Deng was so worried about an ambush ahead that several more minutes passed before it dawned on him that there weren’t any footprints on the path ahead. He stopped, puzzled.
Wu squeezed in beside him. “What is it? Why have you stopped?”
“I don’t see any tracks, sir.”
“They did not turn into birds and fly away,” Wu said, annoyed. For once, he was not smiling. “What do you mean, there are no tracks?”
“I think it was a trick, sir. Back at the fork, I think they may have gone the other way.”
“Nonsense. You saw the tracks as well as I did. They came this way.” The political officer pointed at several marks in the damp earth of the path. “What do you call that?”
“Those are the hoofprints of a deer, sir.”
Wu pushed past Deng to lead the way. The major hurried along the path, which grew narrower and hard to follow. They soon reached the sandy shore of the river. Whatever path they had been following had disappeared, along with their quarry.
The major realized that Deng was right, after all. The Americans had somehow tricked them.
Gazing out at the river, Major Wu shouted several curses that were not at all worthy of a political officer.
Chapter Nine
To Hardy’s eyes, these godforsaken hills were the last place on earth that anybody would want to fight over. All that he saw were rocks, hills, and scrub trees. Beyond the outpost, he saw more rocks and more hills. He recalled the rich farmland of the Midwest, where he had grown up. The fields here were small by comparison, scratched out of the rock, and mostly smelled like excrement due to the human waste that was used for fertilizer.
The communists can have it if they want it so much, he thought.
Although Hardy was a recent college graduate with an English degree, his education in the great works of literature mostly failed him in trying to describe the view. The landscape was just plain uninspiring. Eventually, a few lines from a poem entitled “Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley came to mind: Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair/Yet all around the empty sands stretch away.
The Korean hills were not the desert, but the sentiment of futility was the same. What the hell was everybody fighting over?
“You look lost, soldier.”
The voice behind Hardy gave him a start. He turned around to find a young lieutenant standing with hands on hips, an amused expression on his face. The officer was only a couple of years older than Hardy.
“Yes, sir. I mean, no sir.”
“The billiards hall is just down this way, and ice cream parlor is just over the next hill.”
Hardy realized that the young officer was kidding. He grinned. “Don’t we wish, sir. But I am a little lost. I’m a reporter with the Stars and Stripes, and I’m supposed to write an article about the 65th Infantry.”
“You mean the Borinqueneers? I hope you speak Spanish. Most of them don’t know a word of English, and that includes the officers. We’re supposed to be working together and we can’t even understand each other.” He frowned. “Don’t put that in the article. Listen, the Borinqueneers aren’t going anywhere. What you should write an article about would be my tanks.”
“Tanks, sir?”
“Sure, that’s where the real story is. Have you ever been up close and personal with an M-46 tank?”
“Can’t say that I have, sir.”
“Then follow me, Private. I’m Lieutenant Dunbar, by the way.”
Lieutenant Dunbar led the way forward. Hardy wasn’t sure if he was being ordered to write about tanks or not, but he was curious now. With a shrug, he followed the lieutenant.
They climbed higher on the hill. Officially, this was designated as Hill 122. From up here, Hardy had an impressive view of the valley below with the Imjin River cutting through it. More hills marched away to the horizon.
The lieutenant pointed out one of the largest hills, front and center. “The Chinese hold that one right there. Hill 377. The boys call it the Rice Mound. Every now and then the Chinese get a hair up their ass and fire some artillery at us, and we shoot back.”
Hardy squinted at the Rice Mound, hoping for a glimpse of the Chinese fortifications, but didn’t see a thing.
The lieutenant seemed to read his mind. “They don’t show themselves during the day because our planes will knock the hell out of them. But they’re dug in on that hill, believe me.”
One of those hills was occupied by Outpost Kelly, the lieutenant explained, a forward position meant to provide warning of any attack.
“Who is Kelly?” Hardy asked. There was often a good story behind a name, but maybe not in this case, it turned out.
“Beats me,” the lieutenant said. “Just to the south of us there are three outposts named after cities in Nevada, so go figure. I guess somebody was homesick.”
Climbing a little higher, they passed a solid-looking dugout or bunker, its flat roof and sides heavily sandbagged. However, the front of the bunker was big as a garage. Hardy wasn’t far off about that. As he watched, a crew backed a quarter-ton truck fully laden with boxes of ammunition into the bunker. This must be a support vehicle for the tank unit.
Finally, they reached the tank battery itself. It was not what Hardy had expected. Instead of the tanks sitting out in the open along the ridge, each tank was pulled into its own dugout or revetment so that only the turret and gun sat above ground level. There was a lookout in the open turret, his head just visible above the hatch. The rest of the crew lounged on the ground at the back end of the tank, smoking cigarettes. They tossed them away and stood up as the lieutenant approached.
“How’s it going?” the lieutenant asked. “Anything?”
“No, sir,” one of the tank crew said.
“All right, I want you to make sure all the ammunition is squared away. When the supply comes around today, make sure you stack a dozen rounds right here.”
“Will do, sir.”
His orders given, the lieutenant turned back to Hardy. “Climb aboard.”
They scrambled onto the tank. Once he was standing on the back or deck of the tank, his perspective changed. Even dug into the revetment, the tank was much bigger and higher than Hardy had expected.
“Got a notebook?”
“Yes, sir.” Hardy was beginning to realize that not much got past this officer.
“Here are a few facts about the M-46 for you. This tank weighs forty-eight tons. It is twenty-eight feet long, twelve feet wide, and nine feet high. The steel on the front and the turret is four inches thick. The tank is powered by a twelve-cylinder engine that generates eight hundred and ten horsepower, which makes her a little thirsty. Three gallons of gas to the mile.”
“Glad I don’t have to fill her up, sir.” Hardy scribbled frantically in his notebook as the officer spouted facts. “That could get expensive. Back home, it was a big Saturday night if I could put two gallons of gas in my old man’s Buick.”
“You’ve got that right. Lucky for us, Uncle Sam foots the bill,” the lieutenant said, laughing. He moved forward, nodded at the man in the turret, then slapped the big gun. The easy way that he moved around the tank showed that he was right at home aboard this beast. “This is a 90 mm gun. You can see that we’ve also got a .50 caliber machine gun and two .30 caliber machine guns.”
Hardy whistled. “That’s a lot of firepower.”
“This is the finest tank in the world,” the lieutenant said. “A truly formidable machine of war, if there ever was one. There’s only one problem.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“A tank is meant to be mobile. We’re the modern cavalry, for God’s sake! Do you see a problem with our current situation, Private?”
Hardy ventured a guess. “Well, you’re not very mobile at the moment.”