"We've got to catch up to the column," Cole said. "If we get left behind, we're dead men."
Nobody argued. They knew as well as Cole did that this was their one and only chance of escaping the Chinese. If they missed the column and it had already moved on, they would be running right back into the arms of the enemy that was swarming in the column's wake. Even Pomeroy didn't bother to protest, but grimaced and ran on, despite the obvious pain in his frostbitten feet.
After half an hour, the road came into sight. They could see trucks moving on it and soldiers plodding beside the slow-moving vehicles. Cole had to admit that it wasn't an impressive sight. He was seeing a downtrodden, battered regiment, so different from the troops that had marched so rapidly toward the Yalu River just days before.
"Wave your hands so the dumb bastards don't think that we're Chinese and shoot us," Cole said.
Pomeroy and the others followed Cole's advice — several rifles had turned in their direction as they suddenly emerged from the landscape. Once the other soldiers had determined that they were not Chinese, thus posing no threat, their return to the column was largely ignored except for some idle curiosity.
“Where you boys been?” someone called.
“There’s a burger joint just over that hill,” Pomeroy replied. “Onion rings, too.”
“Over that hill?” The soldier scoffed. “Nothin’ over there but Chinese food.”
The troops on the road had other things to worry about. To the rear of the column, a truck was blazing after being hit by grenades during a Chinese sneak attack. Flames shot from the tires and out of the windows, revealing the truck's metal skeleton. Cole hated to think about the poor wounded bastards who had been trapped inside.
Shots rang out. From above the column, enemy troops in the hills fired down sporadically at the American column. Occasionally, someone cried out and slumped over, hit by the random fire. There was no real cover from the shooting, so no one remarked on it or reacted much. The bullets were just an annoyance, like rain.
"This don't look good," Cole said. "We've still got a lot of miles to cover until Hagaru-ri. Hell, I'm beginning to wonder if there's even anybody left at Hagaru-ri. You'd think they'd send out some reinforcements."
"This is a whole lot better than being captured," Pomeroy said. "But I got to say, it looks like we are out of the wok pan and into the wonton soup."
Chapter Twenty-Six
Cole could see that the entire column was falling apart. The unit had lost so many officers and non-commissioned officers that there were few left to direct the men and create any cohesion of purpose. They trudged along, mutual survival being the glue holding them together.
Sergeant Weber and Lieutenant Ballard did what they could to keep their own men going, but there was a lot of the column that was essentially leaderless.
"This is goddamn awful," Pomeroy muttered through gritted teeth. The escape from the Chinese had taken a lot out of him. It was clear that his feet pained him a great deal. Cole didn't want to think about what Pomeroy's feet looked like inside of those boots.
"How are them feet holding up? You want me to put you on one of the trucks?"
"Hell, no. Save the space for somebody who is actually wounded."
"Have it your way," Cole said. He wasn't going to argue. Targeted by the Chinese hit-and-run attacks, many of the trucks had become death traps for the wounded inside.
Upon returning to the column, they had discarded the unfamiliar Chinese rifles and re-armed themselves with American weapons. With so many wounded, there was no shortage of M-1 rifles and carbines. What they lacked was ammo.
Weber approached, holding a spare rifle. With surprise, Cole saw that it was a Springfield with a telescopic sight.
“You better take this,” Weber said.
“Where did that come from?”
The sergeant shrugged. “Let’s just say that the man who had it last won’t be needing it.” He handed Cole a handful of cartridges. “That is all we have. I know you will make each shot count. It is what a sniper does.”
“Thanks, Sarge. You won’t be disappointed.”
Weber nodded curtly and walked off.
Cole hefted the rifle and admired how right it felt in his hands. It had been too long.
There would be time enough later to put the rifle to use. They were surrounded by enemy soldiers, after all. But first things first. There were more mundane things to deal with.
Cole changed his socks and made the kid do the same. His own toes had an ashen white look and felt waxen and numb, but they didn't seem to be frostbitten yet. He thought that it was a strange thing how with bullets and planes and mortars flying, the fight really came down to the state of a soldier's feet.
Progress had been agonizingly slow. First, the column had been halted by a major Chinese roadblock at Hill 1221. It had taken a coordinated attack led by the task force's commanding officer to push the Chinese off the high ground so that the column could get rolling once again.
Around them, the shadows in the hills began to deepen as night approached. Tangles of thickets covered the landscape, interspersed with bounders and ravines, offering perfect cover for the creeping enemy. As the sun sank lower, so did the temperature. They had worked up a sweat running from the Chinese, and now the damp clothing next to Cole's skin was starting to chill him. There wasn’t time to change into anything dry.
He found a couple of overcoats and a slightly scorched blanket hanging off the back of a truck and grabbed them, giving one extra coat to the kid and draping the blanket across Pomeroy's shoulders. Pomeroy accepted the blanket without comment. The coat that he had grabbed for himself was far too big, like he was moving inside a tent, but in the falling temperatures he welcomed any added warmth that he could get.
"I've never seen anything like it," Pomeroy said.
"Me neither," Cole agreed. "Kid, you stick close with us, you hear?"
"I sure will," Tommy said. “One thing for sure is that I’m not going to go chasing off after any Chinese in the bushes again. It’s a sure way to get captured.”
Cole couldn’t argue with that.
The South Korean soldier who had escaped with them also walked nearby, his own unit having scattered. Cole was glad to have the man around because he had shown a lot of fighting spirit. Cole caught his eye and nodded. They couldn't understand one another's words, but the message was clear enough. I got your back and you got mine.
The closest that Cole had witnessed to what was happening to the column was the Wehrmacht collapse at the Falaise Gap in 1944. But even then, the Germans' fierce discipline and spirit had somehow held their army together as it retreated back to Germany.
Looking around, Cole thought that this was something much worse. This was bad. This was the brink of annihilation. The thought had an unreal quality because this was not something that happened to the U.S. military.
He decided that this had nothing to do with courage. He had never seen such brave, tough men. But they were out of supplies. They had run out of food and medical supplies. Worst of all, the U.N. column was mostly out of ammunition. Trucks ran out of gas and had to be abandoned, sometimes with wounded still inside. The cries of injured men who knew they were being left behind were pitiful to hear.
It didn't help that the Chinese attacked relentlessly. Thank God that they couldn't seem to coordinate their attacks, but came at the column in squads — or maybe bunches — it was hard to make much sense of the Chinese forces, which still seemed largely disorganized. What mattered were that there were so damn many of them, and that they held the high ground. Uncontested, they flowed from peak to peak bordering the road, peppering the Americans with small arms fire, grenades, and even mortars on occasion. The Americans fired back, but soldiers were running out of ammunition up and down the column. For the enemy, this was turning into a goddamn turkey shoot.