Frozen Sniper

Chapter Six

A few days later, Cole's unit moved out, heading north.

"Anybody know where we're going?" Pomeroy asked.

"Just shut up and march," Cole said. "That's all you need to know." It didn't take a general to figure out that to the north lay North Korea, and beyond that, Red China, but Cole didn't feel like explaining geography to Pomeroy.

“You sound like you’re from down South somewhere,” Pomeroy said. “Hillbilly country.”

“Yep, I am definitely a hillbilly. And you sound like you ain’t.”

“Definitely not,” Pomeroy said. “I’m from New Jersey.”

“I’ve never been to New Jersey,” Cole admitted.

“The Garden State, which is like calling hamburger chopped steak, I’ve got to say, but it’s a lot better than this place.” Pomeroy shook his head. "You know why being in the infantry and being a mushroom are a lot alike?" he asked.

Cole wasn't biting, but the kid couldn't resist. Tommy asked, "Why?"

Pomeroy grinned. "We're both kept in the dark and fed a lot of shit."

"It sure as hell smells like shit," Cole said, crinkling his nose. The fields they passed through smelled foul with the stink of human waste spread as fertilizer. Of all the strange customs he had seen so far in his brief time in Korea, this one was the hardest to get used to. As a soldier in Europe, the customs and landscape had not seemed nearly as strange. "What do you reckon this place must smell like once summer rolls around?"

"No need to worry about that, Hillbilly," Pomeroy said. "We'll all be home by then."

"We'll see about that, New Jersey," Cole said.

Nobody knew for sure where they were going, but the entire 8th Army under General Walker was on the move from Pusan. The thousands of troops were divided among the several roads heading north because their sheer numbers would clog any single road. They were all now tributaries of the same river.

Sometimes, they moved by truck, although that wasn't any picnic, bouncing along the rough dirt roads on a bare wooden plank that battered your tailbone. After a couple of hours in the back of a truck, it felt like your joints were coming apart. Your bones ached and even your kidneys hurt. An Army truck wasn't any Rolls Royce, that was for damn sure.

Right now, they were marching, which was just fine with Cole. He carried a lot on his back, but still kept his head up to scan the countryside. The North Koreans were supposed to be on the run, but who knew when they would decide that they had run far enough.

Each man was loaded down with gear that included a rifle and ammunition, canteen, haversack, folding shovel, rations, and a down-filled "mummy" or fitted sleeping bag that was an improvement over the blanket that Cole had carried in the last war.

As if reading his mind, Pomeroy said, "Gonna get cold soon. That wind has got a bite."

"If we get up into them mountains, we'll be damn near frozen," Cole agreed.

It worried him that the soldiers lacked winter gear such as heavy coats, wool hats, gloves, and thick socks. Maybe they would get that gear once they were closer to those forbidding mountains. Then again, maybe not.

Soldiers liked to chew on a good rumor. Pomeroy had asked where they were going, and that was a question on everyone's mind. Some said they were stopping at the 38th Parallel that delineated the boundary between the North and South. Somewhere beyond that boundary was the North Korean capital city of Pyongyang. Maybe they were on the march to capture it. Others said they were going all the way to the Yalu River. On the other side of that river lay China.

Nobody had told them much beyond the captain’s explanation. They were all mushrooms, just like Pomeroy had said.

Cole had at least some grasp of the geography. They moved through a relatively flat coastal plain, but the countryside was starting to develop some rolling hills. To the north, in the crisp air, he could just begin to make out mountains. These were not like the rounded peaks back home, but were jagged and more forbidding. They reminded Cole of broken knife blades. Cole hoped to hell that their path wouldn't take them through those mountains, but he wasn't counting on it.

To Cole's eyes, those mountains resembled nothing more than bare rocks scoured by the winter wind. There wasn't much in the way of tree cover to provide shelter. The Korean high country appeared arid and barren.

At their backs lay the Korea Straight that lapped against the shore near Pusan. To the east was the Sea of Japan. On the far side of the Korean Peninsula was the Yellow Sea. Just the thought of being in this distant corner of the world made Cole ache for home, to be in the autumn woods with a long hunt ahead of him. He was wondering if he would ever be able to go home again. The judge had thought Cole could return, so that was something.

"I got to say, I'm disappointed those North Korean troops ran off before we could teach them a lesson," Pomeroy said. "We came an awful long way to not get in a fight."

"You think they're done, huh?" Cole asked.

"The way I heard it, those North Korean troops are scattered to the four winds. We scared them off."

"Let's hope so," Cole said. "But I've got to ask you something. You say you’re from New Jersey?"

"The Garden State, remember."

"If you say so," Cole said. "But let me ask you this. If a bunch of enemy soldiers started marching into New Jersey, would you run off or would you fight?"

"What kind of a dumbass question is that?" Pomeroy said. "I'd fight, of course."

Cole nodded. "That's what I thought. Keeping that in mind, maybe we ain't seen the last of the North Koreans — or maybe of their Chinese friends, neither."

"Those slant-eyed bastards couldn't fight their way out of a rice paper bag."

Having fought Germans and Russians, Cole wasn't as quick to dismiss the North Koreans or the Chinese just because they hadn't encountered any yet. "We'll see."

The miles wore on. After the long trip from the United States, many of the soldiers were out of condition. Hell, a lot of them weren't in good condition to begin with. In the rush to get troops to Korea, boot camp had been too short to whip them into shape. These green troops hadn't done more than fire a rifle a few times. Boot camp was about more than weapons training, too; it toughened one up mentally and physically. A soldier who went through boot camp truly felt like a lean, mean, fighting machine. But that wasn't the case here. Many of the boys on this road had been eating their mama's cooking and sleeping in their soft beds scarcely a month ago. Now, they were expected to be hardened soldiers.

