Retreat, Hell! Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  IX

  X

  XI

  XII

  XIII

  XIV

  XV

  XVI

  XVII

  XVIII

  Afterword

  Praise for RETREAT, HELL!

  “Griffin, who served in Korea, sticks more closely to the action and moves ahead with galvanized self-assurance.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Another solid entry . . . Veterans of the series will enjoy finding old comrades caught up in fresh adventures, while new-guy readers can easily enter here and pick up the ongoing story.” —Publishers Weekly

  "The author has a knack for smoothly combining fact with fiction, giving his work a realistic veneer.” —Booklist

  W. E. B. GRIFFIN’S CLASSIC SERIES

  THE CORPS

  The bestselling saga of the heroes we call Marines . . .

  “THE BEST CHRONICLER OF THE U.S. MILITARY EVER TO PUT PEN TO PAPER.” —The Phoenix Gazette

  “GREAT READING. A superb job of mingling fact and fiction . . . [Griffin’s] characters come to life.”

  —The Sunday Oklahoman

  “THIS MAN HAS REALLY DONE HIS HOMEWORK . . . I confess to impatiently awaiting the appearance of succeeding books in the series.” —The Washington Post

  “ACTION-PACKED . . . DIFFICULT TO PUT DOWN.”

  —Marine Corps Gazette

  HONOR BOUND

  The high drama and real heroes of World War II . . .

  "ROUSING ... AN IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING ADVENTURE. ” —Kirkus Reviews

  "INTRICATELY PLOTTED and packed with those accurate details that fans of Griffin have come to expect.” —Booklist

  “A TAUTLY WRITTEN STORY whose twists and turns will keep readers guessing until the last page. ”—Publishers Weekly

  “A SUPERIOR WAR STORY.” —Library Journal

  BROTHERHOOD OF WAR

  The series that launched W. E. B. Griffin’s phenomenal career . . .

  “AN AMERICAN EPIC.” —Tom Clancy

  “FIRST-RATE. Griffin, a former soldier, skillfully sets the stage, melding credible characters, a good eye for detail, and colorful, gritty dialogue into a readable and entertaining story.” —The Washington Post Book World

  “ABSORBING, salted-peanuts reading filled with detailed and fascinating descriptions of weapons, tactics, Green Beret training, army life, and battle.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A CRACKLING GOOD STORY. It gets into the hearts and minds of those who by choice or circumstance are called upon to fight our nation’s wars.”

  —William R. Corson, Lt. Col. (Ret.) U.S.M.C., author of The Betrayal and The Armies of Ignorance

  “A MAJOR WORK . . . MAGNIFICENT . . . POWERFUL . . . If books about warriors and the women who love them were given medals for authenticity, insight, and honesty, Brotherhood of War would be covered with them.”

  —William Bradford Huie, author of The Klansman and The Execution of Private Slovik

  BADGE OF HONOR

  Griffin’s electrifying epic series of a big-city police force . . .

  "DAMN EFFECTIVE ... He captivates you with characters the way few authors can.” —Tom Clancy

  "TOUGH, AUTHENTIC . . . POLICE DRAMA AT ITS BEST . . . Readers will feel as if they’re part of the investigation, and the true-to-life characters will soon feel like old friends. Excellent reading.” —Dale Brown, bestselling author of

  Storming Heaven and Fatal Terrain

  “COLORFUL . . . GRITTY . . . TENSE.”

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer

  “A REAL WINNER.” —New York Daily News

  MEN AT WAR

  The legendary OSS—fighting a silent war of spies and assassins in the shadows of World War II . . .

  “WRITTEN WITH A SPECIAL FLAIR for the military heart and mind.” —Winfield Daily Courier (KS)

  “SHREWD, SHARP, ROUSING ENTERTAINMENT.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “CAMEOS BY SUCH HISTORICAL FIGURES as William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., David Niven, and Peter Ustinov lend color . . . suspenseful.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  TITLES BY W.E.B. GRIFFIN

  HONOR BOUND

  HONOR BOUND

  BLOOD AND HONOR

  SECRET HONOR

  BROTHERHOOD

  OF WAR

  BOOK I: THE LIEUTENANTS

  BOOK II: THE CAPTAINS

  BOOK III: THE MAJORS

  BOOK IV: THE COLONELS

  BOOK V: THE BERETS

  BOOK VI: THE GENERALS

  BOOK VII: THE NEW BREED

  BOOK VIII: THE AVIATORS

  BOOK IX: SPECIAL OPS

  THE CORPS

  BOOK I: SEMPER FI

  BOOK II: CALL TO ARMS

  BOOK III: COUNTERATTACK

  BOOK IV: BATTLEGROUND

  BOOK V: LINE OF FIRE

  BOOK VI: CLOSE COMBAT

  BOOK VII: BEHIND THE LINES

  BOOK VIII: IN DANGER’S PATH

  BOOK IX: UNDER FIRE

  BOOK X: RETREAT, HELL!

