이것이 전쟁이다! right behind us as we skidded between the gun and an old stone-and-mud wall. I caught one sidewise mental picture of the battery's fire control antennae toppling over just at our heels. A direct hit. The accuracy of the fire and the way it had started immediately upon the arrival of the helicopter and the tanks were ample testimony to the efficiency of the enemy's observers hidden in the crags above us, and the really great marksmanship of their gunners. Only the fact that the Marines were dug so deeply into the shoulders of the ridge kept the toll from being fearful. Even so the muffled cries for corpsmen coming from the swirling dust along the mountainside told sadly that once again the wounded and dying were among us. And I thought to myself that it was one hell of a way to launch the long-awaited “Big Offensive.” The drive had been set for daybreak. It was then nearly midmorning. Except for the junk flying through the air following each explosion, the only thing I saw moving was a lovely emerald dragonfly which balanced for a moment on the back at my filthy right hand then darted away across riverbed. Just when it had begun to seem that the Reds’ supply of ammunition was inexhaustible and their gunners tireless, a new sound echoed down from the peaks . . . but this was good. Marine Corsair fighter planes were circling high over the mountains, having answered an emergency radio order from Craig’s CP. An artillery observation spotter plane moved over from another sector of the front. It took several minutes for the spotter to locate his targets but then the Corsairs peeled off diving to attack, rockets whoomed among the crags, wing cannons ripped off burst upon burst and the enemy began getting his first taste of the hell that the Marines were soon to start shoving down his throat. Yet, for all the hell poured down upon the Communists, the war in Korea was really quite young with much of Marines’ own share of that hell then unborn. The Battle of The Hill—the Fight for the City—the Great Retreat, were still history to come and suffering unknown. . . . Ⅲ. Korea 1950 l 47
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