“Nervy bastard, isn’t he?” said the man squinting through the sights.
“Give him a squirt,” said the loader.
“Naw. Wait’ll he gets closer.”
“You can knock him off from here. If you don’t, somebody else will.”
“Want to make sure.”
“Sure of what?”
Mackenzie, behind them, said, “Hold your fire.” He looked up and down the line of foxholes. Every gun was trained on this single figure. Mackenzie had a hunch that it might be a Chinese deserter, and deserters were valuable. “Hold your fire!” he called, louder. “Pass the word.”
It was then that Couzens’ first shout drifted down to the lines, and a minute later he had Couzens by the shoulders, and was beating him on the back, and shouting, “Where in hell have you been, you dope? Where’ve you been?”
“They jumped me in the village,” Couzens said.
“I know. When the fighting started your men went up there after you. They found your three men, dead. They figured you were captured.”
“I was.”
“Well, then—”
“They turned me loose. They took me to their Army HQ, and tried to question me, and turned me loose.”
The men of Couzens’ platoon were now popping out of their foxholes, grinning, and crowding around them. “Get back where you ought to be,” Mackenzie ordered. “You start bunching up and they’ll lay a shell in here. They’re watching us, you bet.” He turned to Couzens. “They turned you loose? Why?”
“Beats me. Maybe they didn’t want me. You should see how they operate. You should see how they move at night.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” said Mackenzie. “We’re moving out of this place. We’re moving at ten hundred. You got back just in time. You better come up to the CP, and get some chow, and help me get the stuff rolling. Everything’s quiet this morning. It’s been quiet ever since they hit us, that one time.”
“What happened?” Couzens asked, as they walked along.
And Mackenzie told him what had happened. A detachment of Chinese had crossed the ice, using the white dress of Koreans as camouflage in the snow, and had fallen upon the squad bivouacked in the hydroelectric station, comfortable in their sleeping bags in the office on the ground floor, and probably not keeping a proper alert. “The gunnery sergeant was with them,” Mackenzie said. “I didn’t tell Kirby to take that detail, but he always picks a good, comfortable, dry place to sleep.”
“What happened to Kirby?”
“He’s dead.”
“No!” It didn’t seem possible that Sergeant Kirby would get killed in war. He was too old, and experienced, and careful.
“He couldn’t get out of his sack. His zipper stuck. They bayoneted him, maybe twenty times.”
“And the others?”
“One boy’s alive. They shot him through the legs. He played dead.”
“What happened then?” Couzens asked.
“It was more of a raid than anything else, as if they were after prisoners. This business across the ice wasn’t much more than a diversion, and then they hit us frontally. Your platoon did real good. Your platoon counter-attacked. But when we went after that bunch in the plant, they were dug in, and we lost pretty heavily. Travis, Krakauskas, Phillips, and Scalpe dead. Simmons and Players wounded.” All those he named were lieutenants, or sergeants. “Altogether, seventeen dead, twenty-two wounded.”
“And prisoners?”
“You were the only prisoner.”
Couzens didn’t like the sound of it. He reviewed his interrogation by the commissar. He wondered what he had said that was wrong. If what he’d said was right enough, from the Chinese viewpoint, then it must have been wrong from the viewpoint of his own country. He was worried, and a little frightened. Some time he’d have to tell Mackenzie the whole story, and he was afraid it wouldn’t sound right. He didn’t think he’d be reprimanded or anything. After all, the important thing was that he was back in the line. But suppose he lost Mackenzie’s confidence, and friendship?
Couzens, in the tent, began to gather up what he could take with him. Then he went out to check on the loadings for the Second Platoon, and the Third Platoon also, that had been the platoon of Travis. He relayed Mackenzie’s orders that all vehicles be combat-loaded. Everything else would burn. He told the motor pool sergeant to start distributing gasoline for the burning.
Mackenzie sat at the table, and found the folder that contained the company records, and went over his roster, and carefully marked KIA, and the date, after the names of Travis and Cohane. And he scratched out the MIA he had written after the name of Raleigh Couzens. He’d heard rumors of the Chinese releasing prisoners, for propaganda purposes, or because of obscure oriental or Communist reasons that nobody could fathom. But Raleigh Couzens wasn’t one to fall for propaganda, and he wondered what had really happened. He also wondered when he’d have time to find out. It would be necessary to report the incident to Regiment. It was something for Military Intelligence—intelligence on a fairly high level. Raleigh was going to have to do a lot of talking, and perhaps some explaining.
He looked at the roster again. Seventeen dead, twenty-two wounded. He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was his fault. He had fouled up. Oh, sure, the colonel had approved his dispositions. But whatever bad happened to a company, that was the responsibility of its captain, just as whatever happened to Regiment was the responsibility of the colonel. It was something you couldn’t duck. He should have figured the Chinese would sneak across the ice, and hit the plant on the edge of the reservoir, and he should have had more men there.
Seventeen dead. Seventeen letters to write, when he got a chance. You couldn’t be very original in those letters, because there always seemed to be so many of them, and everything that could be said in them, he had said before. He knew exactly what his pen would say. “Your husband was a fine officer, and an inspiration to his men…. I feel great personal loss…. Your son was liked by everyone in the company who knew him…. Your son was shot during a Chinese attack. He died painlessly.” What a lie. Nobody died painlessly, not when you were twenty years old, or twenty-five, or even thirty, as he was. When you are young it always hurts to die.
A corporal, one of the cooks and the only fat man in Dog Company, entered the CP. “What about the turkeys, sir?” he asked. “They’ve thawed. They’ve thawed fine, sir.” In the fighting of the day before, of course, no one had thought of the turkeys.
“Burn ’em,” Mackenzie said. He thought for a moment, and then amended this order. “On the way through the village, maybe you can drop off a case or two for the civilians.”
“Yes, sir,” said the corporal, his voice dreary, and he left, and Mackenzie was alone again.
He replaced the company roster in its folder, and shoved it down into his musette bag, alongside the bottle of Scotch, and the few personal possessions he carried there. There was an envelope stuffed with snapshots, and Mackenzie riffled through them, the way he often did when he was unhappy, or depressed. He came to a photograph of Anne, and Sam, junior, and himself, all united in a clinch at Hamilton Field, with a big Military Air Transport Service C-54 in the background. He examined its smallest detail, as a man often will when he possesses a picture with special meaning. The focus had been sharp, and Anne’s clean features and the splendid line of her body seemed so alive that she’d move any second, although all you could see of the baby was a blob of nose and cheek, and his mop of blond curls.