CHAPTER XXIX

The wide dirt road got more crowded with men and vehicles as they went along. Trucks, horse-carts, mule-carts, and, big guns wheeled along clanking. Troops from several different units jostled their way along the sides. The carts were piled high in huge pyramids. Silhouetted in the dusk, they were black hillocks moving painfully on crunching wooden wheels-
"Kong shang! Keng shang! Follow up! Follow up! the men kept whispering tensely down, the files.
Every day the enemy planes left big bomb craters in the road that had to be quickly filled. Gangs of ragged Chinese laborers mobilized from Manchuria under the new slogan of "Freewill united with compulsion" maneuvered their way through the crowd balancing flat-poles on their shoulders, a basket of stones strung on each end of the pole. All aquiver with their dancing loads they sang out. "Chieh kwang! Excuse me! Chieh kwang, comrade!"
Sombre Koreans, all in white with tiny top hats of black gauze sitting toylike on their heads, slid along among them uttering little cries of caution, bearing A-frames, the jeeps of Korea. A man carried one of these yokes by thrusting his neck through the top half of the A. The lower half of the wooden frame was laden with sup-- plies.
"Ma ti! Who're they wearing mourning for?" A soldier looked at the white-garbed Koreans and spat to protect himself from the inauspicious sight. "Gives you the' willies- Who'd have known we'd ever get into such a creepy place!"
Liu hurried along the edge of the crowd bawling through his cardboard trumpet, "Latest communiqué -- latest communiqué: Guard against straggling- Mustn't ever lose touch with your unit. Comrades who have fallen. behind may be murdered by enemy agents- So don't lose touch with your unit!
"The things cast off by American imperialists are poisoned. Don't ever eat them. And don't pick them up. The American imperialists bury a bomb under a wristwatch or a fountain pen- A warrior of the 37th Section. picked up a pen. He got four fingers blown off- A kan-pu of the 75th Section picked up a tin. The whole squad was poisoned."
"Kuo kou la! Kuo kou la! We're crossing a ditch! Crossing a ditch!" a man shouted. The long line of soldiers he led, victims of nightblindness, stumbled along holding on to each other. Many of them leaned weakly on sticks like famine refugees. The legs of some were bandaged where they had fallen and hurt themselves-
An occasional sputter of machine guns could be heard. in the distance. The boom of big guns came at shorter intervals. Now and then there was a roar that set the ground moving softly under their feet.
"Hey, who's that smoking!"
A little red eye of light winked dark and lost itself in the crowd.
"Who's smoking?" a babe of voices demanded- "Enemy agent!"
"Who's been smoking?" The Political Instructor clattered up on his horse.
Of course it would be an old warrior- No new warrior would ever dare violate a rule, with enough people pick-big on him as it was.
As soon as the instructor had ridden on ahead the old -warrior broke into a stream of muttered obscenities in an effort to retrieve his lost face.
"All right, all right," said another old warrior. "Stop saying things with no standpoint".
"Go ahead and shoot me!" the man said loudly with the officer out of earshot- "Didn't get my hand blown off picking up the butt, and here I'm going to get shot smoking it. Ma na pi! Takes more than that to scare your dad. Your dad has fought in the Resistance, and he fought in the Civil War. And he didn't get killed- About time 1 did, I suppose- Well, I'd sooner die here than elsewhere, with so many great grandsons wearing mourning for me-" He sniggered, giving the Koreans a glance from the corner of his eyes. "Makes a fine showing."
Liu tried to get, them to sing, feeling like an officious ,organizer of games-
That cigarette'll get the airplanes upon us in a minute. It's cleared up now," somebody said.
The night was warm.. With unburied dead everywhere there was a sweetish foulness in the clammy breeze.
Ahead of them the cart drivers were .yelling frantically, "Hey, make room! Make room!" A man shouted, his .angry voice jolted by punctuating blows between sentences, "Ma ti! ssu kou! It's like dragging a dead dog! Come on — walk! Walk for me! When the planes come throwing flares you run faster than anybody else. - Ma ti' T'o ssu kou! T'o ssu kou!"
