Jeff Shaara - The Frozen Hours

Liu kept at attention, looked at Sung with a short nod. In front of Sung, the commanders received the news with wide-eyed surprise, stunned expressions. In front of Sung, General Su said, “Are we certain of this?”

Sung expected that response, said, “This dispatch was received through highest channels and is marked with the sign of Chairman Mao’s own hand.” He paused. “I am certain.”

He allowed them a moment longer, smiles now breaking out, the men turning again to him, the silent question on their faces. He held up his hand, quieting them, said, “Chairman Mao has imparted this lesson to me, and I shall impart it to you. ‘Enemy advancing, we retreat; enemy entrenched, we harass; enemy exhausted, we attack; enemy retreating, we pursue.’ We have accomplished the first task with perfection. You have all expressed your eagerness to begin the attack. It is now time. By midnight tonight, you will advance your troops into direct confrontation with the enemy forces in your front. You will hold nothing back. If the enemy holds his position, you will attack again until he breaks. When he breaks, you will pursue with the single purpose of destroying him. We shall demonstrate to Chairman Mao just how completely you have learned his teachings. It is time for us to destroy our enemies.”

“I must say, very exciting. I had wondered myself just how long you could merely watch the Americans pass by your guns.”

Sung scooped a single stick of cold rice into his mouth, warmed it for a long moment, made a difficult swallow. “Major Orlov, if you have questions, you may ask them directly. You may not approve of the answer. But I hide nothing from you.”

“I tried a piece of your dried fish this morning. There isn’t much else in the camp that resists the cold. I saw one of your aides chewing a piece of rice paper.”

Sung slid the stick into the small pile of dense rice, bent low, scooped the rice into his mouth, repeated the same routine, another half-choking swallow. “We shall endure. As we shall prevail.”

Orlov pulled his small bottle from his coat, took a drink. “I believe you call that the party line. Your Chairman Mao is quite adept at the poetry of war.”

“There is nothing wrong with inspiring the soldiers to do their duty.”

Orlov put a gloved hand to his face, brushed at snow on his hat. “So, you inspire a man’s mind while his feet suffer a painful death. I was at one of your hospitals this morning. I suppose you would call it that. There was a man there behaving like a doctor. You had at least thirty men laid out like frozen trees, thirty more who still had enough life in them so they could scream.”

“You were in Leningrad. You know what cold can do, what kind of challenges it holds.”

Orlov pulled at his coat, blew a foggy breath into his hands. “This is not Leningrad. We had snow and ice and the kind of suffering that no man should see. Here? There is death in the air, pushing into a man’s lungs. There is death on the ground, beneath your feet. There is no protection, no sanctuary. Look at you . You cannot eat your meal without struggling with frozen rice. There is no tea to be had. Boiling water freezes in seconds. If you drank spirits, you would at least warm yourself from the inside.”

Sung put the bowl aside, ignored the harsh rumble in his stomach. “What would you suggest, Major? We all go home? Is that what you told your officers years ago? I am cold, I am suffering, I cannot fight. This is too difficult .”

Orlov breathed again into his glove. “And they would have shot me. As you would shoot your own.”

Sung was annoyed. “Do not assume I am Russian, Major. We help our soldiers as we are able. Once the attack begins, they will no longer notice the cold.”

“Can’t you at least provide them with boots?”

Sung paced slowly, a hard breeze ripping into his furry coat. He tried to hide the effect of that, said, “You are supposed to observe, not criticize. The footwear we use is meant for stealth. It is one of the few advantages we have, the ability to approach our enemies discreetly, to attack at night at close range. The soldiers know that. They are prepared to do what we must do to prevail. We do not have the luxury of fine radios, and so we must communicate with sound, with the bugles and cymbals and whistles. Every regimental commander has his own signals, and his men have been trained to recognize that. I should not have to provide you a lesson in tactics.”

He was angry now, watched as Orlov retrieved the bottle again. He tried to keep Orlov’s observations at a distance, knew of the horrors of the field hospitals. In the past he had visited them often, comforting wounded men, offering them the gratitude befitting their heroics. But there were no heroics now, not yet, every man crippled by the cold just one more bullet lost, reducing the strength of Sung’s army.

“Are you concerned about the prisoners? I heard your General Chao. You seemed to dismiss his concerns about losing a few men to the Americans. I would be concerned about intelligence, that the Americans might gain some valuable information.”

“I am not concerned at all. For weeks now we have lost prisoners. This is a proud army, and pride compels men to boast of all they know. How has that changed this fight? I have twelve divisions in these mountains. I outnumber my enemy by a factor of five to one, perhaps more. If the Americans are aware of that, why do they come? They must believe that we are a mirage, an army of ghosts.”

“Or, they believe it doesn’t matter how many men you have. The Americans in particular, they believe they are invincible.”

Sung nodded. “Precisely. And tonight we shall prove to them that ghosts can kill, and that the confidence of their generals is a sad mistake.”

FOR THE PAST FEW DAYS, the Chinese seemed to wake up, slipping closer, the skirmishes more intense. An even greater concern was the occupation of a tall hill a short mile up the road toward their next objective, Yudam-ni. It had fallen on Baker Company to push the Chinese away from the vantage point that could have decimated any convoy attempting to travel up the main supply road. After a sharp and brief fight, the Marines gained control of the hill, the Chinese then doing what they had done all along. They disappeared.

Even before Thanksgiving, the orders had come from Litzenberg that once Baker Company had secured the big hill, more of the Seventh would move up that way, advancing northward along the west side of the reservoir. But the orders continued to come, more men from the Fifth moving out that way as well, no one explaining to the men of Fox Company just what those men had been ordered to do. For now the mission of Fox Company had not changed, instructions to serve as a security force. As was typical, the griping came, assumptions that Fox was being punished for some indiscretion, or worse, that Captain Barber himself had asked to have his men passed over for any of the more important tasks. Riley had no idea what to believe, and like the others, he knew only what the officers told him. But even Lieutenant McCarthy was grumbling, low comments suspicious of the captain.

The orders finally came for Fox to follow in the tracks of the others, but still, no one above them offered any satisfactory explanation as to just where they were supposed to go. The scuttlebutt only grew louder when the men observed Captain Barber and the battalion commander, Colonel Lockwood, moving out in a lone jeep, what McCarthy told them was a scouting mission, though the men still grumbled that no one was sure just what the officers were scouting.