Jeff Shaara - The Frozen Hours

Welch rose to one knee, emptied the Thompson into the brush below, Kane firing the BAR, the others joining in. Riley stared, searching for any kind of targets, and he fired the Thompson, aiming low, shredding the brush.

Welch said to Kane, “Give it to ’em again. Then haul your ass up this hill.”

Kane reloaded the BAR, fired again, and the others moved quickly up through the snow and brush, slipping into the rocks. Riley watched Welch, who emptied the Thompson one more time, and Riley looked again at Goolsby. He slid down toward the man, one hand on Goolsby’s coat, tugged, and Welch was now beside him.

“We can’t leave him, Sarge.”

“Didn’t intend to. Grab his hand.”

The fire from below had stopped, Kane above them, firing the BAR one more time. Riley worked with Welch, pulling Goolsby’s body up toward the others, toward the safety of the rocks. Two more men now took the job, Kane and Norman grabbing Goolsby’s hands, Riley struggling to breathe. Welch had one hand on his shoulder, said between breaths, “Let’s go. We chased that bunch off, I think. But they’ll be back. Let’s get the hell out of here. You okay?”

Riley watched the men dragging Goolsby, making their way up past the rocks, the heavier snow, moving past the frozen bodies of the enemy. Riley saw others, up on the ridge, Marines watching the scene, rifles ready, offering help if the enemy was following. Riley stopped at a fat rock, sat, and Welch looked back at him.

“What’s up?”

“Just a minute, Hamp. Gotta get my breath.”

“It’ll be dark in five minutes. Let’s get back home.” Welch was catching his own breath, said in a low voice, “He never shoulda been out here. Too green. Irish called it, said he’d never make it.”

Riley looked at Welch, said, “We were all green. The lieutenant was no worse than you.”

Welch looked at him, said, “He’s dead. That makes him worse. Let’s go.”

Riley looked again at the ridgeline, two more men coming downhill, taking their turn with the lieutenant, the others staring down the hill, searching for any sign of the enemy. Riley struggled to get to his feet, the Thompson heavier still, aching weakness in his knees, his shoulders, his back. He tasted the cold again, the temperature dropping with the setting of the sun, the icy sting returning to his face, the miserable wetness in his shoe pacs. He looked up at Welch, who held out a hand, helping Riley up past the rocks. Riley took a long icy breath, said, “Damn, I’m hungry.”

THE BREAKOUT FROM YUDAM-NI had begun just after dawn on December 1, Litzenberg and Murray uniting their efforts in a well-organized push that drove them straight into the Chinese troops who had cut off the road to the south. Murray’s Fifth led the way, while several units of the Seventh held their position in Yudam-ni, keeping the Chinese troops behind them at bay. The eight thousand Marines moved slowly, methodically, accompanied by a single tank, the only armor they had. To each side of the road, the tall hills hid more of the enemy, and Murray sent his lead troops forward in three prongs, two of them high up, pushing the Chinese back along both sides of the road. The third kept to the road itself, marching with the long train of vehicles that carried the hundreds of wounded. Several miles to their front, both commanders knew they could not just march to Hagaru-ri without passing first through the narrow defiles of Toktong Pass, the most vulnerable part of the march.

Some four miles south of Yudam-ni, short of the pass, one battalion of the Seventh, roughly four hundred men, branched off, leaving the main convoy behind. They were commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Ray Davis, a rugged thirty-five-year-old, a veteran of some of the worst fights the Marines had endured during World War II. With darkness falling late on December 1, Davis led his men up the tall hills to the east of the main road, knowing they would confront heavy concentrations of Chinese, with their only advantage coming from the darkness and all the stealth the Marines could muster. Their mission was not to engage the enemy, but if possible, to slip past him, avoiding a major confrontation that might halt Davis’s men altogether. Through the frozen darkness, they were to cross the rugged hills, trudge through the deep passes, and, following maps that were obsolete at best, attempt to locate and rescue the men of Fox Company. Whether there was anyone left to rescue or whether the Chinese had completely obliterated Barber’s command was a question no one could answer.

Throughout the night, Davis’s men made their way over some of the roughest ground they had experienced. The Chinese they confronted were mostly caught off guard, but there were fights, clumsy and chaotic, the battalion taking casualties Davis had hoped to avoid. Wounded men only added to the challenge, the blinding darkness obliterating any kind of landmark, the men guided by compasses that now failed to work, frozen.

The men struggled to keep to any kind of direction, the hillsides swallowing their bearings, no guidance coming from anyone behind them, no artillery, no aircraft. For a while Davis attempted to guide his men by the stars, but the weariness of the exhausted men made mental exercises required for navigation all but impossible. Trudging onward, stumbling into a surprised, often sleeping enemy, Davis discovered pockets of Chinese soldiers who had frozen to death, unable to protect themselves from the thirty-below-zero temperatures.

As the night wore on, Davis recognized that his men were barely functioning and he ordered a halt, allowing most to rest in the relative comfort of their sleeping bags. But with so many pockets of the enemy around them, sleep was out of the question, and so Davis and his officers moved along the ragged line of march, prodding the men into as much alertness as they could muster. With dawn approaching, the firefights seemed to grow more numerous, and more intense, the confrontations alerting more of the Chinese that their enemy was surprisingly close. Studying his map by flashlight, the bleary-eyed and foggy-brained Davis continued to guide the men toward what he had to believe was his intended goal. Close to dawn, his radioman was suddenly wide awake, offering Davis exactly what Davis was hoping to hear.

FOX HILL—DECEMBER 2, 1950, 7:00 A.M.

Welch had met with the remaining sergeants who still manned Third Platoon’s position, the consensus that at least one of them should check in on the battered Second Platoon, Lieutenant Peterson’s command, which had continued to receive the same pressure from the Chinese assaults. As the casualty count mounted, the gaps in the line were increasing, some of the positions occupied by wounded men brought back up the hill from the aid stations, anyone who could still squeeze a trigger. But across from them on the rocky hill, and the wider hill beyond the road to the west, it was clear that the Chinese had continued to regroup, still pushing forward more troops, preparing yet again for their next assault. Fox Hill was defended now by half the force that had first established the line, men whose rations had run dry, whose lack of sleep had dulled the minds, the relentless assaults draining away any strength at all. But still they held to their foxholes, shifting positions, hanging on to the hilltop that Captain Barber had insisted was their only remaining mission. There was no alternative.

Riley had insisted Welch not make the short journey down toward Second Platoon by himself, and surprisingly, Welch did not object. It was one more sign that even the strongest men were losing command of themselves, that the fight they made now was as much by instinct as by following orders. Even if there was no real purpose to the journey, Riley accepted that a walk, even a frozen one, might help wake them both up from the sluggishness of their hunger, might loosen up the stiffness in every limb from the relentless cold.