hold out until first light, because you won’t be able to get out of here before then.”
"I understand, sir.”
[FIVE]
Five minutes after Major Allman, Captain McCoy, and Master Gunner Zimmerman had started out from the regimental command post for the outpost positions of Baker Company, 1st Battalion, 19th Infantry, a female voice called out, “Hey, guys, wait for me!”
“Miss Priestly,” Major Allman said, dryly, “has apparently chosen to ignore the colonel’s suggestion to remain in the CP.”
“Escaped from the CP is more like it,” Captain McCoy said.
“Fuck her,” Master Gunner Zimmerman said.
“That thought has occurred to me,” Major Allman said. “But this isn’t the time nor place. The question is what do we do about her, here and now?”
“The light’s failing,” McCoy said. “We don’t have time to take her back.”
“Your call, Captain,” Allman said.
“I don’t see where we have a choice,” McCoy said.
He started walking again.
Three minutes later, the war correspondent of the Chicago Tribune caught up with them. She had a Leica III-C 35-mm camera hanging around her neck, and was carrying a .30-caliber carbine in her hand.
“You’re supposed to be a noncombatant,” McCoy said.
“I should use it on you, you son of a bitch,” Jeanette said, conversationally, “for leaving me back there.”
Five minutes later, they reached the Baker Company CP—which was nothing more than a sandbag reinforced shelter on the military crest4of a small hill overlooking the river.
The company commander was not there; the first sergeant said he was out checking positions. He showed them—on a hand-drawn map—where they were, on the other side of the hill, overlooking the river, and thus visible to the enemy.
“This is as far as you go, Jeanette,” McCoy said. “If necessary, I’ll have you tied up.”
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
“Zimmerman and I are going to go down to the positions, the foxholes. We’re going to try to get a prisoner. Maybe two.”
“And I don’t get to watch?” she asked, angry and disappointed.
“There’s an FO OP right up there,” the first sergeant offered helpfully, pointing. A forward observer’s observationpost. “It’s sandbagged. She could watch from there. They’ve got binoculars.”
“And you’d go with her, right?” Major Allman asked, smiling.
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t think so, Jeanette,” McCoy said. “How do I know you’d stay in the OP?”
“I’ll stay there,” she said.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t leave the OP,” Major Allman said, and added: “Unless you’d rather have me go to the outposts with you.”
“I don’t think that would be necessary, sir,” McCoy said. “Thank you.”
It took McCoy and Zimmerman another five minutes to climb past the military crest of the hill, and then to run, zigzagging, down the other side until they reached an obviously freshly dug, sandbag-reinforced two-man foxhole.
It held two men, manning an air-cooled Browning .30-caliber machine gun on a tripod. There were half a dozen cans of ammunition in the hole, and half a dozen hand grenades—with their pins in, and the tape still holding the safety lever in place—were laid out neatly on the sandbags.
The sergeant and the PFC manning the gun were surprised when two officers suddenly joined them, and even more surprised when they saw the Marine Corps emblem painted on Zimmerman’s utilities jacket.
McCoy looked back up the hill for the forward observer’s position, and easily found it—its brown sandbag reinforcement stood out from the vegetation—which meant the enemy could also see it.
He turned to the sergeant, who so far had neither said a word nor saluted.
“Sergeant, they tell me there’s North Koreans trying to wade across the river,” he said.
The sergeant pointed over Zimmerman’s shoulder. McCoy and Zimmerman looked where he pointed. Zimmerman reached into one of the cavernous pockets of his utilities and came out with a pair of binoculars.
At what McCoy estimated to be from 450 to 500 yards, half a dozen men were wading across the Kum River. When Zimmerman had his look through his binoculars and handed them to him, McCoy saw that the North Koreans were holding their weapons and packs over their heads.
He handed the binoculars back to Zimmerman.
“Sergeant, have you been ordered not to fire?” McCoy asked.
“We’re not that heavy on ammo,” the sergeant said, pointing at the ammunition cans. “I decided we better save that for later.”
“And your rifle?” McCoy asked, pointing to an M-1 Garand resting against the sandbags beside a .30-caliber carbine.
“You can’t hit them with a rifle at that range, sir,” the sergeant said.
Zimmerman looked at the sergeant incredulously, and opened his mouth. McCoy held up a hand to silence him.