Frozen Sniper

Chapter Eighteen

At daylight, the scene that greeted the survivors of the attack was like waking from a nightmare that turned out to be all too real. Scattered around them in every direction lay the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers from the last two assaults. It might just be possible to cover at least half a mile, Cole thought, by stepping from body to body without ever touching the ground.

Judging by their contorted figures, many of the Chinese had not died peacefully. Their twisted limbs and bodies were now frozen into grotesque contortions. Cole gazed out at the carnage and shook his head. Sure, they were supposed to be the enemy. A few hours ago, these same men had been trying to shoot or bayonet him. However, seeing so much death did not exactly delight Cole, but just the opposite — he was struck by the waste of it all.

He wondered again what that Chinese soldier had been saying to him before Cole had pulled the trigger. Cole hoped that the soldier had been cussing him. He decided that was what he would believe, although he knew that he would also have a hard time getting that memory out of his head anytime soon.

He took a deep breath and pushed all those thoughts out of his mind. When you got soft was when you died. If he ever got home again, he could try to find some answer to all of this in the Bible or in long rambles through the mountains. However, the shores of the Chosin Reservoir in the Taebaek Mountains was not the place for self-doubt, not if he wanted to survive.

"Unbelievable," Pomeroy muttered beside him. "I wouldn't have thought it was possible, but this is worse than the first night."

"They were so convinced that they could overrun us that they kept throwing men at us," Cole said. "How are you holding up?"

"I didn't get shot again, if that's what you're asking."

Cole turned to Tommy. "Kid?"

The kid was shaking from the cold, so he only nodded and stammered, "I'm all right. I've never seen anything like it, though. It was like shooting zombies in a horror movie. They just kept coming."

"Ain't no movie," Cole said. "These ain't zombies. Just dead soldiers."

"An awful lot of dead soldiers," the kid said quietly, looking around.

"Everybody ought to change their socks," Cole said, trying to get the kid’s mind on other things. "I know we didn't exactly get a chance to do it last night, what with the battle and all."

"Hillbilly, that may just be the understatement of the year."

The fact was that none of them had washed or changed their clothes, other than socks, in days. First, they had been on the march, practically racing to reach the Yalu River. And then all hell had broken loose. Simply staying alive was more important than hygiene.

It didn't help that their uniforms were caked with mud, soggy with slush, or stank of spilled diesel fuel. Pinned down by the Chinese and bundled against the cold, their innards made watery from eating snow or just from fear, more than a few soldiers hadn't made it in time when nature called so that they were forced to go around in soiled trousers. It had gotten so that nobody even commented on the smell. Fortunately, their own foxhole had been spared so far from that particular affliction.

Cole and Tommy started to undo the metal clasps of their galoshes, which wasn't an easy task because the metal was fouled with caked mud and ice. Cole thought that the kid's feet looked all right, and he nodded with satisfaction as the young soldier pulled on a dry pair of socks. His own feet had seen better days — not frostbitten, exactly, but definitely suffering from what the mountain people called chilblains — patches of waxy-looking skin that was painful to the touch. The fresh socks would help keep it from getting worse.

"Pomeroy, you ain't got your boots off yet."

"I can't," he said. Pomeroy hadn't even bothered to crawl out of his sleeping bag, which was pulled up to his chin as he lay in the bottom of the frozen hole. "If I take off either one of these boots, half of my foot will go with it. My damn feet are frozen."

"What the hell? You're supposed to take care of your feet!" Cole snapped, exasperated. "We can't carry you out of here."

"I can walk," Pomeroy barked back at him.

The kid spoke up, smiling for what might have been the first time in days. "Listen to you two, bickering like a couple of old maids."

Both Cole and Pomeroy glared at him and said in unison, "Shut the hell up, kid!"

The kid just shook his head and went back to staring at nothing in particular, way out in the hills.

"Sure you can walk?" Cole asked, more calmly now. "You ain't been out of this hole in a while."

"I can walk," Pomeroy insisted. "Besides, who said anything about us moving out? Looks to me as if we'll be here until the Chinese hit us again or hell freezes over — I'm not taking any bets on which one will happen first, by the way."

"We can't stay here," Cole said. He knew that they very well might; that they could be buried here for all eternity in this spot because they would never survive another Chinese onslaught. At that thought, the foxhole felt suddenly less like protection and more like a grave. "I'm gonna get out of this hole and take a look-see."

"Sure, go take a stroll," Pomeroy said. "Why don't you pick a few daisies, while you're at it?"

Cole scrabbled out of the foxhole, his limbs and joints stiff with cold. He slung his M-1 over one shoulder. He was down to his last two clips. If he got lucky, maybe he could scrounge some more ammo.

