Luther salvaged wood from the fallen ceiling and built a fire in the middle of the front room. Over it he hung a square tin filled with water. As the water heated, he removed his clothing inch by agonizing inch down to bare skin. His large, spare body was surprising white against the purple-black streamers of dried blood.
From his knapsack he removed a worn brick of army soap and washed slowly, carefully. He barely noticed the scalding water as he cleansed his wrist.
This was Luther’s second war. He’d learned to survive in the first. Routine is good: routine plus pain prevents thought, and Luther did not want to think. He washed his wounds, under his arms, his crotch, his feet, and between his toes carefully. He was as patient and thorough as a cat.
From his pack he removed bandages, and where he could reach, sprinkled penicillin powder before taping the field dressings in place. At times the pain caused him to cry out. It didn’t occur to him to use the morphine syrette in his pack. War is supposed to hurt. It wasn’t a game, never was. The hole in his shoulder burned. It gnawed impatiently at his strength.
From his pack he took khaki shorts, socks, T-shirt, trousers, and dressed. He would wash clothes the next day. Martin Luther Cole was an orderly man. He heated a can of K-rations and ate, chewing each mouthful carefully before swallowing.
Still, he did not think, attempt to understand. He was where he was. He was alive. He could move. It was enough.
In the distance, at every point of the compass, the war muttered and snarled, Old Testament cruel, but did not approach his sanctuary.
Darkness came. He didn’t notice. He made coffee and sipped slowly. The fire died. Using strips of reed blasted from the walls, he built a shelter in the corner of the room.
He gathered his gear and dragged it within. He crawled inside, curled up in his poncho and slept.
Two hours later a North Korean patrol moved past the farmhouse. One soldier, a sergeant like Luther, slipped into the ruined building and carefully shone a flashlight around the interior. He didn’t smell the foreign odors, and seeing nothing but debris, hurriedly rejoined his squad.
An hour later a fierce fire fight flared several miles to the south. Not long after, the North Korean Sergeant stumbled by Luther’s hideout, headed north. He carried one man, terribly wounded. It was what he was supposed to do. Minutes behind the North Korean soldier and his wounded burden, a column of American soldiers roared by, headed for the ridge Luther had been forced to abandon. In his cave Luther did not move.
At dawn, Luther’s eyes, thick with an unhealthy residue, opened a fraction at a time. The accumulated injuries hit him all over and he jerked upward with pain. He tried not to scream and groaned deep in his belly. It was an eerie sound, like a steer lowing.
Twenty minutes later he crawled from the pile of debris, and, rifle in hand, staggered outside. He scouted the area. He was alone. In the distance the glowering Gods of war, muttered insanely.
He looked toward low, dun-colored hills and fragments of the past three days came unbidden to his thoughts. He had gathered the men into smaller and smaller defensive positions. More men were killed running away than facing the enemy.
Luther moved through a twilit maze of trenches and bunkers, reassuring here, making a joke there. He came to Bobby Roy’s hole at the end of the line. Bobby Roy stared straight ahead. He didn’t hear Luther arrive. Every so often he shivered like a man with fever.
“Bobby Roy?” Luther spoke his name softly.
The boy twisted around violently, carbine coming up to shoot.
“Easy, boy, easy.” Luther slipped into his fighting hole, deflected the rifle away from his chest.
Luther waited for the terror to leave Bobby Roy’s eyes. Luther reached out and placed his hand on Bobby Roy’s shoulder. The boy calmed down immediately. Luther knew what was wrong. He always knew.
“Bobby, ain’t nothin’ you do will make me ashamed of you. You ain’t a coward, won’t never be one. You been out here six month, and you never ran backward once.”
Luther looked toward the torn slopes becoming blurred with darkness.
“Tonight yore agin the wall. One side duty, tother is something you fears worse than dyin’. Either way I won’t never be ashamed of you.”
Bobby’s head dropped and his shoulders shook. All his fears washed away in tears. He held Luther’s hand to his shoulder. When it was done he looked up at Luther, grateful and ashamed.
“You won’t tell no one I cried, will you, Sarge?”
“Nothin’ to tell, Bobby Roy. Y’all stay sharp, heah? They’ll be coming round midnight.”
“I will be here, sergeant Cole.” Bobby Roy Pettis spoke with finality.
“Never doubted it, Bobby. Roy”
Luther disappeared into the night. The North Koreans attacked at twelve-oh-four. It continued till dawn. At first light the battered, hollow-eyed soldiers of sergeant Cole’s squad looked around at the devastation. They looked at themselves to confirm what could barely be believed. Some were still alive. There were many dead and wounded.
Luther made his way down the line, his left arm tied to his body with an undershirt. A battle-crazed Korean had broken it with a rifle butt during the night. At the end of the line he came to Bobby Roy’s hole. It was empty. He called out Bobby’s name softly. There was no answer. Nothing stirred.
He crawled around the hole and found Bobby Roy, his hands sunk into the throat of a dead soldier. There were others, many others spread around the hole.
Kneeling in the brown mud and debris, Luther looked over the carnage. He lay down and put his head on his folded arm. After a few moments he got back to his knees.
“I ain’t ashamed of you, Bobby Roy, I ain’t no ways ashamed,” Luther whispered.
He fought off the memories with effort. Portions of Luther’s mind still functioned; heat water, eat K rations, drink coffee. Sit, as slow as an arthritic old man, Clean rifle, reload, survey wounds and re-bandage; check contents of pack – all in robotic silence.
When these things were done, he sat in front of the fire. Again memory relentlessly retrieved the past. Bitter tears washed down his bearded face.
Martin Luther Cole was twenty-four years old. He fought the Japanese for two years in the South Pacific. Now he fought North Koreans and Chinese in the Land of the Morning Calm.
He made no sound. He wept not for himself, but for his men. He was responsible. All his adult history was defined by a deep sense of obligation. He promised to care for the men in his small command; boys really, and they were dead, all of them.
‘A promise made is a promise kept.’ His Daddy told him that when he was a small boy.
He tried to shut them away in that place where men store the faces of war. Survival first. He was still alone in a terrible and hostile land.
He looked around tiredly. Something he’d seen when he arrived at the farmhouse wanted his attention, but he couldn’t remember what it was.
Luther struggled to his feet and walked into the back room with its gaping hole in the rear wall. Something wasn’t right. The wall! It was unusually thick: two, maybe three feet. He moved over to it, stumbling over broken beams and blasted hunks of hardened mud. Near the bottom edge where the explosion had burst open the wall, was a shape too natural to have been caused by a bursting shell. A cache had been built into the wall, the size of a large suitcase. Without the explosion