이것이 전쟁이다! took more courage for that boy to grip his cans of ammunition and crawl over the dead man's body than for anything he ever had to do again in warfare. And he had to do it, for he was blocking the path of other men also under fire, men who were veterans, who stood up and charged right toward the enemy guns without even a downward glance as they sloshed over the body below. Lightly equipped patrols ranged in front and off the flanks of the column. Most of the Reds encountered faded away without a fight—for they too were under orders to scout and determine the strength of the advancing enemy. The few Communists shot and dropped by the carefully probing Marines were quickly checked to see whether they really were dead—or wounded so badly that they could not leap up, hurling grenades, as soon as the patrol had passed. Corpsmen attached to the main body of the advancing men cared for those wounded enemy soldiers just as they did their own men. When the column halted and orders came down the line to dig-in up on the surrounding hilltops, the Marines, veterans and youngsters alike, knew that real contact and heavy fighting were very near. Then one battalion got the word not to dig-in, but to move out for the silhouetted ridges even farther ahead. Scarcely a word was spoken as the thin string of men wound ever higher into the hills. Each man just carried his load, kept climbing, and seemed swallowed in his own thoughts . . . for now everyone in the outfit understood that theirs would be the rifles to spearhead the counterattack aimed at stopping the enemy breakthrough. The Korean war was no longer a matter for heated discussion at chowtime, but simply an endless question-and-answer game each man played within his own mind—as he wondered whether the Reds would be hit over the next hill . . . beyond the next valley . . . within the next clump of scraggly trees—or maybe, instead of the Marines hitting the Commies, the gooks might fool the hell out of Craig and the Colonel and the Captain and Lieutenant and Sergeant and the whole goddamned bunch and ambush them even as they poked their noses Ⅳ. The Hill l 81
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