A handful of other men moved around, including Sergeant Weber. Cole was glad that the ornery son of a bitch had survived, even if Cole still didn't much like him. Cole would have been glad for a dozen more Webers if it helped to get them out of this mess. So far, the Chinese sniper who had annoyed them yesterday had not returned. Maybe Cole really had made a lucky shot and punched the yellow bastard's ticket.

He paused to sniff the air. It was a gesture not all that different from how a wolf might emerge from its den to smell for enemies. Cole felt better already out of the confines of that frozen hellhole where he'd spent the last two nights. It felt good to clear his head. No matter what Pomeroy said, he was worried about the son of a bitch. You couldn’t march on frozen feet — not for long, anyway.

The sky had cleared, enabling the Corsairs to resume their patrols. They had been at it since dawn, dropping ordnance on anything that might remotely be a Chinese position. They seemed busier today, which might mean that the Chinese had become emboldened and less concerned about staying hidden — or maybe there were just a helluva lot more of them now in the surrounding hills.

He looked around at the snowy landscape of jagged peaks and valleys. The land looked almost newly formed here, jagged as shattered glass. Nothing grew except scrub brush and tough grass. Hardly worth fighting over, in Cole's opinion, and yet here they were.

He found Sergeant Weber standing over a foxhole, looking down into it and shaking his head.

"Frozen to death," Weber said. He'd heard Cole approach but couldn't seem to take his eyes off the scene below them. He muttered, “Gott im Himmel.”

"Sarge?"

Cole didn't want to look, but Weber seemed to want someone else to see this. He could see three young recruits, curled up in the bottom of the hole. Frost covered their eyes and nostrils. They did not appear to be wounded, but none of them had sleeping bags or heavy coats to fend off the cold. Cole suspected that they had ended up leaving their gear behind during the battle, and somehow wound up in another hole. With so many Chinese around in the darkness, they had probably been reluctant to go back to their original foxhole, or maybe they couldn't even find it.

"They didn't have the right gear, that's for damn sure," Weber said. "Nobody really does in this cold. Half these guys, their guns froze up on them."

"Got to wipe all the oil out that you can," Cole said.

"Yeah? Well, tell that to anyone you run into."

"Mostly we could use more ammo," Cole said. "If the Chinese hit us again, we'll be down to rocks and bayonets."

"What do you want me to do about it?" Weber snapped at him. "Why don't you write a letter to McArthur and see how much good it does."

"Whatever you say, Sarge."

It was no surprise that the sergeant's nerves were shot. He, too, had fought tooth and nail for survival these last two nights. Like his men, he hadn't had anything decent to eat. Also, he had the responsibility for the men in his unit — what was left of them, anyway.

Weber started to stalk off and then stopped. "Come on with me, Cole. I heard how you settled that Chinese sniper's hash yesterday. Keep your rifle handy in case another one of the bastards opens fire on us."

Together, they moved from hole to hole, checking on the men. Dead Chinese were scattered all around their positions. In daylight, it was disconcerting to see how close they had come to being completely overrun.

Many of the surviving American GIs were wounded, some quite badly. A few men had even lost arms or legs to Chinese grenades or mortars. Miraculously, they were still in the field. They had managed to survive because their wounds had literally frozen in the bitter temperatures, preventing them from bleeding to death. The medics had bandaged them up as best they could, then dosed them liberally with morphine to help with the pain. There again, the cold had left their extremities so numb that some of them couldn't even feel any pain.

"You ever seen anything like this?" Weber asked. "Maybe at the Ardennes Forest? Some of the guys said you were there."

"Yeah, I was there." Cole shook his head, thinking back to the winter fighting at the battle of the Bulge. "It was miserable, and it was cold and snowy, but not this cold."

"Some of these poor bastards tried to at least get warm at the aid station, but you know what? As soon as they warmed up, they started bleeding again. There was really no help for them and more than a few died. It's a hell of a thing."

Cole had to agree. His heart went out to the wounded men. They were on borrowed time. The aid station wasn't more than a couple of drafty tents with a little bit of heat and some bandages and morphine. A handful of overworked medics did the best they could. These wounded men needed a military hospital. They needed surgeons.

Cole knew better than to ask how much longer they all had to hang on. Without more ammo, without medical supplies, without reinforcements, there would be no holding this position. You didn't have to be a general to know that. Or maybe in this case, everybody seemed to know it except the generals, but that was the Army for you.

As it turned out, Cole didn't need to ask. The lieutenant came looking for Sergeant Weber. He nodded at Cole, but didn't bother to dismiss him. "Sergeant, we've got orders to move out. Get the wounded that can't walk onto the trucks. Tell the men to take all the gear that they can carry. The colonel wants us as far down the road as possible while we still have air cover. We're headed back to Hagaru-ri."

Although the news was inevitable — after all, it was either pull out or get ground to pieces in the next attack — the enormity of it left them more than a little stunned as the news sank in. After pushing so deep into North Korea, the U.S. Army was about to retreat.