Hold Back the Night

  “So what do we do—make a fight of it?”

  “We make a fight of it—but not the way they expect. We don’t stick to the road, not those who are going to do the fighting. And some of us are going to get through and one of those who is going to get through is that kid, Tinker. And I want to put him in for a gong, sergeant. If I’m not around to do it, you do it.”

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  The captain called for Ostergaard. “How many rounds you got for that bazook you’re carrying there?” he asked Ostergaard.

  “I’ve got one, sir, and Kato is carrying one, and Beany Smith has got one and Vermillion one, and I think somewhere there are two others.” With everything else he had to carry, a man couldn’t lug along more than one, or at the most two, bazooka rockets.

  “You know much about a bazooka, Ostergaard?”

  “Not much, sir. I fired one once in training, Stateside, and I fired three or four when we took that house apart back at that last town. That’s all I know, sir.”

  “Okay, you be my loader, then. You take two rounds with you, and Beany Smith, he should have two rounds, and I’ll take the bazook. Four rounds should be plenty. If there’s one tank, one should do it. One should be enough, because if you miss, the tank always gets in the second shot. If there are two tanks, I doubt if fifty rounds would be enough. Still, we’ll take a couple of extra rounds.”

  The captain looked about him, and summoned them all with his eyes. “Okay, you men,” he said. “Now we’re going to split up this force into two parties. One party will be under Sergeant Ekland, and this party will include Tinker and four litter-bearers, and four good riflemen. The sergeant’s party is to march straight on down the road, Ekland leading, then the other four, strung out.

  “Five men are to come up the hill with me and the bazook. Ostergaard, Smith, Heinzerling, Kato, and Vermillion.

  “Sergeant, you give us time to get to the top before you start, because when you pass the crossroads I want to be sitting up there on the nose of the hill with the bazook.”

  The captain noticed that Ekland’s red, stiff beard pointed straight out, as if in protest, and he knew his sergeant was shaken. “You mean, sir—you mean you want us to move right across that tank’s line of fire, like ducks in a shooting gallery?”

  “That’s it, sergeant. That’s it exactly. And I don’t want you even to look around. I don’t want you to raise your eyes from the ground. I want you to pretend you’re unconscious.”

  “I will be.”

  “No, you won’t. That tank will be backed up a hundred yards or so on the other road, at the crossing. That tank doesn’t want you. That tank doesn’t want the litter and Tinker, and the bearers. That tank wants the jeeps, and the weapons carriers, and the six-by-sixes, and all the other fat targets that ought to be behind us, but aren’t.”

  “I get it,” Ekland said. But the sergeant’s quick mind sought and found a weakness in the captain’s reasoning. Had the Chinese, ahead at the crossroads, guessed the Marines’ strength only by direct observation, or did they know it surely by radio from the Mongol cavalry and the mortar battery, back aways? The sergeant decided not to raise the question. It would only complicate things, and might stir doubt in his men. And at least the captain had a plan, and he didn’t.

  “Don’t even turn your head,” the captain said. “Not until you hear shooting. Until you hear my bazook. Then crack down with everything you’ve got, because we may need help to get off that hill.”

  Aboard a battleship at sea, within sight of the port of Hungnam so that its sixteen-inch guns could fire supporting missions, when called on, there was that morning a meeting of men, if not of minds, for an American army had never before been confronted with a situation like this, and it required study. The British had faced up to it, at Gallipoli, and Dunkirk, and Greece. They knew the word, evacuation, so it was fitting that a British Navy captain was included in the conference. And the Britisher was speaking:

  “Gentlemen, I feel that the thing to do is pull back the perimeter gradually, in the darkness hours under cover of the guns. You have the guns. At Dunkirk, we didn’t. You can lay down a curtain of fire that a mouse couldn’t get through. Under this curtain you bring out the units that have been hurt, and you allow your fresh divisions—the Third Division and the ROK Capitol—to undertake the ground defense.”

  “Bring out the Marines!” said a general of Marines.

  The Englishman inclined his head, and said, “Yes. First.”

