Harry Turtledove - Bombs Away

SOMEWHERE TO THE SOUTH and east lay Hungnam, the North Korean port on the Sea of Japan. Second Lieutenant Cade Curtis knew that, if he managed to get there, he could hop aboard a ship and live to give the Koreans and the Red Chinese more chances to kill him as the war ground on.

He and the platoon he led stumbled along a dirt track that he thought led in the right direction. He hoped the track led in the right direction, anyhow. The clouds scudding past low overhead were gray-brown and ugly, like the wool from a filthy sheep. With snow and sleet and hail leaking down out of that uncaring sky, he got only glimpses of them, anyhow. Somewhere beyond them shone the sun. He knew that, but he would have had a devil of a time proving it by anything he could see.

Part of him wished it would warm up. Even with a knitted wool cap under his helmet, even with winter boots and long johns and an olive-drab greatcoat, his teeth chattered like castanets. He and everybody he led might freeze to death before they got close to Hungnam.

But if it did warm upto the point, say, where it started pouring icy rain instead of the frigid witches brew coming down nowthe dirt track would turn to a bottomless river of mud. Hed already seen the kind of mud they had here. It could suck the boots right off your feet. Moving fast in that kind of goop (sometimes, moving at all) was impossible. Tanks and halftracks bogged down. Trucks were even worse off. Men on foot had the best chance, but best didnt mean good.

Somehow, though, what made Americans sink to midthigh often seemed to trouble the Reds much less. Kim Il-sungs men, and Maos, carried their weapons and a few magazines of ammo, maybe a knife for eating and for hand-to-hand fighting, and that was about it. They were mostly scrawny little guys, too. They didnt struggle through the mud the way so many overloaded Yankees did.

Im no Yankee, Cade thought. Hed been born in Alabama and lived most of his life in Tennessee. Most of his lifeall nineteen years. It seemed as full and as rich to him as an octogenarians. Why not? It was all the life he had. And if he wasnt a Yankee to himself, he sure as the devil was to the enemy prowling somewhere too close.

He wished to God he were back in Tennessee. It was Thursday, 23 November 1950. In the States, it would be Thanksgiving. Turkey with all the trimmings. Friendship. Fireplaces. Here not far from the Yalu River, Cade had damn all to be thankful for.

A dead dogface lay by the side of the track, staring up at the sky with blind eyes. Blood had frozen on his face and on his belly. Maybe, sooner or later, someone would pick him up and bring him along. More likely, nobody would bother.

One of the GIs near the tail of the ragged column had managed to get a Camel going in spite of the horrible weather. He blew out a mixture of fog and tobacco smoke. After inhaling again, he said, Well make it back okay to Watchacallit on the coast, right, Lieutenant?

Oh, hell, yes, Lefty, Curtis said, hoping he sounded surer than he felt. Lefty was from Akron or Youngstown or Dayton or one of those other places in Ohio where the glow of foundries lit up the clouds from below at night. They werent great big cities, not next to places like Detroit or Chicago or Cleveland, but people who came out of them had that same kind of up-yours-Mac attitude.

Lefty tossed away the butt. I aint had this much joy since we left the fuckin reservoir, yknow?

Not that long ago, Cade said.

Yeah, well, time flies when youre havin fun, right? Lefty fired up another cigarette with his Zippo. A beat slower than he might have, he held out the pack to Curtis. You want one?

No, thanks. Never got the habit, Cade said. Combat turned a lot of guys into smokers. From what they told him, you got a little buzz and a little relaxation. And cigarettes came with your K-rations. They couldnt very well be bad for you, could they? He hadnt found out for himself yet. One of these days, maybe, but not yet.

Off in the distance, American 105s rumbled. With luck, the heavy shells would blow some Reds straight to the devil. Big guns? Armor? Airplanes? In every category like that, UN forcesAmericans, mostlyhad an enormous edge on the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and the Peoples Republic of China.

The enemy knew it as well as Cade did. You couldnt very well fight this war without knowing it. So it seemed logical that the side at a disadvantage in weaponry couldnt hope to win, and might as well throw in its hand.

But the Reds came at it from a different angle. The only way for them to put out a fire was by piling bodies on it? Okay, theyd do that. Casualties didnt worry them, any more than casualties had worried Stalin when he took on the Nazis. We need to spend a division to get rid of an American regiment? Fine. Spend it, and make sure the next divisions ready to go behind the lines.

North Korean and Red Chinese losses were four, five, six times as many as those of the UN troops they faced. Their generals, and the commissars who told those generals what to do, didnt give a damn. Men were as disposable to them as bullets or boots.

The really scary thing was, they could win that way. The Reds made brave soldiersoften braver than the South Koreans whose fat the United States had pulled off the fire. They swarmed forward against machine guns, against tanks, against damn near anything. From all Cade could gather, worse things would happen to them if they hung back than whatever American shells and bullets dished out.