Jeff Shaara - The Frozen Hours

“Maybe. Maybe not. One of these days, they’ll send us home. If I get out of this thing in one piece…” He paused. “I need your help, Pete. Maybe Ruthie can ask her friends, find someone worth talking to. I mean, real talking. They don’t need to kick their shoes off after five minutes. Kinda don’t wanna do that stuff anymore.”

Riley saw Welch still staring at the photo. “Sure thing, Hamp. Ruthie’s got a pile of friends. It’ll work. One I know of, really nice girl. She’s a knockout, too. Pretty sure she’s not like any of those in your book. From what Ruthie’s said, I’m pretty sure she’s kept her shoes on.”

“Thanks, Pete. I’ll remind you about that when we get home.”

“You won’t have to. Ruthie will start working on you first thing.”

Welch handed the photo back to Riley, and Riley caught the look in Welch’s eyes, a smile now. Welch reached a hand out, slapped Riley’s arm. “You need a shower.”

SMITH STOOD OUT in the breeze, a soft chill wrapping him, the light jacket not quite adequate. Around him, the camps were in full bloom, great rows of tents, larger tents where food was being served, and the medical and evacuation facilities, the final stop for men not yet assigned to the hospital ships offshore or the larger facilities in Japan.

He watched the men, some in groups, some alone, wandering as though they were lost. He kept back from all of that, would allow them the brief respite, disorganized and scattered, with no particular place they needed to be. In the larger tents, he knew the papers were flowing, Bowser and the other senior staff tracking down the various units, the weaknesses, the holes, sorting through the massive details of rebuilding the First Marine Division.

He didn’t know yet what the next assignment would be, if Ned Almond would still be in command, if the division would even remain a part of Tenth Corps. It was a respite for him as well, a brief pause from the orders, the duties, the job. He had already pondered what might happen now, if he would protest serving under Almond again, just how much noise he could make and still keep his career. He has to know what we did out here, he thought. He’s not stupid, after all. He’s just not… leadership . He should go back to Tokyo and do what he did before, shining Mac’s shoes, cleaning up paperwork jams. MacArthur has to know where Almond’s better off, where all of us would be better off.

The wharves were frantic with activity, ships of all sizes, guarded by the warships offshore, patrols of aircraft overhead. He moved that way, energized by the chill, and he did not ignore the irony of that, the temperatures here so much warmer than what his men had suffered around the Chosin Reservoir. He had learned that the altitude there was more than three thousand feet above where he stood now, and in the winter that part of Korea could be one of the coldest in all of Asia. I knew that, he thought, before we ever began the march. But I didn’t really know, none of us could.

He had seen the reports of the numbers of frostbite cases, crippling and in many cases permanent damage, worse for many than the wounds from enemy bullets. They’ll write about it, he thought, the men, the reporters. They should. No one should ignore what those men went through.

The letters had reached him from home, most from Esther, a chronicle of her days of fear and uncertainty, fueled by the newspapers and all those voices who had no real knowledge of just what was happening. He thought of her, couldn’t help a smile, moved closer to the water’s edge. He kept far away from the activity, focused on the calm sea, caught the salt smell, even now, in winter, memories of Hawaii. We will do that again, he thought. Without a war, without generals and newspapermen and casualty reports. My girls, too. It would be amazing to watch my granddaughter grow up. Maybe I can keep the boys away, at least for a while. He smiled. That didn’t work so well with my daughters.

Don’t do that, he thought. Every one of these boys wants to go home a whole lot more than they want to be here. And they’ve earned it more than you. They’ve gone through more kinds of hell than any of us expected, and unless the commandant tosses me overboard, there’s still too much to do out here. There’s still a war, and it’s a whole lot nastier than any of us thought. For now, I’ve still got my command. And every man in this place still salutes me. They know what we did, even if Washington’s trying to figure it out. He thought of Truman’s man, Frank Lowe. He’s been holed up with Walton Walker for a while, while Eighth Army tries to pull itself back together. Maybe they had it worse than us. There was nothing about what happened over there that smelled like anything but a flat-out retreat. But don’t you say that, never. Not once. Not to Lowe, not to your own officers. It’s too easy to make enemies, and nothing good comes from that. No matter what Ned Almond might believe, the only contest going on here is between us and the Chinese. And we’re not done yet. Sorry, Esther, but Hawaii will have to wait. He fingered one of her letters in his pocket, recalled her words, could see her face as he read them.

“Your march is being called many things. ‘An attack in reverse,’ ‘a fighting march to the sea.’ But the description I like best is that it is a ‘splendid moral victory.’ I think it was just that, and I am very grateful.”

No, he thought. It is so much more than that. So much talk about disaster, about our mistakes and flaws and poor decisions. So much about the quality of our enemy, and how badly we underestimated him. So much about suffering and loss and blame. They must be told, they must know what I know. There was no defeat, no tragedy here. It was war, and the men in this command didn’t just survive and escape. We were outnumbered and outmaneuvered, and yet we persevered. He looked toward the camps again, a swarm of activity around the tents. None of those men believe we were defeated . They came down from that reservoir, those hills, with purpose, and that purpose remains. This war will go on, and they will need us, somewhere, and very soon. And no matter anything that has happened, we will be ready. And we will do the job. And that is our victory.

THROUGHOUT THE EARLY MONTHS of 1951, the Chinese make every effort to exploit their gains, filling the void left by the withdrawal of American and United Nations forces across all of North Korea. Though the Chinese recapture the South’s capital of Seoul, they are not content to maintain a position that pushes the boundary southward well below the 38th parallel. Mounting a number of major offensives, they continue to wage war aggressively, against an enemy who has finally learned just what kind of foe the Chinese have become. As a result, the Americans and their allies continue to build up their resources, and thus their defensive lines.

The war settles into a brutal stalemate, though there are voices in the American high command, notably General James Van Fleet, who insist that the Chinese are vulnerable to another all-out effort to drive them back to the Yalu River. But Washington is leery of a tactic that has already failed in a spectacular way. The goal, stated discreetly, is to return Korea to the status quo that existed before the war, reestablishing the boundary between North and South at the 38th parallel. It is a solution that inspires no one.