Sniper Ridge

Chapter Seven

Cole's only respite from working in the kitchen was the pup tent that he shared with the kid, Tommy Wilson. Pomeroy snored something awful, and Cole was a light sleeper, so he had made sure that he was in a different tent. Pomeroy’s tentmate was a former artilleryman who was deaf as a post.

The tent that Cole shared with the kid wasn't much more than basic shelter, formed by two canvas shelter halves that buttoned together along the ridge line. There wasn’t any floor. When they were on the march, each man carried one half of the tent with him, including one of the three-piece wooden tent poles and a handful of tent pegs. There wasn't any floor, so they had dug a shallow trench around the tent to keep the water out when it rained. The interior smelled strongly of canvas, waterproofing wax, mildew, and both bedding and bodies that needed a wash. Home sweet home.

The battle over these Korean hills had reached the point where it was actually more of a siege over the past few weeks, so some of the support structures — like the mess hall — were semi-permanent. Even some of the officers had wall tents that were roomier and thus moderately more comfortable. Some of the officers had actual stoves to heat their tents. The men in Cole's unit made do with their Army pup tents.

It was getting too cold to sit outside, and worse than that, there was always the danger of an enemy sniper. The enemy occasionally crept within range to harass the American troops, keeping them on edge. This was yet another way that the enemy was trying to wear them down.

Cole was beginning to think that the Chinese snipers were as bad as the Germans in that regard. More than a few GIs had been picked off while lighting up a smoke or simply walking too close to the battlefield. Consequently, Cole kept to the tent. It beat getting frostbite — or ending up in somebody's crosshairs.

There really wasn't room to sit upright inside the tent, but you could sort of prop yourself up on an elbow to read or maybe write a letter, which was exactly what the kid was doing now.

It just so happened that a few days before, Cole had received a letter of his own from back home. He was fairly certain who it was from. Much as he would have liked to know what it said, the envelope remained shoved deep into his pocket. Cole could tell time by the sun, start a fire with nothing more than a bit of flint and his knife, field strip a rifle, and shoot anything that his keen eyes could see, but he couldn't read or write more than a handful of basic words.

Heaving a sigh, the kid put aside his pencil and paper in frustration.

"I don't know what to write to my parents," the kid said. "How many times can I write home that everything is fine, when it's not? I feel like I'm just lying to them."

Cole thought about that.

"Kid, your folks just want to hear that you are OK," he said. "Put in there that the food is great and that you like the scenery. Telling a few white lies like that in a letter home never hurt no one."

"I suppose you're right. I'm also going to send a letter to this girl I knew back home. We went to the fortnightly dances together a few times." He sighed. "I never know what to write to her, either. What should I say?"

Cole considered this new question. "Tell her what a good time you had when you went out, and what you love about her."

"Like about her," the kid said, correcting him. Even in the dim light inside the tent, it was clear that his face was turning red.

Cole smiled. "You made love to her yet?"

"What? You mean like—" the kid paused, aghast at the thought. He turned an even deeper shade of red. "When would I have done that? There were chaperones at all the dances."

Cole shook his head. "We're a funny society, kid. We think it's all right to send our teenage boys to war, maybe bayonet somebody to death, but God forbid they should kiss a girl at a dance. Ought to be the other way around, if'n you ask me. When you get back, you can do things the right way."

"Why don't you ever get any letters?" the kid asked. "I've never seen you write one, either."

Cole grunted.

He wondered if maybe he had made a mistake tenting up with the kid rather than Pomeroy, who seemed to know better than to ask a lot of questions. Mostly, Pomeroy just crawled into the tent and went to sleep. Then again, there was that godawful snoring.

It just so happened that a few days before, he had, in fact, received a letter from back home. Unopened, this was the letter that now felt like a hot coal burning a hole in his pocket.

Should he tell the kid about it?

Receiving mail was something of an unusual event for Cole. He knew who this letter was from. He could make out enough words to recognize the return address in Gashey's Creek. He could also puzzle out the name: Norma Jean Elwood. It was Norma Jean whom he had rescued from a couple of hard cases, resulting in them getting shot and Cole reenlisting to avoid being sent to prison.

There wasn't nothing happy about that story, he reflected.

She had written him once before, thanking him for his actions and wishing him good luck, and also stating that she would like to see him when he got home from the war. This last possibility intrigued Cole, but he had not written back. Mostly because he didn't know how.

He had gotten the kid to read that letter to him, claiming that he was too seasick to read it. Cole was a confident man in most regards, afraid of nothing and no one, but he felt embarrassed about his lack of education. There hadn't been much in the way of school back home in the mountains, and no one much cared if he went or not, anyhow. Back then, book learning hadn’t meant a hill of beans to Cole, but he was starting to change his mind about that.

Meanwhile, the letter in his pocket felt like it was burning hotter.

To hell with it, he thought, and dug the letter out of his pocket.

"What's that?" the kid asked, clearly surprised by the sight of the envelope in his hands.

"It just so happens that I did get some mail." Cole paused. "I was wondering if you would read it to me."

"Read it to you? Why—" Realization dawned on Tommy's face. He seemed to know better than to push it. "Oh. Sure, I can read it to you if you want."

Cole handed over the letter.

"Norma Jean Elwood, huh? She's got nice handwriting.” "Just read it," Cole snapped.