  BADGE OF HONOR

  BOOK I: MEN IN BLUE

  BOOK II: SPECIAL OPERATIONS

  BOOK III: THE VICTIM

  BOOK IV: THE WITNESS

  BOOK V: THE ASSASSIN

  BOOK VI: THE MURDERERS

  BOOK VII: THE INVESTIGATORS

  BOOK VIII: FINAL JUSTICE

  MEN AT WAR

  BOOK I: THE LAST HEROES

  BOOK II: THE SECRET WARRIORS

  BOOK III: THE SOLDIER SPIES

  BOOK IV: THE FIGHTING AGENTS

  BOOK V: THE SABOTEURS

  BOOK VI: THE DOUBLE AGENTS

  PRESIDENTIAL AGENT

  BOOK I: BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

  BOOK II: THE HOSTAGE

  BOOK III: THE HUNTERS

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  RETREAT, HELL!

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author.

  Co
pyright © 2004 by W.E.B. Griffin.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-3465-9

  JOVE®

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  JOVE is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  THE CORPS is respectfully dedicated to the memory of

  Colonel Drew James Barrett, Jr., USMC

  19 April 1919-1 May 2003

  Second Lieutenant Drew James Barrett III, USMC

  3 April 1945-27 February 1969

  Died of wounds, Quang Nam Province,

  Republic of Vietnam

  Major Alfred Lee Butler III, USMC

  4 September 1950-8 February 1984

  Died as the result of terrorist action, Beirut, Lebanon

  Donald L. Schomp

  A Marine Fighter Pilot

  who became a legendary U.S. Army Master Aviator

  RIP 9 April 1989

  “Semper Fi!”

  Korean Peninsula

  Prologue

  Until August 1945, when General Order Number One, the protocol for the surrender—and occupation—of Japan was being somewhat hastily drafted in Washington, the 38th Parallel, which runs across the Korean Peninsula, had been just one line on a map of the globe.

  At the time, World War II was just about over. Nagasaki and Hiroshima had been obliterated by atomic bombs, and Japan was willing to surrender. The Soviet Union had just— somewhat belatedly—declared war on the Japanese Empire, and had already started to move troops into the Japanese “Protectorates” of Manchuria and Korea.

  President Truman, who had already learned not to trust the Soviet Union, realized that to keep the Red Army from occupying all of Korea, a border—“a demarcation line”—between the northern part of the Korean Peninsula and the southern, where the United States planned to station troops, was needed.

  If Korea was divided—about equally—at the 38th Parallel, the United States would control Seoul, the capital, and the major ports of Inchon—near Seoul—and Pusan— at the southern tip of the peninsula.

  The division at the 38th Parallel was proposed to the Soviets as the demarcation line, and they raised no objections. The seeds for what became the People’s Democratic Republic of North Korea and the Republic of South Korea were sown.

  Four years and eleven months later, the Inmun Gun— the Soviet-trained North Korean Army—invaded South Korea across the 38th Parallel with the announced intention of “unifying” Korea.

  The attack officially—and in fact—came as a “complete surprise” to the United States. United States intelligence agencies at all levels had failed to perform their basic duty to warn of an impending attack on the United States or its allies.

  It was hard then—and still is, more than half a century later—to understand why we didn’t see the attack coming.

  Immediately after World War II, Stalin had managed to establish surrogate governments in East Germany, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia—and North Korea. On 5 March 1946, in a speech at Fulton, Missouri, British Wartime Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill said, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”

  President Harry S Truman had become very suspicious of Soviet intentions even before he ordered the use of atomic weapons against Japan, and he had acted to foil them.

  For example, Truman had courageously dispatched American advisers—actually the first special forces/operations soldiers, long before anyone even thought of wearing a green beret—to Greece, where they successfully thwarted Soviet intentions to take over the birthplace of democracy.

