이것이 전쟁이다! exploded all over the positions and down the slope to the rear. One Red machinegunner found the exact range and began clipping the stems of the cotton through which the Marines were crawling and firing. His longest burst raked the ridge, raked it again, and came back a third time as if he knew . . . his second sweep had caught a Marine squarely in the pit of his stomach, driven him half upright, where the last one struck him again the chest, and sent him spinning back into the cotton field, not to move again. As more and more men fell and it became impossible to pull another man from his firing position in the line, South Korean peasants, who had been acting as ammunition carriers, were inducted as litter-bearers for the wounded. Their stolid Asian features revealed nothing of what they thought about the battle raging just behind them—but the way in which a rough peasant encircled a rough Marine with his arms, trying to ease the pain of another man's shattered knee, was the act of mercy and tenderness itself, and belied the look of indifference on the face above. A corporal machine-gunner, named Leonard Hayworth, slithered over from the top of the hill. He had come back for more grenades. He and the other Marines along the line were hurling them down over the lip of the ridge to blast the again-advancing Communists off its face. He was told that there were no more, nor was there more ammunition for his machine-gun, nor reinforcements to take the place of the wounded and dead . . . nor even communication with the rear. His eyes swung searchingly along the edge of the ridge, then up into the rainy sky. Slow, heavy tears started down across his face. In a voice almost impossible to understand, for he worked over each word as though it was nearly beyond his power to form it upon his lips, he choked brokenly, “Can't see 'em. Only two us still there. Can't see 'em. Rest dead . . . wounded. Grenades! Grenades! Can't see 'em! Can't see gooks in rain. Can't see! Keep killing us! Where hell mortars?” When told that all of the fire observers for the mortars had been wounded or killed, he sat numbly for a moment, Ⅳ. The Hill l 85
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