Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

The two tanks ahead—the only tanks that could bring their guns to bear—now increased their rate of fire. Whoever was in command, in the lead tank, saw what the infantry was doing, and was co-operating as best he could. In the face of the burning tank, blocking the road, and the plaguing, dug-in targets ahead, he was almost helpless. But if somebody was sweeping the flank, he’d pour in his shells, and hope for a lucky hit. At least, he could keep the enemy partially occupied.

It is not often that a commander can watch the progress of a battle with clarity, as if it were a panorama that moved, and made sounds, and for the first time in his life this moment came to Mackenzie. Ordinarily a battle was confusion, and sudden noises close by, and the isolation that comes when you can see only a few of your men. But now he watched, not as comfortable as if he sat in an armchair before a television set, but with the same critical detachment. They’re going too far out into the paddy, he thought. “Tell ’em right wheel,” he said to Ekland.

“Lightning Four, right wheel!” Ekland said into the mesh of his microphone, and repeated the order, again and again.

The jeeps continued ahead. Mackenzie guessed the platoon leaders had missed the signal, or were too engrossed in their jobs to listen. It was probably simpler. Probably, it was just too noisy out there. From here in, Mackenzie knew, he could not influence the course of battle. He had committed his force in an unorthodox and desperate enterprise, and he was helpless. So he tried to concentrate on watching, through his glasses.

One of the jeeps stopped, and he recognized it, from its silhouette, as the one with the recoilless gun. He watched this gun begin to fire, and turned his glasses on the target, infinitesimal from this distance. He saw a flash of red, and a puff of white smoke, either on the turret, or very close. That kid, Tinker, was shooting good.

But the tank was still firing, and he lost another jeep. He lost the jeep with the gun. He didn’t see the hit, but the jeep was overturned. The other jeeps spread in a semicircle around the enemy’s position. That was the way he had hoped they would operate, the way he would have ordered it had his communications been adequate. The men had never attempted such a maneuver before, nor was it anything you learned at Parris Island or Quantico. In military jargon it would be called initiative. Actually, it was as instinctive and simple as small boys spreading out for a pass in their first game of touch football. Mackenzie felt proud of his men. They could operate without the coach.

The Chinese would be frantic. Their high velocity gun would find the targets moving, spread out, difficult. Mackenzie watched tiny figures spill out of the jeeps, disappear, and appear again, always closer to the tank turret. Then he saw, clearly, the double-ended red spears of bazookas, firing, and the sound of explosions different from the crack of guns drifted back to him. Now his infantry was in the Chinese position, and beyond, and Mackenzie laid his glasses in his lap. “They made it,” he said.

“I didn’t think they could do it,” said Ekland. “But I heard the bazooks. Wonder how many bazooka men we lost?”

“Maybe one. At the most two. Maybe none,” said Mackenzie. “They played it just right. Somebody was going to get that tank. You know what, sergeant?”

“No, sir. What?”

“Your men are always a little better than you think.”

“Yes, sir.” Ekland enjoyed it when the captain, often so reticent, chose to lecture him, particularly when the captain lectured on the elaborate lore of battle.

“An officer should realize that right from the beginning. He should understand that his men are good, and whenever they prove it he should tell them about it. Then they get better. They get better than they know.”

The tanks ahead began to move, snorting like race horses held overlong at the barrier. The first one shoved the tank that had been hit, and was now burned out and charred. The motor roared, and its exhausts spit out streams of blue smoke, and it shouldered the dead tank off the road. When their jeep passed this dead tank, Mackenzie shut his nose and his mind to the smell.

Where the Chinese block had been, Mackenzie pulled off the road to re-organize his company. Couzens’ platoon held the high ground commanding the road, and the others were now straggling in, bringing their wounded. Mackenzie was examining the twisted turret of the T-34 when two of his men approached him. One was very large, and the other very small, and he did not recognize them until the larger one spoke, for Mackenzie had never seen such a sight before.

It was not only that they appeared to have been hosed by a stream of blood, but bits of flesh and splinters of bone were frozen to their parkas and gloves and boots. “We got hit, sir,” the larger one said, and Mackenzie realized it was Swede Ostergaard, and that the small one was little Nick Tinker.

“For God’s sakes, get off your feet until I can get a couple of corpsmen over here.”

“We’re not hurt, sir,” said Ostergaard. “We’re all right. It was Lieutenant Bishop. He got it in the belly.”

“I guess that’s what saved us,” said Tinker.

“Yes, sir,” said Ostergaard. “He took the whole load. We’d got in good range of this tank, here, and Tinker was aiming, and this lieutenant, he came up with his platoon, and he was standing right next to me when that shell came in and he just exploded. The jeep tumped over, and the two men in the back were hit, but we weren’t hurt at all.”

“No, sir,” said Tinker. “Not at all.”

“Okay,” said Mackenzie, masking the revulsion and horror from his face. “When we get to Koto-Ri, change your uniforms. Find new parkas.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ostergaard.

“I was watching your firing,” Mackenzie said. “You were doing fine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now get going. Find a ride on one of the six-by-sixes.” Mackenzie turned away from them.

Dog Company reached Koto-Ri before dark that night.

THAT WAS a bad night for Mackenzie. He set up the company CP in a frame shack that had once been the barber shop of Koto-Ri. It was near the strip that had miraculously been bulldozed in by the engineers, and which now was being used to fly out the wounded.

There was a message for him in Koto-Ri, and a jeep, a present from Regiment. The jeep mounted a seventy-five-millimeter recoilless gun, and the message said he should carry out his assigned mission. He was grateful for the gun, and its crew. A seventy-five might knock out a Russian T-34 tank. He knew that a fifty-seven wouldn’t, unless you got a lucky hit in the treads. As to carrying out the assigned mission, Battalion, and Colonel Grimm at Regiment, didn’t know that Dog Company had come through another fight, and had suffered casualties which would be called “moderate” in the official reports, but which nevertheless reduced his effective strength below one hundred men.

Mackenzie first saw to it that his wounded were evacuated. Then he sent Ekland scrounging for additional supplies he thought they might need on the secondary road. He personally inspected his transport, and he was disturbed by the way the oil congealed, and the batteries lost their kick, in the darkness hours, even when the hoods were protected from the wind by tarps. The geography didn’t show it, and therefore it would be hard to realize in the Pentagon, but at this time of year in North Korea you fought an Arctic war, if you fought at all.

At last Mackenzie thought of food, and he found a chow line operated by the ground crew of Military Air Transport, moving raggedly ahead on the edge of the strip in the rippling light of gasoline flares. Mackenzie got into this line. He got in at the tail end, as usual, but a young pilot saw him. This pilot must have thought Mackenzie looked especially hungry and gaunt, for he took him by the arm and escorted him to the head of the line, and a tired mess sergeant ladled his kit high with hot C-rations, and potatoes, and bread and peanut butter. An air evac nurse, her uniform incongruously clean except for blood spots stiffened by the cold, and her makeup still fresh from Tokyo, brought him hot coffee, and asked him about himself. He found himself describing the action of the day, and unburdening his mind of the bad moments.