“I’ll tell you,” Mr. Barrett said, “even if I hadn’t met you and gotten to thinking about it, this storm would have reminded me of Korea anyway.  It was winter when we were there, and bitter cold.  In the early stages, we only fought the North Koreans.  Chased ‘em, mostly.  It was a rout.  We pushed them back to the 38th parallel.  The front moved so fast we didn’t have time to dig foxholes before we were on our way again.  We were in the Eighth Army’s infantry, the guys who were right in the thick of it.  No spotters.  Just us, down in it.”

Dori nodded, chin in her hands.  She liked listening to stories.  It would have been cool to fall asleep with Mr. Barrett telling her about…whatever.  He had a good storytelling voice.

“What happened, was that the North Koreans ran as far the 38th parallel, and then on Thanksgiving about two hundred thousand Chinese soldiers came in and backed them up.  We were numbered by about a hundred to one, and with the supply lines stretched tight as it was and the speed of the North Korean retreat, the Army just wasn’t prepared.

“And of course, down on the front, we had no idea.  Nobody did, until later.  We kept up like we had been, and just like dozens of other units we got surrounded before we knew it.  The American line just fell apart, and just like that our boys were the ones on the run.

“I remember the first time I saw them.  The Chinese weren’t equipped as well as us.  They didn’t have armor, or air support.  Sometimes they didn’t even have coats.  But they had manpower.  It looked like a black wave of humanity coming at you, screaming, blowing bugles, anything to psych you out.  You’d shoot down a dozen of them. And they’d just keep coming.  Shoot down a hundred, it made no difference.

“My unit was overrun early.  Our CO went down–shot right between the eyes–and we spent a day and a night pinned down.  I was shot through both legs trying to get to him.  We fought for our lives for what seemed like weeks, but it was only a day.  Wave after wave of Chinese.

“What we didn’t know was that the Army had bugged out on both sides of us as well.  We were surrounded.  We lost our radio man and our radio, and when dawn came we were down to twenty-two men.”

“How many did you start with?” Dori asked.

“Over a hundred.  And half of us were wounded, a lot of them worse than I was.  Hurt too bad to get out on foot, which was the only way to go.  Even if we wanted to pull out–and we did–it would have meant leaving a dozen men behind.  Several of the able-bodied men did just that.  I don’t blame them, either.  If I had been able, I might have gone with them.

“Your grandfather was one of the three uninjured men who stayed.”

“What did he look like?”

“He was a big kid.  Southern–had a bit of a drawl, which went funny with his name which sounded very hoity-toity and English.  But these three men who stayed said they’d get the twelve of us back, or hold the hill till we got better, and that was it.  I’ll never forget the next two days.  We dug in as fast as we could.  The ground was frozen solid.  Men had frostbite, were losing fingers and toes in fact, and couldn’t even hold their trenching tools.  We had no food–even our C-rations were frozen.  I remember lying flat on the ground, my shot legs stretched out, freezing to the bone, and trying to dig.  Trying to do something to help, anything.  That night, Pete Thomasson and as many men as could shoot held off what had to have been several thousand Chinese.  Pete was everywhere, jumping from foxhole to foxhole, shooting in every direction.  I’m sure the Chinese thought there were a lot more than fifteen Americans on that hill.  In the morning, we had more wounded, but we hadn’t lost a single man.  Some of the injured were worse off, but we dug in again.  Pete was stacking dead Chinese like sandbags around the foxholes, to help keep the wind and cold out.”

“Nasty!”

Mr. Barrett smiled with a touch of bitterness.  “Everything about war is nasty, hon,” he said.  “Everything.  The next night was the same as before, except we’d had no sleep.  Pete was the only able-bodied man who made it through that fight.  I remember him pulling a Chinese soldier off of my foxhole, on the end of his bayonet.  And sure enough, next day there were still a dozen wounded, and Pete Thomasson on that hill taking care of them.  He didn’t seem the least bit ragged, either.  He was telling jokes, keeping our spirits up.

“The Marines came and got us out of there a day later.  The hell of it was, Pete went down as we were bugging out.  There was a very small attack–an ambush, really, six or eight Chinese rushing us in broad daylight, and when the shooting stopped Pete was on the ground with a bullet in his heart.  I always wondered if somehow they knew he’d kept them from wiping us out.  Maybe that last suicide attack was their last attempt to get him, you know?”  He looked at Dori for a moment, then out the window.  “You know the rest of the story.  I kept in touch with the eleven other men in our unit, and we tried to find his widow after the war, to tell her that her man was a hero, but weren’t able to.  And now I’ve found you.”

“Sorry if you’re disappointed,” Dori said.  “The heroic thing doesn’t seem to have been passed down.  Well, actually I rescued a squirrel once.  It had one of those Yoplait yogurt cups stuck on its head and was walking around all bouncing off of stuff, and I went up and pulled it off, and it ran away.  But no one was shooting at me or anything.”

Mr. Barrett smiled.  For a moment he looked like he was about to pat her cheek.  “You seem all right to me, Dori.  I’m very glad to have met you.”