Read Online The Marines of Autumn: A Novel of the Korean War by James Brady - Free Book Online
Authors: James Brady
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deployment ordered in mid-October, when MacArthur was assuring Truman no substantial intervention was coming, was nine CCF armies totaling about two hundred and seventy thousand men.
As “Lightning Joe” Collins said of General MacArthur that autumn, “He was like a Greek hero of old marching to an unkind and inexorable fate.”
C HAPTER F OUR
I’ve been doing this since 1941. March Field, California. I did a radio show for Pepsodent and one night we went down there to do the show for a bunch of kids just drafted. The war wasn’t on yet and they laughed and cheered and stamped their feet and whistled. . . . The producer said, “Hey,. . . we got something here. You’re going back . . . every week.” So it wasn’t anything patriotic at the start, just a comedy hour in search of laughs.
—Bob Hope
V erity and Tate and their driver weren’t the only Marines in Wonsan. The division itself might still be at sea, puking up its guts and raging at MacArthur and the Russian mines, but the advance parties and air wing were already here. So, too, the USO troupe. Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell were en route, it was widely (and accurately) reported. Verity was admitted to the presence of one of Oliver Smith’s staff.
“Verity, you’re supposed to be our Chinese expert.”
“I’m not, Colonel, you know. I speak the language, know the country. But not much about their army.”
“Well, you know more than I do. Or General Smith does. So you’re it.”
“Yessir.” You never got anywhere arguing with rank.
“Now, General MacArthur pulled off a brilliant stroke at Inchon. Give him credit, an imaginative and subtle plan. Marvelously carried out by the Marine Corps. Give us a little credit, too. But now he’s done an odd thing. He’s separated his army. We and two army divisions and a ragbag of other units, all of them gallant and so on, I’m quite sure, comprise the X Corps. We’rehere [he poked a finger at maps] in the east of North Korea up against the Sea of Japan. To our immediate west is a range of mountains running north and south the length of the peninsula. Four thousand, six thousand, eight thousand feet, most of the passes already closed by snow. The middle of October and there’s snow up there a couple of feet deep. The other side of that mountain range is the Eighth Army, the other half of MacArthur’s command. We can’t get to them; they can’t get to us. Oh, maybe a small unit could make it up and over the mountains, traveling light. You couldn’t move armor or artillery or heavy units. So in effect, MacArthur’s army is split in two until spring. And we have all these rumors about the Chinese. You were briefed on that.”
“Yessir, in Washington.”
“So you know why you’re here.”
“To assess the Chinese threat and to report directly to General Smith and his staff on what I hear, what I find out, what I even suspect. Yessir.”
“Find out anything yet, Verity?”
“Not much. I have a good radio and a gunny who knows radio. We’re picking up plenty of Chinese traffic—”
“Traffic?”
“Conversation over the air. Transmissions. But the Chinese border isn’t two hundred miles from here. Without a lot of triangulation you can’t tell if what I hear is north of the Yalu in Manchuria or south of the line inside Korea. Or a bit of both.”
“If you went farther north, would you learn more? Better reception, that sort of thing?”
“Sure. A lot of this traffic is low-power stuff. The closer I get, the better the read.” That was what Tate had assured Verity, as he, shamelessly, now assured the colonel.
“Well then, when the rifle regiments finally get off those damned transports and start north, you go along.”
“With which regiment?”
“I don’t know what General Smith wants yet. You’ve got Litzenberg’s Seventh Marines, Murray’s Fifth, and Chesty Puller’s First. Whichever is the point regiment, I’d think.”
“And can I see General
As “Lightning Joe” Collins said of General MacArthur that autumn, “He was like a Greek hero of old marching to an unkind and inexorable fate.”
C HAPTER F OUR
I’ve been doing this since 1941. March Field, California. I did a radio show for Pepsodent and one night we went down there to do the show for a bunch of kids just drafted. The war wasn’t on yet and they laughed and cheered and stamped their feet and whistled. . . . The producer said, “Hey,. . . we got something here. You’re going back . . . every week.” So it wasn’t anything patriotic at the start, just a comedy hour in search of laughs.
—Bob Hope
V erity and Tate and their driver weren’t the only Marines in Wonsan. The division itself might still be at sea, puking up its guts and raging at MacArthur and the Russian mines, but the advance parties and air wing were already here. So, too, the USO troupe. Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell were en route, it was widely (and accurately) reported. Verity was admitted to the presence of one of Oliver Smith’s staff.
“Verity, you’re supposed to be our Chinese expert.”
“I’m not, Colonel, you know. I speak the language, know the country. But not much about their army.”
“Well, you know more than I do. Or General Smith does. So you’re it.”
“Yessir.” You never got anywhere arguing with rank.
“Now, General MacArthur pulled off a brilliant stroke at Inchon. Give him credit, an imaginative and subtle plan. Marvelously carried out by the Marine Corps. Give us a little credit, too. But now he’s done an odd thing. He’s separated his army. We and two army divisions and a ragbag of other units, all of them gallant and so on, I’m quite sure, comprise the X Corps. We’rehere [he poked a finger at maps] in the east of North Korea up against the Sea of Japan. To our immediate west is a range of mountains running north and south the length of the peninsula. Four thousand, six thousand, eight thousand feet, most of the passes already closed by snow. The middle of October and there’s snow up there a couple of feet deep. The other side of that mountain range is the Eighth Army, the other half of MacArthur’s command. We can’t get to them; they can’t get to us. Oh, maybe a small unit could make it up and over the mountains, traveling light. You couldn’t move armor or artillery or heavy units. So in effect, MacArthur’s army is split in two until spring. And we have all these rumors about the Chinese. You were briefed on that.”
“Yessir, in Washington.”
“So you know why you’re here.”
“To assess the Chinese threat and to report directly to General Smith and his staff on what I hear, what I find out, what I even suspect. Yessir.”
“Find out anything yet, Verity?”
“Not much. I have a good radio and a gunny who knows radio. We’re picking up plenty of Chinese traffic—”
“Traffic?”
“Conversation over the air. Transmissions. But the Chinese border isn’t two hundred miles from here. Without a lot of triangulation you can’t tell if what I hear is north of the Yalu in Manchuria or south of the line inside Korea. Or a bit of both.”
“If you went farther north, would you learn more? Better reception, that sort of thing?”
“Sure. A lot of this traffic is low-power stuff. The closer I get, the better the read.” That was what Tate had assured Verity, as he, shamelessly, now assured the colonel.
“Well then, when the rifle regiments finally get off those damned transports and start north, you go along.”
“With which regiment?”
“I don’t know what General Smith wants yet. You’ve got Litzenberg’s Seventh Marines, Murray’s Fifth, and Chesty Puller’s First. Whichever is the point regiment, I’d think.”
“And can I see General
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