한솥밥을 먹다먹다

Eating rice from the same pot.

A Back Office of Incheon Arsenal, December 2nd, 1951

Engineer G.A. Korobov roared with laughter over the glasses of gukhwaju. Half the room were Korean engineers, the other half Russians, Ukrainians, and even two Germans. