Thirty-Fourth Regiment. They were there all dug in and the North Koreans appeared and they just got up and left. Didn’t fire a shot. The new colonel they brought in, I forget his name, arrived from Europe wearing an overseas cap and low shoes and not even owning a side arm. It was the Thirty-fourth Regiment that left General Dean up in the air with no flank for a couple of miles, General Dean who later got captured out there carrying a rifle and playing private. That’s who screwed up down there on the Naktong and in the perimeter.”
“Hills?”
“Yessir, but not like these, not so high. And hot. Hot as hell. And the smells coming up out of the villages and the paddies and the vegetable patches. I don’t know about the rice paddies, but they fertilize their fruits and vegetables with shit, human waste. They keep it in what they call honey pots.”
That, at least, both Tate and Verity realized, was like China.
C HAPTER S IX
There was some of Nathan Bedford Forrest in most of the Marine generals and colonels . . . all of them professional killers. Forrest had been one of Lee’s generals. Even Forrest’s fellow Southern generals were afraid of him. If you crossed Forrest, he would kill you.
A nd now, as the division saddled up to move north, word came from the States to Smith: Chesty Puller was finally a general.
When they notified Puller of the star his officers gathered to congratulate him.
Puller was fifty-two years old, not young for a brigadier. Blame politics for that. Or Puller himself, for being a damned difficult man. Over drinks there was some grousing, some laughter, much genuine pleasure, warmth, and love and admiration.
One officer, in drink, remarked that Custer, another flamboyant, was a brigadier at twenty-three and a major general at twenty-five.
“Yes,” said Puller, contemptuous of the army, “and at thirty-seven Custer was dead and mutilated by squaws.”
Around him Marine officers nodded in agreement. Better a late star and to live to fifty-two.
With a hard campaign ahead of them, men sorted out the priorities.
It was an odd-looking column of Marines that went north, piebald and eccentric.
Some winter clothing had arrived and been parceled out. Overcoats, windproof trousers to be tugged on over kersey pants. Long Johns. Felt-lined hats with earmuffs. Scarves. Heavy socks. New gloves. Mittens.
Not enough of any of them. There were even rarer novelties, better lines of merchandise, but only for the fortunate. There were new boots, thermal in design, proof against not only subzero temperatures but also immersion and sweat, shiny black boots, swiftly nicknamed, “Mickey Mouse.” There were down parkas no one, save an alpinist, had ever seen before.
Yet several thousand men, veterans of the Pusan perimeter and the Naktong River campaign in the heat of August, were still clad in field jackets and fatigues, no gloves or long Johns or earmuffs or windproof trousers.
The effect was so colorfully wrong, driving top sergeants and old professionals like Puller to frustration and near tears, turning enlisted rebels giddy with unaccustomed freedom, that the Marines themselves were confused. They wanted liberty; they were muddled by license.
A goddamned vaudeville show! So went the official howl.
Rarely had there been such a dog’s breakfast of uniforms. Lee’s men, perhaps, after Antietam. Or Coxey’s Army, or the bonus marchers demanding veterans’ benefits from Herbert Hoover’s Washington. Or the homespun and leather and tanned skins of the farmers and hunters and bargemen and trappers who went north under Benedict Arnold to Saratoga to defeat “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne” and the splendid royal army with which he was to split Washington’s rebels and divide New England from Virginia and the rest of the South.
But if the uniform code was being sadly neglected, other things were not. As they marched north, Murray and Litzenberg had patrols ranging far out front
“Hills?”
“Yessir, but not like these, not so high. And hot. Hot as hell. And the smells coming up out of the villages and the paddies and the vegetable patches. I don’t know about the rice paddies, but they fertilize their fruits and vegetables with shit, human waste. They keep it in what they call honey pots.”
That, at least, both Tate and Verity realized, was like China.
C HAPTER S IX
There was some of Nathan Bedford Forrest in most of the Marine generals and colonels . . . all of them professional killers. Forrest had been one of Lee’s generals. Even Forrest’s fellow Southern generals were afraid of him. If you crossed Forrest, he would kill you.
A nd now, as the division saddled up to move north, word came from the States to Smith: Chesty Puller was finally a general.
When they notified Puller of the star his officers gathered to congratulate him.
Puller was fifty-two years old, not young for a brigadier. Blame politics for that. Or Puller himself, for being a damned difficult man. Over drinks there was some grousing, some laughter, much genuine pleasure, warmth, and love and admiration.
One officer, in drink, remarked that Custer, another flamboyant, was a brigadier at twenty-three and a major general at twenty-five.
“Yes,” said Puller, contemptuous of the army, “and at thirty-seven Custer was dead and mutilated by squaws.”
Around him Marine officers nodded in agreement. Better a late star and to live to fifty-two.
With a hard campaign ahead of them, men sorted out the priorities.
It was an odd-looking column of Marines that went north, piebald and eccentric.
Some winter clothing had arrived and been parceled out. Overcoats, windproof trousers to be tugged on over kersey pants. Long Johns. Felt-lined hats with earmuffs. Scarves. Heavy socks. New gloves. Mittens.
Not enough of any of them. There were even rarer novelties, better lines of merchandise, but only for the fortunate. There were new boots, thermal in design, proof against not only subzero temperatures but also immersion and sweat, shiny black boots, swiftly nicknamed, “Mickey Mouse.” There were down parkas no one, save an alpinist, had ever seen before.
Yet several thousand men, veterans of the Pusan perimeter and the Naktong River campaign in the heat of August, were still clad in field jackets and fatigues, no gloves or long Johns or earmuffs or windproof trousers.
The effect was so colorfully wrong, driving top sergeants and old professionals like Puller to frustration and near tears, turning enlisted rebels giddy with unaccustomed freedom, that the Marines themselves were confused. They wanted liberty; they were muddled by license.
A goddamned vaudeville show! So went the official howl.
Rarely had there been such a dog’s breakfast of uniforms. Lee’s men, perhaps, after Antietam. Or Coxey’s Army, or the bonus marchers demanding veterans’ benefits from Herbert Hoover’s Washington. Or the homespun and leather and tanned skins of the farmers and hunters and bargemen and trappers who went north under Benedict Arnold to Saratoga to defeat “Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne” and the splendid royal army with which he was to split Washington’s rebels and divide New England from Virginia and the rest of the South.
But if the uniform code was being sadly neglected, other things were not. As they marched north, Murray and Litzenberg had patrols ranging far out front
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