The Marines of Autumn: A Novel of the Korean War Read Online Free PDF

weapons. Four huskies at a time took hold of a neatly folded tent, a big package of green canvas weighing a few hundred pounds, and slung it into the bed of a six-by truck.
    “These trucks going by sea, too?” Verity asked.
    “No, sir, I believe they’ll move overland, meeting the division at Wonsan.”
    “Well, if they can do it we can.”
    Tate patted the radio paternally. “Would the captain like to put on the headset and start listening now? Try it out?”
    “What kind is this, Gunny?”
    “This is the best field radio we have, Captain. An SFR two-forty. Fine piece of equipment, single-sideband and amplification, sending and receiving, of course, and pretty good range. Only trouble is the weight. A man couldn’t carry it in combat.”
    “Heavy, is it?”
    “About ninety pounds. Just fine for the backseat of a jeep. Want to give her a try?”
    The gunnery sergeant beamed, proud of the radio, pleased that this new captain they’d imposed on his good nature would have the bestequipment to work with, relieved that he wouldn’t have to apologize for the hardware the way Marine NCOs so often did what with the antiquated rebuilt junk they had, bought secondhand from the army.
    “Well, Gunny, the fact is I don’t know anything about radio. Don’t even know how to turn it on.” Verity smiled pleasantly at the gunnery sergeant. It was worth it to see Tate’s face.
    “Well, yessir, I must have gotten the wrong impression. I was told to come down here and wait for a Captain Verity that was going to monitor radio while we traveled about, seeing the country, so to speak, and listening in.”
    “That’s just what we’re going to do, Gunny. So tune in and I’ll start listening while we drive and you can sort of teach me how to run her as we go along. . . .”
    “Yessir.” Tate was back in control; it takes a lot to unsettle a Marine gunny. “Except there are a lot of bandits out there. . . .”
    Verity, remembering North China in ’45, took him literally. “You mean real bandits?”
    “Nosir, guerrilla bands some, but mainly broken North Korean units, battalions, and regiments wandering around out there after being whipped, trying to get home. Couple of Marines in a jeep driving through run into a regiment, doesn’t matter how beat up the regiment is; it wins. Pitches a shutout.”
    Tate was like that, sensible, competent. Did things well. In that, the gunny reminded Verity of his wife.
     
    “Is there anything you can’t do?” he asked Elizabeth.
    “Can’t dance. I’m a klutz.”
    But she was fluent in French.
    “I attended a French boarding school for the unruly children of the rich,” Elizabeth said.
    And in consequence, she sang to Kate this little song:
“Sur le pont d’Avignon,
    On la danse, on la danse.
    Sur le pont d’Avignon,
    On la danse, tout en coup.”
    Once when they were in Paris and Kate was just a year old, Tom and Elizabeth, having dined well, actually did dance on one of the Seine bridges by midnight.
    “We’re not exactly Fred and Ginger,” she admitted, laughing, and he agreed, “Yes, Jailbait, you are a klutz.”
    After she died he took up the practice of singing “Sur le pont d’Avignon” to his daughter Kate and promising one day he would dance with her on Paris bridges.
     
    They came across their driver late that same day. In an army brig.
    The provost told Captain Verity and Gunny Tate they’d caught a Marine stealing.
    “They call a brig a prison,” the prisoner complained. “No wonder the army is so screwed up, Captain, sir.”
    His name was Izzo.
    “Important people in South Philadelphia,” he said, “a respected family. We had a barbershop, a beauty salon. The bus for the racetrack left every day from our front door. Civic responsibility, pillars of the community. I had a cousin became a priest. Didn’t work out. He chased skirts and left after a few years. But the good intentions were there. You can tell people from their good intentions,