Jeff Shaara - The Frozen Hours

Many of the men around him had been through the same experiences as Riley and Welch, places like Saipan and Iwo Jima, Bougainville and Guadalcanal, and nearly all carried those memories in dark places. The biggest talk came from the new recruits, men like Morelli, teenagers who regarded the veterans with envy, a ridiculous thirst for stories of the bloody slaughter of the Japanese. The veterans had learned to tolerate it, though few ever offered more than a casual grunt about anything they had been through. But still, the new men begged for it, and so some of the veterans had learned the art of shoveling manure, giving the new men tasty pieces of stupidity, great tales of war and heroism that most often never happened at all.

The majority of the men of the Seventh Marines were veterans, three battalions drawn together quickly after the North Korean invasion. Many of these men had gone home in 1945, the Marine Corps downsized radically after the war’s end, a decision made by President Truman. But with the explosion in Korea, the veterans had been called up once more. In the peacetime years most of them had grown soft, family men who now left behind wives and young children, the old uniforms too snug around thick middles. But the training had come quickly, Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, routines they would never forget. Few of these men hesitated when the orders came, some of them welcoming the chance to leave the boredom of civilian life. Some had it better, good jobs, a pleasant life that erased many of the awful memories of the war. But they all responded.

As the division assembled around the port of San Diego, the new men had joined them as well, but time was critical, MacArthur beating the drum. And so, in short weeks, most of the Marines had steamed across the Pacific to ports in Japan, then mobilized quickly for the last leg, leading the way at Inchon. Whatever training the new men received along the way was haphazard at best, often on board the transports, rifle and machine gun practice off the fantails of the rolling ships, even the mortars launching their rounds into the ocean. The skill of the careful aim would have to come later, a nagging fear within the sergeants and experienced lieutenants, who had to wonder how these new men would react if they actually came under fire.

The highest-ranking Marine in Korea would be the First Division’s commanding officer, Major General Oliver P. Smith, a man many of these Marines had served with in the Pacific. Most couldn’t really describe Smith, knew him more by name, not like the bombastic reputation of Chesty Puller. Whether or not the Marines would take their orders from MacArthur, at least they had one of their own at the top. And so far, not even the officers, the men like Captain Zorn, had any real idea just what MacArthur wanted them to do. Once Seoul was captured and the North Koreans pushed back across their own border, most of these men assumed they might just board their transports and go back home.

Riley stared out past the fields, could see the river’s edge up ahead, a vast fleet of trucks, big guns, engineers and their heavy equipment all in motion. He felt that familiar icy stab, the sudden feeling that he was very close now to something very big, and perhaps very unexpected. Korea was unknown to nearly all of them, some place in some corner of Asia that only the government cared about. It was the aid stations that changed that. For the first time, the sight of wounded men, wounded Marines drove home the reality that someone in this god-awful place was trying to kill you, and if you didn’t know who or why, it didn’t matter. Your job was to kill them first.

They slowed, a two-and-a-half-ton truck moving through, the men breathing more dust. Beside him, the boy again.

“You think we missed it, Pete? Do you?”

The march was halted and Riley tried to hear past the growing sounds of activity along the river. He heard the artillery again, low, sharp rumbles, and he looked at Morelli, pointed, began to speak, to teach, but overhead a sharp, deafening roar, the men ducking instinctively, the dark blue plane ripping past no more than a hundred feet above.

Riley smiled, straightened his back, then his helmet. “I was gonna teach you how to tell a fight from a thunderstorm. There’s artillery up ahead, out that way, to the north. Must be the Fifth. But that damn Corsair ain’t crop dusting. He’s heading up that way looking for somebody to light up. His wings were loaded with rockets.”

The boy looked that way, the Corsair long gone. “Geez. Scared heck out of me.”

Behind them, Sergeant Welch said, “Fix that nonsense right now. That’s the best sound there is in the world. You get caught in a bad place, those flyboys have a way of pulling your nuts out of the muck. They taught you nothing at all, did they?”

The boy didn’t answer, and Riley saw more civilians. Rough-looking people, he thought. Like Okinawa. Civilians caught in a war, too dumb or too scared to get out of the way.

Behind him, Welch said, “Riley, take the kid, with Norman and Killian. Check those people out. Make sure they’re just locals. They seem pretty interested in something over there.” He called out now, toward the front of the column. “Hey, Lieutenant!”

Riley cringed at the word, knew it was a deadly mistake to single out an officer in the field, especially in a place where every pile of wreckage could hide the enemy. He leaned closer to Welch, said, “Jesus, Sarge. What the hell are you doing?”

Welch laughed. “Don’t worry about it, Pete. That shavetail needs to learn some things, too.”

Riley lowered his voice. “Getting him killed ain’t gonna teach him a damn thing.”

“I’ll let him tell me that.”

The officer slid back through the widely spaced column, a short, thin man, his eyes wide.

“What is it?”

“Sir, the captain told us to keep an eye out for possible infiltrators. I told these men here to check out those civilians. Most of these huts have been blown to hell, but there’s plenty of places to hide. The enemy could be hiding anywhere. I don’t trust civilians.”

The lieutenant, who wasn’t much older than the kid, Morelli, absorbed Welch’s advice with a sharp nod.

“Yes. Good. You boys do what the sergeant says. Check those people out, look for weapons. Grenades and such. Lieutenant McCarthy’s up ahead, on the radio. He said to pass along the word that we’re to wait for orders. The captain’s trying to find out where they want us to sit for a while.”

Bob McCarthy was the platoon commander, a hard-bitten first lieutenant, the kind of officer the riflemen followed without question. But his adjutant, a second lieutenant, was very new, very green, seemed to follow McCarthy around like a helpless puppy. No one was really sure why McCarthy required another officer hanging around, but the officers usually didn’t feel the need to offer explanations. Riley looked at the young lieutenant, said, “We’ll handle it, sir.”

The others followed Riley toward the blasted ruins, what had once been a large hut, more structures beside it. To one side, Killian, a huge hulk of a man, helmet set back on his enormous head.

“Ain’t no enemy around here. We done mowed ’em out of here. Hell, you can see the river out there. Half the Marine Corps’s done gone across. The kid’s right. We done missed it. Gotta be Old Homer’s fault. Damn them officers, anyway.”

Riley ignored the comment, had too much respect for the colonel, the man in command of the Seventh. Homer Litzenberg was one of them, a Marine since 1922, rising through the ranks to command one of Oliver Smith’s four regiments. The nicknames abounded, always: Blitzen Litzen, Riley’s favorite. But to most of the men, the commanding officer was always the old man, so, in this case, Old Homer.