Prince of Peace (6 page)

"Yeah." Sully raised his hand like a schoolboy. "What about the Chinese?"

"They're on the way, Sully. Listen."

The men listened to the dull roar of artillery from Seoul. For the first time they realized that it was closer.

"The engineers have already taken the other bridges down, fellows. This is the last one left across the Han. The Chinese want it. It's up to us to see they don't get it. If we don't clear it right now so that train can move out fast, we're going to have to stay here and fight them for it. About thirty thousand of them."

"Oh fuck," O'Hara said.

The men took up their positions. There were two roadblocks, one at the entrance to the bridge itself and one about fifty yards up the railroad bed. At each the makeshift gate was in the raised position, letting people through. Sergeant Stone, Sully, Bean and Jones manned the outer one while Maguire, Brown, Pace and O'Hara manned the one at the bridge itself. Lieutenant Barrett and Tucci remained at the jeep. When everyone was in position Stone fired his weapon into the air and barked repeatedly the Korean phrase which meant "Stay back!" Both teams began to lower the gates.

Previously the effect of the gunshot and the order had been immediate compliance. The refugees, once halted, waited submissively for permission to resume. They'd thought nothing of waiting several hours. But now, as if they knew the score, their reaction was the opposite one. They surged forward en masse. Women, old men, even children threw themselves against those in front. They ripped the logs of the blockades from their leather hinges and tossed them aside like matchsticks. The people crushed each other to get onto the bridge. A-frames and carts were thrown into the river. Those who stumbled were trampled. Refugees farther back on the road pressed forward even harder. The knowledge of what was happening rippled back; thousands perceived it at once. Their escape was being cut off.

Cries went up: first of pain of those being crushed; then of protest at the prospect of being left behind. Sergeant Stone fired his weapon into the air again, and then the GIs did too. But the barrage only increased the panic in the crowd. The force of its surge doubled.

Maguire sensed that there was no stopping them, and he could feel their panic seizing him and the others of his platoon. What could they do? He for one was being swept onto the bridge, like so much flotsam in a surf. Even if he'd wanted to use his rifle he couldn't have raised it. He, Eddie Brown, the colored kid, and Lennie Pace were each several heads taller than the swarming Koreans, but they were powerless.

Maguire could see that the four soldiers at the forward roadblock had linked arms and were pushing against the tide of people. But then Sullivan's helmet was knocked off when someone clubbed him, and Bean simply disappeared as the crowd overwhelmed him.

Later Maguire would realize that Lieutenant Barrett had seen Bean drop too, because it was at that moment that he hopped behind the wheel of the idling jeep, popped it into gear, and gunned it right at the mob. He was still picking up speed when he hit the line of people midway between the two roadblocks, midway between the positions his boys held. It was an instinctive act, but not an irrational one. Barrett never hit the brakes; the crunch of flesh and bone was what stopped the vehicle. Maguire would later swear he heard the thunk of steel against bodies and of bodies against each other, but the real sounds of impact were lost in the roar of the revving jeep engine.

Though he would not articulate it until much later, it was at this moment that Maguire understood for the first time that judgments about right or wrong can be completely irrelevant. War presents men with certain circumstances and they act. That's all.

Not quite all. Also they perceive; perhaps they perceive, despite their numbness, with special clarity. Maguire saw the heads of Koreans cracked open like melons, gray matter spurting out like vegetable pulp and seeds, as if a pumpkin truck spilled right in front of him. He saw bodies flung through the air jerkily, limbs flailing like swingles, faces crushed against chests or against backs; bodies sprawling on top of each other, then being hideously bulldozed as the momentum of the jeep carried it fully through the line. A score of people were mauled, a dozen horribly killed, but the shock of violence—the wave it made—was felt, could be seen to be felt, all through the dense crowd. The grotesque sight of those split skulls was fixed in Maguire's mind and would always dominate his memory of that day. The memory would make him sick. But he would also always remember that it worked. Lieutenant Barrett had stormed the glacier and stopped it.

