The North Building

By Jefferson Flanders

New York, January 1951. When columnist Dennis Collins returns to his hometown after covering the brutal Chosin Reservoir battle in Korea, he finds his newspaper closed down and New York on edge about a possible European war with the Russians. Collins is reluctantly drawn into an investigation of leaked American military secrets that focuses on the British diplomats Donald Maclean and Kim Philby (later exposed as members of the infamous Cambridge Five spy ring).

As his search for the truth takes him to Washington, Paris, and London, Collins enters a shadowy world of intrigue where moral boundaries blur and the line between justice and revenge is easily crossed. The North Building tells a story of love and personal redemption, seamlessly blending fact and fiction as it takes the reader from the foxholes of Korea to the corridors of power in the West, with the fate of nations, and individuals, hanging in the balance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jefferson Flanders
• Release date: Jun 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9780988784093

Jefferson Flanders

Jefferson Flanders is an author, educator, and independent journalist. During the course of his career, he has been an editor, newspaper columnist, sportswriter, radio commentator, college professor, and publishing executive.

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3

Chosin-Map

Part One

Washington, D.C.

She kept the newspaper clippings in a manila envelope at the bottom of her cedar hope chest, hidden safely under one of her favorite crocheted sweaters. When she was sure that she would not be interrupted, it took only moments for her to go to the chest in the corner of her bedroom and retrieve the envelope stuffed with his latest columns.

The last day of 1950 found Penny Steele opening that bulky envelope at her dressing table and spreading several long narrow strips of newsprint on the flat surface in front of her. She would have some time to reread them without distraction or fear of interruption for Caleb was asleep in the nursery, Bernice was downstairs in the kitchen preparing dinner, and Matthew was out running errands.

Matthew was pleased with her—she had agreed to attend the New Year’s Eve party hosted by Allen and Clover Dulles at their home in Georgetown. It would be difficult for her to stand there next to her husband and smile and listen to the shoptalk of the determined men of the Agency and smile at their inside jokes, but she was resolved to do it. She would wear her latest gown and put on her makeup and her best pearls and brave her way through it—no matter how down she felt, or how much she now hated social events. She owed Matthew that much.

She had not told him that her sense of dread, that some disastrous event was in the offing, had returned. She had not leveled with Dr. Rifkin either, and to avoid her therapist’s gentle but insistent questioning (How have you been sleeping? Do you have any dreams to share?) she had skipped her two last sessions. She had coped during the holidays—a bright smile for her parents when they visited on Christmas Day and a quick kiss and hug for Matthew when they exchanged gifts (a Vacheron & Constantin pink gold wristwatch for her and three new Dunhill shell pipes for him)—and she was sure she could make it through a few more days, perhaps even weeks, until her mood might lift for the better.

She picked up the last column Dennis had written from Korea, from the second week of December, the one headlined A Valorous March to the Sea. Whenever she read his columns she could hear the sound of his blunt, New York-accented voice in her head. She turned to his opening paragraphs.

December 10 – I was there in Chinhung-ni this morning in the bitter Arctic-like cold to greet the first brave Marines who had fought their way out of a Chinese Communist trap enveloping them at the Chosin Reservoir.

They held their heads high as they arrived in this small, ramshackle Korean hamlet, even though they were exhausted and battered. They had been tested by battle and the extreme elements of wind, cold, and ice, asked to bear conditions almost beyond human endurance. These tired and unshaven warriors with their shoulders hunched over from the biting cold and their faces drawn and wan from fatigue were the vanguard of the First Marine Division commanded by General Oliver P. Smith, some 7,500 men who somehow had survived the concerted assault of the Chinese over the past two weeks.

Surrounded and facing overwhelming odds, General Smith had ordered his Marines and elements of the Army’s Seventh Regiment to withdraw from Chosin. They were to march nearly 80 miles to the coast, to the sea, where U.S. Navy ships waited to evacuate them. To reach that safe harbor, his men would have to fight their way from Yudam-ni and Hagaru—obscure towns near the man-made reservoir—down the dirt and gravel-topped main supply route, to the canyon below and Koto-ri, another small hamlet. From there it was another 10 miles of twisting, icy, and contested road before relative safety in Chinhung-ni and then on another 33 miles by truck to the port city of Hungnam.

Yet this was not a retreat, at least not according to the Marines. As far as they were concerned, General Smith had it right when he told this correspondent and other members of the press that you couldn’t retreat when you were surrounded, it was a matter of advancing in a different direction.

