“Listen up! I heard this might happen, but I sure as hell didn’t believe it. You can thank General Smith and every man on down the line for this.” McCarthy paused, took a breath, waited for the platoon to move closer. “In honor of the one hundred seventy-fifth birthday of the United States Marine Corps, headquarters has sent us hot food. Grab your mess kits and form a line.”
The order didn’t have to be repeated, the men responding with raw enthusiasm. Riley ripped the mess kit free from his pack, slid into the formation, Welch in front of him, and Welch said, “I’ll be damned. The brass did something right. I can smell whatever that is already.”
In front of them, another platoon had moved into place, and Killian called out, “They better not take seconds.”
McCarthy was moving along the line, a rare smile. “Don’t worry about it, Private. They’re sending plenty.” He pointed toward the horizon. “More choppers coming in.”
Riley felt the impatience of the men around him, slow steps closer to the food. He heard the thump of the choppers, and now another sound, odd, a loud voice. In front of him, Welch said, “Hey. It’s the captain. Good God. That sounds like singing.”
The men looked that way, and Barber obliged them, stepping out into the open, his voice booming, reaching them all.
“From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli…”
KOTO-RI, NORTH KOREA—NOVEMBER 11, 1950
The temperatures dropped throughout the night, pushed downward by more of the blustery winds. They had been on one-quarter watch, one man in four kept awake for a two-hour stint, the others allowed to sleep. Riley’s watch had come early, before midnight, and when he slid into the bag, curling up into the foxhole, the warmth had been perfect. The boots had come off, the socks set aside, dry socks now embraced by the thickness of the sleep bag. Sleep had come quickly, nothing anywhere along the perimeter of the town to cause any disturbance at all.
He had dreamed of Pennsylvania, courting Ruthie, a stroll through the astonishing beauty of a peach orchard. It was his favorite way to soften her up, the peach blossoms holding some kind of seductive powers he could never hope to duplicate. They had kissed for the first time, his eye caught by the flickers of the blossoms in her hair, the soft sweetness of her perfume. He rolled to one side now, heard a loud curse, the words pulling him back to Korea, jarring him awake. It was Killian.
“Holy Christ! My feet are frozen! Damn, everything’s frozen!”
Riley felt it now, the burning numbness in his feet, a hard chill that wrapped all around his chest. He yanked at the sleeping bag, but the bag was in place, enveloping him, the cold crushing its way through. He flexed the numbness in his toes, sucked in a hard, cold breath, felt a choking numbness in his throat, put one hand up on his face. He fought to breathe, his nostrils frozen shut, saw the shadow of Killian rising up in the hole, slapping himself with his arms. Riley was shivering heavily now, the iciness of each breath draining away any warmth he had inside. His words came in a quivering croak. “What the hell?”
Killian dropped down again, a vain attempt to curl himself more tightly together. “I know! This is nuts. What happened?”
Around them, men were up and moving, some standing, more arms slapping, cries and curses. Killian said, “Somebody light a damn fire!”
“The hell you don’t.”
The voice belonged to Welch, and Riley saw him coming, a dark heap coming down in the hole, crushing weight on top of him. Welch was shivering as well, pulling himself up close to the other two, his words in a quick burst. “No fires. Orders. Jesus Christ, it’s cold. I can’t breathe.”
Around them the men were reacting in a growing chorus of shock and anger, Riley still shivering, the sergeant’s weight a welcome blanket. Killian was saying something, low, meaningless words, and above Riley, a new voice. “The aid station is back this way! There’s heat there!”
