Hold Back the Night

Chapter Eleven

BEFORE DOG COMPANY pulled out of Sinsong-ni, Mackenzie ordered his vehicles re-loaded so that every inch of space was utilized, and he could squeeze two men, in addition to the driver, into each of the three jeeps. He did not like the way the men hung back when it came time to leave the warm house of the old man. They had slept, and yet they were tired, for on no night had they had sufficient sleep since Ko-Bong, and their bodies were protesting, even while their minds told them they must go on, out into the cold and the unknown. In the process of re-loading Mackenzie examined each carton of rations, and each case of ammunition. He jettisoned the few mortar shells he found, for he had no mortars now. He counted the first-aid kits, and the bundles of socks, and the entrenching tools, and he was disturbed at the shortage of cigarettes. He eliminated whatever he was certain would not be needed. He figured two days to the coast, if they were lucky.

And he decided, in this re-loading, that Dog Company could spare a case of five-in-one rations—food for five men for one day—and he gave this case to the old man, and Kato explained to the old man how it should be opened, and used.

When they took to the road the headlights poked shallow holes in the yellow gloom of the false dawn, and barely illuminated the ice-sheathed ruts. Nine men rode while the others walked, with the six who had stood watch through the night riding first. The vehicles moved very slowly, because of the uncertain light.

A solid brown overcast shrouded the sky, and sowed fresh snow over these hills, and it seemed that the darkness clung tenaciously to the hours. The men grew stronger as they went along, but they were silent, which was not a good sign. Each hill and curve in the road ahead was an ominous and mysterious threat.

After the two hours Mackenzie called a break. The men propped themselves against rocks, and smoked. There was one walkie-talkie saved, and during the break Ekland tried to use it, nursing its batteries and cajoling its frequencies, in an attempt to raise Regiment, or Division, or anybody. The range of a walkie-talkie was too short to reach the other road. Ekland knew this. He knew it absolutely. Yet again and again he pressed the transmitter button and said, “This is Lightning Four. This is Lightning Four calling Lightning. Come in Lightning.” There was never any reply, but Ekland continued to call. It was comforting to speak into a microphone. It gave him the illusion of being in touch with someone. Somehow there was a sense of safety in a microphone.

Mackenzie said, “Cut it out, sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“Let it rest. You’re not doing a damn thing but alerting the enemy.”

“Yes, sir.” Ekland dropped the walkie-talkie back into the lead jeep. Ekland hadn’t been thinking about the enemy. The captain thought of a lot of things he didn’t think of. He looked up at the sky, and listened, and the captain looked up and listened, too. There was no sound from the sky. On this day the sky was not their friend.

When the men had rested, and stretched, Mackenzie ordered them on, and he dropped back to where Raleigh Couzens trudged behind the last jeep, one hand resting on a jerican of gas so that the jeep helped him along. “How you doin’, Raleigh?” Mackenzie said.

“Pretty good, Sam, but—”

“But what?”

“But I’m not going to make it, Sam.”

“Don’t be silly.”

“It isn’t going to work, Sam. We haven’t got dick.” This was a strange and fatherless expression birthed by the Korean war. It could mean many things but one of the things it meant was that they didn’t have the stuff, the punch, the power. It was the opposite of another expression of this war, “Ammo’s running out my ass.”

Mackenzie thought that Couzens hadn’t been quite the same since Ko-Bong, and he remembered that he had been wanting to talk to Couzens about his experience, and he said, “Raleigh, you never told me about being captured. What happened? Why’d they let you loose?”

“Oh, to hell with it,” said Couzens. “It isn’t important now.”

“I think it’s important,” said Mackenzie.

“Sam, you’re nuts. You don’t think we’re really going to get out of here, do you, Sam?”

“We’re going to give it the old college try.” He tried to look into Couzens’ eyes, but Couzens’ head was bent. “What happened, Raleigh?”

“Sam, it was terrible. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m not going to talk about it.”

Mackenzie had always realized that under Couzens’ insouciance, his quick wit, and his skill in debate there was a dark area you did not dare touch, lest you destroy him. Now this sensitive area was exposed, and needed protection, for Dog Company needed Couzens and his genius in battle. So Mackenzie slammed Couzens on the back and said, “Forget it, Raleigh. There’s plenty of time to talk, if you want.” And Mackenzie lengthened his stride and moved up to the point of the column. Something bad had happened to Couzens. He was sure of it.

