Росс Томас - The Fools in Town Are on Our Side

“You keep it.”

“Half’s yours if you want it.”

“You earned it,” I said.

He started moving toward the door again and again stopped. “What’d they really want with you at that meeting?”

“They wanted to know if I was banging Carol Thackerty yet.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“The truth. I said not yet.”

Major Albert Schiller and I got hit within thirty seconds of each other on April 17, 1953, about halfway up — or down — the Korean hill called Pork Chop which they made a motion picture about some years later. I think it starred Gregory Peck. The major and I could have used him. I was then nineteen years old and a master sergeant, the youngest in the entire United States Army, or so I’d been told. The major was thirty-six which made him, he falsely claimed, the oldest major in the army, and he didn’t make lieutenant colonel until shortly before he retired in 1961.

We had stumbled halfway to the top of Pork Chop Hill to set up our equipment at an outpost supposedly held by E Company of the 31st Infantry. The equipment consisted of a battery of loudspeakers similar to those used for public address systems in ball parks, college gymnasiums, and football stadiums. I was to use the speakers to address the CCF from the E-Company outpost. I was to insult the CCF, revile it, even taunt it.

“Hit ‘em right in the guts, son,” the general had said to me. “Make ‘em wonder who’s screwing their wives. Make ‘em itchy to get home. You know, undermine their morale.”

The CCF, whose morale I was supposed to undermine, was of course the Communist Chinese Forces who were more or less ignoring the truce negotiations that were then underway at Panmunjom.

Major Schiller had dreamed up the project all by himself and then went scouting for a Chinese-speaking American. He found me, fresh from the States, in an infantry repple depple and promptly had me transferred to what he fondly called his “little psy-war shop.” He somehow had convinced a National Guard general of the merit of his scheme and the general personally had bucked most of Schiller’s proposed table of organization through channels. The approval enabled the major to zoom me from private to master sergeant in two weeks. I had a corporal who was a clerk-typist under my command and together we composed all that there was of Major Schiller’s little psy-war shop.

On April 15, 1953 — or 15 April 53, as the army likes to write it — the major got permission from the general to launch the project that was supposed to undermine Chinese morale to the point where they would lay down their arms and rush back home. But first, the major and I went calling on the general to show off my proficiency in Chinese. “Say something in Chinese, sergeant,” the general said, so I smiled and called him the abandoned son of a syphilitic running dog.

“Sure knows it, doesn’t he, sir?” Major Schiller said and smiled at me fondly. “Of course, he won’t talk that politely to them. He’ll talk to them in gutter Chinese that’ll hit ‘em right where it hurts.”

“Right in the guts, son,” the general said again.

“Right in the guts, sir,” the grizzled young sergeant with the steely eyes replied.

I didn’t see any reason to mention that most of the CCF around Pork Chop Hill were probably Mongolians and would understand less than ten percent of what I was saying. I rationalized that they would at least recognize that it was Chinese and probably assume that it wasn’t a pep talk. I further rationalized that being a master sergeant in a little psy-war shop was far better than being a replacement rifleman in a line company. Anything was better.

E Company of the 31st Infantry Regiment of the 7th Division had sent back word that the CCF was whooping it up with chants and Mongolian music. The major had convinced the general that it would be a “damned fine spot to give ‘em a bit of their own medicine.” Major Schiller knew a lot of clichés and used them lavishly.

So we rounded up a squad or so of spare riflemen who were dogging it on sick call, loaded them and the speakers and amplifiers into jeeps, and headed for Pork Chop Hill. When the jeeps could go no farther, we loaded the equipment on to the riflemen’s backs. The infantry, I thought at the time, hadn’t changed much in the last three thousand years or so.

Major Schiller had found himself a swagger stick some place, probably the only one in Korea other than those employed by the officers of England’s two brigades, and he led us up Pork Chop Hill, swishing the swagger stick around and checking every few minutes to see that his .45 Colt automatic hadn’t fallen out of its holster.

By the time we were halfway to E Company, it had been overrun by the Chinese and most of its men were either killed, wounded or captured. We no longer needed the loudspeakers and the amplifiers to insult the CCF. A conversational tone would do nicely. Major Schiller summoned his ranking non-coms (both of us) for a strategy conference. The corporal and I agreed that a rapid withdrawal would be expedient. The riflemen abandoned the expensive amplifiers and speakers and joined the discussion. To a man, they backed the major’s decision.

It wasn’t really a withdrawal. It wasn’t even a retreat. It was a rout. I carried a Thompson .45 submachine gun that I’d found along the way. The major had lost his swagger stick and now gestured with his .45, but only after I had made sure that the safety catches were on. We plunged down a deep gully, the major still in the lead. Two Chinese soldiers popped out at us from behind a rock outcropping. The major tried to shoot them with his automatic, but he’d forgotten about the safety catches. I yelled, “Stinking turtles!” in Mandarin at the two Chinese, which they may or may not have understood, but which was enough of a surprise to make them hesitate. As I yelled, I dived for the cover of a rock to the left of the major and fired the Thompson as I went. I didn’t hit anything.

The two Chinese were both armed with the highly prized, Soviet-made 7.62mm PPsh 41 burp gun. They must have had them on full automatic because they each fired long bursts at the major and me for at least forty-five seconds. If fully loaded, it meant that they had fired 144 rounds. They were rotten shots, but not all that rotten. One of the 144 rounds ricocheted into my right thigh. Another creased the major’s right forearm and made him drop his automatic, which he still hadn’t fired. I poked my head around the rock and saw that the Chinese were trying to change magazines, but that they weren’t too quick at it, so I killed them both with the Thompson, aiming it low and watching with satisfaction as it climbed up and to the left just as the sergeant at Fort Hood had promised me that it would.

Major Schiller put me in for the Silver Star and got the National Guard general to recommend him for the Distinguished Service Cross, but neither of the medals ever made it past corps headquarters. They did, however, give us a couple of Purple Hearts and then sent us back to recuperate at Brooke General Hospital at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio.

Major Schiller quickly recovered and landed his usual cushy job, this time in Fort Sam’s Public Information Office, where his principal daily task was to issue press releases about the posthumous awarding of medals to the mothers and wives of dead servicemen. The releases were sent to the hometown newspapers and to the San Antonio Light and Express and they invariably began: “In a brief but stirring ceremony, the Silver Star today was awarded to...” It was the same release that the Public Information Office had been using since 1942 and they were used to it. So were the rewrite men on the Light and the Express.