The floor of the officers' quarters was concrete, and he wasn't as young as he had been when he had made the Tarawa and Okinawa landings in War Two.
He decided that there was nothing wrong with being as comfortable as he could for as long as he could. Their current status was bound to change, sooner or later and probably sooner than later, and when it changed, things would almost certainly be worse.
Right now, despite the spartan and miserable living conditions in the shrapnel-holed hangar and the lousy rations, things were pretty good, considering the alternative, which was doing what they were supposed to be doing, fighting as a Marine infantry company on the line.
The lines of ambulances and the sound of the firing had made it obvious that taking Seoul back from the North Koreans had been a nasty job. To judge by the sound of artillery, it still was a nasty job.
Baker Company hadn't been involved. They were officially in what some G-3 major had told him was "Division Special Reserve." Exactly what that meant Dunwood didn't know, but he knew the result.
Since Baker Company had landed at Inchon eleven days before, with the exception of some minor harassing and intermittent fire, they had not been involved in any combat at all, and that meant there had been zero KIA, zero WIA, and zero MIA.
It hadn't been that way in the Pusan Perimeter, where the Army general, Walker, admitted publicly that he had used the 5th Marines as his "Fire Brigade," rushing its men in all over to save the Army's ass when it looked as if the North Koreans were about to break through.
There had been a lot of Killed in Action and Wounded in Action in Baker Company in the Pusan Perimeter. When they were pulled off the line so they could board ships and make the Inchon Landing, Baker Company had been down to three officers and ninety-eight men. They were supposed to have five officers and two hundred four men. Dunwood had been able to report zero Missing in Action in the perimeter; he took a little quiet pride in knowing he hadn't left any of his Marines behind.
When they got to the piers in Pusan, expecting to board the USS Clymer or the USS Pickaway, or another of the attack transports that would carry them to Yokohama, where the 1st Marine Division was being assembled, Baker Company had been loaded instead aboard LST-450. And they were the only Marines loaded, although she was big enough to carry a hell of a lot more people.
Just about as soon as they were out of the harbor and the LST's skipper, Lieutenant John X. McNear, USNR, had time for a little chat, he told Dun-wood three things.
First, that he was, like Dunwood, a reserve officer involuntarily called up for Korea (he had been the golf professional at Happy Hollow Country Club, Phoenix, Arizona). Second, that he had just now sailed LST-450 from Bremerton, Washington, where she had been mothballed. And third, that they were now headed for Sasebo, not Yokohama. He said he had learned that only when he opened a sealed envelope on which was typed "OPEN ONLY WHEN AT SEA," and he hadn't any idea what was going on.
Dunwood had searched his mind for a possible explanation and had come up with very little, except the possibility that Baker Company would be reequipped and brought up to authorized strength at Sasebo.
When they got to Sasebo, Dunwood quickly learned that was not to be the case.- Baker Company, the lieutenant colonel in charge of a team from 1st Marine Division Headquarters told him, had been selected for a "special mission of crucial importance to the landing at Inchon."
The lieutenant colonel made it sound like an honor. Dunwood's experience as a Marine made him suspect it was a euphemistic description of a mission that would get a lot of Marines—probably including him—killed.
Baker Company was shortly thereafter assembled in the gymnasium of the U.S. Naval Base, Sasebo, where, after the windows were covered and guards posted at the doors, the colonel described their mission to them.
It seemed that to reach the landing beaches at Inchon, the invasion fleet would have to traverse the thirty-odd-mile-long Flying Fish Channel. In the channel were a number of islands, two of which, Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do, had to be invested and neutralized twenty-four hours before the invasion fleet arrived, otherwise the enemy could blow large holes in the sides of the transports with ordinary field artillery.
Baker Company had been given the mission, the honor, of investing Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do. Before they landed on the islands from Higgins boats, the islands would of course be subject to an enormous barrage of naval gunfire, which would effectively reduce to minimal the enemy's ability to resist Baker Company's invasion.
Actually, from that perspective, the colonel said, the real mission of Baker Company would be to occupy the two islands and prevent the enemy from coming back and bringing more artillery with them.
Captain Dunwood had gone ashore at Tarawa and Iwo Jima, on each occasion having been assured that following the massive preinvasion barrages of naval artillery to be laid on those islands, resistance would be minimal. That assurance had turned out to be bullshit, and he had therefore concluded that it was logical to presume this one was, too, and that Baker Company had just been handed the short end of the stick.
But he was a Marine, and Marines go where they are ordered to go, and he was a Marine officer, and Marine officers do whatever is humanly possible to reduce Marine losses by the only means that has ever looked like it works— training and more training.
By the time Baker Company reboarded LST-450, Captain Dunwood was sure that ninety-five percent of his Marines hated him for the regimen of training they had gone through under his command. And he was also sure that he had trained them as well and as thoroughly as he knew how, and that would probably result in fewer KIA and WIA than otherwise would have occurred.
At 0415 14 September, as the schedule called for, LST-450 was at the mouth of the Flying Fish Channel, preparing to load the men of Baker Company aboard the Higgins boats for their assault on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do islands.
Every ear, of course, was listening for the thunder, and every eye the flash, of the massive naval gunfire bombardment that was going to reduce the potential of the North Koreans to repel their assault to minimal. That was scheduled to begin at 0415 and last for a half hour.
At 0445, when Baker Company's Higgins boats were scheduled to depart LST-450 for the beaches of the islands, they were still listening, in vain. There had been some kind of a fuckup, obviously, and there wasn't going to be any massive barrage of naval gunfire.
Or, possibly, Captain Dunwood had thought privately, some candy-ass chair-warming swabbie clerk-typist had made a little mistake typing the order—hitting the "5" instead of the "4"—and there would be a massive barrage of naval gunfire landing on Taemuui-do and Yonghung-do starting at 0515, five minutes after the first Higgins boat touched the shore, and Baker Company would be up to its ass in angry North Koreans.
Marines go where they are ordered to go, with or without massive barrages of naval gunfire to reduce opposition to the minimum.
At 0510, on schedule, the first Higgins boat transporting Baker Company to the Flying Fish Channel Islands touched ashore and dropped its ramp.
Marines ran down the ramp and turned right and left, spreading out, weapons at the ready. Captain Dunwood was in the center of what ultimately was a formation in the shape of a V, holding his carbine in one hand.
"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" a voice shouted, an obviously American voice.
A figure appeared. He was in black cotton pajamas and had a band of the same material around his forehead. He held his hands over his head in a gesture of surrender.