Chu Mon Lee.
Lee arrived, and for the balance of the night there was only sporadic shooting around the hill. But occasionally a mortar shell dropped in, and by dawn Frank Munoz had two more wounded men on his hands. One, hit in the leg but still able to walk, he sent down the hill.
As this man limped to the defilade area behind the hill, he bumped into the ominous, hazy shape of a T-34 tank. Staring, unable to believe his eyes, the soldier saw a tank hatch open, and a North Korean blazed away at him with a submachine gun. But the poor light saved the wounded man; he hit the ground and crawled back to Munoz on the hill.
Hearing about the tank in his rear, Munoz said a few unprintable words. Then he got a crew of men together, and with a 3.5-inch rocket launcher they sneaked down the rear slope. It was still dark enough to permit them to crawl within a few yards of the deadly vehicle, and with the first round from the bazooka they put it out of action.
But the crew remained inside—at least, Munoz saw no one come out.
Warily, they watched the silent steel monster, as light grew in the east and spread across the brown and green paddies. They had no more rocket ammunition.
As it grew light, Lieutenant Schmitt came up behind the hill. For a night Munoz had held the actual command of two companies, but now, with the arrival of his boss, he reverted to exec of H.
Pointing to the tank, Schmitt wanted to know, 'What's with that?'
'The crew is still inside—won't give up,' Frank said.
'Hell,' Schmitt said. He stood out in the open and began to yell at the tank in the Korean he had picked up during the Occupation.
The tank stayed quiet, even when Schmitt went up beside it and banged on the turret with his hand. Then Schmitt climbed up on the sponson and tried to pull open a hatch. Suddenly, then, there. was movement inside. A crewman partly opened the hatch, thrust a pistol through, and fired point-blank at the Weapons Company commander.
Unhurt, Schmitt jumped down. 'You son of a bitch, we'll fix you!' he said. 'Somebody give me a white phosphorous grenade—'
Pulling the pin, Schmitt dropped the incendiary grenade on the tank's back deck, over the air intake.
The North Koreans never did come out, though they made a number of unpleasant noises as they stayed inside and burned.
As exec, Frank returned to his old post at the Company CP to the rear. When he arrived, the battalion operations officer, Major Woodard, was on the phone.
'Listen, Frank,' Woodard said. 'George Company is in bad shape. Captain Van Oosten has been evacuated with heat stroke. G's got only one officer left, and he's demoralized. How about taking over G?'
'Well, if you tell me to take it, I'll take it,' Frank said. 'But I won't volunteer.' G was a rifle company, like E and F, and commanding a rifle company was somewhat different than acting as exec of a Weapons Company. For one thing, it could be a hell of a lot more dangerous.
'I'm telling you,' Woodard said.
So Frank Munoz assumed command of George Company. Joining the company on the hill, he found that George had taken several frontal assaults during the recent fighting. Many men had been shot at close range with small arms; others had been hit by mortar fragments. Out of a TO strength of 213, Frank had exactly fifty people left.
He found the remaining officer, Lieutenant Hank Merritt, and told him he was the new C.O.
Merritt seemed happy to get out from under. 'Glad to have you, Frank,' he mumbled.
Quickly, Frank Munoz understood that G Company was in a state of shock. The men had not been ready for the vicious combat into which they had plunged. The original men, who had been at Fort Lewis, had been on the peacetime training schedule, with frequent half-day training, heavy on athletics and sports. The newer men, the fillers they received in July, had largely come from even softer occupation duty overseas.
It had been a pleasant half-decade since the war ended, but the time had come to pay the price. The price, Munoz thought, was a hell of a lot of dead people.
Munoz realized he had not only the problem of too few men to do the job; he had also a morale problem. Almost all of the riflemen, dug in along the rear slope of the hill, had jumped in their holes and pulled the zipper. They didn't want to come out even to shoot.
He knew many of the men by name, and he walked along the foxholes strung out over the ridge, talking to each man. He told them they were fighting for their country, and other things. It was a hard sell.
'Hell,' one man told him, 'you can't tell me we're fightin' for the U.S.A. ten thousand miles from home!'
Some of the men told him they didn't mind fighting a big war. Americans, he found, tend to take pride in doing things in a big way. But they had no interest in fighting a half-ass war like this one.
But he went from hole to hole, talking to every man, doing the best he could.
Munoz was an officer, and a good one. He had no personal enthusiasm for this war, either; but he had taken the government's bread and the government's commission, and even for Truman's shilling he would give all he had in return.
He had just finished, and was walking back to his position in the middle of the line, when the NKPA pulled the plug.
Mortar shells hissed down on the ridge, bursting with sharp cracks, spewing gouts of greasy smoke, sending whining metal through the roiling dust. Caught in the open, Munoz jumped into a foxhole. He had only a .45 automatic pistol. Realizing something was going to happen, he drew the pistol and threw a round in the chamber.
For two minutes the mortar rounds burst along the ridge; then, suddenly, the shelling ceased.
The instant he understood the mortar fire had finished, Frank Munoz jumped from his hole and ran up to the top of the ridge, where he could see across the rice paddies to the front. Quick as he was, he was too late.
At the top of the ridge, he made eyeball to eyeball contact with a North Korean soldier. Munoz moved first. His .45 slug killed the Korean at a range of inches. As he shot, he could see two waves of enemy infantry, bayonets fixed, charging up the slope, firing from the hip.
He went into the nearest hole, which was already occupied by a man with a BAR. 'Fire to your right front!' he snapped at the BAR man.
The enemy boiled up over the hill and ran at George's thin line of holes. George Company met them with a blast of fire, stopping them only yards away. The first wave fell apart a few feet in front of Frank's own position.
As it did so, he got up and ran back to his regular post in the center of the line, joining Merritt. He had seen two of his own men leave their holes to run, and had seen both shot in the back and killed by rifle fire from the enemy. And he knew that George Company was close to the thin edge.
'Hank, call for final defensive fires!'
Then the second wave of charging Koreans swarmed over the crest. In a wild melee, some of the Inmun Gun jumped into foxholes with Munoz's men, bayonets flashing.
Munoz yelled at his Artillery forward observer to bring fire down on the hill. The FO, Lieutenant Hartman, yelled back, 'No! I don't want to do it!'
But Frank grabbed a field phone and reached Battalion. He got the Artillery liaison officer there, and he got action—two salvos of 105's, to be put down on his own position.
Seconds later, the shells screamed down, bursting with ear-shattering noise. They caught most of the attacking Inmun Gun still swarming down the ridge.
Dug in, Munoz's boys suffered no harm. The enemy, in the open, died. And, as suddenly as they had been attacked, George's men were all alone on the hill.
Munoz reported to Battalion by phone. For the balance of the day there was only desultory firing about the hill. Only a few 82's dropped in.
That night, the higher-ups took George Company off the hill for two days' rest.
Trying to counterattack, the United States forces had employed all the men and materiel at their command —and had been able to do no more than hold their own in front of Cloverleaf and Obong-ni. Colonel Hill,
