responded, and after a brief, blessed lull, shell after shell had screamed down into the town — smashing houses, collapsing trenches, churning even the rubble into a sea of unrecognizable debris.
Lee had listened to the frantic screams of the defenders over the radio, and he’d known that they couldn’t hold much longer. No one could be expected to last long in the inferno the communist barrage had created. So he’d left the radio to spur his engineers on.
Some were using the bulldozer blades on their mammoth CEVs — combat engineering vehicles — to scrape out firing positions for the mixed bag of South Korean and American tanks left to block the North Korean advance. Others were scattered across the open ground behind the town, laying a thin screen of antitank and antipersonnel mines.
Satisfied that they were working as fast as was humanly possible — and perhaps a bit faster — Lee had come back to the M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as his command vehicle. Infantry squads were desperately digging in on either side of his APC. Dig fast, he thought, you haven’t much time left.
A voice on the main tactical net confirmed his unspoken thought. It was the battalion commander inside the town calling his brigade commander farther back along the highway. In the background Lee could hear shells crashing on Pyokche, an uncanny echo of the same explosions he could hear with his own ears. “Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Alpha Charlie Two Three. Enemy columns forming up for attack. My strength at thirty percent. Repeat, three zero percent. Request permission to withdraw. Over.”
Lee waited while the brigade commander acknowledged the message and gave his permission. It wasn’t long in coming. No battalion that had lost more than half its strength in such a short time could possibly fend off another determined attack.
He switched to the frequency assigned to his own engineering company. “Bravo Four One to all Bravo Four units. Withdraw to main position. Repeat. Withdraw to main position. Acknowledge.” He wasn’t going to leave his men out in the open.
The South Korean combat engineer listened to his platoon leaders confirm his order and then switched back to the main net.
“Alpha Foxtrot Four Four, this is Charlie Two Three. Request smoke to cover our withdrawal. Over.” Lee nodded to himself. A sage request. Even a thin artillery-laid smoke screen would make it safer for Pyokche’s surviving defenders to evacuate their positions.
“Charlie Two Three, this is Alpha Foxtrot Four Four. Negative your smoke request. Say again, smoke is unavailable. Over.” Listening, Lee swore to himself. Nothing was working right. Ammunition expenditures for all weapons had been far above prewar estimates, and he knew that supplies weren’t getting forward the way they were supposed to. Now the remnants of the mechanized infantry battalion in Pyokche faced a kilometer-long retreat across open ground without cover.
Minutes later, Lee stood high in the M-113’s commander’s cupola watching his engineers filter back through the thinly held foxholes and firing positions that marked the new front line. He shook his head wearily. There weren’t enough infantry, tanks, or heavy weapons here to hold a determined North Korean attack for more than half an hour. It hardly seemed worth the sacrifices Pyokche’s defenders had made and were still making.
Lee lifted his binoculars and focused on the town, watching through the smoke and dust as rubble fountained skyward under the enemy’s barrage. Suddenly the barrage stopped. An eerie silence descended across the landscape as the smoke and dust drifted away from the ruined town.
The radio crackled. “Charlie Two Three to all Charlie units. Execute withdrawal now!”
Lee’s grip on his binoculars tightened as he saw scattered figures emerging from the rubble, running for the safe lanes through the minefield his engineers had laid. Others clung to a handful of battle-scarred M-113s racing at high speed to cross the open ground.
One of the APCs suddenly lurched to a halt and burst into flames. Lee spun round and saw the snout of a T- 62 poking through the smoking rubble of a wrecked house on the outskirts of Pyokche. The North Koreans had arrived.
An American M-60 tank in defilade to his left also saw the enemy tank. Its 105mm main gun whined, swung right, and recoiled as it sent an armor-piercing sabot round smashing into the North Korean tank. The T-62 exploded.
The revenge was short-lived. Muzzle flashes winked among the ruins of Pyokche as North Korean machinegunners opened fire. Dozens of the men sprinting toward safety were spun around and dropped into the snow. Some escaped the slaughter. Enraged by the sight, men all along the line opened up, flaying the ruins, trying to cover the survivors.
At last the firing died away. The broken fragments of the mechanized infantry battalion crossed into friendly lines and shelter while the North Koreans stopped shooting to avoid giving away their positions.
Lee waited, studying the corpse-strewn ground in front of Pyokche. Wounded men writhed in agony or crawled bleeding toward safety. Their moans could be clearly heard in the eerie silence.
Any minute now, Lee thought. Soon the North Koreans will lunge out of the town and we’ll have a brief chance to repay them for this butchery. He knew it would be in vain, though. Reinforcements from other parts of the front were arriving too slowly. The first determined communist attack would find it easy to punch a hole through the defenses he and his men had built.
Worse yet, his engineers would have to ride the attack out. The brigade commander had made it clear that they couldn’t even pull out of the line to start working on new field fortifications to the south. There were so few infantry left in fighting shape that he needed the engineers to man key battle positions. Lee and his men would have to fight and die as common footsloggers — no matter what specialized skills they possessed.
Time passed. Ten minutes. Half an hour. An hour. Lee grew impatient. What were the communists waiting for? Why hadn’t they attacked? They must know how weak we are, he thought, why haven’t they come to finish us? Every minute they delay gives us more time to recover. He cocked his head, listening.
Firing had erupted somewhere off to the northeast some time ago, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now, though, he could hear that it had intensified — escalating from a few isolated rifle shots to a deafening mix of heavy artillery, tank cannon, and continuous automatic rifle fire. It sounded like a major assault was going on, but in the wrong direction. Away from Seoul.
He grabbed his binoculars and swept them across the fields, the rice paddies, and the still-smoldering ruins of Pyokche. Sunlight flashed momentarily on shovels rising and falling. He focused the binoculars, seeing dirt and snow being thrown out of waist-deep holes by North Korean infantrymen. There couldn’t be any doubt of it. The communists were digging in. They weren’t going to attack.
Relief washed over the South Korean combat engineer. He and his men weren’t going to die — at least not yet. The relief was followed, however, by a feeling of unease. What was the enemy up to? He chewed on the thought for a long while without coming up with a satisfactory answer.
Night had fallen.
Artillery rumbled off in the distance, muffled by the high hills between the HQ and the battle zone.
McLaren looked up from the map at his senior staff officers, clustered around him in a semicircle and blinking in the dim light. They all looked haggard, worn down by five days and nights without enough sleep and filled with constant tension. It hadn’t helped that they’d already been forced by the North Korean advance to shift the HQ lock, stock, and barrel from its initial wartime location.
He shifted his gaze to the Army’s operations officer, the J-3, a tall, stick-thin major general who’d kept a flat, nasal New England accent through a thirty-year career in different postings around the world. “Well? What do you think, Barney?”
Major General Barret Smith unfolded his arms and took the unlit pipe out of his mouth. “I think your assessment earlier was right on the money, Jack.”
The J-3 stepped to the map, tracing the enemy’s movements with a finger. “Okay, the NKs have been driving hard for five days straight down Routes One and Three — right toward Seoul. Suddenly the pressure’s eased up, and now we’re getting reports of fierce attacks from here” — his finger tapped the map near Pyokche — “almost due southeast, toward the Han River — and away from Seoul.”
He continued, “Plus, we’re seeing something similar up along the Uijongbu Corridor. Only there, the NK attacks are driving southwest.” The J-3 stopped and shook his head. “I’d say it’s pretty clear that they’re trying to pocket us inside Seoul.”
