This Skipper, this Old Man, had been rough on him, Smith thought, ever since they left the Stateside port of embarkation. But he’d got no more than he’d deserved. No phony raps. Mackenzie was rough, but square. Beany Smith sucked the last good from their cigarette, and said, “Captain, can I spell you with that musette bag, and the bottle?”
Mackenzie was startled. This was the first time that Beany Smith had ever volunteered for anything. The bottle, pulling at his pocket, had grown heavier, and the musette bag and carbine also seemed to be gaining weight. A man of thirty had already lost something. A march like this separated the men from the boys, and it was the boys, not the men, who could take it. “All right, Smith,” said the captain. “You can spell me.” He lowered his shoulder and slipped the strap of the bag, and he reached into his pocket and brought out the bottle and handed it to Private Smith. It was a surprising relief.
Beany Smith slung the bag over his shoulder, and cuddled the bottle under his arm, as the captain had in the early morning, when they started. And somehow he felt stronger. He felt he could carry the bag, and the bottle, forever. The Skipper had trusted him. The Skipper had made him part of something. He was part of Dog Company. He no longer hated the Skipper, or feared him, or was jealous or envious of him. “Captain,” said Beany Smith, “the girl who gave you this bottle—she’s your wife now, isn’t she?”
“That’s right—she’s my wife.”
“Get along pretty good with her?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I had a wife once. We didn’t get along so hot.”
“That’s too bad.”
“But I wish I was back with her now.” They walked in silence, matching strides, and then Smith said, “How come you didn’t drink the bottle when you got married? That was the time, wasn’t it?”
The captain’s laugh was muffled in his parka. “We talked it over, and decided not. Anyway, there was too much champagne.”
“It must have been a swell wedding.”
“Not so swell, it was wartime.” Even at that, it had been too fancy for his taste, and Anne’s, but the Longstreets had insisted on the full treatment. The marriage was three weeks after he’d got home, three weeks after he thought he’d lost her to the Air Force major. There’d been everything, even an arch of swords, and a general to lift a toast.
Mackenzie looked down at the bottle, in its red leather case, firm under Beany Smith’s arm. He recalled how they had the bottle between them, he and Anne, as they drove towards Tahoe that night, and how they talked about it. “Another reason we didn’t open it on the night we were married,” Mackenzie said to Beany Smith, “was because we decided to wait until V-E Day. We were sure that would be the biggest day in the lives of all of us.”
“That was right, wasn’t it, captain?”
“No, it wasn’t right. It should’ve been right, but it wasn’t. Anyway, we decided to postpone it until we had a baby.”
“Have one?”
“We certainly did!”
“Well, why didn’t you drink it then?”
Beany Smith was being awfully inquisitive for a second-class private, but Mackenzie found he didn’t mind, and wasn’t even irritated. “Well, when Sam, junior, was born we decided it wasn’t the time, either. It wouldn’t be fair to the ones that came after, if we drank it then.”
“So you’ve got other kids, captain?”
“No, not yet.” He found the men had been inching close to him, so they could listen. “Stop bunching up!” he roared. They fell back into column, as they should.
Mackenzie now believed that the walls of the gorge were not quite so sheer, and then he noted, through a gap in the hills off to the right, clouds of greasy smoke ascending to the glowering, slate-colored sky. He knew it was time to work out his problem on the map, and form a plan. “Take five,” he ordered. Without a fire to warm them, five minutes’ rest would be all they’d want.
He broke out the cigarettes, and distributed one to three men, as he had before, and posted his watch front and rear. Little Nick Tinker was asleep, or unconscious, so the cigarettes came out even. Then, as his men dropped to the ground, Mackenzie pulled out his map, and called for Ekland. Those fat columns of smoke, he knew from experience, came from burning fuel dumps. “Where do you figure those would be?” he asked Ekland, pointing at the pillars of smoke.
“Well, sir, Ten Corps has big ammo and fuel dumps at Hamhung. I think it must be those dumps burning.” Hamhung was the grimy industrial city six miles inland from the port of Hungnam.
Mackenzie inspected the map, and estimated their progress on the road from Koto-Ri. It checked. The pillars of smoke told him other things. Hamhung had been abandoned, but very recently. So a perimeter probably existed, although it must be much compressed. Still, in three or four miles they might run into the American lines, or anyway encounter a patrol.
The main Communist effort would naturally be on the main road, and the railroad, that ran through Hamhung. There, also, would be their heaviest concentration of troops. If he knew them, they’d all be rushing to Hamhung anyway, for the loot.
Then Mackenzie saw something on the map that made him frown. At a point ahead which he could not see, with his glasses, but still not far ahead, where according to the map the hills dropped away, a heavier road crossed his secondary road. “What do you think of this?” he asked the red-bearded sergeant, and jabbed with his gloved finger at the map.
Ekland looked at the map, and then looked up and concentrated on the terrain. “That looks like a bad spot, sir. But we’ve come further than I thought. We’ve done real good.”
“It doesn’t matter how far we’ve come. It’s where we’re going that counts. Think we’ll find a road block there?”
“If they have one anywhere, that’s where it’ll be. If they’re bringing tanks on down from the north, that’s where those tanks will be crossing our road. Right there.”
The captain nodded. Ekland had confirmed his own deduction. He turned to Beany Smith. “I’ll take the musette bag, and the bottle, now,” he said.
“I don’t mind carrying it on, sir.”
“Thanks, Smith, but from here on it’s all downhill. And it isn’t far.”
He slipped the bag over his shoulder, shoved the bottle into his pocket, and yelled, “All right, off your butts!” And they moved forward again.
Chapter Thirteen
THE CAPTAIN NOW walked warily, his eyes traversing the ground ahead, from left to right and back again, alert for the smallest movement, the most obscure sign. A foot soldier’s eyes must be more sensitive than radar, if he is to live, for his enemies include the microbes of war—the tiny plastic mine to blow off a leg; the booby trap, to blow off his hands; the sniper, to blow out his guts while his mind wanders in a far place; the rifle grenade, to seek him in his hole. There is a reason for this concentration on the foot soldier. He wins and loses skirmishes, battles, countries. He can even win, or lose, a world.
As they marched, the captain faced the full measure of their peril, and sought a solution.
The Chinese fought like Indians, while up to now the Americans had fought like Braddock and his Redcoats, trapped, ambushed, and cut to pieces in the Appalachian forests, while chained and bound by their transport to the roads and the trails. Of course Braddock had had a good lieutenant. Name of George Washington. A real good soldier, Washington. While Braddock commanded him he obeyed orders, and took his punishment, the hard way. He’d learned his lesson, the hard way, and never forgot it. And eventually the American frontiersmen, the Scouts and Rangers and Cavalry, had known more of bush fighting than the Indians, and won out in the end.