Day of the Bomb (21 page)

Fred drove three hundred yards and parked in front of
a small grocery.

“Once again I must ask you a favor.” Ron handed him a
dollar. “The proprietor does not like Japanese-Americans. He fought
in the Pacific and still hates Japanese.”

Fred sighed. Inside the store he found his and Ron’s
favorite bottled pop. As he placed them on the checkout counter,
the burly tattooed owner nodded toward Fred’s car.

“Who’s the slant eye out there?”

Fred grabbed the change and bag with the two bottles.
“A war hero! What he did during the war just might have saved your
sorry butt.”

***

Ron served as interpreter as Fred explained the
value of term life insurance to his grandfather, father, two
uncles, and six cousins. When the males of the clan balked at the
sales pitch, Ron’s grandmother brought out a cardboard box in which
she had squirreled away proceeds from her produce stand for five
years.

“I buy for.” Her English carried such a heavy accent
that Ron translated the offer.

“It’s her inheritance for the women of our family,”
he said.

She bowed and refilled Fred’s tiny tea cup. Two hours
and a lunch later, Fred had completed the policies. By the time he
was headed north to Montgomery, some of his favorite radio shows
were beaming through his dashboard radio.

“Dun...da...dun...dun.” The music faded. “The story
you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to
protect the innocent.”

A half hour later he heard, “Who knows what evil
lurks in the hearts of men? Ha ha ha…The Shadow knows.”

As he pulled up to a VFW hall in
Alabama’s capital city, the
William Tell
Overture
let him know that the Lone Ranger
and Tonto were about to give outlaws and hooligans justice ex-Texas
Ranger style. As he drove north after his presentation, he caught
part of a baseball game and then the last half of an
Inner Sanctum Mystery
. A
creepy voice wished him, “Pleasant dreams?” as he pulled up to a
motel. These days Fred chose his lodgings based on which motel had
the tallest television antennas. Judging by the fifty-foot height
of this one halfway between Montgomery and Birmingham, he
calculated that he should be able to pull in stations from both
cities.

Still a rarity in Madisin, television was the one
luxury that Fred allowed himself on his sales trips. He had just
turned it on when his room’s telephone rang.

“Hello.”

“This is the front desk. Your wife is returning your
call.”

“Thanks.”

“Hello, Fred?”

“Hi, Sally. How are the kids?”

“I got some bad news.”

“Are they sick?”

“No. They’re fine but you got a letter from the
Navy.” As she read it Fred stumbled over and turned off the
Motorola twelve-inch black and white TV. “Are you still there?” She
asked after reciting the name of the Navy Commander who had signed
the document.

“Yeah. I’ll start for home in the
morning. I better cut my trip short.” He spent hours staring at the
cracks in the ceiling and the spiders who traversed them instead of
watching the antics of the Aldrich Family, dancers cutting a rug
on
Arthur Murray’s Dance Party,
George Burns and Gracie Allen portraying the
humorous side of marriage, or some other cut-up whose jokes were
now meaningless for those called to fight to save a peninsula from
communism.

The Korean War began a pattern that United Nations’
sanctioned wars continued far into the next century: America
provided six times as many troops as twenty other nations combined
to battle the North Korean and Chinese soldiers and USSR pilots
flying MIGs, all of them intent on unifying North and South into
one communist nation.

***

“Once a Navy man, always one.” That’s what Captain
Uley had said during Fred’s days of surviving WW II.

Somehow Fred no longer felt like one as he tried to
readjust to uniforms, orders, salutes, and meetings. His new
captain had spent WW II battling German submarines, destroyers,
cruisers, and whatever Goering’s Luftwaffe could muster. Captain
Ickles considered the present war a mere flash in the pan.
Commanding a supply ship was the icing on the cake in his
estimation. He assembled his officers ashore at a Japanese
restaurant to tell them as much.

“To an early end to this war.” Captain Ickles lifted
his glass of Saki as his third toast of the evening.

“Here, here.” His executive officer bellowed.

Ensign Rhinehardt pretended to swallow his drink,
which was the remnant of his first. Not much appealed to him about
Japan, neither the food, alcohol, women, nor sights. If he never
stepped ashore in Korea that would be to his tastes also.

