이것이 전쟁이다! for the command to attack. The storms from the south sent churning clouds scudding low over the hilltop and driving rain beat down, Visibility became worse and worse and all radio communication went out. Captain Ike Fenton, commanding the company, stood close behind the firing line, shouting his orders above the noise of rain and rifles and other men. Observers up on the lip of the hill signaled back that the Communists were launching waves of attacking men from over the top of No-Name Ridge, that already they were racing across the valley below, scaling the frontal slopes of the hill and starting to take the crest. Enemy machine-gunners and mortar-men were pouring fire everywhere ahead of their attacking troops. Other Red riflemen were supporting the gunners, and from somewhere to the left they opened fire with a high-velocity, self-propelled gun which sent its shells screaming and ricocheting along the spine of the hill. Fenton brushed aside the useless radio, cupped his hand to his mouth and—with carbine ready—shouted his command to the arc of crouched, momentarily rigid Marines . . . ATTACK! The entire arc of men moved forward. Marine after Marine got up off his belly, hurled his grenade, dropped to his knees—as other Marines went up on their elbows to shoot the Reds flushed by the explosions More Marines reared up, more grenades soared end over end into the cotton patch on the crest above, or beyond its edge and down into the valley below. Captain Ike shouted the command that sent his men into their final lunge to take the crest of the hill, the one sending them all into positions from which there could be no withdrawal—for the success of the entire counterattack and the return of the Perimeter to the edge of the Naktong Hiver depended upon their taking, and holding, that otherwise inconsequential hill. Captain Ike knew that their foul little hilltop was the key to his General's attack, and the point upon which the Communists' drive either was broken . . . or he, and his Marines, died. Ike Fenton had to stay upon the reverse slope of his ridge to co-ordinate its Ⅳ. The Hill l 83
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