When Liu came up close he saw that it was a kan-pu beating and kicking a soldier who was rolling about on the ground, his arms around his head, weeping. They were not from his unit.
"Two big eyes wide open and he can't see, he says," raged the kan-pu. "Just pretending! Nightblindness be bloomed- Just America-fear."
Liu felt impelled to say something although he had no right to- Even if these two belonged to his outfit all he could do was to bring up the matter in unit meetings. To butt in right now would be bad for Political Influence. But he had heard that some of these nightblind cases had shot or hanged themselves because they could not stand the long marches in total blackness- Too many of the troops were getting nightblindness from malnutrition. Then they got seriously ill with the terrific strain on mind and body. The hikes were much more tiring when you could not see where you were going.
"Don't hit him any more, District Corps Commander."' The other blinded men had been standing around silent but one of them finally spoke up timidly. "He's in bad shape, he is, I'll carry his pack for him."
So this kan-pu was only in charge of a Corps Under Instruction, a bunch of schoolboys. Even then he outranked Liu. Unconsciously Liu tried to tuck his cardboard trumpet out of sight as he pushed past them without saying a word. The trumpet would have betrayed his lowly station at once.
"Chieh kwang, comrade! Please get a move on,"' a cartdriver cried exasperatedly from his high perch. "You're' in the way."
"Less than twenty. left out of a corps of forty two," the kan-pu shouted up at him as if to the world at large,  giving the boy another kick- If I don't drag these sniveling babies along, every single one of them'll drop behind!'

The cartdriver swore at his mule and whipped it hard- "Ma ti how is it you're such a rotten egg? I'll learn you to be such a rotten egg! I'll learn you!"
The mule bounced and kicked under the whistling blows- The cart lurched forward into the protesting crowd. "Hey, careful! Careful!" somebody called out, half laughing. They all knew whom the driver's words were aimed at.
Scarlet flashes of tracer bullets chasing each other down from the nearest ridge dipped into the dark before they reached the marching men- Liu ducked at the clatter of the hidden machine-gun- So there are spies about, he thought, enemy Korean guerrillas- The shots seemed very near. But at night everything always looked so much closer-
By now he had given up all pretense of educating the men while they marched. It was all he could do to keep up the pace, staggering under his fifty-catty pack over ruts and holes. Many of the teen-agers from army kan-pu, schools had emptied their flour pouches to lighten their loads. Parts of the road were white with flour.'
"Like chalk marks," an old warrior grumbled. "They're scared that the airplanes won't see us."
Droves of enemy plane's thrummed an unseen path across the cloudy night sky as they did all the time, seemingly oblivious to what went on down below- But the men listened to the rise and fall of the drone as if it was the snores of great sleeping beasts.
"Kuo ch'iao la! Kuo ch'iao la! Crossing a bridge! Crossing a bridge!" the leader of the nightblind men called out.
Everybody braced himself. Bridges were the worst spots. They were the most bombed and since they were much narrower then roads, the traffic jam made it impossible to get through quickly. The planes muttered on overhead without releasing flares. But star shells from the UN artillery were bursting in the sky ahead. Then a flare of some kind exploded in the air close by, and the sky opened and shut five or six times with the dazzling sheet lightning that came from it. In the alternating light Liu felt his heart tightly opening and closing. The trucks were stuck at the bridge, motors purring. The cartdrivers swore as they struggled to keep the tangled overloaded carts from capsizing. A mule brayed. as if it was being butchered- Its hindlegs had slipped through a big hole in the bridge and got stuck there. The cartdriver lashed at it like mad, hoping that it might jerk itself up- The big mule struggled and heaved until the crumbling concrete around the hole loosened up and the animal fell through, carrying the cartdriver with it, along with a soldier who had been trying to help. Other men were pushed screaming into the river.
Kong Shang! Kong shang ! Follow up! Follow up! the soldiers passed the word along as they made way between the vehicles, everyone keeping his eyes intently fixed on the man in front of him.
Then suddenly there was plenty of room. They were on the road again while, the vehicles were still stuck back there- By the star shells, Liu saw flashing glimpses of mangled bodies. Nobody bothered moving the corpses off the road after the night air-raids. So many wheels had run over them since then that some were mashed beyond recognition. Wrecked trucks lay on their side or their back, wheels in the air like dead bugs.
