consciousness of duty. 'Sir, you told us to let you know if anyone hit a POW—'
'Well?'
The guard wiped his face. 'Major, I just hit one myself.'
'Don't tell me, boy—don't tell me,' Gregory said quickly.
The N.C.O. saluted and went away.
This kind of crisis Bill Gregory had to learn to live with.
One day, the flags went up, blue and yellow and made of clean new mattress covers donated by the U.S. Army. Seeing the myriad banners flying over each compound, each with its Communist propaganda slogan, a gi remarked to Gregory: 'Boy, aren't they pretty sir? These people are sure artistic!'
'They sure are,' Gregory said.
Since the POW's seemed to enjoy putting them up, the flags were allowed to stay.
Bill Gregory had other things on his mind, however. He was busy installing automatic flushing commodes in the four-holers that served the compounds.
And he had a problem on the beach, where one of his sewer lines emptied into Korea Strait. The mouth of the line, made of 55-gallon drums, ran out three hundred feet beyond the water's edge—but Korean tides were extreme, and at low tide the sewer mouth was exposed.
The problem was caused by rice. The prisoners ate rice as if they had never eaten before, and kept the new toilets busy. And rice feces, among the various kinds, are unique. They come out as small hard balls, tough as cement, insoluble in water. They will not float, nor will they wash away. They lay by the hundreds of millions on the beach, like dark, ugly snails.
The beaches of Koje-do, at low tide, were a sight to behold.
It was one engineering problem Bill Gregory was never to solve.
With the prisoners learning about democracy in lectures, and happily at work the remainder of the time, turning out mimeographed newssheets or banging away in the metal shops, Colonel Fitzgerald could turn his attention to the U.S. personnel on the island. It had come to the C.O.'s notice that many of the POW's looked better than his own troops.
He ordered officers to wear pinks and greens on duty, and all personnel were to don ties. After all, the eyes of the world were on Koje-do.
And with the compounds slapped together, he ordered work commenced on the officers' club. This went up quickly, a huge, barnlike structure of sheet metal and native island timber. While it was built, somebody arranged for Koean barmaids, in freshly starched dresses, to be imported from Pusan.
Things were looking up all over.
There was even a rumor that the Eighth Army was now winning the war on the mainland.
During this period, Major Gregory noticed that the population of Koje-do, aside from the POW's, was increasing. More and more Koreans showed up, to get jobs as servants, houseboys, laundrymen, barbers. The U.S. payroll, after the manner of such rolls, continued to increase geometrically each month. In Colonel Fitzgerald's HQ there were more Koreans than GI's.
The Koreans who still hadn't made the payroll were opening new business ventures, selling souvenirs to both GI's and pow's. Each day tradesmen surrounded the compounds, doing a brisk trade through the barbed wire.
It would have been cruel, and a blow to the local economy, to interfere with them.
The ROk's of the two guard battalions were doing well, too. Most of them had brought in their families. Some had also opened up new businesses. All were busily engaged in erecting new quarters, complete with landscaping.
Two alert Koreans noticed that the traffic between Pusan and Koje had increased tenfold since 1950. They dug up two diesel barges to supplement the official ferry on the end of the island, and they soon grew rich.
A great many of the young women refugees from North Korea, who had been dumped on Koje by the ROK government, found steady employment, at compensation formerly undreamed of in East Asia.
Colonel Fitzgerald inspected the officers' club daily, and it was coming along real well.
The POW's continued to make things in their shops. They put out more flags, some of them artistic triumphs. They sang and chanted in their compounds, and seemed content. Now and then a battered body blocked one of Bill Gregory's sewers, which was a hell of a nuisance until they removed it.
But it was understood that the Asians weren't too well checked out on modern plumbing, and no one worried.
The POW press turned out more and more newssheets, flooding the island. Many began to turn up in Pusan, as the paper ration was increased. One evening Major Gregory found one in his quarters. He asked his houseboy what it said.
He was told, 'Oh, the Communists are telling the people what fools the Americans are.'
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28
May Massacre
— From the Latin of Vegetius, MILITARY INSTITUTION OF THE ROMANS.
AFTER THE MASSIVE failure of the CCF First Step, Fifth Phase Offensive, the front, which now almost evenly divided the Korean peninsula, enjoyed two weeks of uneasy quiet.
May Day came, but the CCF had turned to limited retreat on 30 April, and the expected blow did not fall. Always, during the Korean War, U.N. observers tensed at the approach of May, fearing action on the traditional pagan holiday, sacred both to ancient Anglo-Saxons and modern Communists. But the Communists showed no more disposition, if conditions were not right, for action on I May than the Americans did to start their own ruckusses on July Fourth.
But U.N. intelligence, warned by aerial observation of troop and supply movement, felt that a new CCF offensive was brewing and that this time it would fall against General Ned Almond's X Corps, in the center.
Air power, in the mountains of North Korea, could not stop the continuing reinforcement of the CCF front any more than it had been able completely to choke off the German armies in Italy during World War II.
The CCF, relying on night movement and muscle power, were always able to move sufficient supply forward. Air interdiction could cripple the forward flow from time to time; it could not kill it.
The CCF, as others before then, had learned to live with a hostile sky. They clung to hills and mountains, and they dug deep. They moved by night, when it was difficult even for the night-flying fighter-bombers to seek them out in the bristling terrain.
It was only—as in Italy, at Anzio and other places—when ground action put inexorable pressure on enemy ground forces, forcing them to move or to displace, that conventional tactical air could come into its own. Massed to attack, the CCF became vulnerable. When they broke through U.N. lines, and their artillery and supply were forced to move out into the open, to displace, U.N. air could pounce upon them and chew them mercilessly. When they were forced by U.N. ground pressure to retreat, to stream down the roads and corridors of escape, air again could inflict deadly wounds.
Conventional air action, in Korea, could be decisive only when coupled with decisive ground action. It is impossible to interdict the battlefront, in mountains, of an army that eats only a handful of rice and soya beans and carries its ammunition forward piggyback.
But when the Chinese came down out of their brooding hills, either to attack or retreat, U.N. air, armor, and artillery, all vastly superior in the spring of 1951, more than offset their advantage in manpower.
For the first two weeks of May, feeling the enemy would strike again, Lieu-tenant General Van Fleet kept Eighth Army on the defensive, dug in behind its 'No Name Line.' As it turned out, this was an eminently sensible maneuver. In the center, behind prepared positions, crouched the CCF's old friend, the United States 2nd