She stopped reading and closed her eyes and tried to visualize the scene, the winter landscape, the cold, the fear. What must it have been like for the men Dennis wrote about—many of them barely out of high school? Surrounded, trapped, unsure whether they would survive. What kinds of risks had Dennis taken in accompanying the Marines? Had he come under fire? He had always been stubborn and brave to the point of foolhardiness, and she knew he would have stayed as close to the action as he could.

She shivered for a moment. She had seen some of the photographs of the Chosin retreat, the column of Marines trudging through the snow, the mountains rising around them, a barren, unforgiving place. She turned back to his column, remembering how Dennis had told her once that his goal as a newspaperman was to make the reader feel what he felt, to capture in words what he saw around him.

The bravery and courage of these men defy description. Surrounded, outnumbered, forced to fight in brutal conditions—heavy snow and nighttime temperatures reaching some 20 degrees below zero where weapons jammed and extremities froze—and short of rations and winter clothing, they faced the worst odds without complaint and overcame them. Many of them survived on nothing more than Tootsie Rolls and jelly beans—the only food that didn’t freeze solid.

They never gave up, never lost hope. Not the Marines who broke out of their encirclement at Yudam-ni near the northwest corner of the Chosin Reservoir. Not Lt. Kurt Chew-Een Lee, the tough Chinese-American officer who led a last-ditch relief column through a snowstorm to relieve the besieged men of Fox Company guarding the strategic Toktong Pass. Not the Royal Marines fighting side-by-side with their American allies. Not the supply clerks and cooks and mechanics who picked up rifles and defended the Hagaru perimeter from the enemy. Not New York City-born Private Hector Cafferata who, despite severe wounds, single-handedly held off several human wave attacks on Fox Hill, at one point using his carbine to bat away hand grenades hurled at him like he was Joe DiMaggio hitting fastballs at Yankee Stadium. Not the combat engineers who ignored heavy Chinese fire and placed an air-dropped Treadway bridge across a deep gorge at Funchilin Pass, allowing the Marine column to proceed south. None of them gave up.

She stopped reading again and found herself gazing out the bedroom window at the oak and maple trees in the backyard, stripped bare in the winter. She knew at least that Dennis was safe now. Her closest friend in New York, Evelyn Fairchild, had heard from an editor at the Sentinel that Dennis had been called back home. Evelyn had been faithfully clipping and mailing his columns to Penny for months. It was hard to find the Sentinel on Washington newsstands and Penny didn’t want Matthew to know how closely she was following Dennis’ coverage of the war; Penny was grateful for her friend’s help.

Yet for all of the valor of these men and their officers, too many Marines and soldiers died in the valleys and ridges of the forbidding, near-impassable Taebaek Mountains of northeast Korea. They paid the ultimate price for the arrogance and stubbornness of senior officers in Tokyo who bragged that advancing American troops would be home by Christmas. These same commanders disregarded warnings that the Red Chinese would enter the war if United Nations forces crossed the 38th parallel and advanced north toward the Yalu River and the border with China.

Worse, when it became clear on the ground that we faced an entirely new war with a determined and battle-hardened enemy willing to sacrifice 10 of his soldiers for every one of ours, General Douglas MacArthur and his staff failed to adjust to these new realities.

General MacArthur revels in taking risks and defying the odds. He bet that the North Koreans would be unprepared for a surprise amphibious assault at Inchon and he was right. He gambled that the Chinese would not risk attacking his advancing armies in the teeth of a Manchurian winter and he was wrong. He lost that bet. And the Marines and soldiers were the ones who paid for his mistake in blood and death.

The lieutenants and captains and majors on Korean battlefields have been, for the most part, magnificent in their inventiveness, bravery, and resolute courage. They have done all that has been asked of them, and more. Yet the men of the First Marine Division, and their now beleaguered comrades-in-arms in the Eighth Army, deserve better leadership at the highest levels of command. That is where they have been failed. I wish that this were not the case, but it is the reality, one that the Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall and President Truman must change. Too much rides on it now. They must act decisively before it is too late, before we see a repeat of the Chosin battle, or worse.

She knew those last few paragraphs of his column would mean trouble for Dennis. She had lived in Washington long enough to know that those who revered General MacArthur, especially his right-wing supporters in the Republican Party, were sensitive to any slights to their hero. Some had even been promoting the General as a Presidential candidate for 1952, although the military setbacks in Korea on MacArthur’s watch had quieted such talk.

