Read Online Korea Strait by David Poyer - Free Book Online Page B

the Battle Area, the defensive line south of the DMZ—broke, and the Communists flooded into South Korea, they’d be like the Iraqi Army on the Highway of Death. They’d have to blitz their heavy armor fast to occupy the airfields and stop U.S. reinforcements arriving through the southern ports. Meanwhile the U.S. and ROK air forces would be attriting them with every kilometer they traveled. The Joint Chiefs J-3 and Eighth Army had no doubt calculated, diagrammed, computed it all out with mathematical precision, from M-day on. So many percent losses per day. So many sorties to produce that percentage. It would be a war of remorseless, slowly advancing reptiles, picked off day by day by crows diving fiercely from above.
    As if following that exact thought process Hwang said, “A thousand sorties per day. That is the dividing point in our staff studies. More than that and the enemy will be destroyed north of Pusan. Less, and he will occupy all of our country before your tanks and troops can arrive to reinforce.”
    â€œSo the sortie rate’s key. What about the weather? Surprise?” “In our training we always assume a surprise attack in bad weather.” “So what’s your take?
Will
they try again?” “Oh yes, of course. They are devils in human shape, these people,” Hwang said, thin face not quite as impassive. His fingers sank into the padding of the steering wheel. “They killed my uncles, aunts, grandparents in Tanyang. Lined them up and shot them. My mother got to Pusan as a refugee.” He cleared his throat, and Dan saw what he might look like a day after he was dead. “Our country was not prepared. And America—you did not stand behind us until it was almost too late.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear that. I know there was some question whether we were obligated to defend you. Back then, I mean—there’s no question now.”
    Hwang frowned. “I don’t tell you this to make you feel guilty. I tellyou because the other Americans I meet don’t seem to think it will happen again.”
    â€œThe way I see it, nothing happens the same way twice.” “Really? You are an optimistic people. We would say: Everything returns. And again. And again.” He peered ahead, not slowing for a hairpin curve. Cliffs fell away to vertiginous valleys. Dan gripped his seat, visioning the long careening tumble down that rocky fall, how their bones would smash and snap inside the car before it finally impacted. The tires shrieked. Hwang said, “I believe every day they ask themselves, Is this the hour to attack? All it requires is that we be isolated. That is why the North has such large special-purpose forces. Missiles to hit our air bases. Chemical weapons. They will lay mines at sea. And they will threaten Japan. If the Japanese close their bases to your air force, and the mines keep your carriers out of the battle, there’s no way to reach that thousand sorties a day.”
    â€œIt still sounds like a gamble,” Dan said. “For them.” “It is. But if they think they can succeed—then yes, they will gamble. And it will be a terrible war. It will destroy everything we have built since the last one.” Hwang leaned on the horn again, swerved around a bus. Fresh mountains grew in the distance.
    â€œA terrible war,” he whispered again.
    THEY descended hours later into a metropolitan cauldron edged by the distant sea. Now there were clouds, as if generated by the miles of city, the sweating breathing humanity that stretched from one wall of mountain to the other. Hwang told him Pusan had been a fleet base for the Imperial Japanese Navy in World War II. Dan knew its more recent history. Pusan was where the United Nations had finished retreating. They’d finally held the North Koreans, who were by then exhausted and strung out along the roads, depleted by garrisoning after their long advance. Then