WW III

Polly, was one of the first Americans killed in World War III, decapitated by an NKA splinter grenade.

In terms of U.S.-ROK prisoners taken that first day, over seven thousand, the most humiliating of all was the capture of Lieutenant General Hay, commanding officer I Corps, at his Uijongbu HQ while he was in the midst of organizing his eleven ROK divisions and one U.S. division for a counterattack that never materialized.

* * *

In Seoul there was utter panic and confusion as the firing of over two thousand massed guns along the DMZ continued, the 225- and 194-pound high-explosive and white phosphorus shells tearing through the rain-gray air, thudding into the cluster of U.S.-ROK targets in and about the South Korean capital.

Millions of panicked civilians, clogging all roads leading out of the capital, prevented ROK armor and infantry from getting through to mount effective counterattacks. The fleeing mobs were soon out of control, terrorized by the thick, acrid smoke which they thought was some kind of poison gas because of its yellowish tinge, the latter in fact a result of Seoul’s polluted air and burning briquettes which many households had stored for the coming winter. Trying desperately to escape, many were caught in running battles with squads of riot police who were trying just as desperately and futilely to clear the roads for military traffic, which was now backed up as far as Chamshil Iron Bridge, Olympic Park, and the Sports Complex, the shell of the main Olympic stadium holed in several places and burning, despite the determined efforts and initiative of Chamshil’s fire brigade, who, finding water mains severed, coupled hoses and used the Olympic swimming pool as their water supply.

Three of those in the retreating millions heading frantically for the bridges over the Han were Mi-ja, her younger brother, Dyoung, and their mother. For Major Tae’s family the possibility of forced evacuation from the capital had always been presented to them as a distinct possibility by their father, and long ago the family had reluctantly promised him that in the event of invasion, they would head south with everyone else. “For civilians,” he had told them, “there will be no honor in remaining,” warning them to “go — go as fast and best as you can.” Where her lover, Jyung-hun, was, Mi-ja had no idea. She tried to phone, but all civilian and most military lines had been cut hours before.

One of the few who were not trying to leave, and whose family was busy at work in the hole-in-the-wall rooms that he grandly called his “factory,” was the owner of the Magic Cloud Souvenir Shop off Sejongro, selling North Korean flags faster than his family could sew them.

As the NKA’s barrages were a matter of rolling, indirect fire, pinpoint accuracy was not needed, so that changes in the artillery’s fourteen “variables,” from wind velocity and humidity to gun “jump” due to barrel elevation at the moment of firing, didn’t matter as much as they normally would. It was only important for General Kim’s gunners to know whether their fire was hitting the city; the only parts General Kim did not want to hit if he could help it were the bridges, as their destruction would delay the NKA’s progress over the Han, down the Chengbu expressway to the western plain and Taejon, the southern railhead for the Seoul-Pusan and Seoul-Kwangju lines. For this reason alone, Kim instructed his gunners to be guided by the forward observers, firing no farther south than Yongsan Barracks if possible.

* * *

The agent who had escaped from the Secret Garden was one of those whose job it was to act as forward observation officer, and he was doing so from Namsan Hill, where only yesterday in the vibrant sunlight tourists had been enjoying the view of one of the fastest-growing and most westernized cities in Asia. Beyond the city’s punch bowl, the flames strangely beautiful against the scudding overcast, the agent could see that a good part of the northern suburbs was also afire, especially, he was glad to note, the area immediately around the Blue House. A few errant shells, like those hitting the Olympic sites, were overshooting, exploding buildings around the mosque, and some fires were starting in Itaewon, whose bars and girls served, or rather had served, the Yongsan base. The fact, well understood by the agent, that sooner or later he would die in the barrage, the nine-hundred-foot hill he was on being the central grid reference, or aiming point, for the artillery, was a given. He was only one of many volunteers who, with their powerful shortwave radios, were calmly reporting the dispersal pattern of the guns’ fire. Indeed, even as he spoke, he knew there were other agents atop Pugak Mountain on the city’s northern perimeter sending in their reports.

* * *

By 5:30 p.m. all the bridges over the Han except three, the Panpo and Hannam, leading to the Kyongbu-Pusan expressway, and the Songsan Bridge leading to Kimpo Airport and Inchon, were finally clogged solid with refugees, the air filled with a rancid mixture of pickled cabbage, sweat, and cordite.

The Republic of Korea was teetering on the verge of total collapse, for even if the fighting was to go on, a simple but terrible truth was becoming slowly but inexorably evident to Seoul HQ. It was one that no journalist, and certainly no politician, would utter, let alone a military commander who cared anything for his career. Nevertheless it was a fact that the best troops in the American army, as in all armies, were those who wanted to be where they were rather than those who had merely enlisted with some vague hope of learning a trade or of escaping what academics called socioeconomic ghettos. Those enlisting with the highest educational qualifications got first choice of postings, and Korea, despite all the stories of the easy availability of women in Seoul, came in well after West Germany in the GI’s list of preferred postings. And the best of those who were in Korea, those who had volunteered for duty on the DMZ, on the front line, from Fort Apache to Camp Pelham, were now trapped, gone from the big blue board in Seoul HQ, where the NKA’s overwhelming superiority had now all but turned the board red.

The remainder of U.S.-ROK I Corps’s eleven divisions, ten of them ROK, one U.S., now withdrawing from Uijongbu were simply not up to anything like the standard of the “five-year term” soldiers of the North Korean divisions. In the sudden shock of the NKA’s highly professional attack, where rapidity of movement had been everything in the early hours of engagement, these U.S.-ROK ground troops had quite simply been outclassed. And in the confusion and contagion of impending defeat, men who had been trained a hundred times in mock battles, often with live ammo being fired overhead, froze in the initial bowel-churning terror of real combat and so did not move fast enough to capitalize on any holes that did appear in the NKA advance. This was especially true in the case of three infantry battalions on maneuvers in the Whiskey Sierra Tango training area ten miles north of La Guardia and in Falling Water on the outskirts of Uijongbu, nine miles north of the capital.

By late afternoon the situation in Seoul had deteriorated so badly, with millions of refugees now choking all nineteen bridges over the Han, that General Cahill was about to make the bravest — to some the stupidest, to others the most militarily sound-decision of his entire career.

* * *

Far to the southeast off Cape Changgi, the sea mist took on the aspect of moody ghosts rising one minute, returning the next. Inside the Blaine’s combat information center, the radar operator saw two or three more blips appear in the radar sweep. Then more. Soon they were a swarm. “Captain.”

“What have you got?” asked Ray Brentwood calmly. “Fishing fleet?”

With news of the NKA invasion flashed to all U.S. ships, the radar operator wasn’t sure whether the skipper was fooling. In any case, he pressed the computer for a readout of the unidentified blips’ speed. “Forty knots, sir.”

“Patrol boats?”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“Satellite confirmed?”

“Satellite confirmed,” answered the operator, “but no flag.”

Brentwood put down his coffee, looking intently at the small white squares with the white dots inside them signifying unknown surface ships. “Radio traffic?”

“Negative, sir.”

“Range?”

“Fifteen miles and closing.”

“Very well — send message. ‘Unknown vessels, this is a U.S. Navy warship on your zero eight five. Request you identify yourself and state your intentions.’ “

“Aye, aye, sir.”

The message was sent and the Blaine waited.

There was no answer.

“Repeat message,” ordered Brentwood.

“Aye, aye, sir.”