Chapter One Thousand Four Hundred Seventy-Eight
19th March 1962
Near Tongrim, Korea
The Army of China was touted as the largest in the world. What that meant in practice was that it was slow moving and ponderous but extremely difficult to stop. When it had made its way across the Yalu River the badly outnumbered Korea Army had thrown everything that they had at it but in the lowlands south of Sinuiju the lack of a geographic barrier had favored the Chinese. The Korean Army had fallen back to a range of hills around the village of Tongrim where the 3rd MID was in the process of digging in.
When the 3rd Marine Infantry Division had been tasked with holding the strategically important road between Sinuiju and Pakchŏn, Tilo had ordered that every Marine, regardless of specialty, drop what they were doing and grab a rifle. The result was that the 3rd MID was at full strength but its numbers were bulked up with hundreds of Cooks, Quartermasters and Mechanics. There would probably be a price to be paid after this because Tilo had stripped the Division of key support staff, but for that to become a problem most of them would still need to be alive. Tilo was trying to project confidence for his men to see, but he was finding it difficult.
Tilo had even gone so far as to go to Brig and take whatever hardcases they hadn’t yet shipped back to Germany. Even with him dangling the offer of a pardon in return for good conduct and distinguishing themselves in combat, Tilo didn’t trust them not to engage in bad behavior in the field. That was why he had kept them in the same Company and close enough to keep a close eye on them. Reier had told that lot that Tilo was doing it because he wanted to surround himself with the real ass kickers and if they thought for an instant that Tilo was some Staff Officer sitting in the rear while there was fighting to be done then they had another thing coming. The scary part was that Tilo had enough of a reputation that they had bought into it. While it was unthinkable that a General might get caught up in the fighting, if they were getting overrun then there was a possibility that it could happen.
Tilo had been told that reinforcements were on the way, but he had not been given a firm time frame as to when that would happen. The Japanese had offered to send an entire Army Corps to Korea only to be rebuffed by the Korean Government. When the Chinese had been saber rattling a couple years earlier the Japanese had quietly sent a few military representatives to lay the groundwork should such a step be necessary. This time, the Koreans didn’t even want that. As Tilo looked through his binoculars at the Chinese troops massing to the north he thought about how nice it was that they had that kind of luxury in Seoul. Nancy had said that she was in contact with the Japanese and German Embassies and was trying to work something out, to see if there might be some way to win the Korean public over. Not necessarily to the side of the Japanese, but to Tilo and his men’s. Sell them the idea that the Japanese Army deserved a chance for the small amount of redemption that they would gain if they helped the 3rd MID. Tilo wasn’t holding his breath, it would probably take more time than he had left to work that miracle.
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The first probing attack had gone ahead as planned and it had gone about as well as Jonny had thought it would. There was a Division dug in along the ridge South of Tongrim. There was artillery in place behind the ridge and machine gun nests all along the front. The ripping cloth sound of an MG42 was unmistakable for anyone who had been in Mexico. The same was true with the clatter of the rifles and the snap-hiss sound of a Panzerfaust. The thing was that the Krauts had obviously improved their anti-tank weapons since Mexico because Chinese tanks were getting knocked out at five or six hundred yards where the old Panzerfaust 250 was exactly that, only effective out to 250 meters. It was fortunate that they didn’t seem to have very many of those or else more tanks would have been lost.
Jonny just hoped that whoever was in charge up there was smart enough to withdraw his men in good order while he still could. It was because tomorrow a force many times the one they had just stood off would be attempting to force the road at the north end of the ridge.
Tumangang, Korea
The elements of the 8th Panzer Dragoon Infantry Brigade and the 26th Jagdpanzer Battalion were the first units to cross the bridge over the Tumen River from Russia followed by the 5th Panzer Brigade. At the guard post on the far side of the bridge, a handful of Korean conscripts stood awestruck at the sight of the lead elements of the 4th Division crossing the bridge. Not just the Lynx Panzers, StuGs, Skorpions and APCs, but hundreds of lorries and halftracks as well.
Olli sat in the Commander’s seat of his Skorpion and whipped off a sarcastic salute to the conscripts as he passed. They didn’t know it yet, but the entire 2nd Army Corps under the Command of some of their greatest heroes from the Second World War was entering Korea. Looking over the splinter shield, Olli couldn’t see him, but Kurt was in the lead Lynx of the 5th Panzer. A few days before they had departed from Germany, they had learned that General of Panzer Dragoons Hans von Mischner had been appointed to Command the entire 2nd. Olli only knew him by reputation, he knew far more about his crazy sister because she was a close friend of Kurt’s wife.