Raleigh Couzens’ mind was cleft. Half his mind re-acted normally to the surging drive for self-preservation. The other half wallowed in his failures, and exaggerated his guilt. He had failed his girl. He had failed his family. And worst, he had failed his country. Why else would the Communists release him? Why else, except that he had given aid and comfort to the enemy? His flip cracks about the President, and the war, perhaps even now were being used as propaganda by Radio Peking, and Radio Prague, and Radio Budapest, and Radio Moscow, and was being monitored in Tokyo, and London, and Istanbul, and Washington. He could hear it:

“An American lieutenant of Marines, Raleigh Couzens, was captured during the recent rout of the American forces. He admitted that, in his own words, ‘the Korean war stinks.’ He also expressed dissatisfaction, with profanity, at the aid given the United States in the Korean imperialist aggression by other countries of the so-called United Nations. He also cursed the President of the United States. In keeping with the humanitarian principles of the Chinese volunteers, Lieutenant Couzens was released and returned to his own lines.”

Back in Mandarin, when she heard of it, his mother would be elated. He was alive. He was safe. His mother wouldn’t consider it disgraceful, but his mother was a very selfish woman.

Others would regard it differently. He would have to face a suspicious, grim-faced intelligence officer, in Wonsan, or Pusan, or Tokyo, or even in Washington. He could hear the questions:

“Exactly what did you say, Lieutenant Couzens?”

“What did you say about the morale of the Marines?”

“What did you say about our Allies?”

“What did you say about the President of the United States?”

Couzens shivered, and not from the cold. And it would be necessary to have it out, if he got back, with Sam Mackenzie. That was the worst. He would rather lose anything than lose Mackenzie’s respect and friendship. He would rather lose his life.

The gradient of the road sloped downward now, and Couzens realized they were entering a valley. The jeeps moved faster, and the men moved faster to keep up, and the drivers shifted into low gear, so all could keep pace, and distance. Ahead, Mackenzie held up his hand, and the column halted. “Come up here, Lieutenant,” Mackenzie called, taking his map from his pocket, and Couzens went up to the van with his captain.

Mackenzie spread out the map on the hood of the lead jeep, and traced their route with his finger. The finger stopped a mile short of a town named Chungyang-ni. On the map a single-track railroad passed through this town. On the map the railroad was called the Shinko-Shoko Line. “Ever hear of it?” said Mackenzie.

“No,” said Couzens. “Never heard of it.”

Mackenzie called for Ekland. Ekland might know more. As the communicator for Dog Company, Ekland was privy to all the radio chatter and gossip. He reported to his captain what would be of direct interest, which was probably only one tenth of what he heard. But Mackenzie knew that Ekland had a good memory, a better-than-good memory. “Ever hear of the Shinko-Shoko Line?” Mackenzie asked, pointing it out on the map.

“Yes, sir. It doesn’t work. The Commies have always held one end of it, and ever since we took Hamhung we’ve held the other. They’ve got the cars, and we’ve got the locomotives, so it doesn’t work.”

“Thank you, sergeant,” said Mackenzie. “We’ve got to cross that line. Even if the trains aren’t running, I think they must have some sort of guard on the crossing.”

“I’d say yes, sir,” said Ekland. “If there’s going to be an evacuation I figure the Commies will be all set to grab the line, and start operating it again, and so they’ll have a guard at that town there.”

Mackenzie thought it through. He couldn’t send Dog Company into Chungyang-ni, and across the tracks, without reconnaissance. The Chinese might have a couple of hundred men in the village. If they held the crossing in strength, then Dog Company would have to take to the hills, and by-pass the village. He didn’t want to take to the hills unless it was necessary. His men were tired enough already.

“Lieutenant,” Mackenzie said, “this is your baby. You take a patrol up there. Take a jeep and a bazooka and four men.”

Couzens looked behind him and called up four men from his own platoon, and told them to bring up the rearmost jeep. This jeep was loaded with rations, but it was better to use this one than the others, crammed with ammo and gasoline. “How close are you going to support me?” he asked Mackenzie.

“Five hundred yards,” Mackenzie said. That was all it was necessary to say, between men who knew their business.

Couzens and his four men moved ahead of the column, downhill. The lieutenant, his rifle alive in his hands, walked in front of the jeep. In the jeep was the driver, grenades strapped to his chest and a carbine at his knee, with the bazooka man riding the seat alongside. Flanking the jeep were two riflemen. That was the disposition of Couzens’ patrol.

Walking down the road, with houses appearing in the distance like toy blocks, Couzens felt better. It was good to seek action. Action would cleanse his conscious mind. He hoped they would find gooks. He hoped he could crack down on a gook with his rifle. In the sights of his M-1 he would like to have a gook like the jet-eyed officer with the wizened face who had defiled him. He hoped this so desperately that his gloved hands grew numb on his rifle, as if they were frozen there. His rifle. His.