Men began to erupt from their foxholes, some of them stumbling on frozen feet. Welch was up now, moving away, and Riley felt the hard cold slapping his face, put his hands tightly against stinging ears. His brain spewed out a chorus of nonsense, shouts inside him, It’s just cold! For God’s sake, it’s just cold! But around him the chaos was growing, a clumsy stampede toward the tents, and Killian was up now, staggering away. Riley looked out from the hole, a hint of dawn rising to the east. He could see the men gathering at the tents, heard the shouts from officers, useless orders to stand down, back away. He thought of running that way, the cold crushing him into the hole, and he curled up tightly again, hard shivering. To one side he saw his socks, laid out to dry the night before. Put them on! He reached out past the edge of the hole, his gloved hands curling around them, no feeling in his fingers, the socks in his hands now, stiff and frozen. This is insanity, he thought. How cold can it be? He reached for his boots, slid them quickly onto numb feet, the soft layers in the bottom of the shoe pacs now hard and icy. He tried to stand, no feeling in his feet, and he stomped one foot on the other, his brain screaming at him the error, his foot bursting into stinging pain. He rubbed at the boots, useless, no feeling still in his fingers, his brain shouting new instructions: Move! He rose up, climbed out of the hole, shivered violently, dropped down to one knee, his teeth in full chatter, nostrils frozen shut.
“Get up! Here!”
He felt a hand under his arm, was pulled up, tried to gather his feet beneath him, find the balance. He wanted to thank the man, had no words, glanced that way, saw only eyes, the face wrapped in cloth, the single lieutenant’s bar on the helmet. The hand released him and Riley pushed the words out. “Thank…thank you.”
“Get over to the aid station. They’ll warm you up.”
Riley fought the pain, the utter shock of the hard chill in his bones, his lungs. He curled his arms against himself, flexing his fingers, his feet still numb.
“What the hell is this?”
He knew the voice now, McCarthy. “It’s ten below, Private. The Koreans call this winter.”
—
The abrupt drop in temperatures caused a response that even the men from northern climates couldn’t predict. The Marines reacted to the crushing impact of the below-zero weather with what could only be described by the medical officers as shock. More than three-fourths of the two hundred fifty men of Fox Company scrambled to the aid stations, where overwhelmed corpsmen and battalion surgeons could only offer the men the warmth of a heated tent. Men were suffering from dangerously low respiratory rates, a level of hypothermia so severe that the medical men applied various stimulants to pull the Marines from their stunned condition.
The Seventh Regiment had been fortunate to be the first to receive the far warmer winter clothes, but farther south, along the same line of march, Ray Murray’s Fifth had yet to receive the heavier gear. Their single advantage was that at the lower altitude, the temperatures hadn’t dropped so severely. But Murray’s orders were to keep close behind the Seventh, and so, very soon, as his men pushed up through the pass, they would suffer the same misery. As word of the abrupt change in the weather went back to division headquarters, General Smith responded by ordering the supply depots to the south to push forward as much winter gear as could be found.
Once their physical reactions had been tempered, the men of Fox Company began to adjust to the severity of winter. Though their clothing brought some relief, new problems arose, from frozen canteens to frozen toes. If there was no escaping the cold, the men were comforted in some part by what they saw in Koto-ri. Within days of reaching the town, establishing their perimeter, convoys of supplies began to arrive, driven along the same road these men had climbed by foot. The engineers had done their job, widening and strengthening the pathway, to make way for the large six-by trucks and columns of tanks. Koto-ri rapidly became an enormous supply depot, a protected fortress established by General Smith as a precaution for the continuing advance northward by his division. With the great ports so far behind them, a supply line connected to their advance by a single roa
d, Smith realized what Tenth Corps seemingly did not, that the Marines were more vulnerable with every day’s march. If there should be some crisis farther to the south, some danger that could jeopardize that supply line, Smith would provide depots all along the way.
But the men of the Seventh Regiment did not enjoy the relative comforts of Koto-ri for more than a few days. Once more they were ordered to shoulder their gear and resume the march northward toward the Yalu River. Again there was little sign of the Chinese, no significant roadblocks, no attempt by the enemy to stand in their way. And so the men marched farther along the single narrow avenue toward their next goal, the town of Hagaru-ri, at the southern tip of the Chosin Reservoir.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Smith
FIRST MARINE DIVISION HQ—HAMHUNG, NORTH KOREA—NOVEMBER 14, 1950
HE CLIMBED OUT of the jeep, stepped down gingerly on frozen feet. The staff was waiting, a helpful radio call alerting them that Smith was close. He moved quickly inside without speaking, a cup of hot coffee pressed into his hands, the heat in the main room embracing him like a powerful blanket. He thought of his escort, the team of jeeps manned by machine gunners, guards against any enemy who might have been observant enough to realize that the small convoy that tracked past them held the commanding general of their enemy.
