The Marines of Autumn: A Novel of the Korean War (13 page)

Verity, from Yale, was a bit vague as to just which side Quantrill had been on.

“No confusion about that in Kansas, Captain. ‘William Clarke Quantrill, Confederate raider.’ That’s how the Yankees put it. The South, well, they felt different, thought of him and remember him as a great man.” Tate paused. “Burned a lot of towns, Quantrill did, hanged a lot of men. He probably would have done well in the Marine Corps. If we still rode horseback.”

“Horses?
We
had horses? Like John Wayne?”

“Just watch the road, Izzo,” Tate said mildly.

He’d been reading up on the Civil War, Tate said, until Korea interrupted.

“I got through tenth grade and then joined the Marine Corps,” he said. “Family was short of money; the Depression was on. I joined up at seventeen in 1937. Been in thirteen years, going on
thirty. Shanghai with the old Fourth Marines was where I picked up a little Chinese.”

“No shit, Gunny, so that’s how you could
parlez
Chink.”

“Shut up, Izzo. Just watch—”

“I know, ‘watch the road.’ ”

Tate had spent nearly four years in a succession of Japanese prison camps.

“Curious to think of now, considering where we are and what we’re doing, but the Korean guards were the worst. The Japs didn’t treat them very well, and so the Koreans treated us worse. We were even lower than the Chinese who worked around the camps. It was barnyard pecking order all the way, and we were the lowest, the Marines and later on whatever fliers they caught, some sailors off torpedoed ships, a few soldiers from God knows where, some Brits, and even a couple of French and Aussies and one South African with a blond beard. He died early of something. I forget what.”

The Chinese, Tate said, while ill-handled, were still civilians and went home at night to wives and children, hearth and hut.

“We stayed behind the wire.”

Some of the Fourth Marines and other Americans were shipped to prison camps in Japan itself. There was a crude system to it. The Japanese needed certain categories of laborer, coal miners for one, steel puddlers for another, and such men were sent to Japan, usually to be worked to death.

“But you see, Captain, we didn’t know that at the time. There were these big arguments, debates really, about whether to tell them you were a coal miner or something else they seemed to want or to hide the fact. One school said you’d be better fed, better treated, because they needed you. The other said, ‘Stay here; it’s bad, but we’re alive. Who knows what it’s like back there?’ ” He screwed up his face in a half-smile. “Didn’t really matter all that much; most of us died one place or t’other.”

He sounded sufficiently thoughtful that Verity didn’t say anything and even Mouse Izzo was quiet. Then Tate continued:

“It did matter once, whether you stayed or went. They pulled
out fifteen hundred or two thousand Yanks at one time late in ’44 when the War was going bad for the Japs and good for us and crammed them into an old tramp, the
Maru
something, to take them back to Japan, to repair bomb damage, that’s what was said, and the
Maru
something was halfway up the Formosa Strait when it was torpedoed by a U. S. sub. The sub didn’t know it was carrying prisoners, of course. A dozen or so Americans were on deck when it hit, hauling water and chow back down to the hold to the others. They got off. A few of them survived the War, and I met one of them a few years ago at Camp Lejeune. He said none of the two thousand below got out. They were chained and the Japanese didn’t have time, or didn’t care to bother, to unleash them. He said even in the water, swimming around and looking for something to hang on to, he could hear the men still on the
Maru
something and the sound they made chained below. He said it wasn’t like men at all, that sound. . . .”

It was, recalled Tate’s friend, more like animals howling.

“I don’t want to be a POW again, Captain,” Tate said, “not ever.”

There were low hills just north of Sudong, and after Verity checked in with ROK officers and was assured the area was quiet, he and Tate and Izzo set up the radio and a pyramidal tent and the rest of their gear on a hilltop and did some listening that evening and into the night until about midnight. They didn’t get much. Toward dawn, maybe 5:00
A.M.
, there was a big storm swept through, thunder and lightning and heavy rain for an hour or so, more like a summer storm than October.

In the morning the whole country seemed cleaner and fresher, the air sweet.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Verity said. The tent hadn’t leaked very much at all.

“Glorioso,” Izzo agreed.

