At first the bootees had fixed my attention, but
after the sup rise of seeing these symbols of home in such
an incongruous place had worn off, I let my eyes drift,
unobserved, to their owner.

He was a lieutenant, young, I could see, and tired;
not so much from the exertion of the trudging march, but
with the wear of long days and nights in combat. He was
talking to men from his platoon, all of them together
watching the core of a little blaze in their center, and I
could tell that he was answering some of their disturbing
questions about the war. There was a tone of hopelessness in
the men's voices, but the lieutenant sounded cheerful; there
was a glint in his eye, and a squint that melted into an
easy smile when he spoke.

As my companions moved on, I glanced back briefly to
the blue bootees still fresh, still swinging. Often in the
next few weeks I saw the lieutenant and his bootees while we
moved southward before the Chinese armies. Around the
ever-present warming fires I heard the simple story of
the officer and his boots.

The lieutenant was named Shank, and he, twenty-two
years old, led a rifle platoon. He had come over from
Okinawa while the Army was clamped in the vise of the Pusan
perimeter, short on manpower. Shank had his baptism of fire
on the hills outside Taegu. His youth and fire helped keep
his decimated platoon intact, while the North Koreans
frantically tried to crack the American lines. Then came the
breakthrough, and Shank's company, rode on the
record-breaking tank and truck dash northward. He picked up
the Springfield rifle then, and kept it because of its
renowned accuracy and apparent immunity to the cold weather.

A violent day south of Pyongyang won Shank a Silver Star for
gallantry, as he led his flesh-and-blood infantrymen against
T-34 tanks and destroyed three of them. The Chinese
intervention and beginning of the American retreat brought
him up to where I met him, south of Kunari.

The bootees? That was simple. He was an expectant
father, and the little boots sent by his young wife in the
States reflected his whole optimistic attitude while the
battle was the darkest. I also learned that when the baby
came it would be announced by a new piece of ribbon on the
boots - blue for a boy, pink for a girl.

Then I forgot about him as we prepared to defend
Seoul from above the frozen Han River. We were hit hard by
the Chinese. They streamed down from the hills and charged
the barbed wire. They charged again and again, piling up
before our smoking guns. The days were but frantic
preparation for the nights. Companies dwindled, and my
platoon was halved as cold, sickness, and the enemy took
their toll. I neared the end of my mental reserves. Names of
casualties were rumored, and I heard Shank's among them. I
wondered where Shank's bootees were now.

Then the endless night of the retreat from Seoul
came. When we got the word my few men were too dulled to
show any emotion at the announcement. Most were too
miserable to want to retreat again for twenty-five miles,
Chinese or no. But we did, and the temperature dropped
to 30 degrees below zero as our silent column stumbled along
the hard ground. It was the most depressing night I had ever
endured - pushed by the uncompromising cold, the pursuing
enemy and the chaotic memory of the bloody nights before. I,
as a leader, was close to that mental chasm. Only the
numbness prevented thinking myself into mute depression.
We plodded across the cracking ice of the Han River
at four-thirty in the morning, and marched on south at an
ever-slowing pace. Finally the last five mile stretch was
ahead. We rested briefly, and as the men dropped to the
roadside they fell asleep immediately. I wondered if I
could get them going again. Worse yet, I didn't think I
could go myself -so tired, numb, and raw was my body.
Then in the black despair of uselessness in a
second-page war I looked up as a passing figure brushed
against my inert shoe pacs.