Sexton was there, concern on the man’s face, and Smith said, “Captain, make sure those boys out there get something, too. Feed ’em, give ’em coffee. Send them to the warming tents, or somebody’s billet. I’ll not have casualties from this weather just because I needed babysitting.”
Sexton moved outside quickly, and Smith stood silently, wriggling his toes, the feeling returning. He curled his fingers tightly, pulled his hands close to his stomach, glanced at the staff, hoping no one noticed. It was the old malady, an affliction his doctors attributed to the case of influenza he had endured years before. Smith had not escaped the astounding plague that swept the world in 1918, killing more than six hundred thousand people in the United States alone. He had survived his own battle, but the lingering symptom was a quivering weakness in his hands and feet whenever he had been subjected to extreme cold. And today the cold was extreme.
To Smith’s dismay, the helicopters had been crippled, the mechanics working feverishly to solve the problem. The cold had thickened the oil in the crafts’ crucial gearbox, rendering the choppers wholly unreliable. For Smith to maintain close contact with his commanders, meetings that were too involved for radios, the only option now was the jeep. Smith had prepared for the dismal trips the same as his officers, heavy coats and scarves, as much protection from the windy ride as could be found. The journey up to Litzenberg’s headquarters had taken the better part of three hours, and no matter how much coffee was available at either end, the lingering effects of the trip exposed Smith’s dread of extreme weather and brought back the shaking in his limbs. If his staff was aware of that, it wasn’t because he would tell them. Weakness of any kind was a plague all its own, especially when his men were struggling to advance through the hostility of the winter by moving on foot.
The progress was still grindingly slow, and Tenth Corps had only partly accepted Smith’s explanation that the weather had greatly inhibited the march. Whether anyone around Ned Almond actually believed Smith’s reasons for such sluggishness, Smith didn’t really care. No one could accuse him of disobedience if his men were moving north. But Almond himself had his own agenda, and Smith was well aware that military considerations, including the physical suffering of his men, were secondary to Almond’s sycophantic need to please Douglas MacArthur.
The word had come that morning, even as Smith’s jeep carried him southward from his visit to the Seventh in their camps above Koto-ri. Almond was making yet another visit to the Marines’ headquarters. The thought was just one more incentive for Smith to advance his headquarters northward, where Almond’s visits might become more infrequent.
On the far side of the room, he saw Craig, speaking into a radio phone, Craig eyeing him as he spoke.
“Yes, Colonel, he has just returned. I will share your concerns.” Craig paused, and Smith could see he was absorbing a lashing from the other end of the line. “Yes, Colonel. General Almond is due here at any time, and I am certain that General Smith will express what needs to be, um, expressed. Goodbye, Colonel.”
Craig put the telephone down, seemed exhausted. Smith said, “Puller?”
Craig nodded. “Tenth Corps still has him chasing guerrillas down there, and he’s not happy about it.”
“Lewie knows we’re putting more distance between his people and the other two regiments every day. I’ve told him how I’m holding back progress as much as I can, but Lewie feels like he’s stuck in the mud. I’ll talk to General Almond again. When’s he due here?”
Bowser emerged from one of the smaller offices, said, “Just got off the line with Tenth Corps HQ. He’s on his way. Colonel Trotter says that the general is greatly pleased to be relocating his HQ to Hungnam.”
Smith sagged, tried to hide it. “I expected that. It’s protocol. Corps command needs to keep up with the corps.”
“Yes, sir. Colonel Trotter says it will be good for us to be neighbors.”
