Free Prince of Peace by James Carroll Page B

flag out of a fake pistol. "He was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower." He had read those words a million times while the priest recited them in Latin; they were from the Last Gospel with which every Mass ended. "A man came, sent by God."
    Michael told me over Scotch whiskey many years later that at that moment, half frozen, paralyzed under the weight of a shellshocked soldier in a bomb crater on a desolate hilltop in Korea, he discovered for the first time that he did believe in God. He believed in the Resurrection. "What can I say? I saw His glory." He shrugged and drained his Scotch. "With Him on my side, who can be against me?" In other words, while fifteen thousand Chinese were steadily creeping toward him and his one thousand terrified frozen comrades, Michael Maguire accepted in advance whatever was going to happen to him, not only, as pious assholes were always doing, during the remainder of his life, but—much more difficult—during that very day. It was as if he knew how decisive it would be. I would wish many years later that he'd been killed.
    The withdrawal began at dawn. Because artillery shells were still falling, though intermittently now, it was a retreat through a nightmare landscape, but the men of the 27th Infantry Regiment were so relieved to have their dreamless terror over that they pushed out energetically. Who wanted to wait for the Chinese charge?
    It was impossible to assemble a proper convoy. The regiment's vehicles, marshaled along the main road, had been sitting ducks all night and the artillery had knocked most of them out. That meant forced march, which posed a heart-wrenching problem for the colonel in command: the wounded would have to be left behind. As of dawn, counting the casualties of the night shelling and those from the incident at the bridge two days before, there were fourteen of them. Two Medevac choppers had been promised the day before, but they couldn't come in during the heaviest bombardment. Though now it had eased, there was still no sign of them. It made no sense to leave behind a unit of healthy soldiers to defend the wounded until the helicopters arrived, because each aircraft could carry out only seven men. The fourteen, plus the medic, was stretching it already, and when the chaplain volunteered to stay behind, the colonel could not refuse. He said, "Take off your insignia, Father, and make sure Lieutenant Barrett isn't wearing his bars either."
    Father O'Shea wasn't stupid. He wasn't going to fall into Chinese hands with gold leafs on his lapels. But he kept his crosses, on his helmet and his breast.
    Word passed through the regiment quickly both that the wounded were being left behind and that the chaplain was staying with them. When Maguire heard it, he was just tying the flaps of the radio case that he and Pace had been assigned to carry. He looked up at the GI who'd told him, but he was gone already, scurrying down the side of the hill. He looked at Pace. "We can't just leave them here!"
    "What the fuck, Maguire! What can we do?"
    Maguire snatched up his M-i and climbed quickly to the top of the hill. The wounded men were huddled on a level spot near the top of the next hill. Even without binoculars he could see Father O'Shea holding a man in his arms. They knew what was happening. Maguire searched the sky above the windswept hills, looking for the choppers. No sign of them. In the distance of the valley below, the figures of men jammed the roads, but these were not refugees. It was the massing army of the Chinese peasant-riflemen. He scanned the spiny terrain of the nearby slopes, but there was no sign of the enemy there yet.
    A round landed in the gully between the hill on which he stood and the one where the wounded lay. Maguire didn't flinch. After the night, the occasional shell now seemed benign. He squinted, trying to make out Lieutenant Barrett.
    Pace was at his elbow. "Sarge says to move it,