He barely had time to look around when he, was again pushed to the side of the road- The rattling vehicles came up to, rejoin them.
Dust-white searchlight beams spanned the sky. Two of them crossed and stayed_ fixed rather low in the southwest. The troops were heading for that direction. But after marching half the night they did not seem to have made much progress- The giant pale cross hung in exactly the same position where it had waited for them across the river, ominous but unapproachable. Other searchlights swept around lazily- One of them came to rest with its tip just touching a thick pile of gray cloud puffs, making a soft little spot of light- Somehow it looked infinitely tantalizing and fatiguing. It made Liu's heart itch intolerably to look at it- He was very tired-
The noise and commotion earlier on in the night had died down now- The men lengthened their files, walking farther apart- In the fields down the side of the hill some of the wrecked jeeps and trucks from an air-raid were still burning, secretly it seemed, a small scurrying tongue of flame peeping out now and then like a mouse. And there were still red sparks in the trees and the burned stubble.
"Kuo kou la! Kw kou la!" cried the leader of the blind. The sound was isolated and sad in the stillness of the night-
Liu was half asleep, walking with a hand on the side of a lumbering cart. He thought he was already dreaming when he first heard the commotion ahead. The road dipped rather suddenly at the next turn. And the star shells had stopped now just when the eye had got used to them, so that it seemed pitch-dark at the treacherous bend. One of the trucks. had switched on its headlights.
Everybody was shouting obscenities at the driver. Feelings were running high against the truck-drivers. All of the foot soldiers knew that these men were very much pampered because they were hard to get- The officers were always making allowances for them, expecting them to have picked up bad habits working in the old society. They liked their comfort and hated risking their necks- Two Party members accompanied each driver every hour of the day to see that he did not desert. But the drivers were free to voice their complaints, make reactionary remarks even, and get nothing but a soothing pep talk from one of the kan-pu And they were the only ones in the outfit who ate rice, aside from the Battalion Commander and the Political Instructor.
"Ai! This baked flour' is no bloody use," a man sighed." "Stuffs you up and the next minute you're hungry again-"
"I heard Chow Yiu-kwei picked up a big tin of peanut butter," somebody else said. "He was the one who picked up the American watch last time. Really la yang ts'ai, made an overseas fortune."
"All I want is one or two piles of shell fragments. Sell the copper when I go home and I'll have enough to live. on all my life," a third man said.
"Just let me spend two days collecting empty cans and it'll get me.: enough to last me for ten years," said another.
Just when the erring driver had been made to turn off his lights, another truck was discovered with flashlights blinking on and off inside.
"No, this truck's being repaired," somebody called out above the confused clamor. "This is a wrecked truck-"
A kan-pu ran up shouting to the mechanics to put out the light. Then he switched to pidgin Korean- It did not get him anywhere. The men went on working, probing about with their flashlights.
"Sure, they're North Koreans," th kan-pu fumed. "That's what they always do — get the repair men out here before us. On our trucks with government certificates and everything. Repair them and just drive them away. Gets us into an awful hole — you can account for wrecked trucks but how do you account for the ones that just disappear?"
Those of the soldiers who did not catch what he said were still cursing the drivers. "I'd give anything not to have the trucks along! Always them that get the planes on us."
Then a faint shout rose among the men as a plane came straight at them out of nowhere, a small plane flying lower than usual. The high hills here were usually in the way, especially at night.
The flares it dropped descended slowly, one after the other. The men scattered, spilling over the slope down the side of the road- Liu fell face downward in the stinking water of the paddies. The vehicles had to stay where they Were in the middle of the road, awaiting their fate. The two Party members assigned to each vehicle saw to it that the driver carried out his co-existence or co-destruction pact with his vehicle.
