Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

This was his decision, and he instantly took under consideration the first tactical problem—the effect of one drink of Scotch on one completely exhausted Marine with a stomach utterly empty. It would start them moving, all right, and they’d feel hopped up and warm for forty-five minutes to an hour. But when the alcohol died within them there would come inevitable depression, and if they collapsed again, they were through. He determined his course. “You’re each going to get a drink,” he said. “But you’re not going to get it until we’re back inside our own lines.”

He waited for their groans, and they came, and then subsided. Sergeant Ekland said, “Do you think it’s far, sir?”

“Not too far,” Mackenzie said, “and the poop is that there’s an evacuation fleet waiting for us at Hungnam.” He was not at all sure of this. Like most small unit commanders he had only the most general idea of the strategy of battle outside his own sector, and depended upon the Stateside short wave, or Armed Forces Network, for news of what he could not see with his own eyes, or learn from his patrols, or what he was told by Battalion and Regiment. But in the hazy past, during the fighting at the Hagaru air strip, Dog Company had saved the life of a Major Toomey, of the Division Staff, and the major had told him he thought there’d have to be an evacuation from Hungnam, and that was the poop of which the captain spoke.

He began to give orders. They were to take only light weapons, except for one bazooka, and Ekland’s BAR, and one grenade to a man. They were to carry two litters, and two of the six jericans of gas still strapped to the jeeps. “What’re we going to need gas for,” asked Tinker, “with no jeeps?”

“You’ll find out,” Mackenzie said, “and meanwhile you and Smith will carry them. Lay ’em in one of the litters. They’ll be easier that way. Every man will take his turn with the jericans. Nobody’s going to bugger off on this duty.”

The captain looked up at the hilltop. The patrol was still there, waiting like human vultures. Well, the longer they waited, the better, and the further Dog Company might get. He eased himself into the seat of the lead jeep, removed a glove, took his map from his pocket, and tried to concentrate on it.

It was a makeshift map, issued in a hurry. This was understandable. The company had been living in the luxury of tents, and everyone knew the war was practically over, when the Chinese attacked. So the map was bad, but it did show, as a twisting, thin blue line, the secondary road over which Dog Company had fought to protect the regiment’s flank and rear. To the south, winding through a parallel pass, the map showed the main road from Koto to Hamhung, over which the bulk of the regiment had retreated with its heavy equipment. Hamhung was the industrial city, and supply depot, six miles inland from the port of Hungnam.

“Ekland,” Mackenzie called, “come over here.” The sergeant walked to the side of the jeep, and Mackenzie shared the map with him. “Ekland, what do you think of this?”

Ekland looked at the map hard. “Sir,” he said, “I’m not sure. This map is screwy.”

One of the good things about Ekland, the captain thought, was his frankness. When he didn’t know, he simply said he didn’t know. Mackenzie attempted to estimate the distance Dog Company had progressed since Koto, but time was blurred by hours of marching minus hours of fighting, and somewhere he feared he had dropped a whole day. Still, allowing for the hairpin turns in the road that the map ignored, and the dips and humps of the terrain, they might have covered two-thirds of the distance to the coastal plateau, where he judged they would bump into Ten Corps’ perimeter. Providing, of course, that Ten Corps still existed, and there was a perimeter. He had lost his radio jeep to an ambush of tanks and self-propelled guns in the first fight after Koto, and had not since been in touch with Battalion, or Regiment. So far as Mackenzie knew, his might be the only unit still fighting in Korea. Or the Eighth Army, over on the other coast, might have counter-attacked and put the Chinese to flight. Or everything might have been settled in UN. But all he knew for sure was that it was his job to get Dog Company over this road to Hungnam, if possible, and if that wasn’t possible, then to kill as many of the enemy as he could.

He stuffed the map back in his pocket, and wondered how many things he had forgotten. The socks, of course. He reached under the back seat of the jeep and pulled out the last bundle of clean, dry socks. Two pair he took for himself, and then he tossed the bundle out into the road and shouted, “All right, men, come and get it!”

They moaned, and swore, and the big Swede from Minnesota, Ostergaard, wept, but there was nothing they could do about it, because he had ordered it. They took off their shoepacs, and the clammy socks they had worn through the night, and rubbed each others feet for five minutes, and put on the clean socks. Mackenzie got out of the jeep and rubbed Ekland’s feet, and then he got back into the jeep, and let Ekland rub his feet.

On that very first day when the colonel had sauntered into his area, and hinted that Eighth Army was in trouble, Mackenzie had taken a long look at the map of Korea, and had then gone scrounging for extra socks. When they fought their way out of the trap at the reservoir, Dog Company’s vehicles carried five times as many socks as a company should need. But Mackenzie was determined of this, that he would accept wounds and death from the enemy, if he had to, but he’d be damned if he’d yield casualties to the weather. He’d be damned if one of his men would lose a foot to frostbite.

So every morning, and every nightfall, no matter what else happened, the men changed their socks. On the unexpectedly long breakout of Dog Company, the supply of socks dwindled alarmingly, but the attrition of personnel had been equally great, and it had come out even.

Sergeant Ekland leaned over the side of the jeep and said, “It’s a long way to go without cigarettes, sir. We’re out. All of us.”

“So am I,” the captain said. In Mackenzie’s estimation the lack of cigarettes might be as damaging as lack of food.

The sergeant looked over to the side, where the bodies lay marked by the rock, and then shambled off the road. The captain watched him bend over the bodies.

When he came back Sergeant Ekland was grinning through his frosted red beard, and he held close to his chest three boxes of combat rations, and one full pack of cigarettes, and one pack half full. “I’d forgotten,” the sergeant said. He began to slice open the cartons with his bayonet.

The captain didn’t say anything, but he rested his hand for a moment on Ekland’s shoulder. Then he announced, “Okay. Chow!”

Three rations split seventeen ways wasn’t much. But it was something. It was something for the belly. The captain counted the cigarettes. Twenty in the full pack, nine out of the ration cartons, and nine in the opened pack. That made thirty-eight. There would be one cigarette for each now, and another for some time later on, when it would be needed, and a few to spare.

As he ate his minute share of cheese and chocolate and biscuit, the captain wondered how he could have been so stupid as to forget the rations on the bodies of the dead. Raleigh Couzens and the others had been hit the morning before, and so had needed no meal at noon, for they were so torn inside. Ekland had used his head, as usual. Mackenzie hoped that if any were saved, Ekland would be one of them. The Corps, and the world, could use men like that.

Mackenzie finished, and washed it down from his canteen. His canteen was almost empty, and he suspected that some of the others’ would be completely empty. More than food, more than cigarettes, they must have water. He called Ekland. “We need water,” he said. “Know how to get it?”