It was like Dennis to hold MacArthur responsible, by name. She had always loved that about him—he never shied away from telling unpleasant truths, although it often came in the form of a joke or wisecrack. She wondered whether the grim realities of the war had diminished his sense of humor. She hoped not.

She returned the newspaper clippings to the envelope and then placed it under the clothing in the chest. She sat down at her dressing table and found a small pad of paper and pencil. She rarely made New Year’s resolutions, but there was unfinished business she needed to resolve in the year ahead. She prayed that she could make progress on her condition, and that she wouldn’t need any more extreme treatment, but there was always that possibility. She couldn’t delay any longer.

She knew she couldn’t wait. She would have to convince Matthew of the moral correctness of what she wanted them to do about Caleb. She had raised it once with him and he had been cool to the idea. He told her that he wanted to think about it, and about all of the consequences. She was sure that he would come around to supporting her wishes. Then she would find a way to bring Dennis to Washington so she could tell him, face-to-face, that he had a son—their child—the consequence of one impulsive, and careless, night of lovemaking in New York.

It had all been so unreal, at first. When she had realized that she was pregnant, after she missed her second period in December and had felt sick on consecutive mornings, she couldn’t believe that it was happening to her. It became real as the days passed and she felt the child moving inside her.

She had felt lost, so lost and so vulnerable. She thought, briefly, about ending her pregnancy. She knew there were discreet doctors who for the right price would and could perform an abortion. For whatever reasons, she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Her hastily conceived plan was to move to the West Coast and live near her sister, Elizabeth, before she started showing. Once the baby came, she could figure out what to do next.

That never happened, because when she told Matthew the truth early in January, expecting that he would abandon his then-renewed courtship of her, he had surprised her by immediately proposing marriage. She had hesitated before accepting his offer. She worried that he would regret his gallantry later, when the baby came, and he faced the reality of her bringing another man’s child into the world.

They placed the engagement announcement in the Washington newspapers in February and were married, in a small ceremony, in early April. Not once had Matthew expressed judgment, and she believed that he had been pleased with the arrival of Caleb not only because of her delight with her baby boy but also because he cared for the child.

It would be hard on him, she thought, to have Dennis Collins back in their lives, but she knew that Matthew would eventually accept her logic. He had always been logical to a fault, a disciplined thinker, willing to accept sound reasoning.

Dennis, impulsive and emotional, still harboring bitterness and resentment toward her, would be another matter. She had never been able to love him in the way he needed her to. She had thrown him over twice and she had treated him thoughtlessly. How could he not despise her? No doubt he thought of her as cold, a heartless bitch, and there was much that was shameful in the way she had treated him. She so regretted that now.

She hoped that he remembered the good times, as well, when they had first started dating, before the war. Those memories were sweet—dancing cheek-to-cheek all night at El Morocco, hurrying through Central Park in a sudden snowstorm eager to get back to her apartment and make love, spending lazy summer weekends on Nantucket where they strolled along Madaket Beach at dusk talking about everything under the sun, even attending the occasional Dodgers game that Dennis dragged her to. Did he think about any of that when he thought of her? Or only the ugly times?

She wished the hurt and the pain they had caused each other could be erased, but she knew there was no going back, no fixing the past. That had been clear when they had seen each other again after years apart and had tried to rekindle their romance. What had gone before was always there, a reminder of failed promises and disappointed love.

Sometimes she wondered if that heaviness of spirit that she felt, that lingering, suffocating dread, was God’s punishment for her sins, for her selfishness, for the times in the past when she had betrayed Dennis. When it had really mattered, when any hope of a future with him had hung in the balance, she had deceived him, knowing as she did that somehow whatever there was between them would die. Was she being punished for that? Dr. Rifkin had assured her that it wasn’t so, that a loving God would never turn his back on her. She wasn’t so sure. Could Dr. Rifkin speak for God?

The news of Caleb would come as a shock to Dennis. How would he react when he learned that she wanted her son to know his father as he grew up? Could Dennis overcome his bitterness toward her and not punish Caleb for the sins of his mother? She hoped that he would eventually understand and accept her idea. He had to. She worried that if she waited to tell Dennis she would lose her nerve. If only she could get him to come and see her, she believed she could say the words to him, the words that would sway him.

She gripped the pen and began to carefully write down what she had to say to Dennis. She wanted to have it scripted out beforehand, so she could make it all clear to him—her regrets, her shame, her desire to repair the harm that she had done. She prayed that he could, in the end, find it in his heart to embrace Caleb, their son, their shared connection to the past and to the future.