  “We don’t have to bring out the Marines,” the general said. “Not yet.”

  “What are your casualties?”

  “Three, maybe four thousand in the Division.”

  “Including frostbite?”

  “No.”

  “General,” said the Englishman, “with casualties like that, I don’t see how your force can any longer be effective.”

  The general sat up straight, and beat his fist on the wardroom table, and started to explain about the Marines, and in particular about the First Marine Division, but the British four-striper smiled at him, and the general knew that the Britisher knew about the Marines, already, and was only trying to be helpful.

  “We need the Marine Division,” the Britisher said quietly. “We need them.”

  “Okay,” the general said, “we bring them out. Now.” He turned to his G-3. “Where are we?”

  “Two regiments are in the perimeter,” the G-3 said, “and the other is coming in. It’s coming in with its guns, and its equipment, and its wounded.”

  “That doesn’t sound like we have to be taken out of here, now does it?” said the general.

  The Corps commander, who until then had held himself apart from the discussion, said, “We evacuate your Division. Now.”

  The general said, “Yes, sir,” and turned to his staff sitting behind him and asked, “Everybody accounted for?”

  For a moment, none of his staff spoke, and then a Major Toomey, recently arrived from Washington, said, “Sir, I think the last regiment has a company missing. It is called Dog Company. It was sent out on that secondary road there—” he looked up at the map on the wardroom bulkhead—“to protect the regiment’s flank. It left Koto-Ri okay, but reduced in size, and it wasn’t heard from again until last night. Last night, according to the action reports, someone operating a walkie-talkie at Regiment heard this company calling. This company’s code name is Lightning Four, and that’s what this man at Regiment heard.”

  “Did he contact this company?” the Corps commander asked.

  “He tried, sir, but he couldn’t raise them. These short-range talkies are tricky.”

  The admiral, who had not said a word, said, “What are we going to do about this company? Are we going to abandon them?”

  Nobody spoke, but all of them knew the answer.

  “We have to have air,” said the general of Marines. “That’s up to you, admiral.”

  “There isn’t any air today,” said the admiral, who once had been an air admiral. About the time most of the men fighting in Korea were born, this admiral was flying a box-kite onto the deck of the Langley.

  “It’ll take air to find that company, and support it, if it’s still there,” said the general.

  “This whole coast is socked in,” said the admiral. “I wouldn’t send out a buzzard to fly in this weather. Specially over those goddam mis-mapped hills.” He scratched his chin. “However, we might send out a pinwheel, just to look for them, to see if they’re still there. Where’s my air controller?”

  A commander in the back row stood up and said, “Here, sir,” as if answering roll call at school.

  “How many pinwheels you got?”

  “Well, right now, sir, all of them are out on air-sea rescue, or gun-laying for the cruisers. Except I think there’s a one-place job standing by on the Leyte.”

  “What can it do?”

  “I’m afraid not much for this job, sir. It’s only designed for short-range reconnaissance, and spot
ting. It doesn’t carry anything except a second lieutenant.”

  “Can’t it drop anything?” the admiral asked. “Medical stores or anything?”

  “Not very well, sir. The pilot’s all by himself in a plexiglass bubble in the bow. He can’t do much except look.”

  “Well, what in hell is it good for, except spot?”

  “That’s about all, sir. But it does have a couple of basket litters rigged on the outside, to pick up wounded. It’s picked up quite a few wounded.”

  The admiral scratched his chin again, and then he scratched the back of his neck. “If it can bring back wounded,” he said, “it can bring up supplies. Ever think of that, commander?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, have those basket litters filled with supplies, and send it out. At least we’ll find out whether that company is still there, or not. What kind of supplies do you think they’ll need, general, that is, if they’re still on the road?”

  “Ammo,” said the general of Marines. “Ammo and food and cigarettes.”

  “What kind of ammo?”

  “Rifle, M-1.”

  “Okay, get going,” the admiral told the air controller, and the conference turned to other business.

