Combat- Parallel Lines Read online

  “My brother’s around there somewhere. He’s a tanker with Twenty-Sixth Regiment.”

  “They’re part of Twenty-Fourth Division, right?”

  “Yeah, they are. You don’t happen to know exactly where the Twenty-Sixth is, do you, Joe?”

  “Sure do, sir. They’re not too far from the airstrip. We can give them a heads-up you’re coming once we’re airborne. Does your brother know you got knocked down?”

  Tommy replied, “I hope not. He doesn’t need the extra worries.”

  *****

  The only person waiting for the liaison ship when it landed at Sunchon was the GI driving the fuel truck. Joe Novarro checked his watch and told Tommy, “You’ve got about an hour, sir. If we take longer than that to get airborne again, you’ll miss the Tokyo flight at Kimpo. Those transport jockeys are on pretty tight schedules. I don’t imagine they’ll hang around for you.”

  Making that Kimpo connection meant being back in Japan for supper. But an hour wasn’t much time to find Sean, who was somewhere, presumably, in the regiment’s zone.

  He’d started walking toward the operations tent when he heard the roar of a vehicle engine echoing across the valley cradling the airstrip. In another moment, the source of that roar barreled into view as a Pershing tank crested a rise, avoided the carefully plowed aircraft ramp so as not to chew it up, and came to a stop behind the tent. Climbing from the turret hatch was none other than his brother.

  “I knew you wasn’t dead, Half,” Sean said, calling him by the nickname Tommy had been saddled with since childhood, one only family and close friends dared use. It had always seemed so natural to refer to a diminutive person with that surname as Half Moon.

  Neither said another word as they locked each other in a brotherly bear hug, the much smaller Tommy practically lost in the embrace of his tall, burly brother.

  And neither was ashamed of the tears he shed.

  *****

  As scheduled, the C-54 from Kimpo deposited Tommy back in Tokyo in time for supper. But he was more interested in a long, hot shower, clean clothes, and a sound sleep, one in which there was no danger of being discovered by rats or enemy soldiers. After hours of medical examination, the flight surgeon—a fellow major—pronounced him fit for duty.

  “I still can’t get over the fact that you don’t have any intestinal problems, Tommy,” the doctor said. “And I’m still amazed how you kept up your energy level eating the little you did.”

  “Sometimes you just get lucky, Doc.”

  “I think it’s more than that. Face it, Tommy…you’re not the biggest guy who ever strapped on a fighter plane. Your caloric demands are probably quite a bit lower than a larger person’s. How’d you ever make the height requirement for flight school, anyway? I mean, you’re not quite five foot four. Close, but no cigar.”

  “That’d be my little secret, Doc. And sure, I was hungry as hell out there in the cold. But wouldn’t you say it’s pretty hard for a guy who’d been eating pretty well all along to starve in just two weeks?”

  “Maybe you’ve got a point there, Tommy.”

  *****

  Mercifully, the debrief was not scheduled until 0800 the next morning. He wasn’t prepared for the crowd that filled the conference room where the debrief was held. Aside from a twenty-strong phalanx of USAF officers led by the three-star general commanding Far East Air Force, there were six Navy and Marine Corps officers, all wearing aviator’s wings.

  Damn, when I got shot down behind enemy lines in France, the debrief committee was my C.O. and just a few other officers. Some adjutant did most of the talking, trying to figure out whether I qualified for an escaped POW’s immediate ticket out of theater.

  This is a much bigger show…but I’m not sure why.

  The minute the three-star opened the proceedings, it became painfully obvious why this was a much bigger show: there was a good chance that Moon, Thomas P., Major, USAF, was the first American pilot to be shot down by a Soviet-built MIG-15 jet. The fear that the Americans had nothing in their inventory or tactics to equal, let alone best, the MIG hung heavily over the room.

  When the general finished his introductory remarks, Tommy asked, “Sir, you said there’s a good chance I was the first. Who else is in the running?”