One

New Year’s Day, a Monday morning. Through the windows of the Lockheed Constellation, Dennis Collins could see Manhattan’s distinctive skyline glinting in the winter sunlight as the overnight San Francisco-New York flight began to descend toward Queens and the Idlewild airport. He spotted the Empire State Building and the soaring, idiosyncratic Art Deco spire of the Chrysler Building. As they flew over the East River, the sun reflected off the United Nations Secretariat building, the new blue-green glass skyscraper designed by Le Corbusier that was still under construction. All of it was a welcome sight for Collins, for he was coming home.

As he walked across the tarmac to Idlewild’s main terminal Collins glanced around, his eyes slowly adjusting to the morning glare. Inside the building, his brother Frank was waiting. When he caught sight of Collins, a crooked grin appeared on his ruddy face.

In his double-breasted charcoal suit and red-patterned tie, Frank looked sharp, and Collins smiled, remembering how he would kid his brother about being the best-dressed plainclothes detective of New York’s Finest. Collins was suddenly conscious of his torn and faded Marine parka, his only warm coat. He should have purchased a civilian overcoat in San Francisco, he realized, and resolved to buy one as soon as he could.

Hey, Denny, his brother called out. Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Thanks for coming out to pick me up.

No problem. First time I’ve ever started the year with a day off. I sort of like it.

Glad I gave you an excuse to play hooky, Collins said.

They embraced and his brother wrinkled his nose. Starting early, or didn’t you ever stop?

You know how I hate to fly, Collins said. And I didn’t get much sleep. I guess I celebrated the New Year on the way.

Collins stopped himself. He didn’t have to apologize or explain to his older brother, or to anyone else, about when and where he decided to drink.

At least you had some decent visibility for your landing, Frank said. We had heavy fog yesterday and they closed the airport in Newark. Couldn’t see fifty feet in front of you in the city.

We had a nice clear view on the way in. Quite a sight.

It’s a grand city when you see if from the air, ain’t it? High time that you were back home.

Collins nodded. He didn’t trust himself to say anything more because he was suddenly, unexpectedly, on the verge of tears, overwhelmed by a sudden wave of emotion. Seeing his brother and reaching home had triggered feelings he had kept contained during the longest six months of his life, as he followed the First Division of the Marines through their victories at Inchon and Seoul to their brutal retreat from the Chosin Reservoir.

Peggy was real excited when you called, Frank said quickly, always sensitive to his brother’s moods.

How is she? And how is Brendan?

They’re both great. Brendan is looking forward to seeing his favorite uncle. You’ll be surprised by how much he has grown. Peggy can’t wait to give you some home cooking. We’re all really pleased that you’re going to stay with us.

Not for too long, Collins said. I don’t want to get in the way. I’ll find a furnished room once I figure some things out. I can’t get back into my apartment until June. When he went to Korea, Collins had sublet his place on the Upper West Side to Earl Randolph, a night editor for the Associated Press.

His brother nodded. You won’t be in the way. How was your Christmas? I got your postcard. It must not have seemed like it in Hawaii, with the good weather and all.

I needed to thaw out.

That’s good, then. Frank paused, hesitating, unsure of himself. Collins knew what he wanted to ask. It sounds like it was pretty rough over there. From what you wrote in the paper.

Collins didn’t say anything. His New Year’s resolution—if it could be called that—had been simple: he was going to talk as little as he possibly could about Korea. He figured that was the best way to shake the experience. The more he talked about it, the more the memories would remain vivid. He was already having a difficult time sleeping and when he did doze off he didn’t care for his dreams.

It was hard, Collins said, hoping that his brother would understand. Very hard. Frank had been a detective long enough to know that there were always things better left unsaid.

Collins had never expected to return to New York in January. He had been recalled to the city by an urgent telegram from his editor, Peter Vandercamp, in the middle of December. It came just days after Collins had joined the evacuation from Hungnam. Vandercamp’s message had been brief and to the point: the publisher of the Sentinel, Frederick Longworth, had died of a sudden heart attack and the newspaper was in dire financial straits. By the time Collins reached Tokyo a second telegram informed him that the paper would close days before Christmas.

That bad news served to deepen Collins’ grim mood. After a brief stay in Tokyo, he began the cross-Pacific trip to Midway. It was difficult to banish the images of the Chosin campaign from his mind as he made the long flight home. Korea had not been his first war as a correspondent—he had covered the Marines in the Pacific—but it had been a different experience. In the island battles of 1944 and 1945 the Japanese had been cut off, isolated without hope of reinforcement, and American victory, while achieved at a horrific cost in lives, was never in doubt. But in Korea, the Marine and Army units that had been confidently pressing north were fighting for their very lives within hours after the Chinese entered the war in November.

