The presence of the sergeant nearby pulled Cole out of his reverie. He nodded at Cole and said, "I've been looking forward to seeing what you got. I expect to see some real shooting out there today."
"Yes, sir."
In squads, the soldiers approached the firing line. Their first position would be prone, possibly because it was harder for a man to wave his rifle around and accidentally shoot something when he was lying on the ground. Some of the more enterprising men had stuffed cotton into their ears of their own accord — the army hadn't gotten around to worrying about hearing protection. The targets themselves were rectangular, roughly the size of a man's torso, and covered with a bullseye. At this range, the targets were the army's equivalent of hitting the broad side of a barn, but he was sure that some of the men in his squad would find the targets challenging, nonetheless.
Cole took his position. A flag fluttered downrange, signaling that the range was in use. The fabric also gave Cole an indication of which way the wind was blowing, so that he could adjust his shooting.
He followed the sergeant's commands, barely listening. He sure as hell didn't need someone to tell him how to shoot. The stock fit perfectly against his shoulder and against his cheek. These were open sights, not a telescope, but the targets were close enough. Cole breathed deeply, enjoying the autumn sun on his face and the smell of gun oil on the warm, gleaming metal of the rifle barrel. Around him, the other men began to fire.
Dimly, he was aware that the sergeant had come to stand just behind him.
Cole's finger began to take up tension on the trigger.
For Cole, the target had an almost gravitational pull. His bullets wanted to find that target in the same way that the moon circled the earth or the earth circled the sun.
But he reminded himself that he needed to keep his head down. Stubbornly, he had decided that he wasn't going to play the army's game. Cole the sniper was in the past. Wasn't he?
The rifle bucked against his shoulder, not that the M-1 had a bad kick. The rifle's gas system lessened the recoil compared to Cole's old Springfield.
Cole fired five carefully placed shots.
Behind him, the sergeant grunted. "I've got to say, that's goddamn disappointing."
At this distance, it was easy enough to see that not one of Cole's shots had hit the target.
"I reckon I've lost my touch, sir," Cole said.
"Goddammit, Cole, that's not all you've lost. You lost me a fifty-dollar bet with the other sergeants that you would hit the bullseye."
After Cole's performance on the range, which did not improve, the drill sergeant no longer seemed interested in Cole, who did what he was told and worked hard not to stand out. In fact, the only time that the sergeant paid Cole the slightest attention was one day when he cut through the kitchen where Cole was on KP duty, paring knife in one hand and potato in the other.
"Better get used to it," the sergeant said ruefully. "That might just be all that you're good for in Korea if you can't shoot straight."
Cole tossed a freshly peeled potato into the pot and said, "I reckon that's just fine by me, sir."
Chapter Four
Cole might have spent the next few weeks on extra KP duty, but he got a reprieve. Just days later, Cole's unit shipped out for Korea. Never mind the fact that they weren't fully trained or prepared. Nobody much cared about that. There was a war on. Korea was being overrun, and the U.S. Army needed boots on the ground as soon as possible.
He found himself on a troop train to the West Coast, and then on a ship. Cole had never seen the Pacific Ocean, but a glimpse of the rolling swells was enough for him before he went below. Aside from the occasional visit to a swimming hole as a boy, he never had much liked the water in any way, shape or form. He much preferred two feet on dry ground.
A troop ship was hardly what you might call luxury travel. Too many men were crammed into too little space. The air below decks smelled of diesel fumes and damp metal, armpits and dirty laundry. The sooner that they got where they were going, the better.
Cole knew little of Korea's proud history, let alone any of the politics involved, but understood that the soldiers could probably expect a fight once they got there.
According to legend, Korea was founded by the god-king Dangun more than two millennia ago, in roughly the epoch in which Christ was born on a distant continent. Wise and resourceful, Dangun ruled for more than a thousand years as the people of Korea flourished, largely in peace.
By the twentieth century, however, Korea's fortunes had fallen. Koreans suffered under Imperial Japan, whose wealthy hunters and landowners saw Korea as little more than a backwards rural fiefdom to be exploited. The arrival of the Second World War meant yet more suffering for the Koreans under Japanese occupation. To the north lay China, a nation that could have been a more powerful ally but that had paid a steep price for not keeping pace with the development of the modern world. China had become embroiled in its own Civil War with the Communists eventually ascending.
In hopes of preventing Korea from falling under the sway of the Communists, the United States had propped up a puppet democracy under a political strongman named Syngman Rhee. Those who had opposed the corruption and brutality under Rhee had sometimes welcomed the Communists at first, as a liberating force. They had soon learned the hard way that the cruelty of the Communists made Rhee’s government look like a bunch of petulant Boy Scouts by comparison. The Communists imposed death squads, imprisoned anyone who was somewhat educated, and starved the rest of the population into submission.
For the average Korean, especially those in rural areas, it probably mattered very little who ruled, so long as there was peace in the land. Alas, it was the everyday Korean people who would largely suffer as war swept the peninsula.
Before their ship left port, the troops aboard had received one last mail call. Cole was surprised to hear his name. Who the hell was writing to him? Nobody in his family was the letter-writing type. He tucked the envelope away in a pocket, barely even glancing at the handwriting.
Meanwhile, the voyage was long and dull. Soldiers played cards or read battered paperback Westerns and detective stories. Mostly, Cole kept apart from the others. He stayed below and slept, not being particularly eager to gaze out at endless miles of rolling waves.
One distraction came when he found an amateur artist in the ranks who had managed to bring along a little paint and some brushes. Cole paid him a few dollars to paint a Confederate flag on his helmet, similar to the one that had decorated his helmet as he had fought his way across Europe.
"I hate to tell you this, buddy," the artist had said, smiling with satisfaction as he inspected his own work. "But you do know that the South lost the war, right? You sure you want that Johnny Reb flag on your helmet?"
"It's for good luck," Cole explained.
The artist raised his eyebrows. "Geez, I'd had to see your idea of bad luck."
From time to time, Cole took out the letter that he had received and considered opening it. But why embarrass himself? He couldn't read it. Hell, he couldn't even puzzle out the return address to see who had sent it. Clearly, it was someone who didn't know him all that well, or they wouldn't have bothered to write him a letter. Growing up a poor mountain boy, Cole never had gotten around to learning his letters. Poor but proud, Cole’s only real source of embarrassment in this world was that even a child could read better than him.
But finally, even Cole couldn't stand the curiosity. Maybe the boredom of the voyage was getting to him. He wanted to know what was in that letter.