  And when the Soviets tried to force the Americans, French, and English from Berlin, Truman had ordered the Air Lift, which saw U.S. Air Force transports landing round the clock at sixty-second intervals to keep Berlin fed, and the Western Allies in the former German capital.

  Many historians now believe that the reason Stalin authorized his surrogate North Korean Army to invade South Korea is that the United States had actually led him to believe we would raise no objections.

  On 12 January 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined President Truman’s Asian policy in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Acheson “drew a line” of countries the United States considered “essential to its national interests,” a euphemism everyone understood to mean the United States would go to war to defend.

  Acheson placed Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines within the “American defense perimeter.” Taiwan and Korea were not mentioned.

  The United States was then “completely surprised” five months later when, in the early morning of 25 June 1950, the North Koreans invaded across the 38th Parallel.

  Not that twenty-four hours’—or ten days’ or six months’—advance warning of the attack would have been of much real use: The Inmun Gun was well trained, well disciplined, and well armed. The South Korean armed forces were not.

  The South Koreans had been denied, for example, heavy artillery because some of Truman’s advisers believed they might use it to invade North Korea. South Korea had also been denied modern aircraft, tanks, and other military hardware by the same reasoning. And, of course, for reasons of economy.

  There were only several hundred American troops in South Korea on that Sunday morning, assigned to the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), and they were armed only with their individual weapons.

  The Eighth United States Army was scattered among the islands of Japan, but it was not prepared to fight a war.

  Blame can fairly be laid for this:

  The President of the United States, under the Constitution, is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. The authors of the Constitution wanted to make absolutely sure that the armed forces were firmly under civilian control, and gave that control to the President.

  With that authority, of course, came responsibility. It is the responsibility—the duty—of the President to ensure that the armed forces are prepared to wage war when called upon to do so. In practical terms, this means the President ensures that the uniformed officers in command of the armed forces meet their responsibilities to keep their forces in readiness. In turn, that means that the armed forces are trained and equipped to go to war.

  There is little question now that the senior American officer in the Pacific, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, failed in his duty to make sure that the Eighth Army under his command was both trained and equipped to go to war. On 25 June 1950, it was neither.

  That it was not adequately trained is entirely MacArthur’s fault, but to place blame for the literally disgraceful lack of equipment in the Eighth United States Army, it is necessary to go all the way to the top of the chain of command.

  United States Forces, Far East, were under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur repeatedly advised them of the sorry state of his equipment, and requested to be supplied with what he believed he needed.

  The Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs—there were several during this period—repeatedly requested of their superior, the Secretary of Defense, that the U.S. Armed Forces worldwide (not only MacArthur’s forces in Japan) be adequately supplied with the necessary equipment.

  Truman’s Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, openly boasted at the time that he had first cut military spending to the bone, and then cut some more.

  He h
ad. At Johnson’s orders, there were two battalions (instead of the three considered necessary) in most of the U.S. Army’s regiments. And there were two regiments (instead of three) in all but one of the divisions.

  The Secretary of Defense is, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appointed by the President. Once Louis Johnson had been confirmed, President Truman was responsible for his actions, good or bad.

  The blame for the inadequate equipment in the Eighth U.S. Army—and just about everywhere else—has to be laid on the desk of President Harry S Truman, right beside the small sign reading “The Buck Stops Here” that he kept there.

  There were, of course, extenuating circumstances.

  Congress, for one, was not in the mood to appropriate the billions of dollars it would have cost to bring the armed forces back to the state of preparedness they had been in five years before, when, on 2 September 1945, MacArthur had accepted the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire on the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Harbor.

  And Korea was almost at the bottom of the list of problems with which President Truman had to deal on a daily basis. Most of these problems had to do with thwarting Soviet mischief in Europe, the Near East, and even Africa.

  The Soviets hadn’t done nearly so well in the Far East, and the credit for that unquestionably belongs to Douglas MacArthur, who had flatly refused to permit the Soviets to participate in the occupation of Japan.

  MacArthur had also successfully sown the seed of democratic government in the mind of the Japanese people, and taken wide and generally successful steps to get the war-ravaged Japanese economy moving.

  As far as the disgraceful condition of the Eighth United States Army in Japan was concerned, one has to remember that all armies are rank conscious.

  General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was not only the senior officer on active duty, but he had been Army Chief of Staff when the general officers in the 1950 Pentagon had been captains and majors. In World War II, MacArthur had been a theater commander, commanding more men of all services than there were now in 1950 in all the armed forces of the United States.