What did the radio say about the Great Pusan Breakout?”
“Not a whole lot, sir, except, ah…hey, Bubba, what was that word he used about the breakout?”
“He said it was ongoing,” Sean replied.
“Ongoing, my sweet ass,” Jock said. “They just told us at the command briefing that the breakout has already taken back over a thousand square miles of territory. By the looks of that map, the boys up at Inchon have reclaimed maybe a tenth of that. And according to G2, they’re not exactly up against the cream of the KPA, either.”
Sean asked, “Does that mean we are, sir?”
“Supposedly, Sergeant.”
“Well, sir, that cream must be going sour, because these guys we’ve been up against lately ain’t all that hot. Actually, I think they shot their wad about a month ago. It’s been downhill for them ever since.”
“Let’s not get too confident, Sergeant Moon. We’ve got to push the KPA another hundred miles north before they get trapped between us and Tenth Corps and we can finish them off.”
Patchett tried not to snicker. “So they’re calling that gaggle of Marines and GIs up north a fucking corps? And this corps—just a couple of divisions, really—is going to seal off the whole damn Korean peninsula so we can double-envelop the KPA? You gotta be kidding me, sir. The peninsula’s well over a hundred fucking miles wide. That’s stretching the manpower a little thin, ain’t it?”
“Well, Top, you just heard it for yourself on the radio…MacArthur can work miracles. I guess he’s got a few more up his sleeve before this is all over.”
“You and me both know better than that, sir. And who the hell’s commanding this Tenth Corps? Gotta be some Marine general, right?”
“I’m afraid not, Top. Tenth Corps is commanded by none other than MacArthur’s chief of staff, General Ned Almond.”
Sean let out an explosive burst of laughter. “Almond? I remember stories about him from back in Europe. He commanded that Negro division with Fifth Army down in Italy, the Ninety-Second. It was FUBAR from the word go. He blamed the coloreds for the division’s shitty performance. But we’d seen other colored units in action, and they did pretty damn good. The word was they just wouldn’t fight for his cracker ass.”
Looking over at an annoyed Patchett, he added, “With all due respect to present company, of course.”
“With all due respect, go fuck yourself, Yankee.”
Sean rolled on without missing a beat. “But FUBAR or not, we heard Almond had friends in high places, so he didn’t take no hit for it. The rest of the brass had a pretty good nickname for him, you know.”
Jock smiled; he’d heard the nickname since coming to Korea. But Patchett was clueless. He had to ask, “Somebody gonna tell me?”
Jock said, “I’d better let you do it, Sergeant Moon. Keep it one NCO to another.”
“Bidet,” Sean replied. “They called him bidet.”
That didn’t help Patchett. “What in God’s name is a bee-day?”
“It’s a little sink that squirts water up instead of down and washes your ass for you. They got ’em at all the fancy places in Europe.”
A smile crossed Patchett’s face. He needed no further explanation.
*****
The fight for Seoul was shaping up to be far tougher than taking Inchon. It was the largest city in all of Korea, North and South; G2 reported at least one KPA division within the city itself. Enemy reinforcements were streaming in from the north and east faster than the combined air power of the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps could stop them.
On the southern outskirts of Seoul, a platoon of Pershings led by Gunnery Sergeant Jim Ramsay lay in wait, sheltered behind a railroad embankment. A recon patrol had reported a column of KPA tanks moving along the road that paralleled the tracks. He’d convinced his commander to let him use his five tanks like that Master Sergeant Moon from the Army had been preaching, not merely detached as individual rolling bunkers for the infantry companies but as a unified force in their own right, able to capitalize on their maneuverability and firepower to defeat enemy armor.
Ramsay had picked this spot as the best place to ambush the Koreans. Our hulls are in defilade behind the embankment, but we’ve still got great fields of fire. The T-34s on the road will have no cover. We can pick off as many as we can handle and still make a clean getaway.
They’re getting real close…half a mile, maybe less. I can see their dust and exhaust smoke now.
And they won’t even know we’re here until our first shots hit them.
But someone had spotted the Marine tanks; a light observation aircraft—with US Army markings—had begun a tight, low orbit over them. There were two men on board: a pilot and another man leaning out an open window, grasping a big megaphone in both hands as if afraid the slipstream would yank it away. He appeared to be speaking into it, but whatever he was trying to say was lost in the deep industrial throb of the Pershings’ idling engines.
This is all we fucking need, Ramsay thought, some idiot Army officer pinpointing our location for the KPA tanks. They can see what he’s doing plain as day.
This changes the whole ball game. Kiss the element of surprise goodbye.
In one last histrionic but futile gesture, the Army officer pointed east toward the approaching T-34s. Then his aircraft sped away to the west.
Ramsay weighed his options. What had been an excellent opportunity for ambush had devolved into the prelude of a head-to-head brawl; the T-34s had broken their column and deployed into two wedge formations, one vaulting the railroad embankment while the other remained on the far side. He estimated the combined KPA force outnumbered his platoon by at least two to one.
He seriously doubted that his heavy, underpowered Pershings could successfully climb over the tracks like the T-34s had just done. A terrain feature that had been a formidable ally a few moments ago—before that fucking Army plane showed up—was now a wall severely restricting his ability to maneuver.
Better we live to fight another day, Ramsay told himself. Then, while calling for close-support aircraft to attack the T-34s, he ordered his platoon to withdraw.
*****
O.P. Smith, the general commanding 1st Marine Division, watched in annoyance as the Army spotter plane taxied up to his CP on Kimpo Airfield. He knew who its occupant was: General Almond, X Corps commander, MacArthur’s chief of staff, and his new superior.
