Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 08 - In Dangers Path

«You were supposed to be here last night, Sergeant,» Cawber repeated.

«You better get this straight,» Sweatley snapped. «I don't have to explain a fucking thing to you. So far as I'm concerned, you're just going along for the ride.»

And then Cawber made things worse by trying to tell Sweatley how he thought they should organize the convoy of vehicles.

«You don't listen, do you?» Sweatley said. «I've been running convoys around China for six years, and I don't need a retired Doggie to tell me how to do it.»

Chief Brewer and Technical Sergeant Abraham took Staff Sergeant Cawber aside, and Sweatley proceeded to set up the convoy the way he thought it should be run.

Chief Brewer would head it up in his Oldsmobile, with another car behind him, and a Marine would be in each car. Then would come the first of the Marine trucks, with four Marines in it—including Technical Sergeant Abraham. There were seven other cars. These would follow the first truck, with either a Marine or one of the 15th Infantry retirees, carrying a weapon, in each. Cawber could ride in any of the cars he wanted to. The second Marine truck, carrying Sweatley and the rest of the armed Marines, would be at the tail of the convoy.

That day they met a pretty fair amount of traffic on the road; and because the Great Wall of China made a U-shaped loop to the west, they had to pass through it again. That meant they didn't reach Chining, 150 miles down the highway, until half past seven that evening. As night began to fall, Sweatley made another decision.

When Brewer stopped to talk things over, Sweatley explained that he thought it would be better to keep going and pass through Chining right now, even if it proved difficult to find someplace to stop on the other side in the dark. By morning, he explained, the Chinese might have gotten word to arrest westerners. Sergeant Abraham agreed with Sweatley, and so did Brewer. Even though Staff Sergeant Cawber didn't say anything, Sweatley sensed he didn't like it when Brewer agreed to the plan without asking him.

They spent the night parked by the side of the road. Sweatley put out a perimeter guard and spent most of the night awake, but there was no trouble.

They started moving again at first light, and made the 175 miles to Huhehot by three in the afternoon. On the other side of Huhehot, Brewer stopped the convoy again. There were problems. Three of the eight automobiles were running low on gas. Though Sweatley's trucks had more than enough gasoline, in five-gallon Texaco tin cans, to refuel them, Sweatley was opposed to doing that.

«We're going to abandon the cars in Baotou anyhow,» he said. «Hiding them will be a problem. What we should do is load the people in the trucks and other cars and get rid of the cars here.»

«You're making all the decisions, are you, Sweatley?» Staff Sergeant Cawber asked, sarcastically.

«I'll get rid of my Olds,» Chief Brewer said, nipping the argument in the bud, «and the Packard and the Buick. The more gas we can take with us, the better. And I don't think we can be sure of finding gas in Baotou.»

The supplies the Oldsmobile, Packard, and Buick were carrying were transferred to Sweatley's trucks, while the passengers were distributed among the other cars and trucks. Several miles farther down the road, they came to a narrow trail leading to the left. The cars were abandoned there, out of sight from the road. At Sweatley's suggestion, their ignition keys were left in place, but the Peking license plates were removed.

It began to snow thirty minutes after they resumed their march to Baotou. They reached the city after dark. By then it was covered with snow.

The women and children were put into a go-down Brewer had arranged for, guarded by several of the Marines and soldiers. Meanwhile, the Sick, Lame, and Lazy; the Marines; and the other able-bodied men spent the night at a stable transferring the supplies to the rubber-tired wagons and carts. The cars and trucks were then abandoned—scattered in inconspicuous areas all over Baotou.

Again, the keys were left in the ignition switches. With a little bit of luck, the vehicles would be stolen, and therefore concealed from the authorities.

Chief Brewer and Sergeant Abraham came early the next morning to the stable where Sweatley had spent the night.

«We have a couple of problems,» Brewer said. «The snowfall is heavy; under it is ice. We're going to have trouble moving.»

«We don't have any choice,» Sweatley said. «We have to get out of here before someone turns us in.»

«That's just about what I decided,» Brewer said. «But as part of that problem, the wagons are pretty heavily loaded. Some of them are likely to get stuck.»

«We worry about that when it happens,» Sweatley said. «If necessary, we just dump whatever we can't carry. Anything else?»

«You and Sergeant Cawber.»

«Fuck him.»

«We need him. You're just going to have to get along with him,» Abraham argued softly.

«Tell him.»

«I have.»

«Tell him not to start giving me, or my Marines, orders.»

«I did,» Chief Brewer said. «He said I should tell you the same thing. From now on, you want him to do something, you don't tell him, you tell either Abraham or me. Understood?»

«You're in charge, right?»

«You don't like that?»

«I'll go along with you two, just as long as Cawber doesn't think he's next in line, and over me.»

«Done,» Brewer said. «What we have to do, I think, is elect officers.»

«Elect officers'?»

«We'll talk about that, later. What we have to do now is start to pack essentials on wagons we know won't get stuck.»

»

We

start doing that? You and me and my Marines?»

«Everybody,» Brewer said.

«Okay.»

«The first thing we have to do is decide what has to go and what doesn't.»

What had to go with them was food, the bare necessities of clothing, the air-cooled Browning .30-caliber machine gun, and a gasoline generator and twenty gallons of gasoline to run it.

The Yangtze sailor who had been a radioman first on the

Panay

had a shortwave radio. He didn't know how well it worked, but Brewer thought that they should take it with them. Maybe they could establish contact with a radio station someplace.

They left Baotou eighteen hours later.

It took them a month to reach and cross the Altai mountain range, and then to reach the edges of the Gobi Desert.

There Brewer called a meeting; and here they all agreed to a command structure.

With the election of officers came the division of responsibility. Sweatley and his Marines, plus several able-bodied Yangtze sailors and several of the 15th Infantry retirees, provide the armed force to protect everybody. They'd be, so to speak, «the soldiers.»

The rest—under Staff Sergeant Cawber—would be responsible for feeding everybody.

The «soldiers,» in pairs, mounted on the small Mongolian ponies, went on what amounted to permanent perimeter guard duty. One pair preceded the main body of wagons. One pair moved on each side of the wagon train, left and right. And the fourth pair brought up the rear. Everybody did four hours at a time, but the reliefs were on a staggered schedule. Every two hours, one man was sent out from the caravan to relieve one of the men on each two-man team. No «guard post» was ever unmanned.

Almost as soon as they began their trek, they encountered caravans moving toward China. Most were camel caravans, but a few were like their own with ponies pulling rubber-tired wagons and carts. After the second week, they were overtaken and passed by camel caravans headed toward either India or Russia. On the one hand, they were encouraged that their caravan closely resembled so manyothers. On the other hand, they were surprised at how quickly the camel caravans overtook and passed them. They seemed to move at least twice as fast as their horse-drawn wagons.