Raleigh Couzens wanted to pray, but he couldn’t remember any prayers. All he could recall were some phrases out of the Marine Creed. “This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine…. I must fire my rifle true…. I must shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me…. I must shoot him before he shoots me…. I will…. Before God I swear this creed…. My rifle and myself are the defenders of my country….”

The houses, to Couzens, seemed much larger than toy blocks now. They were like boxes and cartons strewn behind a store, and a winding street ran through the village. Smoke came from most of the chimneys, so Couzens knew the village was still lived in, unlike Sinsong-ni. He neither saw nor heard the people until the patrol came to the first house in this village of Chungyang-ni. Then he heard voices, muted. The people were singing. They were singing inside this first house, and they were singing in the other houses ahead. They were singing “Auld Lang Syne.”

Couzens thought he must be mad. Then he remembered. The Korean national anthem, their song of unity and freedom, was written to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” It was absurd, but it was true. It was their “Star-Spangled Banner,” their “God Save the King,” their “Marine Hymn,” their “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” their “Dixie.” They had fought the Japs to this song, and particularly in this wild and rangy country, which military strategists called a “redoubt area,” they had fought, and never ceased fighting, the conquerors. Now Couzens realized they were fighting the new conquerors, the Communists, with this same song. Dog Company was being serenaded into battle with a song of freedom, but quietly, quietly, so Couzens knew the enemy was not far distant. The enemy would be at the crossing.

Five hundred yards from the crossing, short of the first house of the village, Mackenzie halted his main body, and prepared either to support the patrol, if Couzens met light resistance, or to flee if the company was out-gunned and out-numbered. He scrambled up a rise alongside the road, sat down on a rock, and brought out his field glasses. “Come up here with me, sergeant,” he called to Ekland. When Ekland came up beside him he said, “I want you to see Couzens work. Watch him work this patrol.”

A ragged boy darted from the door of one of the houses and grabbed at Couzens’ arm. “’Ello, Joe,” he said. He was no larger than a boy of nine, but he was probably thirteen, and excitement and intelligence shone out of his eyes.

“Hi, Kim,” said Couzens, halting. All the little boys of Korea—the boys that the Army and the Marines adopted and fed and made their mascots—were named Kim. Couzens knew an American column had passed through this village before, although in the opposite direction.

“Joe, they up there!” The boy pointed.

“How many?”

The boy did not understand the words, but he understood the question, for it was the natural question for an American officer to ask. He didn’t know the word for the answer. He held up nine fingers.

“Nine?” said Couzens. That would be par for the course. That would be a squad.

“Nine,” the boy mimicked, shaking his nine fingers at Couzens.

“They got mortars?” Couzens extended his forearm at a forty-five degree angle and added, “Poom!”

The boy shook his head, no. “Macines!” he said. “Marines!” The boy held an imaginary sub-machine gun in his hands and swept the street with it, saying, “Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah,” just like the small fry of America, destroying gangsters, or Indians, or spies, or Men from Mars in their radio-stimulated world of dreams.

“Thanks, Kim,” said Couzens. He rested the butt of his rifle on the glazed dirt, and removed a glove, and fished in an inside pocket until he found two bars of chocolate. These he gave to the boy.

The boy said, “Thanks, Joe. I come.”

“Get the hell out of here!” said Couzens, smiling and aiming an imaginary kick at the boy, and the boy grinned and scuttled back into the house, where a woman’s face waited anxiously.

All this Mackenzie saw through his glasses, and while of course he could not hear the words, he interpreted the pantomime accurately. He could even reconstruct the dialogue. He chuckled, and explained it to Ekland.

Now that Couzens knew the strength and location and armament of the enemy, he could make a plan. He walked back to the jeep, and called in his flankers, and said, “They’re at the crossing—nine of ’em. They don’t have mortars. All they’ve got is burp guns. Now they’ve probably got three men out on sentry duty and the others are probably in the station shack at the crossing, keeping warm.” At a flag stop like this there was always a frame shack, built by the Japanese when they laid down the line, to serve as a freight and passenger depot.

“Now the thing to do,” Couzens went on, “is kill the six men in the shack first. Then pick up the strays. That calls for surprise.”

Couzens’ bazooka man, Jack Kavanaugh, said, “Well, if this jeep pokes its head outside the village, so they can see it from the crossing, there won’t be a helluva lot of surprise.”