  In the Combat Intelligence Center on the Leyte, Second Lieutenant Slaton Telfair, III, who his friends called Pinky, listened closely to his briefing, and when the briefing officer finished he asked a question, tracing a pencil along the secondary road as the map showed it. “Who owns this real estate?” he asked.

  “Reds. The Chinese.”

  “Then what’s that company doing there?”

  “I personally don’t think it is there any more,” said the briefing officer, “but higher authority thinks it’s there. Higher authority thinks it sent out some sort of a radio message last night. On a walkie-talkie.”

  “So I stick my neck out along that road, in this weather, looking for some people who probably aren’t there? Sir, do you have the correct spelling of my next-of-kin?”

  The briefing officer grinned, and so did Slaton Telfair, III, and the briefing officer said, “If you run into small-arms fire you’re to come back. We don’t want to lose that pinwheel.”

  In a few minutes a helicopter rose straight up off the deck of the Leyte, like a noisy blue fly, and headed towards the unseen land.

  When he was sure the captain had reached the ridge line, Sergeant Ekland ordered his men forward. Occasionally he looked behind him to make certain his men kept a good distance. To the Chinese, his detachment must look like a patrol, a considerable patrol. “Loosen up,” he commanded over his shoulder. “Take it easy. Pretend like they ain’t there.”

  Mackenzie had reached the nose of the hill, with Ostergaard puffing behind him. “Load it!” the captain said.

  Ostergaard loaded it. Beany Smith and Heinzerling and Kato spread out, along this nose, to cover the captain. They wormed themselves into the ground until they were solid. They made sure their grenades were at hand.

  From this point the captain could see the road, and the heavier road that crossed it, and which had been macadamized, and although pitted and worn, in this part of the world could be considered a main road. Far below him, to the left, he could see nine men of his company, four of them carrying Tinker’s litter, marching steadily. He could also see the enemy tank and ambush, exactly where he had placed it in the map of his mind. Men were swarming over the tank like ants over a beetle. He put his glasses on it.

  It was a Russian T-34, sleekly stream-lined. Its armor would deflect most projectiles fired from ground level. But Mackenzie wasn’t on the ground. He was on top of them. He wriggled forward on his belly until he came to a place where he could steady the bazook upon a rock. “Don’t let ’em see you,” he whispered.

  His men crept up beside him.

  Mackenzie watched. He watched the sergeant and his men approach the crossroads. If I ever get back, he thought, I’ll make the colonel commission him. I’ll scream and shout until he gets shoulder straps. It sounded ridiculous. If he ever got back. He was lucky to have come as far as this. He aimed the bazooka until the sights steadied exactly on the spot where the turret joined the chassis. Then, hardly breathing, he marked the progress of his men.

  He saw Ekland’s tightly knit figure come to the crossroads, and Mackenzie said his luck aloud:

  “He either fears his fate too much,

  “Or his deserts are small,

  “That dares not put it to the touch

  “To gain or lose it all.”

  Ostergaard, working up beside him with an extra rocket, said, “What was that you said, sir?”

  “I didn’t say a damned thing.”

  “Yes, you did, sir.”

  “Okay, Ostergaard, so I said something. And if you are smart you will be quiet and when I let this bazook loose you’ll say something with that M-1, and also keep that extra bazook round handy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The captain watched. The erect, miniature figure that was Ekland reached the cross of the road, and walked on, from this distance cocky and confident as if he were leading a patrol into a waterside bar in Dago. Behind Ekland came Tinker’s litter, and behind them, well strung out, the four good riflemen. The captain held his heart for them. He waited for the Communist burp gunners, now invisible in their hiding places around the tank, to open up. They didn’t, and he held fast to his fetish. What a ridiculous thing, the captain thought, that his fetish was a hunk of poetry—an old double couplet written by Montrose, the Scotsman, the wild and brash Scotsman. He supposed every soldier must have a fetish of some kind, to be consulted like a Haitian ounga before battle. It was a picture in a wallet, a coin, a charm, a six-sided star to keep a man from harm.

  And all he had was four lines, written three hundred years back.

  Ekland’s detachment passed through, all of them, without drawing fire.

