Free The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat by Bob Drury, Tom Clavin Page A

Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, argued that "something cataclysmic" needed to be done to stop Korea from becoming a "meat grinder of American manhood." Gore suggested using atomic weapons on the 38th Parallel to make it a radiation belt separating the two Koreas. No one, however, argued for the atomic option more strenuously than General MacArthur.
    MacArthur had disagreed with the Joint Chiefs' decision from the beginning of the war, and in mid-November he stepped up his attempts to push the atomic button. This, he said, would not only result in the complete capitulation of Kim 11-Sung within two weeks, but also end any possibility of a Chinese or Russian incursion into the country for three generations. No cordon sanitaire dividing North and South Korea would do for MacArthur. He wanted to separate the Korean peninsula from the rest of the Asian mainland "with a belt of radioactive cobalt strung along the neck of Manchuria." His plan was to saturate the strip of land just north of the Yalu River with thirty A-bombs. After that, 500,000 of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist Chinese soldiers would be used to guard the border for the active life of the cobalt-then calculated to last between 60 and 120 years.
    "I visualize a cul-de-sac," MacArthur wrote to the Joint Chiefs. "The only passages leading from Manchuria and [the Russian city of ] Vladivostok have many tunnels and bridges. I see here a unique use for the atomic bomb-to strike a blocking blow-which would ... sweeten up my B-29 force."
    Although MacArthur insisted that his plan was "a cinch," American civilian leaders, wary of the Soviet Union's small, if growing, atomic stockpile, rejected it-for now.
    Radiation strips and cobalt zones were the last thing on Private First Class Bob "Zeke" Ezell's mind as he hauled two heavy cans of ammo for the light machine guns up the east slope of the hill. He was freezing but trying his damnedest not to let the others see how miserable he was. Ezell, who had just turned nineteen, was a tall, skinny baseball star from Wilmington, California, near the Los Angeles harbor. In his hometown he was renowned for his reckless outfield play. Here in Korea he was nothing more than an assistant ammo carrier sick of hearing the northern boys, especially the squareheads from Minnesota, boast about adjusting to the cold. Corporal Harry Burke, a bazooka man from a small town in the southwest corner of Minnesota, had even taken it upon himself to lecture the company's "California queers" on foot care after one of Ezell's buddies was evacuated with frostbite. And just a few mornings ago, in Hagaru-ri, a couple of Marines who called themselves the "Minny Gang" had made Ezell the butt of their jokes when he'd poured milk on his cereal and found a stump to sit on outside the mess tent, only to discover the milk frozen solid.
    "Gotta eat your Wheaties inside the tent, Zeke. Don't you pretty boys from California know anything about winter?"
    Ezell learned fast that if you didn't come back at them quickly they'd ride you even harder, and he gave as good as he got. But he was at a natural disadvantage. He bore an eerie resemblance to the young Tyrone Power and was forever being kidded about his perpetual smile and his brilliant white teeth. Ezell was quick to remind his tormenters that Power had suspended his acting career to enlist in the Corps and had become a Marine pilot who'd taken wounded men off the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. That shut them up for a while.
    Like most of the kids in Fox, Ezell had spent his youth immersed in the movies of the World War II era, and he and his buddies had enlisted in the Marine Reserves to live out these fantasies. But his first love was baseball, and he was good. He'd been all-league in high school and he'd made the all-star team in his first season in the minor leagues, playing for an affiliate of the Boston Braves. He dreamed of following in the footsteps of a fellow graduate of Harbor High: George Witt, a minor