a week before, and he had exchanged twenty-seven of his vehicles for damaged vehicles. But that had not at all taxed the capabilities of the Eighty-Twenty-Three. He felt sure he could conduct one hundred vehicle exchanges a day easily, and more if pressed.
But the lack of business had permitted getting the Eighty-Twenty -Three into very good shape. Not only had his shops repaired all but seven of the exchanged vehicles and returned them to the Ready for Exchange lines, but there had been time to establish creature comforts for his men.
The squad tents in which they were housed now had wooden floors, doors, and electric lights. A section of the garage building had been converted to a mess hall, with picnic-table-type seating for the lower ranks, and chairs and tables for First Three Graders and officers.
He was serving three hot meals a day, and had set up two shower points, one for the men and a second for the noncoms and officers, which they shared on a simple schedule. Similarly, he had set up three latrines, one outside under canvas, and two—by repairing existing facilities—in the main building, one for the officers and another for the noncoms.
He had even established a unit laundry. He’d had to bend regulations a little to do this. Koreans were performing this service, in exchange for the garbage from the mess and five jerry cans of gasoline daily. Inasmuch as this service was provided outside the depot area, he didn’t think it would come to the attention of anyone visiting the Eighty-Twenty -Three. If it did, he was prepared to argue that it was a question of troop morale. Men whose uniforms quickly became grease- and oil-stained, and who took a great deal of comfort in knowing that after their shower they could put on fresh clothing, were obviously going to be happier than those who had to either wash their clothing themselves or go to one of the X Corps shower points outside the depot and exchange them.
Not to mention, of course, that his laundry service returned uniforms that were even pressed. In the case of the officers, starched and pressed. The uniforms available for exchange were those that had simply been washed and dried in the enormous machines of the shower point.
Immediately after the “heads-up” call, Captain MacNamara had sent his runner to announce an officer’s call, and when his four lieutenants came to the CP, he told them what was going to happen.
He said that when he walked through the shop and around the depot perimeter, as he planned to do in thirty minutes, he didn’t want to see anyone unshaved or in a dirty uniform. He said, as they knew, he didn’t insist that steel helmets and web gear be worn while the men were working, but he expected to see both near those working. Those on perimeter guard he expected to see looking alert and with their weapons as clean as possible, and they better be wearing their helmets and web gear.
And thirty minutes later he took a quick tour of the Eighty-Twenty-Three, and found only a few things—he insisted that a large poster of a nearly naked redhead be removed from the wall of one of the work bays, for example—that needed correction. Then he started a second tour of the Eighty-Twenty-Three, this time a slow one.
He thought it would look better if Colonel T. Howard Kennedy found him keeping a personal supervisory eye on things, rather than sitting in the CP, drinking coffee, and reading Stars and Stripes.
From what MacNamara had heard—and, for that matter, seen—the war was just about over. The linkup with Eighth Army advancing from the south had been made, and he’d heard that the UN had given permission to MacArthur to chase the North Koreans back across the 38th Parallel and destroy what was left of their army.
There were a lot of implications to be drawn from that, and MacNamara had been around the Army long enough to make them.
Many of the troops here would be withdrawn, either— at first, at least—to Japan or all the way back to the States. That didn’t mean they would take all their wheeled vehicles with them. For one thing, that would take a lot of shipping, and for another, it didn’t make a lot of sense to haul vehicles that had been used hard in the war and needed Third and Fourth Echelon maintenance all the way back to the States when that maintenance could be performed