Ferrying supplies from Japan to the aircraft
carriers, destroyers, and other ships in the waters off of Korea
seemed routine enough. North Korea had no navy and thus far the
USSR had not provided any ships to the enemy. The main danger was
the mines that floated in the waters surrounding the peninsula.
Because their ship sailed at 2300 hours Captain Ickles broke up the
celebration early.

“Back to the ship, men.” He rose from the low lying
table and stretched. “Don’t want to be late.”

Not until 0120 hours did Fred’s recent diet awake
him. He tried to walk the few steps to his room’s head but the pain
like a hot poker piercing his abdomen buckled his knees. He writhed
on the floor until his groans roused his roommate.

“What’s wrong, Rhinehardt?”

Fred clutched his stomach. “It hurts pretty bad.”

“Sushi get to you?” He tried to lift him but Fred
howled in pain.

“Man, you really are bad off. I’ll fetch the
doc.”

But the ship’s surgeon had eaten the same raw fish,
which was now exiting his body. “It’s coming out of both ends,” he
told Fred’s roommate. “Go get a medic and bring the ensign to sick
bay.”

Before moving his patient, the medic poked Fred’s
right lower abdomen with his finger. When Fred screamed from the
slight pressure, the medic shook his head. “Looks like
appendicitis.” He sent for a stretcher and helped carry his moaning
patient to the small sick bay. Two others stricken by the raw fish
sat on its cold metal floor. “Boy, you all must’ve eaten the worst
fish around Yokohama last night. Counting the doc, that makes four
of you so far. Either of you two hurting on your lower right
side?”

They shook their heads.

“I’ll be right back with the doc.”

The medic supported the surgeon as they stumbled to
the sick bay. Dizzy from his diarrhea and vomiting, the doctor
pulled the medic aside after examining the sickest man on board.
“You were right. It’s appendicitis. But I’m so sick I can’t hold a
scalpel steady enough to operate in these rough seas. Go tell the
captain we need to put ashore.”

But by the time Fred was transported to an Army
hospital on land the poison from his burst appendix had seeped
outward. Peritonitis spread rapidly and he died two days later.
They flew his body home on a C-54 transport so that family and
friends could bury him in Madisin.

***

Sergeant Jason Dalrumple disliked his promotion
because now he was responsible for a squad of soldiers instead of
only ensuring his own survival. Its number varied from five to ten,
depending on members killed or wounded and available replacements.
Three raw recruits had reported to him for duty during a lull in
combat.

“Welcome to Korea, boys,” Sgt. Dalrumple said. “My
job is to keep you alive. Your job is to keep yourselves alive.
Your number one question is probably ‘when do I go home?’ I
bet.”

Two of them nodded as the third fiddled with his M-1
carbine.

“I thought so. You’re lucky. They just dropped the
number of points you need from forty-three to thirty-six. You get
four points for each month of close combat, two points for duty in
the rear echelon, and one point for duty in the Far East, such as
Japan, Taiwan, or the Philippines. Once you hit your thirty-six
points you are eligible to rotate back to the States. But sometimes
some guys end up waiting longer for rotation. Any questions?”

“Is it always this cold?”

“Only in the winter. When you wake up at night shake
your hands and stomp your feet to keep the blood flowing so you
don’t get frostbite. If you get frostbite you might get gangrene
and the docs will have to chop it off.”

The three settled into a defensive line, a series of
hills and trenches facing two brigades of Chinese and one of North
Korean troops, which waited until dark to attack. Soldiers of the
first wave fell about one hundred yards from the line, from the
second wave about thirty yards away. By the fourth wave of the
seemingly infinite enemy a few were reaching their trenches. One of
the new men panicked when his weapon jammed and he rose from his
kneeling position. A bullet ripped into his shoulder and knocked
him to the icy ground. When daylight came, Sgt. Dalrumple examined
the wound as a medic removed the blood-soaked bandage and applied a
fresh one.

“Went in and out.” He patted the shaking soldier’s
helmet. “Worth a Purple Heart though. You’ll be back in a couple
weeks.”

