Combat Reckoning Read online

  COMBAT

  RECKONING

  A Jock Miles-Moon Brothers

  Korean War Story

  Book 2

  A Novel By

  William Peter Grasso

  Novels By William Peter Grasso

  Jock Miles-Moon Brothers Korean War Story

  Combat Ineffective, Book 1

  Combat Reckoning, Book 2

  Moon Brothers WW2 Adventure Series

  Moon Above, Moon Below, Book 1

  Fortress Falling, Book 2

  Our Ally, Our Enemy, Book 3

  This Fog of Peace, Book 4

  Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series

  Long Walk to the Sun, Book 1

  Operation Long Jump, Book 2

  Operation Easy Street, Book 3

  Operation Blind Spot, Book 4

  Operation Fishwrapper, Book 5

  Unpunished

  East Wind Returns

  Kindle Edition

  Copyright © 2019 Grasso Joint Revocable Trust

  All rights reserved

  Cover design by Alyson Aversa

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Combat Reckoning is a work of historical fiction, not a history textbook. Events that are common historical knowledge may not occur at their actual point in time or may not occur at all. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales or to living persons is purely coincidental. The designation of military units may be actual or fictitious.

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  Email: William Peter Grasso

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  Dedication

  To the real-life Jillians and Sylvies throughout this

  war-torn world—soldiers whether they wear uniforms or not—whose service, sacrifice, and heroism match that of any man

  Author’s Note

  Often called the “forgotten war,” the Korean War of 1950 to 1953 remains overshadowed by the vastness of WW2. Yet it marked an escalation of America’s military misadventures on the Asian mainland, where US domestic politics continued to distort foreign realities, provoking disaster after disaster on the battlefield. In no way, however, does the fictional story presented here mean to denigrate the hardships and sacrifices of the individual American soldiers forced to fight an enemy they did not understand and for whom they were woefully ill-prepared.

  Depending on the linguistic methodology of the research source, the name of a Korean village, town, or city often features different spellings. Since US Army maps were the primary geographic source for this novel, most place names are shown in the simplified form displayed on those maps. It is also not uncommon for locations in North and South Korea to have identical or sound-alike names. Even with the simplified presentation of US Army maps, GIs, Marines, and airmen found the names of many locations unpronounceable and referred to them by Anglicized or slang names.

  Dialogue often uses derogatory terms for people of various Asian ethnicities. The use of those terms by the author serves no other intent than to accurately represent the vocabulary of some military personnel in 1950.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Novels by William Peter Grasso

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Map—Fall 1950

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Coming Soon

  More Novels by William Peter Grasso

  About the Author

  Fall 1950

  Chapter One

  31 August 1950

  The GIs still feared the night. It was from the darkness that the most terrifying attacks by the KPA—the North Korean Peoples’ Army—had come as they sent the Americans reeling in a two-hundred-mile retreat the length of South Korea.

  That happened during June and July. It was the last day of August now; for the entire month, the GIs had held their ground on the one-hundred-by-fifty-mile strip of land in the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula known as the Pusan Perimeter. Ending that shattering retreat had been a question of geography: there was no place left to retreat, for the Sea of Japan was at their backs now.

  But relentlessly, the nights still came. Cloaked in the forbidding darkness, the KPA still launched its most savage attacks. The GIs were sure this night would be no different; when the sun set, their anxiety soared.

  PFC Jed Streater thought he’d finally found a way to deal with that pants-wetting terror: he dug holes. At the moment, he was enlarging the one that sheltered the listening post low on the front face of Hill 143. His feverish activity had already deepened the hole another foot; now, with nothing but dim moonlight to assist him, he was digging firing steps into the heightened walls.

  His partner and senior man at the LP, a corporal named Rawls, was annoyed with all this digging and dirt flying everywhere. He liked deep cover as much as the next GI, but he’d just caught a carelessly aimed shovelful in the chest. “Dammit, Streater,” he said as he dusted himself off, “this is supposed to be an LP. Who the hell can listen for a damn thing with that noise y’all are making? Besides, ain’t that what those KATUSA gooks are supposed to be doing?”

  Another voice, muted yet forceful, drifted from the darkness: “You ain’t wrong about that, Corporal. But you better take that entrenching tool from the boy before he hurts hisself.”

  That done, Master Sergeant Melvin Patchett—the top kick of 26th Infantry Regiment—walked up and dropped into the hole with the two men.

  “Streater, ain’t it?” Patchett asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant.”

