Free The Marines of Autumn: A Novel of the Korean War by James Brady Page B

up in North China, gun-fighter-style, strapped down for a quick draw.
    God, what a kid I was. Moving picture stuff.
    He would soon be thirty and was not at the movies.
    The North Koreans pulling out had blown up some of the docks, and there were a couple of big burned-out warehouses and some other damage, but the port was functioning. The ROKs had gotten in here too fast for the North Koreans to do a really proper job of demolition. Someone probably got shot for that. When you retreat you’re supposed to blow up what you can’t take along and have to leave behind, blow it up or burn it or, preferably, both. War was hell on insurance companies.
    Down here by the harbor it wasn’t cold. No breeze off the water, but a land wind from behind and not bad. The first big landing craft had nosed up sideways to a long pier, and when Verity arrived a gangway was already down and a couple of sergeants were shouting up at the ship. Sergeants, always shouting. Though, in fairness, Tate didn’t shout much. And still got things done. Out beyond this ship was a big old liner called the
General Meigs
, and there were other craft he could see, smallish mine sweepers and a few destroyers, the rest of them LSTs or, like this one, infantry craft. There must be others still hull-down beyond the horizon.Someone said a small coaster had hit a mine last night in the approaches, one the sweepers must have missed. Damned clever, the Russians, inventing mines you could sail over a dozen times and then, on the thirteenth pass, they blew the hell out of you. It took a curious sort of mind to come up with a notion like that, Verity concluded. He wondered if the number 13 had a sinister connotation for Russians as it did in the States.
    Now there was more shouting and the first troops started down the ramps, helmeted, heavily laden with field packs and weapons and canteens and bayonets and all variety of impedimenta hung from belts, plenty of the men slung with bandoliers around their chests and over their shoulders, cloth slings carrying clips of ammo; others lugging machine guns, two men to a gun, one carrying the gun itself, the other man the tripod and the metal cans of ammunition on belts. There were other two-man crews carrying the small mortars, the .60s, one man per tube, the other with the heavy metal plate it rested on.
    “I ain’t never getting on a fucking ship again!” he heard one Marine sing out. They were pale, and some of them looked drawn. You get the runs for ten days, you look pale; you look drawn. Otherwise, they looked pretty much like all the Marines he’d ever seen, some clean-shaven and baby-faced like kids’ bottoms; others hairy and tough; craggy men like Tate and gnomes like Izzo; pimpled boys and top sergeants going gray, men with their helmets securely fastened with chin straps, others with their steel hats cocked back off their faces, straps a-dangle.
    Hell
, Verity thought,
they look like . . . Marines.
    He watched for a while; satisfied he belonged, he walked slowly back up the hill of the town away from the docks in the noon sun. Some of the men were being trucked to the outskirts and others were marching, and suddenly Wonsan was how he had expected to find it, full of Marines and sergeants calling out and people with lists and men shouting hello to other men they knew, men off other ships. It was everything but a liberty town with bars and girls. That’s what they needed, a couple of gin mills, a couple of local girls, and a jukebox, and this could be Oceanside, California.
    They had all the Marines they needed. They might be pale and staggering and unsteady from their long voyage, but they were finally here and there were plenty of them. It was hard to imagine that what was left of the North Koreans could handle this bunch. But you never knew about the Chinese. And Verity remembered the “Japs,” small and skinny and wearing eyeglasses, and how in the beginning the Marines had laughed, contemptuous of