  “An F-80 was lost over North Korea earlier the same day, Major. We’re not sure what happened to him. He’d been separated from his flight and no one saw how he came to grief. There’s been no trace of the pilot or the plane, either. But you’re sure how you came to be shot down, am I correct?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m quite sure what happened and who did it.”

  “Then you’re the only one who does, Major. Tell us every last bit of it,” the general said. To the room, he added, “Strap in, gentlemen. This is going to be a long and bumpy flight, I’m afraid.”

  Chapter Three

  A relative calm had settled over the line of contact in the week since the Chinese attacked, wreaked havoc, and then disappeared. While the shock of that assault had begun to wear off, the GIs were convinced beyond all doubt the combat momentum still lay with the CCF. Nobody below the rank of general believed it had just been a probe, a one-time event that wouldn’t be repeated. As Jock Miles told his assembled regimental staff, “Holding the chinks off is all well and good, but we need a plan to take back the offensive. And at the moment, dammit, neither Division, nor Eighth Army, nor MacArthur and his boys in Tokyo have one.”

  The only plan Tokyo seemed intent on implementing was a daunting logistical one: provide a traditional Thanksgiving feast—hot turkey with all the trimmings—for every GI and Marine in Korea, no matter how remote his current outpost happened to be. So on November 23, 1950—Thanksgiving Day—every American mess section prepared and served the planeloads of holiday food they’d received.

  “This turkey’s mighty fine,” Patchett said. “Keeping it hot for the men on the far outposts was a little tricky, though. By the time they got from the serving line to where they set themselves down to eat, that hot chow wanted to freeze all over again.”

  “How’d we solve that problem, Top?”

  “Simple, sir. Everybody kept their gloves on while they heated up their mess kits over a fire. That held off the cold for a coupla extra minutes.”

  Then he asked Jock, “You ready for seconds, sir?”

  “Not unless every man in the regiment has already had a shot at seconds, Top.”

  “They all have, sir,” Patchett replied. “Every last swinging dick. So what’s your pleasure…white meat or dark?”

  “Actually, I had my heart set on another piece of that cake.”

  “Coming right up, sir,” Patchett replied as he headed for the serving line.

  In this moment of solitude, Jock thought back to a Thanksgiving during the last war. The holiday fare had been much more spartan in the jungles of Papua and New Guinea. Jillian, being Australian, had no concept what Thanksgiving celebrated. When he’d explained to her back then what the holiday meant, she’d listened quietly and then asked, “These pilgrims…they were English?”

  “Yeah, they were, Jill. Some of my ancestors, in fact. The Miles line goes way back in Massachusetts.”

  She shook her head. “It all sounds like another of your bloody Yank fairy tales to me, Jock. The English would be more likely to kill or enslave the natives than break bread with them.”

  What began as a pleasant reminiscence had now turned painful: Where are you and the kids now, Jill? How long am I going to have to wait to find out?

  Patchett returned, setting the chocolate cake on the field box they were using as a table. He said, “Here’s your pleasure, sir, as requested.”

  “Thanks, Top. But you know what my pleasure really would’ve been?”

  “A case of Scotch whiskey, maybe?”

  “No, seriously…I would’ve loved to see all the cargo planes that delivered this food loaded to the gills with ammo and automatic weapons instead. I’ve got a nasty feeling we’re going to need
that stuff real bad before long.”

  *****

  At a village nestled between jagged mountains in central North Korea, Gunnery Sergeant Jim Ramsay and the men of his Marine Corps tank platoon were downing their Thanksgiving dinner, too. The hot turkey with dressing, steamed vegetables, fresh-baked bread, and pumpkin pie was a delicious treat that seemed completely out of kilter with the hostile environment and the imminent jeopardy of combat.

  This whole thing’s been a goat rope from the git-go, Ramsay told himself. These Army generals we’re stuck under get dumber by the day. After we fucked around on board ship for a couple of weeks, sailing from Inchon to Pusan and then to Wonsan—where those generals told us we’d be making another amphibious assault—we sat offshore for a damn week, waiting for the swabbies to declare the harbor free of mines. When we finally hit the beach, we found out the ROKs were already there…and so was Bob Hope and his USO show.