Cole looked around at the boys laboring under their packs, rifles dangling like forgotten appendages, and shook his head. If it came to a fight, they were going to discover their inadequacies in a hurry.

For veterans like Cole, who knew a thing or two about military life, more than a few of them had put on weight and gone soft in the middle. It was a rare man who had kept himself in condition. A peaceful existence didn’t encourage it. Cole was an exception. His almost daily hikes up through the mountains had kept his legs muscular and his frame lean. He hadn't even smoked a cigarette in years.

"Where are those trucks?" Pomeroy griped.

"Shut up, Pomeroy. If you were in that truck, you'd be bitching about that. And keep your eyes open, will you? I got a feelin' about this place."

"Knowing you, it's not a good one."

One by one, the soldiers started to lag as the miles added up.

"Close it up," Sergeant Weber shouted, but it was a futile effort. Weber had a German accent that Cole found disconcerting the first time that he heard it. It turned out that Weber was an old Wehrmacht NCO who had washed up in the peacetime U.S. Army. He liked to say that soldiering was the only thing he knew.

Weber could bark all he wanted, and could even resort to swearing in German, but it did no good. The tired soldiers would pick up the pace for a short distance, and then fall behind ahead.

The column looked more like a shuffling mob than a company of soldiers, which was why the first shots from the field caused utter pandemonium. Ahead of Cole, a GI was hit and slumped to the road.

"What the—" the kid said, freezing at the sound of gunfire and looking around him in confusion.

Cole grabbed him by the pack and half-dragged, half-threw him into the ditch beside the road. Pomeroy was right behind them and jumped down beside them. A few inches of water sat in the bottom of the ditch, cold and stagnant, smelling strongly of the human manure used in the nearby fields.

"Christ," Pomeroy muttered, the knees of his pants now soaked. "What kind of war is this? I don't know which is worse, dodging bullets or liquid shit."

In leaping into the ditch, they were way ahead of the sergeant, who stood in the road, shouting, "Take cover! Take cover, goddammit!"

Without clear orders, some soldiers threw themselves flat on the road, while others simply ran in the opposite direction from the shooting. The fire from the field increased, and another GI went down.

While the majority of the men, including the noncommissioned officers and officers, had no real idea of what was happening, Cole assessed the situation through eyes that had seen his share of combat. It was clear that North Korean guerillas had set up an ambush, and very effectively at that. The Army troops had been taken by total surprise.

Lucky for the soldiers, there weren't that many of the enemy, and they were equipped with rifles. A machine gun or two would have been devastating to the exposed troops on the road. The road cut through open fields. There was nothing resembling cover except for the roadside ditches. In other words, the ambush had very effectively halted the advance and pinned it down.

"You see anything?" Pomeroy asked.

"They're on the other side of the field right across from us," Cole said. "Probably down in a ditch, burrowed in good. Can't be more than a dozen or so."

Pomeroy slid his rifle over the top of the ditch and opened fire in the general direction of the North Koreans.

Bullets snapped overhead. Another man was hit on the road and started screaming. Tommy was balled up in the bottom of the ditch, rifle clutched to him. He looked scared as hell.

"Easy, kid," Cole said. "Get up there next to Pomeroy, but keep your head down."

"I can't."

"Sure, you can," Cole said calmly. "You're a soldier. This is what we signed on for. All of us. Now get to it."

The kid crawled up next to Pomeroy, then put his rifle over the rim of the ditch. Cole went up behind him and put a hand on the kid's helmet, keeping it pressed low. "Just enough to see. Sneak a peek, like. Don't go sticking your whole head up."

"What am I shooting at?"

"Don't matter. Just shoot. Make them keep their heads down."

The kid began to return fire. He was shaking, so much so that his rifle jumped wildly each time he pulled the trigger. In his confusion, he started to rise too high above the edge of their cover. Again, Cole tugged him down.

"Hey!"

"What did I tell you, kid? Shoot back, give them North Koreans some lead to chew on, but keep your head down. You want a bullet to crack that pretty pumpkin head of yours wide open? We've got tanks and mortars to do the hard part."

Sure enough, they heard the deep boom of a tank lobbing a round toward the enemy. A geyser of dirt erupted, far beyond the ditch where the enemy was sheltering, but that gave the North Koreans something to think about.

The enemy fire slackened. More rifle fire was coming now from the Americans as the troops on the road, and those who had taken cover in the ditches, began to return fire. The return fire was wild and most of the men probably didn't know what they were shooting at, but it was enough to make the enemy keep his head down.

Farther down the column, the tank fired again. This time, the round scored a direct hit on the North Korean position. The enemy fire stopped abruptly. Some of the enemy crawled from the ditch and began running away across the fields.

All at once, it was immediately clear that the enemy ambush had not been well planned because there was no fallback position or any cover for a retreat. The retreating North Koreans were now the sitting ducks — or running ducks — that the Americans had been exposed on the road.

Caught out in the open, several of the enemy fell under the American guns. Everybody seemed to be shooting, caught up now in the excitement of getting a shot at the actual enemy. They were blazing away like the worst kind of turkey shoot, with the exception of Cole. He contented himself with watching the action as the tank and then the small arms fire finally beat the hell out of the North Koreans and sent them scurrying. One by one, the enemy fell dead until there weren't any upright, running targets on the field.

Just as quickly as it had begun, the ambush was now over.

But all around them, the shooting hadn't stopped. Cole scanned the surrounding fields, but he didn't see anything. What the hell was everybody shooting at?