Frozen Sniper

Chapter Five

Cole had tried to imagine what Korea would be like, and he wasn't that far off the mark. He had pictured something more tropical, this being Asia, but Korea was a dry, brown, wintry place. Mountains raised jagged peaks on the horizon. No jungles that he could see. The whole country was a war zone, and Cole had seen war before — the burned buildings, the frightened civilians turned into refugees in their own country, and most of all, the mud.

What he had not counted on was the smell.

"Ugh, it smells like shit," said somebody next to Cole. He was exactly right.

As a country boy, Cole was no stranger to the smell of manure used to fertilize farm fields in the spring. Each kind of manure had its own peculiar smell — pig, cow, horse, even chicken. A farmer could tell those smells apart like a connoisseur could sniff a wine cork and tell you the vintage.

But the smell here was nothing like back home. No, it was much, much worse, for the manure that Koreans used to fertilize their fields was human. Something about using human waste seemed unnatural and unclean to the Americans and other western troops. In Korea, decades or even centuries of its use, all year round and on all crops, meant that the smell of human excrement pervaded the air and ground. The muddy fields exuded it.

All in all, Korea smelled like one big outhouse.

The man next to Cole made a face. "You know what? The Chinese and the Communists can have it. I doubt this place is worth fighting for."

"You might be right," Cole said. "But it ain't up to us."

They unloaded off the trucks that had carried them from the port, glad for a chance to finally stretch their legs. They found themselves in a sprawling camp filled with battered canvas tents. Ominously, several of those tents were marked with large red crosses to shelter the wounded. Even more ominously, artillery thudded in the distance, loud enough to vibrate up through the mud and twang their nerves. The sound of small arms fire rattled at the edges of their hearing.

Battle-hardened veterans marched by, their uniforms muddy, reeking of Korea, in some cases stained with blood. Some glared at the new arrivals in their fresh uniforms. Others laughed and bombarded the green troops with catcalls.

"Them Commies are gonna love you boys!" somebody shouted. "Fresh meat! They like to eat the ones fresh off the boat!"

Cole wasn't so sure that the soldier was kidding. None of the American soldiers thought of the Korean enemy as fellow human beings, but as occupying a lower rank on the evolutionary ladder.

Another soldier shouted, "Somebody take a picture! That's the cleanest looking squad I've seen in months."

Indeed, just about every soldier had a camera of some sort thanks to the Kodak company and also the cheap, but high-quality Japanese cameras picked up by troops on leave in Tokyo. Already, the Japanese economy was rising from the ashes and ruins. As a result, Korea had become a war documented with snapshots.

Some of the other men hunched their shoulders against the verbal insults, but Cole didn't mind. He had seen the same disdain for green troops in the last war. He knew it wouldn't be long before they were the ones doing the catcalling.

Silently, they marched toward the assembly area and formed up. Cole found himself in the front row, which didn't thrill him. He'd have been happier in the back. Next to Cole, Tommy Wilson had turned pale as a sheet and fell out of formation long enough to throw up. He ran to rejoin the squad.

"Take it easy, kid," Cole said. "This ain't an execution. The worst that could happen is that they'll march us straight to the battlefield. But hell, that's why you signed up, ain't it?"

"It's not what I thought it would be," Tommy admitted.

"It never is, kid. It never is. Just you wait, because it don’t get no better."

They fell silent as a captain appeared at the front of the ranks. His uniform looked worn and well-used, but at least it was clean. He was tall, a couple of inches over six feet, with a sharp-featured, almost hatchet-like face and dark eyes showing under the brim of his helmet. Those eyes surveyed his new troops. From his sour expression, it was evident that he didn't like what he saw.

"Welcome to the Republic of Korea," the officer said. "I'm Lieutenant Ballard. In the days ahead, you will be placed in line of battle or other duties. You heard those boys giving you the business as you marched in — well, they've had a much worse time, believe me."

The lieutenant paused to wave vaguely at the mountains behind him. "You all know that you are in Korea, but more specifically, you are at the edges of the Taebaek mountain range. Here's the situation. We are going to occupy all of Korea and push the enemy back to the Chinese border at the Yalu River. If they love Communism so much, they can damn high-tail it into China."

A sergeant trailed the lieutenant. He wasn’t as tall as the officer, but he had a heavy build and the look about him of a combat veteran. His eyes went from man to man, sizing them up.

The lieutenant nodded in the sergeant’s direction. “Men, this is Sergeant Weber. Better to listen to him. He has saved my ass more than once.”

Now, the lieutenant came closer, seeming intent on talking to some of the men individually. He approached Tommy Wilson, on Cole's left. "Can you hit anything if you’re not wearing those glasses, son?"

"No, sir. Not really."

"We’ve got a war to fight and the best they can do is send us four-eyed soldiers.” The officer sounded disgusted. “Keep your head down and do what your sergeant tells you, and you might just get back home. And whatever you do, don’t lose those goddamn glasses."

"Yes, sir!"

Next, the lieutenant moved down the line. Cole stiffened. He found the lieutenant stopping right in front of him. "What’s your story, soldier? You’re not wearing glasses, but can you hit what you shoot at?"

"I try, sir."

"You sure as hell better do more than try, soldier! You sound like a goddamn hillbilly. You make moonshine or whatever back in those hills?"

"I reckon some do, sir."

"You reckon? Dear God, you really are a hillbilly. What do you think about that?"