Smith said nothing, knew that Bowser and Craig both could read his thoughts. He drank from the coffee cup, the bitterness curling his tongue, the cup now empty except for a smudge of grounds in the bottom. But the cold still ran through his veins, and he ached for more, saw the pot on a small burner in one corner. One of the enlisted aides was up quickly, moving that way, the pot in hand.
“Please. Allow me, sir.”
Smith waited for the cup to fill, the shaking in his hand nearly gone. The young man seemed not to notice, and Smith turned away, a soft, “Thank you, Corporal.”
He heard the vehicles outside, the heavy rumble and squeal of brakes.
Craig motioned with his hand. “Has to be General Almond. One of the senior mechanics told me he won’t let them lube his truck. Likes to make an entrance.”
Bowser laughed, said, “Like Patton and his siren.”
Smith wasn’t in the mood for their playfulness, said to Craig, “The mechanics figure out how to get those helicopters working?”
Craig said, “Thinner oil. They’re draining out the usual stuff. Once the new oil supply gets here, they say the choppers will be up to the task.”
Smith kept his focus on the commotion outside, thought, Not soon enough.
The door opened with a flourish, an aide pushing inside, back flattened against the wall, holding the door wide open. Smith felt the blast of cold air, waited impatiently, no one appearing. Outside, the voices were boisterous, Almond greeting the men, shaking hands, as though visiting old friends. Smith hunched his shoulders, the heat in the small building sucked away, Almond’s staff officer still keeping the door open, oblivious to the reaction of the Marines inside. Almond was there now, stopped in the doorway, appraising, and Smith was annoyed, his usual response to Almond’s meaningless smile.
“Please come inside, sir. It takes a while for the heaters to do their job.”
Almond stepped in, the door closing behind him, noticeable relief from the staff around Smith. Almond removed his gloves, the coat now pulled off his shoulders by his aide.
“Brisk, eh?” He looked toward Craig, said, “Hello, General. I understand you’ve been up at the front, prodding Colonel Litzenberg to make better time.”
Craig didn’t smile, said, “We both have, sir. General Smith and I have made daily runs to each of the regimental commands.”
Almond looked down, slapped his hands together, said, “Is that right? With the kind of progress the Marines are making I had thought perhaps General Smith was occupied with other matters.”
Smith fought himself not to react, said, “General Almond, my staff has a great deal of work to do here. Would you please join us in my office?”
“Lead the way.”
Smith moved toward the smaller office, Craig
there before him. Craig stood aside, Smith sliding into a small folding chair, and he motioned toward another.
“Please sit, sir. No need to be uncomfortable.”
Almond stood, his aide standing stiffly behind him. It was a game that Smith was used to, Almond not conceding any need for comfort. Craig knew the rules, said, “Do you mind if I sit, sir?”
Almond folded his arms across his chest. “Certainly. I’ve been sitting for a while in that infernal truck. Prefer keeping upright, keeping my back straight. There will be time for relaxing when this war is over.”
Smith said nothing, wouldn’t give Almond any kind of satisfaction. In short seconds, the silence grew heavy and Almond said, “We’re relocating Tenth Corps HQ to Hungnam. I would like a company of Marines to serve as guards, security, so forth.”
Smith saw the surprise on Craig’s face, thought, A show of power.
Smith said, “Why do you require Marines? Is it not better if my men are sent forward? We might need every man we can put into this fight.”
“What fight is that, Smith? So far, I have only heard reports of sniping, skirmishes, and an enemy who delights in keeping out of your way.”
Smith felt the familiar boil. But, he thought, there has to be more to this visit than a request that could have come by phone. He said to Craig, “Get Bowser.”
Craig seemed ready to sputter a protest, but he obeyed, went to the door, a sharp whisper. Bowser was there quickly, said, “Sir?”
Smith kept his eyes on Almond, Almond looking away, and Smith said, “General Almond requires a company of Marines to serve as security for his new HQ here. Find out who’s nearby. Murray’s people haven’t completely taken to the road yet.”