who three months before had been on recruiting duty in Montgomery, Alabama—had “borrowed” them that morning from an Army ration dump in Ascom City, near the port of Inchon, while collecting their daily rations and the mail. There had not been very many rations, and almost no mail.
Preston had passed seven of the ten cots out to the senior noncoms of the company, then carried the remaining three into the officers’ quarters—what had apparently been small offices off the hangar floor—and started setting them up.
“Can you go back and get some more cots for the men?” Dunwood had asked.
“Ten’s all they had, sir,” Preston had replied, then had taken the meaning of the question and added: "R.H.I.P., Skipper.”
Dunwood doubted that “Rank Hath Its Privileges” justified his other two officers and himself, and the seven noncoms, having cots when none of the other men of Baker Company would, but he let it go.
The floor of the officers’ quarters was concrete, and he wasn’t as young as he had been when he had made the Tarawa and Okinawa landings in War Two.
He decided that there was nothing wrong with being as comfortable as he could for as long as he could. Their current status was bound to change, sooner or later and probably sooner than later, and when it changed, things would almost certainly be worse.
Right now, despite the spartan and miserable living conditions in the shrapnel-holed hangar and the lousy rations, things were pretty good, considering the alternative, which was doing what they were supposed to be doing, fighting as a Marine infantry company on the line.
The lines of ambulances and the sound of the firing had made it obvious that taking Seoul back from the North Koreans had been a nasty job. To judge by the sound of artillery, it still was a nasty job.
Baker Company hadn’t been involved. They were officially in what some G-3 major had told him was “Division Special Reserve.” Exactly what that meant Dunwood didn’t know, but he knew the result.
Since Baker Company had landed at Inchon eleven days before, with the exception of some minor harassing and intermittent fire, they had not been involved in any combat at all, and that meant there had been zero KIA, zero WIA, and zero MIA.
It hadn’t been that way in the Pusan Perimeter, where the Army general, Walker, admitted publicly that he had used the 5th Marines as his “Fire Brigade,” rushing its men in all over to save the Army’s ass when it looked as if the North Koreans were about to break through.
There had been a lot of Killed in Action and Wounded in Action in Baker Company in the Pusan Perimeter. When they were pulled off the line so they could board ships and make the Inchon Landing, Baker Company had been down to three officers and ninety-eight men. They were supposed to have five officers and two hundred four men. Dunwood had been able to report zero Missing in Action in the perimeter; he took a little quiet pride in knowing he hadn’t left any of his Marines behind.
When they got to the piers in Pusan, expecting to board the USS Clymer or the USS Pickaway, or another of the attack transports that would carry them to Yokohama, where the 1st Marine Division was being assembled, Baker Company had been loaded instead aboard LST-450. And they were the only Marines loaded, although she was big enough to carry a hell of a lot more people.
Just about as soon as they were out of the harbor and the LST’s skipper, Lieutenant John X. McNear, USNR, had time for a little chat, he told Dunwood three things.
First, that he was, like Dunwood, a reserve officer involuntarily called up for Korea (he had been the golf professional at Happy Hollow Country Club, Phoenix, Arizona). Second, that he had just now sailed LST-450 from Bremerton, Washington, where she had been moth-balled. And third, that they were now headed for Sasebo, not Yokohama. He said he had learned that only when he opened a sealed envelope on which was typed “OPEN ONLY WHEN AT SEA,” and he hadn’t any idea what was going on.
Dunwood had searched his mind for a possible explanation and had come up with very little, except the possibility that Baker Company would be reequipped and brought up to authorized strength at Sasebo.
When they got to Sasebo, Dunwood quickly learned that was not to be the case. Baker Company, the lieutenant colonel in charge of