Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

Ahead Mackenzie saw the arms of the tank commanders fly up, one by one, in the signal for halt, and the column halted. “What’s cooking?” he yelled ahead.

The tanker lifted both hands, palms up. “Don’t know. They’ll pass the word.”

At this point Dog Company rested on the crest of a hill, and the line of tanks wormed downward before Mackenzie, so he could see the progress of the word, as the face of each tanker flashed back, and up. Finally the tank ahead got the word, and the tank commander turned to Mackenzie and shouted, “Road block. Chinks. Pass the word.”

Mackenzie passed the word to the jeep behind, where a kid named Nick Tinker was swinging the fifty-seven recoilless around, like a small boy with a Roy Rogers pistol. He heard Ostergaard, the big, placid Swede driving this jeep behind, pass the word.

Mackenzie considered this wait ridiculous. It was absolutely stupid and ridiculous that a powerful formation of tanks should be stopped by a road block. There was firing ahead, about two miles, he guessed from the sound. He could hear a tank’s high-velocity gun laying it in, and the dull thud of mortars which were probably Chinese mortars, and the dueling of machine guns. From the sound he judged that not more than two tanks were in action. This was a shame, but this wasn’t tank country. On the right the tanks were barred by the cliff, and on the left they dared not venture across country, for fear they would crush through the ice formed over the paddy fields, and mire in the slush below. The tanks could not deploy, as tanks should, and race across country to take the enemy on the flank and rear. The tanks were chained to the road.

What was needed here was infantry. Mackenzie estimated the road. The Pershings and the Pattons stood astride of it so that not even a jeep could pass on either side. They had to move over. They had to get close to the rock. If they did that, he could bring his jeeps into action, his jeeps and his foot soldiers. “Vermillion,” he ordered his runner, “you go on back and tell everybody but the drivers of the six-by-sixes, and the weapons carriers, that I want ’em. Right now! Tell ’em to hit the ground and move up. I want every bazooka man. Every one. And I want the jeeps.”

Vermillion tumbled out, and Mackenzie yelled back at Ostergaard, “All jeeps follow me. Pass the word.”

Then he turned on the tank commander in front of him. “Move that big bastard over!”

The tank commander stared back, surprised and uncertain.

“You heard me! Move it over!”

The tank commander said something into his mouthpiece, and the tank grated to the side of the road.

That was the way Mackenzie got Dog Company to the point of the Battalion. It was slow. It was tedious. It required much cursing, and excursions into the ditches. But eventually he came to a place where two tanks were firing. There was still another tank ahead of these two, but it was burning, and had slewed athwart the road. At regular intervals enemy mortar shells arrived, bursting around the burning tank. The road was efficiently interdicted, and part of Division was cut off.

Ekland stopped the jeep at what he considered a safe distance behind the two engaged tanks. Mackenzie said, “Think the ice on those paddy fields will hold our jeeps, sergeant?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Sure. I’m not sure the ice wouldn’t hold the tanks.”

“I guess their Battalion commander knows more about that. Those things weigh almost fifty tons. They go through the ice and they’re finished. Tell you what we’re going to do, sergeant. We’re going to make a sweep. We’re going to flank ’em. We’re going to use the jeeps like cavalry.”

“Very light cavalry,” said Ekland.

“Very light indeed,” said the captain. “But anything’s better than sticking here. Pretty soon the Chinese will get wise. They’ll find out we’re stopped cold here, and they’ll bring up some heavy guns, and we’ll never get out. You and I are going to stay right here, sergeant. This will be the CP. The platoons have got walkie-talkies. We’ll operate by walkie-talkie. You be my talker.”

“Yes, sir,” Ekland said. He brought the walkie-talkie from its case, and called in the platoons.

“Tell ’em I want a bazook on every jeep,” said Mackenzie. “Tell ’em the jeeps are going to move off the road at an angle. The jeeps are going to do a left oblique, if they remember what that is. And when they’re all deployed they’re going to do a right oblique, and charge. The riflemen will follow the jeeps, and the machine-gun and mortar platoon is going to cover, if it sees anything to shoot at.”

Ekland told them.

Mackenzie rummaged for his field glasses, and found them, and stood up on the seat, and swept the terrain a mile distant. Close to where the shells from the Pershings were bursting he saw what he believed to be the top of the turret of an enemy tank. A tank, naturally, would be the core of a road block. It was probably immobile, dug in. Behind the tank he saw no evidence of the enemy, but they were there. Mortar shells spoke their presence. “They’ve got a tank up there,” he said. “You tell the platoons they’re each to have two bazookas on that tank.”

Ekland told them.

Mackenzie looked back over his shoulder and he motioned to Ostergaard to come up, and when Ostergaard came up he said, “I’ve got a special job for you with that mounted fifty-seven. I don’t think that fifty-seven is a damn bit of good against all that turret armor. But when I give the word, you light out of here, but you stay behind the other jeeps, and open fire on that tank up there.” He gave Ostergaard his glasses, and pointed, until Ostergaard too saw the turret.

“I see it, sir,” Ostergaard said. “But what am I going to do with it?”

“You won’t do anything with it,” said the captain. “All you’ll do is distract their fire, so the bazookas can slip in with a Sunday punch. Who’s your gunner?”

“Well, that kid, Tinker, is our gunner, since we lost our gunner back to Ko-Bong.”

“Can he shoot?”

“I guess so, sir. He says so. He brags he’s an expert.”

“Okay, let him shoot. Now look, Ostergaard, any time you think they’ve zeroed in on you, you move.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll move, sir.”

Ostergaard went back to his own jeep. Mackenzie said, “Okay, sergeant, tell them to get going.”

Ekland spoke into his walkie-talkie, using the code name for Dog Company. “This is Lightning Four. This is Lightning Four Forward. Take off!”

Mackenzie watched as his jeeps swerved out on the frozen plain, with the brown stubble of last season’s rice crop poking through the ice. There were only eleven jeeps, in the beginning, and they hadn’t made their turn towards the Chinese block when there were only ten, because a shell from the Chinese tank found one. “This isn’t in the book,” Mackenzie said. “This may be all wrong.”

“This isn’t a book war,” said Ekland. “Right, sergeant, but that won’t help if I lose my company.” Mackenzie noticed that a red beard had been sprouting on Ekland’s chin since Ko-Bong, and that this beard was now stiff, like toothbrush bristles.

“You can call it a calculated risk,” said Ekland.

“Captains don’t take calculated risks,” said Mackenzie. “Captains just make mistakes.” A general could take a calculated risk. If it was successful, he wouldn’t call it a risk, later. It would be a well-planned operation. If he failed, it was a calculated risk.

A cascade of mortar bombs enveloped another jeep, and when the brown smoke drifted away, that jeep was on its back, its wheels slowly spinning. Then the advancing infantry platoons walked through the mortar fire. They walked into it, and out again, but there were not so many of them walking out.