a second. It was not a round from any of the PT-76s, which were now breaking left and right of the blocked road as the five American tanks opened up from the bamboo and surrounding hills, but a relatively slow, Russian-made antitank “Spiral,” coming in at 560 meters a second, less than half the speed of a tank round. It struck the M-1’s turret, exploding against the two-hundred-millimeter-thick sloped armor, failing to penetrate, the shock wave quickly dissipating throughout the composite, or layered, SPC armor. But it caused a ringing that, even through the crew’s protective earphones, was so intense that along with all the other internal noise of the fifteen-hundred- horsepower gas turbine, controlling gun elevation and depression, the constant hum of the computers and the steady blowing of the air conditioner, the fume sleeve halfway down the barrel evicting noxious gases from the exploded powder, none of the tank’s crew could hear anything on the radio for at least ten seconds. And so they didn’t hear the warning transmitted from the other two tanks in Clemens’s platoon. A second antitank missile, wire-guided, had been fired at them from ten o’clock, from a fringe of smoke fifteen hundred meters away in the paddy off the left-hand side of the road. The Russian-made Sagger, moving at under five hundred meters a second, came through the black and white smokescreen rolling over the paddies, hitting the right track of Clemens’s M-1 as it was nearing the bamboo thicket. There was a muffled explosion, more sound shock, and then a clanking sound, like chains unraveling from a snow tire.
“Damn!” shouted Clemens’s gunner as the tank crashed into the bamboo thicket, the top of which rose a good six feet above the hillock immediately to the right of them, blocking them from the NKA tanks’ view and placing them in a perfect position for defilade fire, providing the driver could manage to turn the fifty-four tons using only the intact left track and what was left of the right.
“Can you do it, Johnny?” shouted Clemens.
“It’ll take the right track off, Lieutenant.”
“Do it!”
The M-1 shuddered right, then the driver, in his forward hull semireclining position, used all the skill he had been taught at Fort Hood, coaxing, talking to the twenty-five-foot-long, eight-foot-high tank, as a cavalry man of old might have cajoled his wounded battle horse, to climb that few feet more up the reverse incline of the bamboo hill to the defilade position. In the lowest gear the tank gave a throaty roar, inching forward on the slippery cane of the bamboo almost to the summit of the hill. Here, given the light rain that was now falling and the smoke, the tank was barely visible, and here its gun, the product of the best engineering in the world, could lay down fire with minimum silhouette. The enemy could return effective fire only if the M-1 could not withdraw before the NKA range finders picked it up. With the right track off, Clemens knew he couldn’t fire and withdraw with any speed and so asked his wingmen, the other two tanks in his platoon, to “overwatch” him, to feed his tank information about any advancing NKA infantry with antitank weapons or PT-76s looking for a lucky shot from the paddies.
On one hand Clemens felt trapped because it would take several hours at least to fix the unraveled track, if they could do it at all in the field. And yet he was in a perfect position with a wide down angle of fire across the paddies now stretching fifteen hundred to five thousand meters in front of him. He was waiting for the smoke to clear. One of the other two tanks he’d requested help from didn’t answer. Whether it was hit hard and out of action or whether its radio had packed it in, Clemens didn’t know. In any case, the other tank gave Clemens the happy information that Cahill had released a full batallion of M-1s, thirty-five tanks in all, which were now rolling up Unification Highway. Within twenty minutes they’d be in the area, engaging the remaining sixty lighter-armed and lighter PT-76 tanks now presumably scuttling across the paddies either side of the road under cover of the smoke, trying to find whatever defensive positions they could. In the interim, Clemens decided to save what was left of his original fifty-five rounds until the smoke curtain cleared.
“How many shots we got left, Luke?”
“Forty-two.”
“What we got on the menu?”
“Ribs, lobster.”
“Never mind the shit — what’ve we got?”
“Shoes, twenty, HE, ten, and twelve HESH.”
It told Clemens he had twenty rounds of solid-shot armor-piercing, ten high-explosive shells, and twelve high-explosives with squash heads.
“Well,” said Clemens, trying not to sound too satisfied up against the PT-76 tin cans. “That should hold us awhile.”
“I reckon,” said his gunner.
As General Kim in his headquarters six miles east outside Uijongbu was informed of the M-1 spearhead rapidly approaching, his face remained impassive, even as his infantry commanders worriedly reminded him of the cardinal rule: that while it was permissible for tanks to move without infantry, this was only wise when you were advancing and using the infantry as your eyes and ears, but in this situation, with a long line of American M-1 tanks, the NKA armored column would quickly be thrown on the defensive, the supporting regiments behind the NKA tanks slaughtered by the cannon and machine-gun fire of the formidable M-1s unless they were withdrawn. Radio intercepts, Kim’s officers pointed out, already confirmed that the M-1s, their laser range finders thwarted by neither rain nor smoke, were less than twenty minutes away. And, after the executions at Panmunjom, the
One of the infantry commanders, a colonel, Russian-trained and in charge of one of the crack NKA Sapper units, had, as Kim ordered, already gone ahead of the beleaguered PT-76 column and blown a huge hundred-yard gap in the road, in effect creating an enormous tank ditch which no tank, including the M-1, could ford. But this, the colonel pointed out to Kim, could only be expected to delay the Americans for at most a quarter hour. And it would not be long, he told Kim, before the American fleet in the East Sea would be near enough to launch aerial antitank attacks. This was dangerous for any tank, the top of the turret being the least-armored part of the vehicle, but for the relatively light-armored PT-76s, it could mean annihilation.
Kim did not respond.
As Kim left the headquarters tent, walking across the squishy ground to his private quarters, two of his chief staff officers tried to fathom Kim’s intent. “Perhaps he thinks,” proffered a battalion commander, “that once the M- 1s engage our tanks, they will be too close. Any aerial bombardment would also destroy any American tanks nearby. I think Kim has something up his sleeve.”
“Why?” asked the colonel.
“He did not seem overly concerned about the M-Is. Didn’t you notice?” asked the battalion commander.
“I noticed. That is what bothers me. He does not fully comprehend this situation.”
“You can’t tell with Kim,” said the colonel. “He is known for not divulging his tactics till the last minute. Fears a security leak. I’ve no doubt he’s studying the situation carefully. He’s up against the American, Cahill. Kim hates him.”
“So do I,” said the other officer. “But hating is not enough. Hate will not stop an M-1.”
“No,” agreed the colonel. “But it will help.”
“How?”
The colonel shrugged. “In-close armored fighting is not something the Americans—”
“You think Americans are no good at this? Don’t you remember Patton?”
“Yes, of course,” said the colonel. “But that was a long time ago.”
“And what happens when Washington sends reinforcements?” pressed the infantry commander.
The colonel laughed. “They won’t.”
“If they do?”
“We will have over half the South before they get here. The Americans love to argue. Their democracy,” said the colonel contemptuously, “is all talk. They talk big.”
‘“They have big tanks.”
“They have big egos,” countered the colonel. “Remember Vietnam, my friend. Once their ego is punctured, they become very depressed, the Americans.”
“First,” said the infantry commander, “I’d prefer to see the M-1s punctured.”
“Be patient,” said the colonel.