“You win the eighteen thousand in cash and prizes, Jack,” said the lieutenant. “I was going to get to that. You and me and Cohen are going to hit the shack, and Seitner and Flynn are going to have the jeep behind the last house on the street—the two-story house. See it, Seitner?”

“I see it, sir,” Seitner said.

“Well, you and Flynn stay behind it until Kavanaugh opens up with the bazook. Then you two whip out and take care of the watch.”

“Yessir.”

“We go quietly, Jack,” Couzens said to Kavanaugh, the bazooka man. “You and me and Cohen. We go real quiet and we don’t do any shooting until you get that bazook on the shack.”

So Couzens and Kavanaugh and Cohen, a rifleman, stalked the shack. Smoke came out of the shack’s chimney. They were in there, all right. Couzens led, stalking the shack carefully as if he sought deer in Palm Valley. He never took a step until he was sure where that step would carry him.

On the slope five hundred yards behind, Mackenzie said, “Watch this. It’ll be wonderful.” And he passed the glasses to Ekland.

When Couzens was a hundred yards from the shack he eased to the ground, and took a prone position that was correct for a target range. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, and balanced it delicately, and then with a half wave of his arm, motioned to Kavanaugh to fire. A rocket left the bazook and the shack heaved and smoke poured out of it. One figure came out of the door, legs churning, and Couzens’ first bullet met him before he had taken two steps. The man writhed on the snow in front of the door and Couzens shot him again. Through the head. Couzens patted his rifle.

Couzens waited for others, but they did not come, and he motioned to Cohen and Cohen charged. He charged bent far over and with shoulders hunched as men do who do not want to get hit before they can use the bayonet. He looked awkward, but he moved fast. He went through the door like a sixteen-inch shell. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. There were no shots, and in seconds Cohen appeared again, beckoning.

Couzens ran to the shack. Inside were two dead from the bazook. One was dead outside. That left six. Where were they?

Five hundred yards back, on the slope above the road, Ekland stood up and screamed and shouted, for he had seen a disastrous thing. Tiny black objects had fallen from the second floor of the house on the far end of the street. They were grenades, and they had fallen upon the jeep hiding behind this house, and the jeep had exploded and was burning. Ekland and Mackenzie jumped down the slope and into the jeeps. Mackenzie yelled, “Let’s go!”

When the grenades exploded behind, in the village, Couzens guessed what had happened. His logic had been wrong, all wrong. The squad of Chinese assigned to guard the crossing had not maintained normal security. Instead of having three men out on watch, and six in the shack, which they should have done if they were good soldiers, they had assumed there was no enemy in the area. After all, had they not only to listen to the radio to know the Americans were defeated?

So the Chinese had been lax. Their watch on the crossing consisted of three men, and these three Couzens had destroyed. But they kept six men back in the village, sleeping and resting and eating in comfort. The house in which they bivouacked was easy to spot, because the jeep, its spare gas cans alight, blazed under it, giving out many colors of smoke. Couzens knew that Seitner and Elynn were probably dead.

And he knew that his calculations had been wrong. He had failed again. He had failed Mackenzie.

At this point Couzens should have waited. He should have waited for Mackenzie to come up with the rest of the force, so that the house could be surrounded, and riddled and blown apart by cross-fires, and the enemy destroyed without loss. For of course Mackenzie had seen what had happened, and what had gone wrong, and would be streaking down the road to help him. But at this point Couzens’ cleft mind was not functioning rationally, and he called to Cohen and Kavanaugh. “We take that house,” he said. “We take it.” And he advanced upon it, and they followed him uncertainly.

This house had two windows on the second floor, and the flame of a burp gun flickered from one of these windows and Couzens’ M-1 snapped to his shoulder and he fired fast as if he swung on a single quail bursting from a palmetto clump. “Got him,” he said, but fire was returned from both windows. He waited for Kavanaugh to blow them apart with the bazook and when Kavanaugh didn’t fire he looked over to where Kavanaugh should be, and he saw Kavanaugh, but Kavanaugh’s face was flat on the ground, and he was hit. And he looked over to where Cohen should be and he was hit, too, and down on his side, his knees jerking.

Couzens went on. Whenever he saw the flash of a brown face or hand he fired.

Running down the road, with Ackerman and Ekland, Mackenzie saw this and he stopped and shouted, “Get back, Raleigh! Get the hell back!”

Couzens heard this shout, but he did not obey. He walked on.

Then Mackenzie saw his lieutenant bow his head and sink to his knees, as if to pray, and then slide forward on his face.

