while we were waiting for you to join us, my Number One and my gunnery officer, after studying aerial photographs of the islands, have offered the opinion that they can bring all of them under our guns.”
“You’d have to go into the Flying Fish to do that, Captain, wouldn’t you?” Taylor asked.
“No, actually not. We can lay the cannon fire from a position seaward of the islands, and use the islands, so to speak, as rocks behind which to hide from possible enemy observation.”
“Jesus!” McCoy said.
“Sir William made it quite clear to me, Captain McCoy, that the use of British elements in your operation is by no means an order. Using any, or all, of what we can offer is entirely up to you. What do you think?”
“I think if it wouldn’t give Taylor the wrong idea about Marines, I’d kiss Lieutenant Diceworth,” McCoy said.
“Well, perhaps there would be time for that later,” Jones-Fortin said. “But right now, nose to the grindstone, et cetera, right?”
[TWO]
TOKCHOK-KUNDO ISLAND 0330 25 AUGUST 1950
“What the hell is going on?” Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman asked when Captain Kenneth R. McCoy jumped off the Wind of Good Fortune onto the wharf. “I almost blew you out of the water when I saw you coming in with that light.”
Another man jumped onto the wharf, and Zimmerman looked at him in absolute surprise.
“Lieutenant Diceworth, Royal Marines, Master Gunner Zimmerman,” McCoy said.
“How do you do, Mr. Zimmerman?” Diceworth said, politely.
Zimmerman saluted, then looked at McCoy for an explanation.
“I want everybody who won’t fit in Boat Two—including the militia—on the Wind of Good Fortune in ten minutes, ” McCoy said. “I want to be in the Flying Fish Channel in fifteen minutes.”
“I asked you what’s going on, Killer,” Zimmerman pursued.
“There’s been a slight change in the operation.”
“What kind of a change?” Zimmerman asked dubiously.
“I only want to do it once, Ernie,” McCoy said. “Get everybody loaded up.”
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Zimmerman said to Diceworth. “With respect, sir, may the gunner inquire where the hell the lieutenant came from?”
Diceworth smiled.
“From HMS Jamaica, actually,” Diceworth said.
“He and fifteen more English Marines,” McCoy added.
“Actually, Captain,” Diceworth said, “that’s Royal Marines.”
“Sorry,” McCoy said. “And two pretty-good-sized boats with people who know how to drive them, and radios with which they can talk to Charity, the destroyer, who’s laying just outside the lighthouse.”
“No shit?”
“And can bring naval gunfire to bear on all the islands, and has aerial photos, so we can call in what we need when we need it.”
“No shit?”
“And now, if your curiosity is settled for the moment,
Mr. Zimmerman, would you please get your ass out of low gear, and start getting this circus on the road?”
The essential difference between the pre-Royal Marines and pre-HMS Charity plan, and what they were going to try to do now, was that the element of surprise wasn’t nearly as important as it had been.
If the two-lifeboat “invasion fleet” had been detected and brought under fire by any of the North Korean forces, it would almost certainly have meant disaster. The North Koreans had both machine guns and rifles, and would have brought the lifeboats under fire the moment they saw they were filled with armed men.
Machine-gun and rifle fire from firm ground goes where it is directed. Machine-gun and rifle fire from crowded lifeboats bobbing in the rapidly receding tide waters of the Flying Fish Channel would have struck its targets only by wild coincidence.
So the element of surprise in the initial plan was of prime importance. Now it fell into the category of “nice to have if we can get away with it.”
The plan now had a role for the Wind of Good Fortune. With the two boats from HMS Jamaica running to her starboard, where they could probably not be seen, and towing the lifeboat, she would move up the Flying Fish Channel past Taebu-do and Taemuui-do under both diesel and sail power. The sails probably would do very little to propel her forward, and their being raised might have the opposite effect, if there was a strong wind from the north—in which case they would be lowered.
All the Marines—Royal and U.S.—and most of Major Kim’s national police would be in the boats. They were now divided into three teams, scattering the Royal Marines among the U.S. Marines.
The two larger teams, one commanded by Captain McCoy and the other by Lieutenant Diceworth, would, if everything went well, land undetected at the narrow point—the center of the hourglass—of Yonghung-do, and then split, and simultaneously move