Pat Frank - Hold Back the Night

Although he was within ten feet of the Chinese tommy-gunner when the man fired, Mackenzie never saw it. All he knew was that he was on his face, in a pile of icy shale and broken rock, and his knees were drawn up, because his stomach hurt so.

Ekland saw the whole thing. He had led his column, as the captain commanded, past the crossroads, keeping his eyes straight ahead, watching his crusted boots move. He did not so much as bob his helmet as they passed the Chinese tank. He tried to walk confidently, as if powerful support was not far behind. He concentrated on this bit of acting. This concentration allowed him to hold in his fear.

He walked like this until he heard the explosion of the bazooka’s rocket, and then he wheeled, and the four men carrying Tinker’s litter put the litter down, and with the other four they turned the other way. At first Ekland’s detail walked, until they were sure the tank was killed, and then they started running. Ekland saw Mackenzie and the others leaping down the hill. He also saw that there were eight or ten of the enemy milling around the tank and he shouted, “Watch out!” but of course the captain couldn’t hear him.

He saw one of the Chinese turn and cut down the captain. He saw it all.

Ekland knelt and began to fire his BAR, and his men were firing too. Ekland fired until there was no more ammunition, but by then there were no more targets either.

He ran to where the captain lay, and shoved the others aside, saying, “Don’t crowd him!”

He saw that the captain still lived but he knew the captain was badly hurt, for every few seconds the captain had a spasm, or a fit, or something, and his arms and legs jerked and his face was shorn of color, and contorted. Beany Smith was thrusting an aid kit at Ekland, and he took it, and said, “Please, sir, hold still.”

And by a miracle of will Mackenzie relaxed on his back and breathed and held still, and Ekland went to work on him.

There was only one bullet hole, high in the stomach, almost in the solar plexus. It bled, a lot. The bullet hadn’t come out through the back.

Ekland looked around when he had finished his job with the sulfa powder and the compress. He looked at the faces of his men. They were all thinking what he was thinking—the captain was going to crap out. “Come on, we’ve got to get out of here,” Ekland said. “There’ll be more Chinese along this crossroad—lots of ’em. Where’s the other litter?”

“Back with Tinker,” said one of the litter men.

“Well, we can’t give the time to get it,” said Ekland. “We have to bring the Skipper over to it.” He selected his two huskiest men. “Ostergaard, you and Heinzerling, you carry the captain. Give your guns to somebody.”

For the first time since he had been hit, Mackenzie spoke, “Get the hell out of here, you damn fools. I’ve had it.”

Nobody paid any attention to him. Heinzerling and Ostergaard made a cradle of their arms, and the captain was lifted into it, and then they found that he could not hold on, and had no support for his back, so Beany Smith held up his back, and they carried him across the road, and up the road to where Tinker lay, still unconscious. They carried him gently, as if they feared he would break.

They laid him down on the litter gently and Ekland said, “Sir, do you hear me, sir?”

“Yes. Water. My mouth is dry.”

Ekland poured water into the captain’s mouth and Mackenzie choked and spit. “Can’t you hold it down, sir?”

“More.” Mackenzie’s voice was strained with agony.

Ekland gave him more water, and this time Mackenzie held it down, and Ekland wondered whether he was doing right. One thing he ought to do, he ought to stop the captain’s pain. “Should I give you that last syrette, sir? It’s in your bag, isn’t it?”

The captain shook his head, no. “It might get worse. Besides I don’t want to use it. So long as I don’t use it we’ve always got it—we’ve always got that one. We’ve got something to fall back on. How’s Tinker?”

“Still knocked out.”

“He might wake up. If he wakes up and starts to scream, then you use it, you hear me, sergeant? Then you use it.”

The captain’s head fell back, and they thought he was dead, but he kept on breathing. Ekland turned to Beany Smith, kneeling beside the captain. “Smith, give me that bottle! He needs it! He needs it now!”

The captain’s hand moved, and closed on his pocket. “No!” he said. “Not yet! We don’t open it yet.”

“Yes, sir,” said Ekland, for the captain still commanded. “Four men to this litter. Move!”

They moved, but they moved very slowly now. Their stomachs ached in emptiness, and their legs had been bastinadoed and beaten by the hills, and their shoulders screamed protest against each necessary strap across them, and they were aware of the weight of each round of their ammunition, what little was left. Their feet would no longer behave, such was their exhaustion. Their feet would no longer move straight ahead. And their heads would not behave. Their heads wanted to dream. Their heads told them to stop, and lie down, and dream.

After he crossed the coastline, Second Lieutenant Telfair, in his pinwheel, caught himself a little altitude. He crossed over those sensitive spots in the Ten Corps perimeter from where the massed guns thundered, laying a ring of fire around the evacuation. Unless you were in a pin-wheel, you were pretty careful about flying over your own guns and anti-aircraft batteries. You made your recognition signals quite clear. This was not necessary with a pin-wheel. Everybody knew a pinwheel, and knew only the Americans had them, and laughed at them as they proceeded across the sky like lazy dragonflies crabbing against the wind. Of course this worked both ways. Usually the Commies, the first time they saw a pinwheel, were frightened, and hid. But when they learned it did not carry bombs, or rockets, or indeed anything that could kill you from the air, they enjoyed shooting at them with small arms. They did not, however, use anti-aircraft guns on pinwheels, for they had learned this was an indiscretion. If they missed with the first shot, then the pinwheel would call down the wrath of God, in the shape of massed artillery, upon the anti-aircraft position.

After he worked the helicopter to a thousand feet, Second Lieutenant Telfair sat back and enjoyed his matchless view. He could see everything that was happening, and the burning of the stores and ammunition dumps at Hamhung especially intrigued him. He had heard about smoke rising six or eight thousand feet from an ammunition fire, and had not believed it, but now he saw it was true. There would be turbulence in that smoke, he thought, just like a thunderhead.

He looked at the map clipped to the board on his knee, and he saw how the roads were, and looked ahead and compared them with the map. The map was not exactly accurate, but it was easy to pick out the main road that ran down from the reservoir to the perimeter, because troops were still moving on it, and using the main road as a guide, he looked until he saw the secondary road. It wasn’t much of a road. You could see that from the air. He didn’t see anything on it, not anything at all, except a wisp of smoke at the crossroads. He got almost under this smoke, and then allowed the pinwheel to drop straight down several hundred feet.

When he was close to the road he saw that it could be a burned-out tank that smoked, and it was easy to see the bodies, about a dozen, he thought, lying around in the snow. But from the air, he couldn’t tell whose tank it was, or discern the nationality of the bodies. He was pretty sure the tank and the bodies had nothing to do with the company he was looking for. A dozen bodies didn’t make a company.