Aerial recon of the enemy’s new position discovered
reinforcements snaking toward their forward lines. Unable to
respond in kind, the American commanders ordered their troops to
regroup 1,000 yards to the south. By dusk Sgt. Dalrumple’s squad
had joined the rest of their company in a hilltop bunker abandoned
by their battalion’s commanding officer and his staff.

“Just like the Ritz. At least we got a view,” the
company’s commanding officer, a lieutenant six months out of West
Point said. “The enemy’s going to have to climb this hill to get to
us now.”

“They got so many guys it doesn’t matter, sir.” Sgt.
Dalrumple said what the other noncoms were thinking.

“I just got off the radio with Battalion
headquarters. Enemy artillery blew up part of our ammo dump. The
soonest they can bring us any ammo is tomorrow.”

“My men are down to only about four clips each,
sir.”

The lieutenant turned toward the other
sergeants.”

“About three.”

“Maybe five each.”

“Six at most.”

“How many BARs do we have?”

“Two.”

“Put one on each end of the bunker. Tell the BAR
gunners that no matter what happens they can’t let the enemy
outflank us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is the trip wire set up?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How much fuel does the flame thrower have left?”

“Half a tank.”

“Put him in the middle.” He took off his helmet and
pounded it on a wooden plank until some of the dried mud dropped
from it. “I have three flares left. When I fire off the last one
order your men to fall back down the hill toward the rear lines.
Our orders are to hold this hill as long as possible.
Dismissed.”

The four sergeants went to their squads to pass along
the orders as their commanding officer hunkered down next to the
three mortars set up twenty feet from the bunker. He offered their
crews gum and cigarettes.

“Fix your coordinates on the trip wire. Wait for my
order to fire.”

“Yes, sir.”

The two-man teams set the short metal cylinders for a
pattern that would saturate the area on both sides of the 100-foot
wire with the thirty-one remaining shells, not enough to stop the
thousands of troops waiting to climb the hill, only slow their
ascent. Then they waited.

***

Hoping the imperialists would be numbed by cold and
darkness into slumber or drowsiness, the Chinese commander of the
battalions assigned to take the hill waited until 2300 hours to
whisper the order to attack. A young North Korean rifleman’s boot
clipped the trip wire, which rang the bells attached to it. The
clangs jolted the American commander from his half sleep.

“Fire at will!”

The first rounds from the mortars hit the bottom of
the hill thirty seconds later. After two more minutes the last one
sailed upward.

“That’s our last shell, sir.”

He fired the first flare. It drifted slowly downward,
its tiny parachute granting maximum illumination. Sgt. Dalrumple
groaned as the sweating private next to him stated the obvious.

“Good God, Sarge. They look like ants.” He jabbed the
barrel of his M-1 toward the shadowy figures.

“They’re going to be crawling all over us if you
don’t start firing, troop!”

The bullets from the eighty-four carbines dropped the
first fifty enemies to the ground but their lifeless bodies served
as traction for the comrades who followed. As they sank into the
mud the corpses proved less slippery than the gooey earth that half
buried them. The BARs raked the flanks of the hill until their
belts of ammunition were spent. By then the second flare had
drifted to within twenty feet of the ground.

“Report!” The lieutenant ran from sergeant to
sergeant.

“Ammo gone.”

“Down to our last clips.”

He pounded the helmet of the one with the flame
thrower. Its forty foot burps of flame ignited the enemy closest to
the bunker. Those with burning skin and uniforms rolled down the
hill, taking down fellow soldiers like bowling pins. The lieutenant
fired the last flare through the two-foot gap between frozen earth
and the hundreds of sand bags that formed the roof. One by one, the
sergeants ordered their men to retreat down the back side of the
hill. Some of them slid. Others tumbled as they tripped.

Sgt. Dalrumple clutched the ankles of a bleeding man
as a medic supported his shoulders. Halfway down the hill, Jason
turned to watch the first shells from an artillery battalion two
miles away hit the bunker, showering mud, sand, wood, and body
parts on the fleeing Americans.