Out of the stillness a kan-pu called out, "All right, you men. Let's get going-" Liu lifted his head and heard the plane zoom away- Not a jet, he recognized with relief. Just an observation plane. They often went away after dropping flares. They did a lot of things he did not try to understand, like retreating all this way down south when they had apparently been winning the war-
The big green pearly lamps hung suspended in midair, scarcely seeming to fall, tear-like in their transparency against the pale lit-up sky- Until now he had been too tense to realize how nice it was lying down. He let his head drop back on his arms and heard his breath bubbling in the water. In his sudden exhaustion he did not mind the filth, feeling like a small boy sucking up orange juice through a straw and ejecting it back into the glass to make it last- A moment later he was up and staggering back to the road.
The short rest had finished him. He joggled along, a looseknit bundle, consisting of just his pack and his various aches and sores, about to fall apart. It seemed to him a long time but they could not have gone ahead for fifteen minutes when it happened.
The first plane was upon them ahead of its sound so that the first warning was the spurts of dirt raised by machine gun bullets. Men dropped all around him. Liu joined the rush for the field. The cartdrivers and grooms and artillery men struggled to pull the carts and big guns as much to the side of the road as was possible-
There was a tearing howl of sound as the jet screamed up again and almost instantaneously a second plane dove on them, with the terrifying cry of metal in pain- The Party members guarding the trucks were yelling above the loud yammer of machine guns, Ch' ung ah! Ch' ung ah! Rush it! Rush it!" urging the drivers to swerve off the road and make a dash for safety outside the illuminated area. More flares had been dropped by more planes— so many of them that the pulsing hum overhead sounded very odd. The flares hung in the air forming an ellipse, covering an area of at least five or six miles. They burst into greenish blue chrysanthemums of light. The desolation of churned and pitted earth with a few charred trees was lit up brighter than day. It was a strange dawn on another planet.
A truck drove into the shrieking crowd and overturned, crashing into a gully. The screams of the fleeing men sounded almost exhilarated as though they were running for cover in a sudden shower. Another plane, diving with its machine-gun fire thudding into the tangled. heap. was answered by scattered rifle shots. Shooting was permitted during air-attacks. Another truck rushed by and more shots banged out after it. The men hated the trucks and in this confusion anything went.
Liu lay in a gully, his head against a boulder. The whirling buzz of a circling plane drilled painfully deep into him. Then the bomb fell thundering.
In the complete black-out he had enforced within himself, it took him a moment to make up his mind he was not dead- He opened his eyes. A rain of dust and earth was still falling, slithering over him. The quivering waif and groans of the wounded sounded like they were less than ten yards away.
By now it was relatively quiet except for the howling: fury of swooping planes and chattering machine guns. The man beside Liu had the hem of his blouse thrown over his head. Liu could hear his muffled sobs. Some of the schoolboys were all piled up in a heap for protection. Others kept crawling about, always feeling that it was: not safe where they were.
There was a new sound, a stream of broad thick slapping sounds, heavy, less rapid, less sure and smooth than machine guns. Liu raised his head and saw that an antiaircraft gun had been set up in the watercourse just off the road- The crew dropped flat as a plane dove on the gunt then leaped up to load shells and fire at the next plane. A hit! Caught in the merciless web of the search lights, the silvery-blue jet spurted into an arrow of flame and slanted toward the ground- Half a mile away it crashed into a mushroom of yellow-red flame and black smoke.
Before they could cheer, another plane dove to avenge. its mate. Liu heard the zip of rockets and buried his head in his arms. When the crackle of explosions stopped, he raised his head again. Under the light of the flares he could see that the gun was out of action, half turned from-its carriage- One man on the gun still twitched his legs, where he lay; the rest of the crew had been tossed into contorted positions that showed all too plainly that they were dead.
Bombs were dropping farther down the road- But now the grating buzz of a circling plane was again boring into him, concentrated, like a dentist's drill. Then came the complete blank of anticipation before the deafening boom.
Somebody seemed to have tumbled over him. Then he knew that he had been hit. The realization bumped heavily against his ribs. He was dazed and couldn't tell where, but the pain began to saw away heavily at his dulled consciousness.
He had no idea how long the bombardment' lasted- Time seemed to have stopped for him several time's when he screamed loud enough- Then the eternal yowling swish of planes and rumbling and sweeping rat-tat-tat went on again.