  Like I said, a goat rope. Typical Army hurry up and wait bullshit…

  Just like the Inchon landings back in September.

  From Wonsan, we drove north, into these fucking mountains, where there’s only one road—we call it the MSR, for main supply route. Main supply, my ass…it’s the ONLY supply route. And now we’ve stretched that ONLY supply route for over fifty miles, to this little shithole town called Hagaru-ri, which sits at the southern tip of this big lake called the Chosin Reservoir. We’re just begging for that supply route to get cut off by the chinks.

  To get around and past the Chosin, the road north to the Yalu and Manchuria is straight uphill, through the highest mountains in Korea. My tanks will never make it up those grades through the passes. Half of them have broken down already. Once we’re in those mountains, we’ll lose the other half, for sure.

  It makes no sense why that Army general who’s running this show—that General Almond, like the nuts—has his Tenth Corps dispositioned the way it is, extending like gnarled fingers of an arthritic hand, each moving up its own deep valley. The Marine division is on the hills to the west of the Chosin, an Army regiment is on the east side. We couldn’t support each other with that fucking lake in the way if our lives depended on it…

  And they just might.

  I don’t know much about the big picture—I’m not sure anybody does—but with all these mountains in the way, none of the UN forces in North Korea can support each other.

  If the Chinese decide to hit us here, we’re on our own.

  But those Army generals keep telling us that’ll never happen.

  I guess they figure we haven’t heard that it’s already happened to Eighth Army on our left flank…

  On the other side of the damn mountains.

  *****

  Three nights after Thanksgiving, the Chinese struck the UN lines across the entire width of North Korea with a renewed vengeance. Jock Miles’ 26th Regiment had just been designated as 24th Division reserve, remaining at Sunchon while Division’s other two regiments deployed to forward positions along the Taedong River a few miles to the north. From Sunchon, Jock’s regiment could deploy in any direction to plug breakthroughs in the defensive line, surrounding and destroying any marauding Chinese before they could do serious damage in rear areas of the division.

  It would fall to Division to make the call when to commit the reserve. Jock and his staff figured that was why Brigadier General Ellis, the 24th Division assistant commander, was camped in front of the situation map in their CP. As battle reports from the other regiments flooded in, Ellis became alarmed as Sergeant Patchett drew a particularly large bulge on the map near the boundary of 24th and 25th Divisions, an indication that a Chinese breakthrough was imminent…or might have already happened. The general wanted the reserve committed immediately to reduce the bulge.

  As Jock was formulating a respectful way to disagree with the general, Patchett beat him to the punch.

  “If I may, sir, the bulge is just an approximation,” Patchett told the general, “a worst-case scenario. You know as well as I do these reports in the middle of a fight—especially a night fight—are never one hundred percent on the money. Let’s not light our hair on fire until we get some confirming information. Nobody’s reporting a breakthrough yet, just a readjustment of boundary lines between us and Twenty-Fifth Division.”

  As Ellis dithered, Jock added, “We’ve got to be certain before we commit the reserve, General. We’ll only get to do it once, and it’ll be damn near impossible to stop it or change its direction after it gets going. It’ll be like a boulder rolling downhill, so we’d better be right when we pull the trigger. In my opinion, we’re not there yet.”

  Ellis replied, “Maybe you should just send a tank company or two up there to support them, Colonel?”

  Even in the CP’s dim lighting, Jock could see Sean Moon’s face twist into a scowl. He understood why his armor sergeant hated the general’s idea: Tanks rolling around in the dark, without dedicated infantry support, are easy marks for sappers. So he told Ellis, “When we commit, sir, we commit everybody—infantry and armor—together. Otherwise we’re begging to get destroyed piecemeal.”

  “But surely, Colonel, there are times that call for exceptions to the rule…like taking an aggressive action to seize the initiative.”