Tate looked at the sky. “I dunno,” he said. “Back home in autumn, just before the real cold, there’s generally one last good thunderstorm, clearing things out.”

Verity looked around then, too. Not a cloud.

“But this ain’t Kansas and I may be wrong,” Tate said.

“Sure, Gunny,” Izzo said. “Even a gunny can be wrong.”

“Izzo, just strike the tent and load the jeep.”

Verity’s orders were to spend just the one night in Sudong and report back to Division. Smith didn’t like to have Marine officers out too far ahead and relying on ROKs.

Fine with me
, Verity thought.

Besides, maybe Tate was right and the weather would be coming off cold.

Ned Almond had his prejudices. He didn’t like black troops or trust them. He’d commanded a black unit in Italy during the War, when the American army was still segregated, and had lacked confidence in blacks ever since. At one point while ordering troop dispositions in X Corps, Almond said that a black 155mm howitzer battalion and several other black units should be “bivouacked behind the lines and left there.”

Nor did he like Marines very much.

But the Marines were what he had to work with and, he conceded with reluctance, they were probably the best he had. He ordered them to move out of Hungnam and Hamhung toward the reservoir no later than November 1. And to move fast.

It was Oliver Smith to whom Almond issued these orders.

“If you as much as
smell
Chinese cooking,” General Smith instructed Captain Verity, “get back here and tell me.”

H
omer Litzenberg, the colonel commanding the Seventh Marine Regiment, was so aggressive a decidedly corny nickname had adhered: Blitzin’ Litzenberg. No one used it in his presence, although his troops enjoyed it. It gave them something to amuse themselves when the Old Man wasn’t listening.

Now Litzenberg’s commanding officer, Gen. Oliver Smith, called Litzenberg aside to tell him his Seventh Marines would lead the march north toward the reservoir and Hagaru-ri and on to Yudam-ni to relieve the ROK forces there and to spearhead whatever farther move north or west the entire Marine division would be ordered to make.

Said Smith, when the two men were alone: “Colonel, I don’t want you to ‘blitz’ your way north. Not this time.”

Litzenberg nodded but looked, and was, confused. Smith wasn’t confused at all. But he was aware he was doing a very subversive thing, something that for a Marine general officer was almost without precedent. He was coldly and knowingly setting out to disobey Ned Almond’s order.

Smith went on now with Litzenberg.

“Homer, I don’t like the way this division is being used and where it’s being sent. General Almond’s ordered an advance to the Chosin and beyond without a secure left flank. There is nothing out there to our left but a range of mountains with no roads across them. And on the other side of those mountains it’s another twenty, maybe forty or fifty miles to the right flank of Eighth Army. I think it’s a mistake by General Almond and by General MacArthur to send two distinct and widely separated wings of this army north in winter conditions against what may be a major element of the Chinese Communist army. I’ve told Almond that. He told me those were the orders and to proceed.”

Smith looked grim now and Litzenberg leaned forward, not wanting to miss any of the subtleties of his own orders, on which his own professional competence would be judged. Such things were important to career military men. He wanted desperately not to misunderstand any of what Smith was telling him.

“Yes, sir?” Litzenberg said, aware that more was coming.

Smith, too, was now tensed and leaning toward his subordinate. He knew how important it was that Litzenberg understand yet how impossible it was to reduce his instructions to paper. A written document instructing the colonel to disobey X Corps orders direct from Ned Almond would be prima facie evidence of insubordination that could easily have Smith, perhaps both of them, up on charges, facing a General Court-Martial.

“I smell something bad out there, Colonel, and I wouldn’t take it amiss if you went north at somewhat less than flank speed.” Oliver Smith was worried about Litzenberg’s Seventh Marines and about sending Marines along a narrow mountain road with real winter coming on and, perhaps, a Chinese army waiting.

Litzenberg was no happier.

