All these things the men noticed, and discussed, and it was strange that the captain never noticed them, the captain who could smell an unkempt gun barrel at twenty paces. It must have been humiliating to the captain, this business of the frozen hands. Company officers are fused together by the intimacy of war, the intimacy of those who sleep, wash, and eat and face death together for a long period of time. The captain must have felt as if one of his younger brothers had been proved a forger. Ekland felt sorry for the captain.
The captain raised his chin and said, “Don’t take the right fork. Keep straight.”
“Yes, sir.” Ekland wondered what created a coward. There was a difference between being a coward, and being afraid. Ekland always sweated with tenseness, and nervousness, when they moved into battle, and when they were pinned down and shells were coming in he was almost paralyzed. He’d spoken to Molly about this fear, frankly, and she’d said, “John, don’t ever let it worry you. Only a moron wouldn’t be afraid when he was in danger of losing his life.” For a girl her age she was awfully smart, Molly. She completed him. He needed her, all the time.
He’d always been able to control his fear, and not run. And once a fire fight started, and he was actually doing something, even something routine like encoding a plea for artillery, or sending out co-ordinates to the guns, then his fear miraculously vanished. A man wasn’t afraid when there was a job to do, and a man took pride in doing a good job, whether it was hitching up the network to the stations, in Chicago, or keeping Dog Company in touch with Battalion, or digging gooks out of a cave with a flamethrower. And there was another kind of pride, the pride of being in the First Division, with all its history; the pride of Regiment, and Battalion, and Company. A company was like a baseball team. One bad or lazy player could make the difference. Only a very selfish man would let down his company, so Ekland concluded Sellers must have been a spoiled and selfish man. Right now Sellers was safe in Japan, and in a few weeks he’d be back home, wearing ribbons. Ekland knew of self-inflicted wounds, and once he had seen a man incongruously blow out his brains in desperate fear of death, but getting yourself frostbitten was a shrewd and subtle way out. Nobody could prove frostbite was self-inflicted.
Far ahead of them Ekland saw another jeep approaching, behaving erratically. It swerved into the shallow ditch and a man piled out and scrambled under it. Ekland thought he heard the hiss of a burp gun, and then he saw thin gouts of flame from the second floor window of a house on the other side of the road from the jeep. He tramped down hard with his right foot, and the tires spun in the snow, and then gripped, and they lunged forward.
“What the hell?” said Mackenzie.
“Sniper,” said Ekland, keeping his eyes on the window, and the road. “Got him marked.”
Mackenzie put his carbine in his lap.
When their jeep was a hundred yards from the house Ekland braked, and grabbed his BAR from the rack on the dash. “Cover me,” he said. “The window on this side, second floor. Kato, grenades for you.”
Ekland hit the ground, running and doubled over, and left the road, with Vermillion and Kato behind him. Mackenzie followed, the butt of his carbine cradled in his elbow, like a boar hunter fascinated by the skill of his catch dogs. Nobody had to tell them what to do. They were good. They were pros.
This house, with cracked and flaking plaster walls, on the outskirts of Hagaru, like most Korean two-story houses, had no windows except in front, and so they rushed its blind side. They deployed in the shelter of the wall. Vermillion backed cautiously into the street, and as soon as the window was in his sights, he began to fire, methodically, to keep the sniper down. Mackenzie joined him, his carbine at his shoulder, to take up the covering fire when Vermillion changed magazines, and to watch the other window, and the door. Kato appeared, careful not to obstruct their fire, drew back his arm, and lobbed a grenade through the window with the smooth, easy motion of a warm-up pitch. While the grenade was still in the air, he turned and ran, in case the grenade should miss, and bounce from the wall. He had never missed, but some day he might. With the grenade’s explosion, Ekland raced around the corner of the house, and through the door. Mackenzie heard four short bursts from the BAR, and then Ekland came out of the house, examining the breech of his weapon. “There were two of them,” Ekland said. “Koreans, I guess.”
The man under the jeep now crawled out, a pistol dangling from his hand. Mackenzie turned to Kato and Vermillion. “You two men go back and get the transport moving,” he ordered.
The man with the pistol said, “Thanks. Pretty inadequate, isn’t it—thanks?” He was a chunky man, older than a Marine at the front should be, and Mackenzie could tell from the condition of his boots and his greatcoat, and by the fact that he carried a pistol, that he was fresh from the States. A forty-five was not much use in this war.
“You hurt?” Mackenzie asked.
“No. They got a tire. That’s all, I guess.” They glanced at the jeep. There was a semi-circle of small round holes in the steel. “Not quite all,” the man said. “I suppose you’re Dog Company.” He looked closely at Mackenzie. “You must be Mackenzie. Heard of you at Division CP. I’m on Division Staff. I’m Major Toomey.”
“I’ll have my men in the tail jeep change your tire, major. They can catch up with us.”
“That’s damn nice of you. I think I’d just as soon be shot as change a tire in this cold. I’m not exactly acclimatized.”
“California?” said Mackenzie.
“Yes. San José.”
“Los Altos,” said Mackenzie.
“Do you know the Woodruffs?”
“Jim Woodruff? Sure. Lives on the Saratoga Road.”
“Small world.”
“Getting no bigger. What’s the poop at Division?”
Major Toomey frowned. “Not very good. Not very good at all. Navy’s got a lot of ships at Hungnam, and more are coming in every day. We haven’t been told yet, officially, but I think there’s going to be an evacuation. I think there will have to be an evacuation.”
Ekland, who had been listening, said, “Gee-sus!”
“You mean the whole Division?” said Mackenzie. It didn’t sound believable. Only a few days before, the war had been over, and won, and now they were talking about evacuating the Division.
“The whole Corps, I should think,” said Major Toomey. “Maybe the whole Army, the whole works.”
Mackenzie drew in one long breath, and let it out with a whistle, but he made no comment. He could understand, because of the gap between Ten Corps and Eighth Army, that Corps might have to pull back into a perimeter around Hamhung, the industrial city, and Hungnam, its port. Certainly Corps could hold a beachhead perimeter, with all its artillery, and Navy big guns and the carriers, and all the air. What had happened? Were the Russians coming in, or what?
The communications jeep had now drawn abreast of them. Mackenzie sent Vermillion back down the line with orders about the major’s jeep. Kato slipped into the back seat. Mackenzie saluted Toomey, as line officers often do when they encounter Staff, and said, “Glad to have met you, major.”
Major Toomey smiled, returned the salute, and said, “I was gladder to meet you, and your sergeant here. Any time you’re in San José—”
“Right. I’ll drop around for a drink.”
“Name’s in the phone book. Toomey.”
“I won’t forget.”
“Be seeing you, Mackenzie.”
The column moved again. John Ekland, at the wheel of the jeep, had not ever been so cold—so cold, and frightened, and miserable. What in hell had happened to the United States? What in hell was happening when a bunch of gooks and Chinks could lick the United States?