  “Well, son, I was just wondering…you putting in a swimming pool? Or just having yourself a hissy fit?”

  The top sergeant’s presence was only making PFC Streater more nervous. Senior NCOs had a way of making you feel like you were too dumb to live. His voice strained, he replied, “No, Sergeant. I just figured it…well…”

  “Oh, hush up, son,” Patchett said. “I’m just having some fun with you. But I tell you, this don’t look to be too bad a fighting hole.”

  In the red glow of his black
out flashlight, he gave the interior of the hole a closer look. “Yeah,” he continued, “it’s a damn fine job. Nice and deep. You might want to make that grenade sump a little bit wider, though, so you make sure the damn firecracker actually drops down inside.”

  Then he patted Streater on the shoulder and said, “But you don’t want to be putting none of them KATUSA boys out of work now, do you? Digging and hauling is all they’re good for. I don’t think a one of them gooks has figured out what end of a rifle the bullet comes out of, despite what ol’ General MacArthur thinks.”

  Something in the distance caught Patchett’s attention. His eyes fixed on it as he said, “Y’all take a look across the river.”

  The river—the Naktong, a ribbon of wide, deep water that was the western boundary for much of the Pusan Perimeter—lay hundreds of yards in front of Hill 143’s base. Once night fell, the river became invisible to the GIs. So did the KPA soldiers who snuck across it in the dark, using any ingenious method they could muster.

  But beyond the far bank of the Naktong—Patchett made the distance from the LP to be about two miles—someone was making a point not to be invisible. A solitary flame was burning strong and bright. Despite its distance from the Americans on the hill, it didn’t even appear to flicker.

  And then there were more flames just like it.

  “Them things are torches,” Patchett said. “Look…they’re lighting a bunch more, too.”

  Within a minute, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of torches burning, stretched in a jagged, unmoving line that was at least half a mile long.

  Patchett’s walkie-talkie came to life; the OP on top of Hill 143 was already calling in its sighting of the torches to the regimental command post.

  PFC Streater found the blazing display more unnerving than the darkness. He said to Patchett, “Holy shit, Sarge! What the hell are those gooks up to now?”

  “It’s just some kind of distraction, son,” Patchett replied, “like that damn music that blares from those loudspeakers of theirs sometimes.” Then he began to climb out of the hole.

  Rawls said, “Don’t run off, Sarge. Why don’t you stick around a while?”

  Unlike Streater, Rawls didn’t mind Patchett’s visit. It made his life easier; he wouldn’t have to make any decisions on his own as long as the top sergeant was there to do it for him.

  “You think you’re the only two dumbasses I gotta keep my eye on? Now, what’s your damn job, Corporal?”

  “To listen and report when we hear something, Sarge,” Rawls replied.

  “And then what?”

  “Get our asses back up the hill as quick as we can.”

  “Damn right,” Patchett replied. “Now you do that job…and I’ll go do mine. Don’t get fixated on them torches. They ain’t gonna hurt you none. Just keep them ears of yours open for something that can.”

  *****

  Rawls and Streater couldn’t stop looking at all those torches. An hour after that first one came to life, they were still burning.

  “That ain’t natural,” Rawls said softly, afraid his voice might carry. “A torch don’t burn forever. Surely not for no hour.”

  “Maybe they just keep lighting new ones as the old ones burn out,” Streater offered. “As far away from them as we are, we’d never know the difference.”

  “You got a point there, Jed. But the hell with them torches. You are listening for the gooks, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah, Corporal, I swear...”

  But his voice dropped off. He really was listening—and he’d just heard the muffled crunch of something making its way through the nearby scrub.

  Then there was the sound of lots of somethings moving through the scrub. Along with the snapping of twigs was the faint, tinny clank of noisemakers the GIs had set out.

  Rawls was already on the field telephone. “We got company coming,” he told the CP. “Sounds like a whole herd of them. I put ’em at thirty yards west of LP Dog. We’re bailing outta here.”

  Their escape path had been planned in advance. All they had to do was follow the commo wire around the side of Hill 143. They wouldn’t be able to see that black wire in the darkness, but they could feel it, letting it slip through their cupped hand as it guided them to safety. The path around the hillside would keep them clear of friendly fire coming down from the peak toward the river. They’d unhook the field telephone and take it with them. If they ran into trouble along the way, they could cut into the wire, hook the phone back up, and call to the CP for help.

  They were ready to make their escape in a matter of seconds. But as they started to climb from the hole, they could hear more heavy footsteps, this time behind them. There were voices, too, muttering softly. It didn’t sound like they were speaking English.