Once he opened his eyes to find a face on the ground looking vaguely at him, one check pressed against the earth- The spotty young face was a thin oval with' fine regular features. But it was just a face. Back of the ears there was nothing. It must be that the blast of a bomb had flung the youth into the gully. All that was left of his body was the blood-smeared gray skeleton, armless with just the left ribs and hip and leg bones. The narrowness and continuity gave him an elongated, crawling look. And his lips were slightly parted as if in a half smile. Liu could not help thinking of these old stories about snakes with human heads, beautiful and smiling- He tried not to look at it.
It was close to dawn when the planes finally stopped coming. Immediately an uproar broke out. "Forty-eighth section! Over here! Over here!" "Platoon Commander Chu, the Deputy Instructor is wounded!" "This way, Thirty-ninth Section! Where are the others? Where's the Instructor?" These were the ones who had emerged unscathed. There was a glad ring in their keyed-up shouts. They made more noise than hawkers at a country fair. To Liu, lying there listening to it, all the noise and gaiety were so exclusive he could not stand it.
A wounded' man shrieked and . then, all in the same breath, bawled out, "Anybody tell me' again that the enemy's a paper tiger, I'll f . . . his ancestors!"
"I knew I was going to get it this time," another man said. "Ma ti, this war is certainly not the same as the Civil War! Never saw so many planes in all my life. And where are our planes? You see pictures of so many planes flying over Peking for Mao Tse-tung. Why can't he spare us a few here? Just get us out here to cung ssu, send us to our death, that's all-"
The kan-pu bustled about herding the soldiers together and salvaging the supplies in the vehicles- They told the wounded to wait quietly for the stretchers. When one of the wounded men started to call Mao names and professed dishonorable intentions toward the great man's mother, a kan-pu stopped and said to him, "This comrade here-you mustn't say things with no principle. It's an honor to kua ts'ai, wear the red sash- You just have to be patient and wait for the stretcher."
"Ma ti, nothing but a whole load of face-towels," a man said disgustedly. They were swarming all over the wrecked trucks grabbing what they could. "What's in there? Looks like tins."
"Hey, what have you got there?"
"Don't tell me there's nothing but cotton wool in this one!"
Soon order was restored. Liu could not see the road from where he lay but he heard them marching off with what was left of the rumbling carts- It was dawn- The brush-like poplars up on the hill arcoss the road were still smoking.
Nobody was supposed to use the road in daytime. But Liu heard people passing by in small groups of three or four. He knew they were nightblind cases who., being old. warriors, did not have to pay strict attention to certain rules and refused to be threatened or cajoled into marching at night. Hiking comfortably by daylight they could easily catch up with their units before it got dark. Liu listened to them chatting as they went by, sounding just like travelers on a country road on a fine day in early summer. He looked up stupidly at the bright blue sky traced with wisps of white, clouds- He wondered again where he had been hit, but the merciful daze still held him in its grasp. Besides, he was afraid to explore with his hand for the wound.
Once a group of them stopped to cut a big piece of flesh off the hind leg of a dead mule. Where the ground dropped away over the side of the road, the corpses and dead horses and mules piled up higher than the road level.
"Mule meat is too tough for my teeth," said one of the Men.
"That's because you don't know how to cook it right," said his companion. "Last time we accepted the' advice of the Fourth Field comrades and it turned out very tender. Just put a little urine in the stew. Tastes all right. Good and salty and no queer smell."
Some of the other wounded called, out to them, asking about stretchers but received no answer. Liu did not try to speak to them. It would only make him feel that nobody could see or hear him, like a ghost who did not know he was dead and kept rapping futilely, angrily, on the glass that separated him from the living.
He was also afraid to call out. He was feeling Weak and faint and he had heard that sometimes they just ran a bayonet through the serious cases.
The gully was steaming hot in the noon sun. He dozed off, lying face downward on the scorching gravel, his cheek pressed against a cramped arm- Then the pain would jerk him back sharply into consciousness. He drank from his water can and managed to get some ch'ow mien out of his long pouch. But the pain of the exertion made him vomit and he could not get any of it down. The smiling face several yards away was changing color and beginning to .smell.