When first asked how he felt having to work for Almond, an Army general, Smith had answered, “It stinks,” and let it go at that.
Now that his division was pushing into Seoul, his unhappiness with the command situation had grown like a cancer. In his opinion, Almond was a poor general, a sycophant who had been given command of X Corps only to make it an instrument of MacArthur’s fantasies. Subjecting his Marines to the ill-considered dictates of the Army’s Tokyo headquarters was not something O.P. Smith would accept blindly.
The little aircraft pirouetted around one main wheel like a winged ballerina and then came to a stop so its cabin door faced the CP. I guess that’s so that kiss-ass doesn’t have to walk one step farther than he needs to, Smith thought. Or maybe he’s afraid that if he has to stroll around the front of the ship—near that whirling propeller—one of my Marines might push him into it.
If I don’t push him first, that is.
The way Almond stomped toward the CP left no doubt in Smith’s mind he was in for an ass-chewing. But that thought didn’t intimidate him in the least:
I’ve got the same goddamn rank on my collar as him: two stars. Sure, he’s the “boss” of Tenth Corps, and MacArthur’s trying to ram a third star for him through Congress right this very minute, but I’m going to tell him where to get off any time I think it’s necessary.
To be on the safe side, though, he’d cleared the CP of staff the minute he saw the little airplane headed his way. There was no point having a pack of witnesses to the invective he would undoubtedly hurl.
And knowing this weasel, if I give him a ration of shit about something, he’ll complain to The Great One in Tokyo that I’m being insubordinate. But if there are no witnesses, it’ll just be his word against mine. To hell with what MacArthur thinks of me.
Almond burst through the door, shouting, “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, General.”
“That makes us even then, Ned. You go first…maybe we’ll be picking the same bone.”
“I’m your superior, Smith. You’re to call me General Almond or sir. Is that clear? Do I have to teach you Marines everything?”
Smith said nothing, just reached to his collar, tapping the two stars there with one hand while he held up two fingers on the other. Then, pointing at the stars on Almond’s collar, he waggled those same two fingers.
Red-faced, Almond said, “Regardless, I’m still your commander. I could have you relieved for insubordination right now.”
Unimpressed, the Marine just shrugged and said, “That’d be your call.”
“And so would this, Smith. Not fifteen minutes ago, I found a number of your tankers hiding from a KPA armored column rather than engaging it. I yelled orders to them, but they pretended not to hear me. I want whoever’s in charge court-martialed immediately, if not sooner.”
“Okay, then we do have the same bone to pick after all,” Smith replied, motioning for Almond to join him at the big situation map. “I just received a report that right here”—he jabbed his finger onto the map—“a platoon of my tankers had set an ambush for a column of KPA tanks. And then some clown in an Army spotter plane circled over them, pointing out to the whole damn world where they were and blowing any chance they had of achieving surprise. Since there’s only one spotter plane operational around here that I know of, and you’ve got it, would that clown have been you?”
Almond stepped up to the map, studying it like it was the first time he’d seen one.
“Cut the shit, sir. It had to be your plane. You fucked up an ambush and put my men at risk.”
“They’re my men, General,” Almond sputtered.
“The Marines work for me, not you. You’re just the ringmaster of MacArthur’s little circus.”
“Now see here, Smith. I’m—”
“This show is risky enough without you Army grandstanders fucking it up. You seem to know as much about armored warfare as you do about amphibious assaults, which is zip. I still count my lucky stars my Marines didn’t get massacred trying to scale those fucking seawalls at Inchon. That’s not how a landing is done…but I don’t expect you doggies to know that.”
“But your tankers weren’t taking the initiative, Smith. I was trying to prod them into action.”
“My Marines know better than any Army man how to take the initiative, sir. What you did was stick your nose in where it didn’t belong. And in doing so, you fucked up an ambush. Now we’ve got a knock-down, drag-out tank fight on our hands that we could’ve ended with one punch. With that armored force out of the way, at least one of my regiments could’ve crossed the Han and been in downtown Seoul by nightfall. There’s no chance that’ll happen now.”
“I still believe your Marines are not moving fast enough, and that’s exactly what I’m going to report to General MacArthur.”
“Tell him whatever the hell you want. And by the way, don’t waste your breath yelling at tankers with a megaphone from an aircraft. They won’t hear you over the noise of their engines. Any damn private knows that.”
“I have no choice. The radios in that plane don’t talk to the tanks.”
“Then wouldn’t a general’s time be better spent getting radios that can actually communicate rather than trying to play tank platoon leader?”
With Almond stunned into silence, Smith added, “Stay the hell away from my Marines, General. If you need anything from the Marine Corps, you come talk to me. In the meantime, why don’t you take that toy airplane of yours and go see what your Seventh Division troopers are doing down south of here. Seems to me that if they collapse—and from what I hear, they just might—we’d better all be able to swim real good, because that’s going to be the only damn way we’re getting out of here alive.”
*****
Jim Ramsay was still boiling mad: If only that Army idiot in the spotter plane hadn’t screwed everything up, we could’ve bagged ourselves a bunch of T-34s and scattered the rest. But now we’re running for our lives, trying to fall back to a defensible position.
The close air support he’d called for a half hour ago still hadn’t arrived. Ramsay’s platoon of Pershings had slipped into the narrow streets of a village whose name he couldn’t pronounce—Goom-chum-goo, or something like that—hoping they’d find concealed firing positions among its ramshackle wooden buildings. Maybe here they’d get one more chance to ambush the advancing KPA armor.
