at the artillery position complained that this was expensive.
'Who the hell cares?' Busbey told them, by radio.
With light and gunfire, Baker Company held off the attacks till dawn. Then someone wanted to know how many Busbey and company had killed.
His answer was, 'How the hell would I know?'
With daylight, he was ordered to attack.
But the big hill he had been concerned about was feeding Chinese clown onto the ridges he assaulted, faster than the friendly artillery could destroy them. Baker took a very bloody nose trying to move up the T-bone, and finally, Busbey received orders to pull back before dark.
He was lucky to get out. A sergeant from the supporting Weapons Company D, firing from a supporting finger ridge, realized his machine gun could not hold off the enemy long. This N.C.O. sent his crew back, while he fired to give them cover, staying on the gun.
As the Chinese pressed in, the machine gun snapped empty. Unable to load a fresh belt in time, the sergeant emptied his .45 at them. His body was found later; the Chinese had left it and taken the gun.
The sergeant, whose name Busbey thought was Henderson, got a posthumous D.S.C., while Bushey and his men, under heavy pressure, got out.
Later, both the corps and division commanders came down to the battalion, apologizing for the operation. They had had no intimation that they were sending 1st Battalion into a buzzsaw.
During September, Busbey replaced his casualties and held the MLR around Artillery Hill—so named because enemy shells always fell at chow time. Then, in October, a battalion of Colombians relieved his battalion, and the 32nd Infantry took over from the 2nd Division on Heartbreak Ridge.
During the last days of October, the 7th Division tried to police up the litter left at the scene of that battle. Equipment and material lay everywhere; enemy dead were strewn across the hills. And even some American dead still lay in the ditches beside one road. How they came there Busbey never knew.
Tied in with the ROK 7th Division, Busbey's company was given the mission of covering the valley beyond Heartbreak, a two-hundred-yard-wide defile through which flowed a small stream, and up which American tanks patrolled each day.
By day Busbey could cover the valley by fire, but at night it was a matter of setting up ambush patrols near the stream and on the fingers of the covering ridge to prevent the enemy from mining the valley floor and stream bed.
On the third night, one of Busbey's patrols hit the jackpot.
Several of his men with a light machine gun manned by an assistant gunner who had never fired in combat were sitting close by the stream. They heard the stealthy noises of approaching men, and through the dark were able to make out a mining patrol, 2 NKPA officers, and half a dozen enlisted men carrying AT mines.
'Wait till they're closer,' the machine gunner whispered.
To fully load a round into the chamber of a light machine gun, the bolt must be pulled to the rear and released twice. The assistant gunner, who had pulled the bolt back once, thought the gun full loaded—until the pressure on the trigger produced only a terrifyingly loud
By the time the patrol figured out what was wrong, the North Koreans were six feet away. The first shot tore off the top of an NKPA lieutenant's head. Swiveling the gun rapidly, the blond young man who had waited just a bit longer than he had intended cut down all of the surprised unfortunates before they could escape.
Next morning Major General Claude Ferenbaugh, the division commander, who visited front positions regularly, was shown the stiff and blasted Korean corpses. 'By God,' Ferenbaugh said, 'I get these reports all the time, but this is the first time anyone has had the bodies to prove it!'
He decorated the blond gunner before he left.
Now there was no offensive action taken against the enemy—but an army could not sit still. It had to patrol, even as the enemy had to patrol, to keep contact, to see what the other side was doing, and to attempt to keep the other side honest.
It was this patrol action, this continual flirting with danger and death, for reasons many of the enlisted men thought flimsy, that soldiers all across the Eighth Army's line came to hate. But there was no help for it.
And while the front was still, except for patrols, there was the shelling. The enemy, who had to bring his precious ammunition under air attack over many miles, did not care to waste it. But he was not loath to shoot it, if he had a target.
One of Busbey's platoon leaders, Jack Sadler, was restive at the inactivity. 'How about letting me snipe at them over there with my 75mm recoilless?'
'Hell, you'll make 'em mad, Jack,' Busbey told him.
'Aw, just one round, anyway—'
Sadler fired one round at the enemy lines, with indeterminate effect.
Then, immediately, the enemy shelled his platoon, heavily. Two of Sadler's men were killed—and forever afterward Sadler held himself responsible. After that, a sort of gentlemen's agreement held—each side left the other alone during the day.
It was a weird war now, not so dangerous, but more frustrating than ever. Now and then, by night, the enemy made limited attacks.
The U.N. almost never returned them.
It began to grow quite cold by night, as winter neared. And since the men had to be alert at night— everything in Korea happened at night, whether the Americans liked it that way or not—orders came down for each man to get his sleep during the clay, so that he could remain alert at night without hardship.
There was nothing else for the troops, holding a line of foxholes and bunkers until the boys of Panmunjom could come to agreement, to do. Bored and restless, they didn't like the schedule, particularly the standing guard each night.
One night, as the temperature dropped to near zero, Lieutenant Sadler called Busbey's CP by phone at 0200. 'Captain, I have a fully armed NKPA here who has turned himself in—'
Quite a few North Koreans, from time to time, when they could slip past their officers, came voluntarily into U.N. lines. This was nothing new.
But Sadler continued. 'He surrendered to the tanks back of me—'
Busbey snapped, 'How'd he get past you?'
'By God, I hadn't thought of that—I don't know, Captain.'
'Well, think about it!' Busbey told him, hanging up.
Sadler roused his platoon sergeant, Trexler, and they got a ROK to query the enemy soldier. He had walked down the road in the valley—right through an area where Sadler had two standing patrols, two foxholes containing three men, with absolute orders that one man remain awake at all times. Sadler and Trexler looked at each other, and went out into the night.
Jack Sadler went up one side of the trail. Trexler the other. On both sides they found all men zipped up in their bags, sound asleep.
If the Inmun Gun had probed that night, they could have walked to Seoul for the weekend, as Busbey said.
After listening to the lame, stumbling stories, Busbey, furious, preferred charges against four enlisted men.
And two nights later, while the four were awaiting trial, the NKPA attacked down through the same valley. The outposts were alert; they were repulsed at the main line.
A 76mm artillery round killed Sergeant Trexler, however; and the Division Judge Advocate General said he would have to drop the case against the two men Trexler had caught sleeping on outpost—there was now no witness against them. The two were released.
But the remaining two, with Sadler's testimony, were convicted by a general court-martial at Division HQ. Each was given ten years at hard labor, and dishonorable discharge.
Because of their stupidity, and their lack of responsibility, hundreds of their comrades might have died. During the American Civil War they would have been shot.
But it was a long time since the Civil War, and with the Korean War a new factor had entered American military justice: during a crusade, or a war with fervent popular support, a soldier's malfeasance is almost always