Tommy cleared his throat and began reading:

The kid was grinning. "I'll be darned. You've got a girlfriend back home. You never wrote her back?"

"How would I do that?"

"I have a pencil and paper right here. Why don't you let me do it, on account of your battle wounds."

"My what?"

"You'll see."

With the kid's help, Cole composed a letter home to Norma Jean. He provided the words, with a flourish or two from the kid. One of these flourishes included the fact that it turned out that Cole hadn't written back because he got frostbite in his fingers during that fight at the reservoir that Norma Jean had mentioned.

"That's a lie," Cole pointed out.

"A white lie. You just said that sometimes those are all right."

Cole shook his head. The kid had him, there, although that wasn't exactly what he'd had in mind when he had mentioned white lies.

The letter ended with the words he asked the kid to put down, I'll be sure to see you when I get home.

For some reason, those words made him know exactly how that lonely owl had felt.

The kid addressed the envelope and handed it to Cole. "You can send that out in the morning." He hesitated. "You can send mine, too."

Tommy hadn't said a word about it, but Cole sensed that the kid was anxious about something, and for good reason. In the morning, the unit was slated to go back on the line. They had been out there before, keeping a wary eye on the enemy occupying Sniper Ridge, but rumors were flying that this was going to be different because an attack on the Chinese was being planned. To prepare, the kid began cleaning his rifle — or attempting to, anyway, because he was having trouble reassembling the M-1. He would have thought the kid would know that rifle inside out by now, but his fingers fumbled the task, either from cold or from the nervousness about what was to come tomorrow.

Cole watched him for a while. If the kid asked for help, he'd help him. Cole had helped him with that rifle as far back as boot camp. But sometimes, you had to figure things out for yourself, because that was how you learned. Cole had always believed that if you wanted something done right, then you should do it yourself.

His own well-oiled rifle lay next to his sleeping bag, where he had left it days ago. There wasn't much need for a rifle in the kitchen.

While the rest of the unit would be heading into combat, Cole had orders to stay behind in the kitchen. He was just fine with sitting out this fight, anyhow. To his surprise, the mess hall chief must have liked the job that Cole was doing. The sergeant didn’t even seem to suspect that Cole had been the one who had beaten the hell out of Tater. Or maybe he did know, and figured that Tater had it coming.

Finally, Tommy tossed away the pieces of the rifle in frustration.

"Goddammit!" the kid muttered, which was unusual. He didn't swear much, at least not by Army standards.

"Give it here a minute," Cole said, holding out his hand.

The kid handed over the rifle, and Cole deftly clicked the stock, barrel, and trigger mechanism into place. He took the kid's oily rag and gave the weapon a good wipe down.

"Thanks, Cole," Tommy said, watching Cole’s expert hands. "You're good at that."

"This ain't my first rodeo, kid."

"I know that you were in the last war, too. Hell, you were at D-Day. Tell me about it."

"It ain't exactly a bedtime story," Cole said. He continued wiping down the rifle, doing so almost lovingly. "Besides, there ain't much to tell."

"Were you scared?"

Cole glanced at him. So that's what was eating at the kid. Cole could understand — going into battle was not an experience that any man took lightly. "Hell, kid, only a fool ain't scared. But you know the drill. It ain’t your first rodeo, either.”

“It’s not something I’ll ever get used to.”

“Just keep your head down and listen to what Sergeant Weber tells you. Most of these young officers have got their heads up their ass, Lieutenant Ballard included, but Weber knows what's going on."

"Good advice."

Cole handed back the rifle and clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll be all right, kid."

"If you say so. What was it like for you, the first time? Bet you weren't even scared."

"Just to be clear, we are talking about battle, right, and not about something else?"

The kid blushed again. "Battle."

Cole nodded, thinking it over. In a sense, he had gotten his baptism by fire long before the war.

As a boy, Cole had once hunted down and killed a bootlegger who was trying to do the same to him, but he knew that wasn't what Tommy meant. The kid was asking him about Omaha Beach at H-hour on June 6, 1944.

"I reckon I wasn't scared as much as I was angry at them Germans," he said, leaving out the part where a German machine gun had killed his buddy from boot camp, Jimmy Turner, within minutes of them hitting the beach. It was Jimmy who had first painted a Confederate flag on his helmet. Cole had one painted on his helmet here in Korea as a good luck charm.

The kid didn't need to hear all that. "I was mad as hell at the Germans for shooting at us. Don't make much sense now that I'm saying it, but there you have it. Got my dander up."

The kid grinned. "I'd like to see that."

"You might not."

"Did you shoot anyone right away?" Tommy asked, his grin fading.

"Everybody was shooting," Cole replied. "It would have been hard not to shoot someone."

"Cole, I saw you on the range back at boot camp. You couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door. Everyone in the squad knew that. But you got to Korea and you became the best shot in the unit. Like you had done this before. What was that all about?"

Earlier, Cole had managed to hide his past as a sniper from the others in the unit. To them, he was just the hillbilly who worked in the kitchen. Circumstances had put a rifle back in his hands. But now, Lieutenant Ballard had sent him back to the kitchen.

Something in Cole's eyes made the kid look away. His stare sent shivers down the kid’s spine.

"I wish you were going with us tomorrow," the kid said.

"You'll be fine," Cole said, wishing that he believed it.