  “Yes, General, there are exceptions, but this isn’t one of them.”

  Patchett and Sean watched the discussion in silence, fully expecting the general to issue an order mandating his half-baked tactical idea. Both sergeants were thinking the same thing:

  What is it with the generals in this man’s army nowadays? They still ain’t seeing the difference between aggressiveness and tactical stupidity.

  Patchett had come up with a name for this tendency, which he kept to himself; he called it MacArthur’s Disease.

  But to their surprise—and relief—Ellis issued no order.

  Battle reports continued to spill into the CP. The regimental intelligence officer—the S2—had been listening intently to a radio conversation. Turning to Jock, he said, “Sir, we’ve got a call for artillery support from a Twenty-Fifth Division unit on our right flank. Looks like all their batteries have their hands full at the moment. Our one-five-five guns can handle it.”

  Patchett already knew the coordinates of the fire support request; he’d been listening to every radio in the CP simultaneously, sorting out what was critical and what were just the babbling voices of men under extreme pressure, their words doing little but chronicle the terror and uncertainty swirling around them. The ability to sort out the confusion was a talent successful combat leaders developed early, one that enabled them to steer their units through the chaos with as little deadly misdirection as humanly possible.

  “I recommend we put a hold on that fire mission, sir,” Patchett said, stopping the artillery liaison officer as he was about to relay the request to the firing battery. “The Twenty-Fifth’s already got their artillery engaging that target.”

  “Negative, Sergeant,” Ellis said. “You don’t know that. Honor that request for fire.”

  Patchett replied, “Sir…with all due respect…the coordinates are within thirty yards of a fire mission the Twenty-Fifth’s guns already started shooting less than a minute ago. The first rounds impacted while we were standing here talking. Target description is near identical: troops at the wire, danger close. Just a case of different eyes on the same thing. We’d be shooting at the same damn bunch of chinks, sir…and wasting a ton of precious ammo in the process.”

  Looking deflated, Ellis asked Jock, “Do you go along with the sergeant’s assessment, Colonel?”

  “Affirmative, sir.”

  Ellis threw up his hands, a gesture that meant so be it.

  The CP’s switchboard operator called out, “I’ve got General Bishop on the line, sir.”

  General Bishop: 24th Division’s mostly absentee commander, frail and racked with arthritis. A man famous for leading from the rear, he’d rarely visited frontline units during his three months as division comma
nder. Right now, he was at 8th Army Headquarters near Pyongyang, forty miles from the front. In all fairness, his physical condition would’ve made constant travel to and from his units in small aircraft and jeeps a painful ordeal. But in all honesty, it should’ve precluded MacArthur from blessing him for command in the first place.

  Jock replied, “Who does he want to speak to?”

  “You, sir.”

  Jock held out another handset to Ellis so he could join the conversation.

  But the general looked stricken and waved the handset away. “Don’t mention I’m here,” he said, just above a whisper.

  Patchett had to turn away to hide the smirk on his face. Sure, he don’t want Bishop to know he’s here, with the reserve regiment. He’s probably supposed to be bird-dogging the line units.

  There don’t seem to be no physical defects to our General Ellis here, but I reckon he’s taken to being a rear-echelon commander just like his boss.

  Jock hadn’t had a chance to say anything to Bishop yet; the general on the other end of the line was doing all the talking. What he was saying was startling, especially from a commander who’d bought into the misunderstanding of every situation Tokyo had ever offered.

  But surprisingly, Bishop’s words made tactical sense this time.

  Jock rang off the line, still seeming a bit stunned as he told his staff, “You’re probably not going to believe this, but we’re being ordered to pull back.”

  Ellis asked, “Back to where, Colonel?”

  “Pyongyang, sir. Eighth Army wants to trade space for time so we can set up better defensive positions. If the CCF plans to continue trying to overwhelm us with sheer manpower, Eighth Army wants to fight them on more favorable terrain.”

  Patchett had one more question: “We’re gonna do this move in daylight, right?”

  “Negative, Top. We’re going now.”