  Mackenzie’s finger tightened around the trigger of the bazook, slowly and carefully, as if he were instructing a squad back in boot camp at Lejeune.

  The bazook said, “Shooo!”

  The tank shuddered and buckled, and Mackenzie heard an explosion, muffled, for the shaped charge had exploded inside the tank. Then he saw that what had been a T-34, sleek, fast, and dangerous, was now an iron coffin leaking smoke. “Okay!” the captain said. “Off your butts. Let’s go!”

  They charged down the slope of the hill, yelling. It was ridiculous. It was like an old film of the U.S. Cavalry, pennons flying, routing the redskins. It was San Juan Hill, and Hill 609, and Washington’s ragged Continentals rallying at Trenton. It made no military sense at all.

  It seemed to Mackenzie that he simply floated down the hill, and it was not until he was almost at the bottom that he realized he still carried the bazooka, which he didn’t need at the moment, while his carbine banged against his back. It was too late to stop, and do anything about it, and anyway the bazook might be needed again, so he kept on running. When he was almost to the tank he saw a figure rise up in front of him, and this figure had a gun of some sort and Mackenzie tried to swing his bazooka like a bat, but it was too big and unwieldy. Anyway the figure backed away.

  Although he was within ten feet of the Chinese tommy-gunner when the man fired, Mackenzie never saw it. All he knew was that he was on his face, in a pile of icy shale and broken rock, and his knees were drawn up, because his stomach hurt so.

  Ekland saw the whole thing. He had led his column, as the captain commanded, past the crossroads, keeping his eyes straight ahead, watching his crusted boots move. He did not so much as bob his helmet as they passed the Chinese tank. He tried to walk confidently, as if powerful support was not far behind. He concentrated on this bit of acting. This concentration allowed him to hold in his fear.

  He walked like this until he heard the explosion of the bazooka’s rocket, and then he wheeled, and the four men carrying Tinker’s litter put the litter down, and with the other four they turned the other way. At first Ekland’s detai
l walked, until they were sure the tank was killed, and then they started running. Ekland saw Mackenzie and the others leaping down the hill. He also saw that there were eight or ten of the enemy milling around the tank and he shouted, “Watch out!” but of course the captain couldn’t hear him.

  He saw one of the Chinese turn and cut down the captain. He saw it all.

  Ekland knelt and began to fire his BAR, and his men were firing too. Ekland fired until there was no more ammunition, but by then there were no more targets either.

  He ran to where the captain lay, and shoved the others aside, saying, “Don’t crowd him!”

  He saw that the captain still lived but he knew the captain was badly hurt, for every few seconds the captain had a spasm, or a fit, or something, and his arms and legs jerked and his face was shorn of color, and contorted. Beany Smith was thrusting an aid kit at Ekland, and he took it, and said, “Please, sir, hold still.”

  And by a miracle of will Mackenzie relaxed on his back and breathed and held still, and Ekland went to work on him.

  There was only one bullet hole, high in the stomach, almost in the solar plexus. It bled, a lot. The bullet hadn’t come out through the back.

  Ekland looked around when he had finished his job with the sulfa powder and the compress. He looked at the faces of his men. They were all thinking what he was thinking—the captain was going to crap out. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Ekland said. “There’ll be more Chinese along this crossroad—lots of ’em. Where’s the other litter?”

  “Back with Tinker,” said one of the litter men.

  “Well, we can’t give the time to get it,” said Ekland. “We have to bring the Skipper over to it.” He selected his two huskiest men. “Ostergaard, you and Heinzerling, you carry the captain. Give your guns to somebody.”

  For the first time since he had been hit, Mackenzie spoke, “Get the hell out of here, you damn fools. I’ve had it.”

  Nobody paid any attention to him. Heinzerling and Ostergaard made a cradle of their arms, and the captain was lifted into it, and then they found that he could not hold on, and had no support for his back, so Beany Smith held up his back, and they carried him across the road, and up the road to where Tinker lay, still unconscious. They carried him gently, as if they feared he would break.