His regiment jumped off on November 1. The day before, the ROK II Corps had come under heavy attack from regular Chinese Communist Forces, the first such major encounter with the Chinese. The Chinese attack was a long way off to the west near Kanu-ri but confirmed there were heavy forces in the war and not just a few Chinese “volunteers,” as Willoughby kept insisting.
Litzenberg moved out of Hamhung heading north but not in a rush, throwing out patrols on each flank and far ahead of the leading battalion and not moving a yard until the patrols signaled the way was clear. There was snow on the ground, and on the single road that would now become the Main Supply Route (MSR) for the entire division, the snow was being packed and polished into ice by treads and wheels and men’s boots.

Still, it wasn’t snow and ice or even Litzenberg’s official “caution” that slowed the advance. It was the enemy.

At Sudong, regimental-sized Chinese Communist Forces attacked and for a time cut off two rifle battalions of Litzenberg’s three. It was more than a firefight, the toughest fighting the Marines had been in since taking Seoul. Air strikes were called in, the Eleventh Marines artillery was brought up, and still it took two days to secure Sudong. Then a company of North Korean tanks—and where the hell did they come from?—came out firing and cutting up the lead rifle company before the heavier, bigger-gunned Marine tanks could be brought up. Another day and night went to the taking of Funchilin Pass, nearly five thousand feet high and deep in snow.

On November 7, after a week giving battle, the Chinese abruptly broke off and seemed just to melt into the hills.

Litzenberg didn’t understand it, and back at headquarters neither did Smith. Verity was still there, still monitoring, and had been due to drive north to accompany Litzenberg when the fighting at Sudong broke out and the road was cut.

“We got lucky, Gunny,” Izzo remarked. “We could of been up there with my old buddies in the Seventh getting shot.”

Tate gave Izzo a sour look but knew he was right. It looked as if there was going to be plenty of fighting to go around before this was all over, and a prudent man didn’t rush things.

The battle at Sudong surprised everyone. Hadn’t Verity and Tate driven up there just days earlier to have a look-see and found the place solidly in South Korean hands? Where had the South Koreans fled? Why had the Chinese attacked so ferociously and then broken off?

This Peng is a chess player
, Oliver Smith told himself. Worrying.
And hadn’t Verity assured him the man would fight in the center of the ring? Well, maybe he would yet; maybe all this so far was just the preliminaries, the four-round bouts before the main event.

In Tokyo General Willoughby had finally admitted there were Chinese troops in North Korea, still insisting they were “volunteers.”

“Yeah,” responded cynics at headquarters when sure they were out of hearing, “about a million volunteers.”

There were little signs of panic.

Starting October 25 when the ROK Sixth Division was hit near Unsan, Chinese pressure had built. On November 1 the army’s First Cavalry Division was attacked. On the second, the Marines at Sudong. A few days later Australians had to fight off attacks so fierce they ran short of ammunition and were reduced to wielding bayonets. MacArthur demanded Washington order bombing of the Yalu bridges to cut off Chinese supplies and reinforcements.

Suddenly it looked as if “the boys” might not be home for Christmas, after all.

Yet in other sectors of North Korea, Allied patrols had reached the Yalu, meeting almost no resistance, while along the east coast ROKs sprinted north more than one hundred miles ahead of the Marines still getting under way at Hungnam.

Anyone looking at a map could see that MacArthur’s two armies were spread out over a terrible range of hostile country, so much so that by November 7 MacArthur himself was ordering all units to slow down and consolidate gains.

Then, unaccountably, the Chinese fell back and vanished. By November 14 MacArthur was again preening. The Chinese, he said, had made their little demonstration and gone home. Either that, or they’d run out of steam.

The General had again been proven right.

“Come up with me, Verity,” one of Smith’s staff said. “We’ve got some bodies.” They were from the fighting at Sudong, from the Chinese attack on the Seventh Marines.

Verity told Tate to keep the radio watch and followed the staff major. Izzo, he assumed, was out stealing things.

General Smith had a big tent with a stove going, and it was warm enough you could shed your gloves and open your parka. It was also warm enough to thaw the dead, and so now the staff and a handful of other officers were led out around back behind the general’s tent to where nine or ten Chinese bodies had been lined up for their inspection.

“I always like to see stiffs,” Verity heard one officer whisper to another. “Talk all you want about body counts. I like to see the bodies. That way you know, you really know.”