"Whatever you say, sir."

The lieutenant clapped Cole on the shoulder. "You've got the right idea, son. Whatever I say. I've got to say, that being a bad shot is a disappointing quality in a hillbilly. I would have thought you’d have grown up shooting squirrels or possums. A soldier has got to shoot. You're going to get a lesson in that soon enough."

Cole felt relieved when the lieutenant moved on. He spoke with a few more men in the front row, and then returned to where he could address the entire unit. "This may seem like a big war, with artillery and planes and a hundred thousand Chinese troops massed on the border that we hope to hell decide to keep out of the war, but that doesn’t seem likely. For you men, it all comes down to one man with a rifle. Corporal Heywood, step up here."

A man approached from the handful of staff that had been looking on as the captain greeted the green troops. He was stout and sturdy, about five feet eight, and he moved with the natural ease of an athlete. What Cole noticed about the man was his rifle. Instead of the standard issue M-1 like the rifle that Cole and the other fresh troops carried, this soldier held a bolt-action Springfield equipped with a telescopic sight. Cole was more than a little familiar with such a weapon because he had carried one from D-Day to the fall of Berlin — and beyond.

The captain spoke again. Cole had the feeling that this was not happenstance but that the sniper had been paraded in front of new troops before. The whole thing had an orchestrated feel. "This man here is a sniper," the captain said. "All of you have had rifle training on the range, but I doubt any of you can shoot the eye out of a Commie at two hundred yards — all while he's shooting back. Corporal Heywood here can do that. Isn't that right, Heywood?"

"Yes, sir."

"How many Commies have you shot, Heywood?"

"At least twenty, sir."

Several of the soldiers around Cole gave a low whistle of astonishment. Most of them hadn't shot anyone — not yet.

"I can tell you one thing, men. It is true that we have those big guns and planes and napalm, but it is Heywood here who strikes fear into their hearts. Never underestimate the value of your rifle. The truth is, we are going to win this battle — hell, we are going to win this war — one bullet at a time. Make each shot count. And yes, I'm looking at you, Hillbilly."

Several of the men around Cole gave a low laugh, but Cole stared straight ahead, stone-faced. Sure, this sniper had shot sixty Chinese. How many Germans had Cole killed? Twice that. Maybe three or four times that. Each time, Cole had worked the bolt, chambered a fresh round, put the crosshairs on some man's head or chest, squeezed the trigger, watched him go down. Some men did that once during the war and felt haunted by it. Cole had done it again and again and again.

Enough times to keep him wide awake some nights, thinking about the enormity of ending so many lives.

No, Cole didn't laugh with the others. A few of the other veterans were just as grim. Those who had killed in the last war weren’t so eager to do it again.

"Dismissed!"

They slogged back down the hill toward their new quarters.

Tommy had been standing beside Cole. Oddly, the kid seemed energized by the captain's pep talk.

"Maybe they'll put us in the line tomorrow morning," Tommy said. "I wouldn't mind having a chance to shoot some of the enemy. Combat can't be so bad."

"You'll see," Cole said.

Another soldier nearby overheard and spoke up, sounding annoyed: "What do you know about it?"

Cole didn't reply, but the kid did. "Cole was at D-Day on Omaha Beach," Tommy said. "He knows what he's talking about."

The other soldier snorted in disgust. "If you were at D-Day, and now you're here, then you are one unlucky bastard," he said.

Finally, here was something that Cole could agree with today. He laughed mirthlessly. "You got that much right."

"And you say that you’re no good with a rifle?"

"Nope. Can’t shoot straight."

"If you can't shoot and you're that goddamn unlucky to get sent here, then you'd better stay the hell away from me," said the soldier, whose name was Pomeroy. Cole knew that the man was also a veteran — he was also a loudmouth. He reminded Cole a lot of Vaccaro, who had served with him in Europe. He had been full of wisecracks, but you could count on him. Cole hoped the same was true of Pomeroy. When push came to shove, it never hurt to have someone you could count on to watch your back.

Cole glared at Pomeroy, who looked away from Cole’s strange, cut-glass eyes. That soldier wasn't the first person to find Cole's gaze unsettling. Cole's eyes were hard to read, but there was something of the wolf sizing up his prey in that measuring gaze.

Pomeroy didn’t buy it for a minute that Cole couldn’t shoot. He grunted, “Can’t shoot straight, huh? I call bullshit on that.”

As it turned out, nobody had to worry about being too close to Cole out in the field. Their new sergeant had overheard the exchange with Captain Ballard and caught on to the fact that the captain thought Cole was a dumb hillbilly who couldn't shoot straight.

When orders came around that the mess tent needed a few extra hands, the sergeant volunteered Cole. He'd come all this way to fight the Chinese and here he was, hauling buckets of chow in a field kitchen under the command of a grumpy cook with a vocabulary mostly made up of a word that started with "f" and rhymed with "luck."

If it had been Tommy sent to work in the kitchen rather than to be a warrior, the kid would have been disappointed. But mess duty was just fine with Cole. He wanted to serve out his tour and keep his head down and return home in one piece. In this war, he wanted to be as different from his old life as a sniper as possible.

Hell, working in the mess tent, Cole didn't even need his rifle. He left it in his tent every morning. It was against regulations, of course, because they were in a combat zone and every soldier was supposed to keep his rifle within reach. Cole didn't care. His weapon of choice was now a soup ladle and that was just fine with him.