Collins spent Sunday in San Francisco with his friend Charlie Adair. They met for an early dinner at Tadich’s where they talked movies and baseball. Adair, a Marine veteran, knew better than to inquire too closely about Korea after Collins made a few terse comments about Chosin and didn’t elaborate.

After their dinner, Collins took a cab to San Francisco Municipal Airport, arriving in plenty of time for his flight. He shouldn’t have spent the money on the airfare back to New York—the train was much less expensive—but he didn’t care to wait. He wanted to get back home.

In the first hour aloft, Collins had turned to the copy of Across the River and into the Trees he had purchased in Honolulu. He had been saving Hemingway’s latest novel for the plane ride and he had looked forward to a large block of uninterrupted time in which to read it. The book started well enough—an opening scene of duck hunting on an iced-over river in Italy, Hemingway sketching the scene without an excess word, and then an encounter between the aging Army colonel and his doctor, signaling that all was not well. Collins admired Hemingway’s distinctive, Spartan sentences and authentic and taut dialogue, but he found himself growing irritated as he read further.

Collins was in no mood for dwelling on war memories and failed love affairs. He abandoned the book an hour into the flight, leaving Colonel Cantwell during one of his drunken soliloquies, and decided to get tight himself. He took a few generous pulls on the silver flask that he had tucked in his sweater pocket, enjoying the warmth of the brandy as it coursed down his throat. The lead stewardess gave him a disapproving look. It was not her first silent judgment of the flight. When Collins had boarded wearing his cardigan sweater, frayed button-down shirt, and gabardine trousers she had given him the once over. Collins stared back at her and she looked away. He didn’t really care what she thought.

The flask had been a gift to Collins from a Marine captain, Oliver Winslow, a friend. On the third day of December, inside the perimeter at Hagaru when their chances of survival didn’t look particularly promising, Winslow had given Collins the flask as an early Christmas present. By then Collins was carrying an M1 Garand rifle himself, as were most of the other combat correspondents. The Chinese Red Army soldiers making nightly assaults on American positions weren’t stopping to ask for press credentials. As much as the next man, Collins wanted to live to the morning so he had armed himself.

When he handed Collins the flask, Winslow had joked that every Irishman needed a handy container for his booze. I bought it at Shreve, Crump & Lowe on Boylston Street last year. It’s been gently used, as the saying goes. Almost as good as new.

The story of my life, Collins said. Except I can’t say that I’ve been gently used.

In return, Collins gave Winslow his Zippo lighter engraved with the eagle, globe, and anchor emblem of the Marine Corps that he had carried around since Okinawa. Winslow thanked him and slipped the lighter into his parka pocket.

You do fit the bill for a crazy Irishman, Winslow said. I’m an expert in spotting the type, you know, because Boston’s overrun with them. The proof positive is that you’re here when you could be back in Hungnam or Pusan, somewhere warm and safe.

Winslow had been called up from the reserves, leaving a wife and child and prosperous Beacon Hill law practice to rejoin the Corps. Collins thought it was particularly unfair that so many Pacific Theater veterans had been pressed into service. Then again, there was nothing about the conflict in Korea that he could see that was particularly fair.

It’s my job to be here, Collins said.

Not quite. You’re a noncombatant. You ought to clear out of here. No one will think less of you for flying out on the next available transport plane. You’re a newspaper guy, remember? And somebody should inform the world about what’s really going on here. That’s your real job. To tell people how MacArthur and Almond have screwed up royally and to explain that a lot more of us are going to die if the top brass thinks that we can fight the entire Chinese Red Army to a standstill.

You want to write the column for me?

I just did. You can quote me by name. Make sure you add a little poetry. Mention how we proud Marines of the First Division are the citizens of death’s gray land.

Where does that phrase come from? Death’s gray land?

It’s from a poem by Siegfried Sasson about the Great War. An Englishman, despite the name, who had no illusions about the stupidity and horror of war. He won the Military Cross in 1916 for bravery under fire but then refused to return to the front. Sasson sent a letter to his commanding officer, ‘Finished with War: A Soldier’s Declaration,’ that was read in Parliament. I just wish I had his courage. I should send a letter along the same lines to my superiors and to Congress. I don’t have the guts.