After his men had disposed of the survivors in the house, swiftly and efficiently, Mackenzie tried to evaluate his loss and reorganize the company and push on. He had little heart for it. Raleigh Couzens had five, maybe six, small calibre bullets through the stomach. He was unconscious, and his bazooka man and his rifleman, the one still alive, were badly hurt too. And the bazooka was riddled, so now there was only one bazooka. He and Ekland did what they could for the wounded, with sulfa and penicillin, and had them placed on litters.

The burning jeep was the jeep with the rations packed in its back seat, so now Dog Company had no rations except the combat rations the men carried in their pockets.

Mackenzie wished he could call a halt here, but he dared not. Now speed was essential. They must get out as quickly as possible. Another detachment of Chinese might enter the village, and anyway it was a place of ill luck. “Sergeant,” he told Ekland, “have the litters strapped to the hoods of the jeeps, and let’s get going.”

“Yes, sir, except—”

“Except what?”

“What are we going to do for rations, sir?”

“We’ll worry about that when we get hungry. Right now we’ve got to get out of here. The quicker we start moving the quicker we’ll get to some place where these men can be treated, and we can get rations.” He hoped this was true, but of course he had no way of knowing. It was the only thing to say.

And the column moved out of the unlucky village of Chungyang-ni, and crossed the railroad tracks, rusty under a veneer of ice, and trudged uphill into the loneliness of the road.

The road ascended steadily and the men walked with bent heads, and there was no sound except the laboring motors of the jeeps, and the pain of the wounded. They were all unconscious now, and Mackenzie was grateful for this, but still they made noises when the jeeps jolted in the ruts.

At noon Mackenzie called a break, and the men ate what rations they had left. Mackenzie wondered how long men could endure, and march, without rations in this cold, but of course he said nothing of this to the men. He called Ekland, and together they went over the map.

“This place up here,” said Mackenzie, pointing to a black dot on the map which marked some sort of habitation, “this place is where we’ll spend the night. Then tomorrow we’ll make it to the perimeter, if there is a perimeter up there. How far ahead do you think that place is, sergeant?”

“This map is sort of crazy,” Ekland said. “You look at this map and you’d say four or five miles to that little place, but the map doesn’t show the ups and downs. I’d say four hours’ march, sir.”

“That’s what I figure, too,” said Mackenzie. “Anyway, that’s where we’ll stop.”

As they marched, the character of the land changed. The paddy fields, and all sign of man, vanished, and there were no longer gentle slopes such as they had seen in the valley of the railroad. Sheer rock climbed at their right, and to their left the slope deepened and the jeep drivers became wary of the left, for if they skidded they could drop off three or four hundred feet. And this land was forbidding, and seemed to close them in. And it grew colder as they climbed, and in the narrow places between the walls of this gorge the wind screamed. This wind that had crossed the frozen steppes of Asia screamed like a live and fanatic enemy.

Just before dusk they came to a place where the road widened and the land grew more level, on the crest of a ridge, and Mackenzie said to Ekland, “This must be it,” and he looked about him for houses, but there were no houses.

“This was it, sir,” Ekland said. He pointed to blackened timbers not quite buried under the snow. If you looked closely, you could see that three or four houses had once been here, but they had all burned. How long ago, or for what reason, they could not figure out. It didn’t matter. They were gone.

“Well, let’s get on with it,” Mackenzie said. “We’ll find some other place ahead.” He knew this wasn’t true. He knew they would have no shelter in the night. But the further he could lead, or drive them, this day, the better chance they’d have of finding someone, or some place, the next day.

They moved on, slower. They moved even after darkness came. They moved until Mackenzie’s legs would move no more. The collapse of his men was immediate. He had to kick them to their feet to force them to change their sweat-soaked socks, which would surely freeze in the night. The litters, with the wounded, he ordered placed under the jeeps, where they would have some protection from the weather. Then Mackenzie, numb and exhausted utterly, collapsed too. His mind was so tired, and so concentrated on his men, that he forgot an important thing. His jeeps needed warmth in the night.

After his captain slept Ekland crawled into the front seat of the lead jeep, and found the walkie-talkie. The map told him there was no chance of his voice reaching anyone. His logic told him too. But one could never be certain with radio waves. There were skip waves. There was the Heaviside bounce. And anyway it was comforting to believe someone could hear him. “This is Lightning Four,” he said. “This is Lightning Four calling Lightning. Come in Lightning.”

He repeated this several times, but there was never any answer, and at last he gave up, and got out of the jeep, and found a place for himself against the cliff, and slept.