When night fell there was more firing in the distance and more traffic on the road. But the stretcher-bearers did not turn up. If there were wolves and wild dogs in Korea surely they would be coming, Liu thought, with so many corpses about. It started to drizzle again. In the blackness and the slight rustle of rain it was difficult not to imagine that the smiling face had inched up closer to him. The stench was certainly much stronger now. He fell into a pain— dulled stupor, more like a coma than sleep.
In the morning, in his intervals of consciousness, he noticed that there were no nightbiind men traveling on the road. It seemed terribly quiet without them,. Later he thought he heard the spatter of machine guns coming from at least two directions,. They never did any machine-gunning in daytime, as far as he knew. Unless these were air attacks.
The big guns were steadily going carrump, carrump. The firing increased and drew closer by nightfall but somehow he felt less worried by it.
He had not given up hope of the stretcher-bearers' coming, knowing how hard it was to, find transportation. A delay of several days was not unusual. His only fear was that he would be unconscious when they came and they would miss him, taking him for dead.
That night he saw the flicker of flashlights being turned on and off in the' hills. They were searching for the wounded over on the ridge. Then they 'crossed the road and came down into the field. By now there weren't -many people screaming for stretchers. But he had made it.
All the stretchers were concentrated in a spot at the roadside while they waited for the. trucks to come up. They took the weapons and cartridge belts away from everybody but one of the men refused to be disarmed. After two days and a night of great pain and feeling deserted by the world he trusted nothing except his grenade belt-
There was an argument. The kan-pu was afraid to use force- "We have orders from above to turn in all your weapons," he told the man.
"What sort of t'a ma ti orders? You nag some more and your dad'll kill the whole lot of yea! I'm through anyway."
Four. trucks came for them. Three soldiers picked him up and swung him into a truck. The road was so bumpy, Liu nearly passed out from the, jolting and tumbling- But it felt good to return to the human world. The jolting got worse when the truck suddenly put on, speed. The men were sliding about, trying to hold on to the sides of the truck-frame and crying out in dismay. Liu hoisted himself up, turning around with difficulty to look out of the rear opening of the canvas cover. The sky was pale with green flares and he could hear the planes humming overhead above the rattle of the engine.
There were sounds of an altercation in the cab ahead and presently the truck screeched to a stop. Other trucks were pulling up sharply behind them.
" Ya ch'e tung - chih ! Comrade Car-guard!" some of themen called out.
They heard the door of the truck cab clicking open, then the patter of running steps.
"What's happened? Comrade Driver! Comrade Car guard!" Then somebody wailed; "The sons of bitches - they've run away! Just left us in the middle of the road ."Somebody else cursed, 'Those mongrel 'bastards! I've always known they aren't men. Those, guards. are the worst. When the truck carries supplies they always force the driver to break through. Now' they just don't care.

Our lives aren't worth anything. They just stick to the driver and see that he doesn't go over the hill — that's all they care."
Others were still screaming for the driver and the two guards to come back. The pitch-dark truck-bed could scarcely hold the alarm and clamor. But already an all-pervading stillness and brilliance was closing in around them. The sound of the planes seemed part of the silence, like the scraping hiss of an old silent film.
"Where are the sons of bitches? I'll get them. I'll throw a grenade at all three of them. You just watch." The man who had. kept his grenade belt had a big hole in his stomach but he struggled to sit up. Liu knew he would not be able to go after the three, though he was quite capable of tossing off a grenade inside here, blowing up the truck before the bombs could get at it.
Liu found himself climbing down the rear of the truck. He did not know about the others but he was crawling away from the truck that stood brilliantly lit in the black puddle of its own shadow. The imprisoned furor inside seemed to reach out after him. More flares burst and a green-lit heaven bore down on him in intensive, microscopic scrutiny. Doomsday would dawn like this, if it ever came. He felt like a beetle and seemed to cover as little ground as a beetle going at full speed- It took so long to got to the side of the road and off into the field.
His wound hurt like fire. The field was wide but wherever he crawled there was a path of fire in front of him- He crept along like a wisp of flame in the blackened stubble. It would seem to die out and then, after a long moment, suddenly leap up again, the golden red tongue thinned and diffused as it swelled out, going up with a faint hum. But it finally went out altogether.
He did not hear the explosion of the first bomb.