  Silently, Rawls and Streater slid back into the hole.

  Then they waited, hoping the sound of their pounding hearts wouldn’t give them away.

  *****

  At the peak of Hill 143, a quad 50—four .50-caliber machine guns on a traversing wheeled mount—was taking aim at LP Dog. The powerful weapon was emplaced in a downward-sloped firing position dug by a KATUSA labor party. It had been arduous work on the rocky peak, but the South Koreans did it quickly and without complaint. Without the sloped firing platform, the guns couldn’t be depressed far enough to pump their deadly grazing fire down the front face of the hill.

  The quad 50 was originally designed as an anti-aircraft weapon, but there were few, if any, enemy aircraft to shoot at in South Korea. Adapted to engage soft ground targets, it had proven terrifyingly effective. Any GI would tell you: The noise alone of a quad 50 will scare you to death.

  Satisfied with the aiming of the weapon, the section chief ordered, “Commence firing.”

  Hunkered down in the deep fighting hole of LP Dog, Rawls and Streater couldn’t see much, just a tiny rectangular chunk of the night sky. But they could hear the hiss and crack of .50-caliber bullets splashing around the LP. When the traversing guns would sweep the rounds directly over them, they could see the angry white glow of tracer rounds zipping past, no more than a foot above the hole’s rim, illuminating their petrified faces like a strobe.

  They could hear the soft chatter of the quad 50s firing from eight hundred yards away up the hill. The sound that predominated, though, was the wails of those being ripped apart by bullets meant to kill machines far tougher than the flesh and bone of mere men.

  Something large and heavy fell on top of them, landing with a dull plop like a sack of potatoes being thrown to the ground. Slithering from beneath it, the GIs realized it was a man: a KPA soldier. Streater had been beneath the legs. Rawls had been under the man’s head.

  The enemy soldier moaned once, twice…and then fell silent.

  All the two GIs could hear now was that rhythmic staccato of bullets close overhead, sounding like the pulsating sizzle of steam from a venting boiler.

  There was no more wailing from beyond their sanctuary. No more moaning, either.

  Pushing the dead KPA soldier off the field telephone, Rawls hooked it back up. “Let’s hope all that fifty cal ain’t chewing up the wire,” he said. “I gotta tell our guys we’re still down here.”

  Then something else—something much smaller than a body—fell into the fighting hole. It bounced off Streater’s helmet with a metallic clank, and then rolled unseen along the sloped floor until it reached the low corner. There was no sound as it dropped into the grenade sump.

  Sometimes, one second can change a life forever. In that second, a life could end, too.

  Jed Streater needed less than that one second to realize the thing that had clanked off his helmet was probably a grenade…

  And he had no idea where that grenade was now.

  With a motion as involuntary as breathing, he threw himself behind the corpse of the KPA man, using that body as a shield.

  The GIs felt the grenade’s explosion in every cell of their bodies, the shock wave knocking them—and the dead Korean—to t
he far side of the hole. Their ears would scream like sirens for hours, if they lived that long. They’d be blind from the flash for a few moments.

  When those moments passed, Jed Streater picked up his carbine, climbed onto one of the firing steps he’d so carefully crafted, and peered over the edge of the hole. He knew the .50-caliber bullets might sweep only inches above his head any second, but he paid that thought no mind.

  In the shadows, he saw movement not ten yards from the hole. A man was low-crawling toward the river.

  Streater squeezed off a round.

  Shit. I must’ve missed. The bastard’s still moving.

  He fired again.

  The man didn’t stop.

  Flipping the selector on the M2 carbine to auto, he fired a five-round burst. It struck the crawling man, lifting him a few inches and then rolling him over to his back.

  He never moved again.

  As Streater slumped back into the hole, stunned by what he’d just done yet proud he’d done it, he didn’t hear Rawls screaming into the phone, begging the CP to cease fire.

  Once they’d convinced themselves that the quad 50 had finally stopped hurling rounds their way, they made their escape.

  *****

  Rawls and Streater had to be relieved from their duties at LP Dog. When a captain protested, claiming I don’t have the people, Sergeant Patchett replied, “Having deaf boys at a listening post don’t make a lick of sense, sir. And this night ain’t near over yet. We’re still gonna need ears down there.”

  Once the two were back at the CP atop Hill 143, Patchett told them, “You did damn fine, boys. That nice deep hole you dug saved your asses, didn’t it?”

  Then Streater told him about the grenade.