You’ve got plenty of guts.

Winslow smiled slowly. Well, that’s debatable. Is it courage that keeps me here? Or stupidity? He retrieved an envelope from inside his parka and handed it to Collins. You can give this back to me when we see each other in Hungnam. Or if that’s not in the cards, I want you to make sure it gets to my wife, Beth. If it comes to that, mail it when you get Stateside. I’d like for what I’ve written to stay private.

I’ll see you soon enough, Collins said, but he took the envelope from Winslow. He could understand why a man wouldn’t want his last letter to his wife read by some anonymous military censor.

That night changed Collins’ mind about staying in Hagaru. Just after two o’clock Winslow had roused Collins and a few enlisted men, mainly clerks and cooks, from where they dozed by the camp stove in one of the warming tents. Chinese soldiers had breached the nearby defensive line of foxholes and machine-gun placements.

Grab your weapons, Winslow said. They’re inside our perimeter and coming.

Collins pulled on his fur-lined parka and found his helmet. He picked up his M1, grabbed some loaded clips, and stepped out of the tent, following Winslow and the other men into the half-light. A few other Marines joined them as they cautiously moved toward the sounds of gunfire. Snow was falling rapidly and the cold cut into Collins’ face. It hurt to inhale. Their boots made crunching sounds as they broke through the crusted snow. He felt nervous about what lay ahead in the darkness, but the snowfall made it impossible to see more than twenty feet or so in front of them.

Then, without warning, indistinct figures in white emerged suddenly from the dark. Collins fought back his fear. He wondered for a moment whether this was the moment when he would die. Winslow shouted at the Marines to fire and Collins found himself moving into the kneeling firing position and sighting his rifle on the closest figure in front of him. He tried squeezing the trigger only to realize that in his excitement he had left the safety inside of the trigger guard. He flipped the safety off and depressed the trigger and the sudden recoil of the weapon caught him by surprise.

He recovered quickly and began firing as rapidly as he could at the small cluster of Chinese in front of him—men as intent on killing him as he was on killing them—squeezing the trigger slowly as he had been taught. He finished the first clip of eight bullets in what seemed like seconds and quickly slid another into the Garand. He prayed that the carbine wouldn’t jam on him, a common failing of the M1 in the extreme cold.

He couldn’t tell whether his rounds had hit any of the enemy, but in what seemed like only moments there was no one left standing—just bodies sprawled out awkwardly on the snowy ground in front of them. Collins could feel his entire body shaking from a sudden rush of adrenaline, the shock of the sudden firefight registering on his nervous system.

Later, Winslow took him aside. Get out of here, he said. Catch the first outbound flight that you can. This place has become a death trap and it will only become worse when we march out of here. They are all around us and they’ll be looking to annihilate us. There’s no good reason for you to stay.

Collins knew then that Winslow was correct. There was nothing keeping him there but pride and a sense of loyalty to the men around him. Yet Collins wondered if Winslow had seen something in his face or in his eyes—fatigue, anxiety, perhaps even the fear he was trying hard to mask—that had prompted his friend to again encourage Collins to leave while he could.

I’ll feel like I’m bugging out.

Is staying here worth your life? Winslow asked. You didn’t sign up for the duration like we did. No one will think less of you if you leave. You have more than enough to write about now. You know what is happening here and you can tell your readers. You can’t do that if you’re dead.

Collins nodded reluctantly. He had heard from an aide to General Smith that the Marines would start their breakout to the coast in another day. Collins had no illusions about how dangerous the march south would be.

That was the last time he saw Oliver Winslow, his friend, a man who loved poetry and longed to be back with his wife and son in Boston. Later that day Collins caught one of the C-47 Dakota flights out of Hagaru ferrying wounded Marines to the airstrip in Hungnam. From there he worked his way back up the main road, catching a ride in an Army supply truck ferrying ammunition north. In Chinhung-ni, he waited for the advance elements of the Marine column fighting their way south.

As the men straggled into the village, Collins asked around about Winslow. He had no luck with the first units, but then a captain from the headquarters battalion turned up and told Collins that Winslow hadn’t made it past Koto-ri. His men had come under heavy fire when clearing a ridge and Winslow had been killed by a sudden burst of fire from a Chinese machine gun. They had buried him at Koto-ri in a mass grave scraped out of the frozen earth by Marine bulldozers.

Winslow’s death had not come as a complete surprise—the officer corps had been hit particularly hard by casualties and Winslow had never shied away from taking the lead when