‘We’ll also have to draft men from the service and support units for infantry fillers,’ Nate continued. ‘We’ll form them into provisional infantry companies. We need at least one infantry battalion as the brigade reserve. We can add line crossers from units out in the field who make it back inside the perimeter.
‘The provisionals in the brigade reserve will counterattack to plug breaches. They’ll go three ways as three separate companies, or all together against one point of attack — whichever I say.’
No one seemed particularly happy with Clark’s plan. A lieutenant colonel — the operations officer — was the first of his staff to speak up. ‘Sir… those provisionals are clerks and cooks and mechanics, not infantrymen. They can clear out a few holes. But to maneuver against an enemy under fire they need time to organize.’
‘They’re soldiers, colonel. They wear the same uniform as you and I.’
‘Just keep their tactics simple,’ Reed jumped in. ‘Nothing complicated. Just single-line, massed frontal assaults for sweeping operations.’ He turned to Clark. ‘I could put the battalion together,’ he said.
And command it, he knew Reed to be proposing. But it would be an awful job. Clark worried that losing so many men might ruin him. You’d never convince him it wasn’t his fault… if he lived.
But Reed was good. Those men deserved him. Clark nodded. ‘Take off,’ he said.
Reed flew out the door still climbing into his parka.
The group waited for Clark, who still stared at the exit. When he turned back, he said, ‘Okay. What’s our current fire support plan?’
The operations officer pointed at the artillery symbols — hand-drawn rectangular boxes with a single cannon ball in the center. ‘We’ve got a collection of about three battalion-strength artillery units. They’re all firing 155s, which helps with supply. One is American, one British, and one French. They’re each covering the areas defended by their nation’s contingents.’
‘Who directs them?’
‘They’re under the control of the three different commands.’
Clark stood upright. ‘You mean to tell me their fire control isn’t integrated?’
‘We didn’t want forward observers controlling fire-direction centers they hadn’t worked with. Plus, there’s the language barrier. And the different national commanders all wanted their own people available to them in case…’
‘And unavailable to everybody else!’ Clark exploded. He tried to rein his temper in. But it was a critical mistake. He was sure men were dying — right at that moment — because of it. ‘I want centralized fire direction. I want a single, integrated fire plan for every mortar, rocket, and artillery tube on this base. I want to be able to lay pre-registered fire — from every gun on this base — wherever the Chinese mass for an attack. But only I will have authority to release all three battalions’ guns to a single forward observer.’ He leaned out into the light. His hands pressed heavily on the table. ‘We own the terrain inside those guns’ ranges. They will stop the Chinese — dead in their tracks — if used properly. If used intensely. If concentrated. Search and traverse — box patterns — poured out as fast as those crews can cycle their guns. Forget what happened with the 2/263rd. Those guns will cut exposed infantry down. They’ll butcher them. It can be made to work. It has to be made to work… if we’re gonna hold this base.’
He gave his staff the opportunity to tell him that it couldn’t be done. No one took that opportunity. If they had, Nate would have quietly taken him aside and reassigned him to different duties.
‘Do we have any Firefinder radars?’ Clark asked.
‘They’re packed up and ready to move out,’ replied his chastened operations officer.
‘Unpack them. I want counterbattery fire laid against any guns before they get off a second shot.’ Clark looked down at the map. ‘Now, why is this artillery unit here,’ he said — pointing — ‘deployed so close to the perimeter?’
‘They’re still providing fire support for units strung out along the road to Khabarovsk. Those units are at the extremity of the guns’ ranges, sir. If we pull them back, they won’t be able to support…’
‘Pull them back, colonel,’ Clark said. He got looks that verged on contempt. Clark resented it. They didn’t have to make the hard decisions. ‘I’ll authorize all the unrecoverable units to surrender. We can’t risk those tubes that far forward. Pull them back safely inside the perimeter.’ He ran his finger back and forth across the map. ‘And make some sense of these deployments. If it takes moving gun emplacements, then move them. If it takes blasting and bulldozing new positions for every last gun, then do that. I want those guns protected, and rationally dispersed. I want them interlocked and capable of responding to calls from every fire-direction center on this base no matter what nationality. And I want it by twenty-four hundred hours.’
Their faces were set in grim masks.
‘Now, do we have an inventory of exactly who is on this base?’ Clark asked.
‘Not exactly, no, sir,’ the operations officer replied. ‘We’ve spent the last forty-eight hours collecting units from smaller firebases all around. We were also a transit point for units moving down the road to Khabarovsk before it was cut. Some units we thought were here had already headed on toward Khabarovsk. Others we thought were gone fought their way back down the road to us. There are plenty of others I’m sure we don’t know about — bits and pieces, some of them smashed, from a half-dozen different nationalities.’
‘I want an inventory by twenty-four hundred,’ Clark ordered.
The man nodded.
‘And I want everyone else digging,’ Clark said.
At first it was if they hadn’t heard him.
‘Digging,’ he repeated. ‘Get engineers to blow the topsoil with shaped charges. You’ll be amazed how good an entrencher men with long-handled shovels can be. Men properly organized. Well led… by you.’ He had their attention now. ‘You structure their lives for them. They’ll be getting no sleep, so their minds will be mush. We will do their thinking for them. We tell them what to do. When to do it. How to do it. We’ll motivate them to keep going. Give them a direction to head in — an objective. And if that objective is directly related to holding this base… you’ve done your job. And they have done theirs. That’s all they want out of you right now. That’s all you can ask of them.’
‘Should we…’ the operations officer began, then shrugged. ‘Pass any words of encouragement down to the troops?’
‘You tell them we’re going to hold for the night. Then tomorrow you tell them again. And the next day — again. If they haven’t taken us in three days, they never will.’ Clark looked each of them in the eye, then straightened. ‘Twenty-five percent strength in fighting positions till dusk. All patrols in before dark. Starting at dusk, I want automatic weapons moved to alternate weapons pits and test-fired every hour to prevent freezing. We go to fifty percent strength on the line from dusk till twenty-two hundred hours. Seventy-five percent till oh four hundred. Then one hundred percent through the dawn attacks. Afterwards, we’ll send out patrols — combat patrols. We’ll take the fight to the enemy. It’ll police the battlefield. It’ll keep the Chinese from digging in within small-arms’ range of our lines. And it’ll build morale. Everyone not on patrol or in their fighting posts… digs. Every day. Every night. Till I say stop.’