been built to withstand the traffic now moving up it, in terms of either weight or numbers.
The United States X Corps was on the move. The order had been issued to advance to the Chinese border. That meant not only the American 7th Infantry Division and 1st Marine Division, and the four ROK Divisions, which were “up front,” but the mind-boggling support and logistical train needed to support it.
It wasn’t simply a question of supplying the attacking divisions with food, fuel, and ammunition, or even also moving their supporting tactical units, the separate tank and artillery battalions, and so on—and their food, fuel, and ammunition—but the nonfighting units had also been ordered moved out of Wonsan. These ranged from Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals to Quartermaster Ration Depots, Ordnance Ammunition Supply Points, down to smaller units such as Water Purification Platoons, Shower Points, and a Mobile Dental Surgical Detachment.
Into this mix, all trying to move up the same winding, crumbling, narrow two-lane “highway,” Colonel T. Howard Kennedy, the X Corps Transportation Officer, had added Captain MacNamara’s 8023d Transportation Company (Depot, Forward) and the Replacement Company of the 7th United States Infantry Division.
It was worse than anything MacNamara had seen in France in World War II, and when he first got into the line of moving vehicles, he had used his experience in France to predict that it would take six hours to move the sixty miles. It took eighteen.
Not all of that time—in fact very little—was spent on the move. Most of it was spent stopped, as units, or individual vehicles, with a higher priority passed them on the left lane. The basic rule of thumb was that medical supplies went first, then ammunition, then food.
Overworked, and thus sometimes snarling, military policemen guided high-priority convoys onto the left lane, past stopped convoys with lesser priorities.
The first military police officer Captain MacNamara encountered had asked him for his movement priority, which would then be painted on the lead vehicle for the edification of military police along the route.
“Verbal orders of the X Corps Transportation Officer,” MacNamara had replied, with as much assurance as he could muster. “The colonel said, ‘Time is of the essence.’ ”
The MP officer, also a captain, had smiled at him.
“Good try, Captain,” he said, and dabbed a blue paint circle on the windshield of MacNamara’s jeep. Within an hour or so, MacNamara understood that the blue circle indicated a priority way down on the list.
Several times MacNamara seriously considered replacing the blue circle with a yellow one. Yellow seemed to represent the priority immediately after ration trucks, and there was an assortment of paint in one of the mobile workshops he had included in the first convoy, but he decided against it. For one thing, it didn’t seem right, and for another, he didn’t want another letter of reprimand in his service record, which he would get, sure as Christ made little green apples, if he was caught.
He wondered how long it was going to take him to return from wherever he was going in the Hamhung-Hungnam area to Wonsan. The southbound lane, so to speak, of the highway was usually crowded with north-bound vehicles with a priority. Only a few vehicles were passing him going south.
He wondered if maybe he could somehow get a message to the officers he had left behind, telling them to saddle up and get moving as soon as they could because he would not be returning. In the end, he decided against this, too. It was his responsibility to go back and set things up, and he would.
Sixteen and a half hours after MacNamara had left Wonsan, he was again stopped in the right lane as priority convoys passed him in the left. Another MP officer, this one a lieutenant, came southward down the shoulder of the road in a jeep.
“Where are you headed, Captain?”
“Hamhung, Hungnam,” MacNamara replied.
“Which?”
“I don’t know. I have to find somewhere to set up—on the highway, preferably. I’m a vehicle replacement outfit. And I’ve got the advance party of the 7th Repple-Depple with me. They need a place too.”
“When I come back, say, in thirty minutes or so, you— just you—follow me. The turn off to Hamhung’s about five miles up the road. You can find a place, or places, to set up while the rest of your convoy is still on the highway.”
MacNamara had little trouble finding a suitable area for the 8023d. It was about half a mile in on the turnoff to Hamhung. The only