Jeff Shaara - The Frozen Hours

Riley passed Welch now, followed the directions, caught the smell, worse than his own.

“Damn, Sarge, you fall into something nasty?”

“Your mama’s bathrobe. Get moving.”

Riley smiled to himself, knew he’d have to top that one.

They were spread out in a ragged formation, more than two hundred men, other companies positioned beyond. Down the sloping ground toward Seoul, he could hear the clatter of heavy weapons, that fight not slowing, and he thought of those men, no names, no friends that he knew of. They got none of this, he thought. No time for laughter, for a company commander to test the mood of his men. He stared that way, a low haze of smoke rising over distant houses, saw more Marines moving out on another trail, another battalion adding to the force that was to keep the North Koreans from escaping the city, from slipping away. He was suddenly very tired, realized there had been no sleep at all. He thought of the man he had knifed, fought against ever thinking of that at all. But the moment would find its way down into that hole, join the other memories, the other horrors. One more kill, he thought. Him, not me.

He sat in the hole, shifted himself, pushed rocks out of the way, tossed one out of the hole. Killian was kneeling at the far end of the hole, digging into his bag, and Riley thought of the captain’s words: something to eat. He put one hand on his stomach, no appetite at all, his own odor engulfing him. He watched Killian pull something from his bag, a small can with no label.

“Hey, Sean. You ask about the mail?”

“Lieutenant Goolsby said tonight, if the Nooks leave us alone. Ammo carriers be coming up, too.”

Riley was surprised. “You talked to Goolsby?”

Killian shrugged. “Well, he’s a platoon officer, right? He’s sorta in charge. Figure he’d know.”

Riley recalled the criticisms of the man from days before, all the talk about ninety-day wonders. “Guess maybe he’ll work out okay, huh?”

Killian focused on the can, stabbed it with his knife. “So far. Ain’t screwed up yet. But Rickman getting hit bugged him too much. He says it’s serious, Rickman’s going back to a hospital. McCarthy’s okay with it, best as I can tell. But I’m guessing Goolsby’s got green guilt .”

Riley knew the phrase, shorthand for a new officer’s inevitable response when he takes his first casualty. “No time for that. Not after today.”

Killian swiped a finger through the open can, which seemed to be fruit cocktail. “Nope. He’ll learn. This thing gets hot, won’t be time to hand-hold every wounded man. Kinda looking forward to it.”

Riley tried to feel an appetite again, couldn’t erase the smell. “Why you say that? You enjoy what we went through last night?”

“Sure. Hardest part was finding a damn target. Ain’t like deer hunting. You hit one of these yellow bastards, he goes down in a heap. If you miss him, he runs for the hills.”

“Sounds like deer hunting to me.”

Killian sat down in the trench now, set his rifle upright beside him. “You ain’t never killed no deer.”

“Once. Well, no, I missed him. He ran like hell. Just like the enemy.”

“Where you from, anyhow? Thought you’d be from the city, like me. I went hunting with my family, upstate New York.”

Riley said, “Pennsylvania. Apple country. Lots of deer.”

“Hmph. Shooting a Nook’s no different. Dead’s dead.”

Riley held his response, thought, You couldn’t be more wrong, Irish. The image of the knifing came again, the cries, the hard grunts, the man’s smell.

They fell silent now, low talk around them from the others. But with the quiet came the sounds from Seoul, never-ending, skirmishes and raw combat, an excruciating reminder to Riley that the heavy lifting was being done by someone else. He avoided looking that way, nothing to see, could hear Morelli talking to the man in his foxhole, lively chatter about New Jersey. I wonder if he had fun, too. I wonder if he put his knife through a man’s chest. He closed his eyes, tried to shut down the voice in his head, but the fighting in Seoul rolled on in the distance, a chorus of rattling machine guns, a song from the kind of hell that boys like Morelli didn’t know existed.

THE JEEP WAS TILTING to one side, making for a nervous ride, made more so by the heavy load on the meager springs. Puller sat in the front seat, Eddie Craig in back, beside Smith. They had come from Puller’s new command post in the city, the Duk Soo Palace, but Smith had first come into the city across the Han River on a brand-new bridge. The orders weren’t his, the bridge doing nothing for the Marines who were already in the city. The word had come from Tokyo, launching the engineers into a frantic rush. The bridge was to be built specifically for MacArthur, allowing the general to make his entrance into the capital with all the grand spectacle of the conquering hero.

The jeep tottered precariously past a deep crater, the stench of the explosion still rising, Smith holding on tightly to the side. Puller leaned back toward him, said, “Sorry. Busted shock absorber. That’ll be fixed. Wasn’t time this morning, when we got the word. You’d think there’d be more jeeps, but they were all out doing real jobs. Besides, this one’s my favorite.”

Smith kept his eyes down the side streets, could see Marines in clusters, aid stations, low-level command posts. The smoke was there, too, some of it from blasted houses, piles of rubble where men huddled, watching civilians searching for anything they could find.

“This is madness.”

The words came from Craig, and Puller turned his head slightly.

“Oh, you got that right, Eddie. They made me wear this idiotic helmet, you know. Hate this tin cap, but General Almond insisted, said it’ll make me look like I did the fighting. Jackass.”

The jeep wound along more potholed streets, a sudden high bounce, the driver grappling with the steering wheel, Puller offering the man a heavy dose of swearing, but Smith ignored that, too, knew the driver was probably used to it. They turned down a wider avenue, rubble to one side, and Puller pointed, said, “Russian tanks rolled through that place there. Half-dozen T-34s. Artillery took care of them, or we did. Surprised me, though. Cost me some good men.” Puller paused. “They’re veterans, you know. The North Koreans. All that talk about them running away was crap. The prisoners we picked up said they had fought the Japs, some of ’em fought in China. Their weapons weren’t new, but they worked just fine. Russian guns, some of ours, too. Didn’t think it would be this tough, but I think we’ll have this place secure in another couple of days.”

“One hour’s worth, Lewie. We need secure for one hour. By tonight you can do whatever you need to do.”

There was a thump of artillery, a hard shriek overhead, then another. To one side, a distant burst of machine gun fire. Craig’s word rolled through Smith’s brain. Madness .

Puller didn’t respond to Smith’s request, didn’t have to. Puller knew as much as any of his officers what still needed to be accomplished. They were only taking this jeep ride now because of orders that could only have come from Douglas MacArthur.

It had been announced on September 27 that two days prior, squarely on the twenty-fifth, just as MacArthur had demanded, the capital city of Seoul had been swept clean of enemy soldiers, liberated as promised, the city now to be handed back in a grand and formal ceremony to South Korean president Syngman Rhee. Around MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo, the newspapermen had scribbled furiously on their pads as the announcement was made, magnificent news that went out quickly on the wires or by phone, reaching anxious newspapers in the States, to be swallowed whole by Americans who still weren’t sure just what this war was about. But pride ran deep, some of that left over from World War II, the certain expectation that our boys would always win, no matter the enemy. MacArthur understood that more than anyone, the power of the positive story, the power of victory . To the reporters, the general had offered praise for the Marines, the army, his staff officers, anyone who had contributed to the liberation of Seoul. That the city was still engulfed in fighting seemed not to matter to MacArthur at all.