Street Without Joy by Bernard B. Fall

Author:Bernard B. Fall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811767750
Publisher: Stackpole Books

A slight pall of smoke, acrid with cordite, began to rise over the grass and from the edge of the jungle, where the Communist gunners were working feverishly at their heavy mortars, recoilless cannon and bazookas.

For the men of the 803d, this was the pay-off for six months of painful marches on roadless jungles, dragging thousands of pounds of food and equipment on their bleeding backs; of eating cold, clammy rice day in, day out, with barely a little rotten fish and a few drops of nuoc-mam sauce to add taste and provide for a few vitamins; of suffering from endemic malaria and dysentery without proper rest or drugs; of leaving their wounded behind at the mercy of cannibalistic savages, or to die unattended on the path unless they were eaten first by huge armies of black ants; of cowering in helpless terror and hatred as the French B-26’s and Bearcats roared overhead with their deadly load of bullets, rockets and napalm.

This was the moment they had been waiting for, the battle which was going to repay them for hundreds of their own dead, and which was going to give them control of the plateau area before the armistice negotiations were terminated in Geneva; the battle, finally, which would wipe off the face of the earth the hated Korea Regiment which still wore on its sleeve the white star and Indian head of the 2d U.S. Infantry Division. But 1st Company’s private agony was soon overshadowed by the same fate befalling the other elements of the convoy as the ambush unfolded in all its hugeness.

In the Headquarters convoy the ambush looked quite different from what was happening to Léouzon and the now fully-deployed Bataillon de Marche of the 43d Colonial.* The armored platoon—three half-tracks and two M-8 armored cars—traveled directly ahead of the headquarters elements, with the exception of one M-8 which went with the 2d Korea. The commanding officer, Colonel Barrou, traveled in an open jeep, carbine within reach, at the head of his convoy element, directly behind the armor. He was in direct communication with his own radio truck. Thus, he was informed by it that the tiny Morane mouchard circling overhead had reported at 1405 a light stone barricade at PK 15 which apparently was not defended. The headquarters truck had acknowledged the message with a laconic “compris” [understood].

At 1415, Barrou all of a sudden noticed that the lead element had picked up speed and that the armored platoon, following it, had increased the distance between itself and the Headquarters convoy it was supposed to protect. Barrou left his jeep, returned to his radio truck, and personally ordered the armor to slow down. The message was immediately acknowledged by the platoon commander and Colonel Barrou left the radio truck. At that precise moment, a machine-gun burst was heard far ahead, followed by the dull “thump” of a hand grenade. It was 1420.

As if swallowed up by an earthquake, the whole headquarters convoy now disappeared in clouds of

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