Tucci was standing in the jeep firing the submachine gun above the heads of the people. The staccato of his weapon gave perfect expression to the violent fury that always follows the release from danger. The Koreans, hunched over, protecting their heads, had lost their impetus. The GIs were in charge again. Maguire and the others formed ranks in front of and alongside the jeep. They stood with their weapons cocked, a more formidable blockade than ever.

"Cease fire, Tucci!" Lieutenant Barrett called.

When Tucci released the trigger a shocking silence fell. The groans of the wounded Koreans could be heard and also the distant booming of artillery, but still there was silence.

"Sergeant! Is everyone accounted for?"

"Yes, sir!"

"What about Bean?"

"Here, sir!"

"Tell these people anyone who moves will be shot!"

Sergeant Stone rattled off a few words in the strange language. The Koreans gave no sign they knew they were being addressed.

"That's you, Tucci," Lieutenant Barrett ordered. "Shoot them if they move. Don't wait for me to tell you."

"Yes, sir." Tucci, poised above the scene like the statue of a hero, was not as cool as he looked. He had never fired the submachine gun in action before.

Barrett shut the jeep engine off and hopped down. "Maguire! Brown! Let's help these people!"

They laid their rifles aside and knelt, trying to pull the tangled bodies out from under the front bumper of the jeep. Bodies were piled there three and four deep, like, Maguire thought, in a concentration camp. At first none seemed alive, but as they pulled, some victims began to move. The cries grew louder. The vehicle had come to rest right on the railroad tracks. One poor bastard's head was crushed against the rail.

Maguire retched, but he only turned his head aside. He, Brown and the lieutenant worked steadily to free the people, to drag the corpses away and to try to comfort the ones who were alive.

One little girl, a shattered but howling figurine, was strapped to her dead mother's back. Her mother's neck was broken, and her expressionless face was perversely askew on her shoulders. Maguire freed the girl, who was barely more than an infant. When he stood up with her he found himself facing Lieutenant Barrett. The officer seemed suddenly horrified. "Jesus Christ," he whispered while staring at the bawling child in Maguire's arms. "What have I done?"

Maguire buried the baby's face against his chest. It was how he'd held that rabbit. He wanted to say, "We all did it, Lieutenant," but he couldn't.

 

The crowd was still at bay and the bridge was clear when the train arrived. It pulled into view behind the scolding sound of its own engine and Maguire wanted to feel relief, but he had maintained his nerve up to then only by blanking out his ability to feel anything. He had spent the time trying to comfort the injured civilians, applying first aid, wrapping them in GI blankets, clearing stones from under them, wiping their faces. He realized that he'd begun to imitate their stoicism.

He had to remind himself that now he was going to leave. The train had come, in a way, for him.

"Move that jeep!"

Maguire looked around to see who Lieutenant Barrett was addressing, but he was nearer to the jeep than anyone. It was still blocking the track, and the engine was steaming steadily closer. He hopped aboard the jeep, pushed the ignition button, and fiddled with the gear stick until he found reverse. He had to gas the engine to get the wheels over the iron rail. As he backed away from the track he continued to gun it instead of stopping; suddenly he knew that he wanted only to get away. He saw what he had in common with those Koreans, not stoicism, but heart only for escape. He careened backward in that jeep toward the riverbank, as if escape was waiting for him there.

Maguire would hear it said later that some men were made more acutely conscious by the bleak experiences of war, and it was true that his ability to see and smell and hear the minutiae of violence was heightened. But his ability to organize his perceptions into a coherent whole in which he was more than a detached observer abandoned him utterly. As far as he could recall he was barely aware throughout that episode of his own choices or even of his own reactions. It was a mad thing to do, for example, to send that jeep shooting off the edge of the cliff. It tumbled down the hundred feet of rocky incline and burst into flames just before it plunged through the ice. The gasoline fire was extinguished as quickly as it had ignited.

And Maguire, as if he'd practiced for a stunt show, had leapt free at the last instant, landed in a crouch facing the river, and watched until the jeep disappeared under a plume of steam. "Fucking thing," he said.

"Maguire! Maguire!"

The engine and tender were just crossing onto the bridge. The platoon was scrambling aboard. Sergeant Stone was waving Maguire's M-i and calling his name, alarmed that he was being left behind.

Maguire had to run. The train was moving at a clip and he would not have made it if Brown and Pace hadn't pulled him aboard. He collapsed on the iron platform and then at last, leaving that nightmare behind, felt the first hint of relief.

But it was premature.

"Oh fuck!" O'Hara cried. "Oh Jesus! Fuck!"

The others saw what he saw. The wall of refugees had broken and they were rushing onto the bridge behind the train. Their grim stoicism was gone. The crowd of old men, women, boys and girls which had not moved for most of an hour was now a charging infantry, bellowing insanely as it stormed after them. Fatalistic Orientals? Shock victims? A defeated populace? Resigned to wait for its new masters? None of these. They were like the notorious primitive armies of Sun Tsu, which depended less on weapons than on dreadful masks and frightening noises. But a mob is not an army. It is moved not by discipline but by emotion. The Koreans were one creature now, an incarnation of feeling that went beyond fear or rage into something wholly other, something infinite. Even from a distance Maguire could sense that now their energy was going to overwhelm any obstacle they met, and to their horror the GIs realized that the refugees were catching up with them.

"Fix bayonets!" Lieutenant Barrett ordered.

It was difficult to do it on the jolting train, but no one hesitated. In a moment all seven riflemen had the long blades fixed to the barrels of their guns, and Tucci had the safety off the Browning. No one, not Maguire certainly, allowed qualms to surface. The Koreans were no longer old men and women, no longer children. They were an enemy whom the odds favored.

A boy of about twelve was the first to catch the train. He was reaching for the rail when Pace poised to harpoon him, but at that moment the train picked up speed and a gap opened between the boy and Pace's bayonet.

The crowd kept coming even though the train was leaving them behind.

But just as it seemed safe again, the train slowed. Maguire had forgotten that it was going to stop in the middle of the bridge.

The iron wheels began to screech, and steam hissed out from the undercarriage.

And the refugees began to close the distance. The train jolted to a stop.

"Get ready!" Lieutenant Barrett ordered.

Maguire couldn't believe what they were about to do. Tucci raised his submachine gun, and the other soldiers aimed their rifles. Maguire tried to find a middle-aged man to aim at, but all he saw were Pappa-sans and children. "Go back!" he screamed suddenly. "Go back!" Sergeant Stone started screaming at them in Korean, and the other GIs chorused, "Go back! Go back!"

Tucci fired into the crowd, and the front rank fell. Immediately there was a pileup as the onrush continued. The bodies of the Koreans, even the fallen ones, writhed as Tucci's bullets pumped into them.

Maguire couldn't tell whether the other soldiers were firing. He assumed later that he was himself firing, but he was never certain that he hadn't simply frozen while the merciless staccato went on around him. He wished desperately that the rabble-refugees had been a cavalry charging so that he could have aimed his gun at horses.

By the time Lieutenant Barrett gave the order to fall back, the engineers had already abandoned the train. Stringing detonating wire behind them, they were rapidly crossing toward the shore, and it was with infinite relief that the platoon took out after them.

It was impossible to run efficiently on the railroad ties, and the men stumbled constantly.

When Sully fell ahead of him, Maguire assumed he'd only tripped. He stopped to help him. Sully looked up with blood gushing out of a hole below his ear, then he collapsed, obviously dead.

Bullets pinged off the ironwork of the bridge.

Maguire was the first to see the flotilla of small boats in the river below. The channel between the iced margins was clotted with vessels. Scores of soldiers in mustard-colored uniforms were shooting at the Americans from the decks and superstructures of dozens of fishing boats and junks. "Chinese!" he screamed. "Chinese!" Some of the boats were already alongside the pilings of the bridge. The Chinese were grappling their way up.

The GIs ran even faster. The railroad ties were suddenly no obstacle.

Bean was shot. Lieutenant Barrett stopped for him, but then he fell too, clutching his chest.

Eddie Brown and Maguire scooped the officer up and, each taking an arm, carried him along. O'Hara and Pace started to pick up Bean, but he waved them off and they left him.

Tucci fired his submachine gun in a frenzy, and only then did Maguire realize that a pair of Chinese soldiers had just climbed over the railing right in front of them. The Chinese fell dead.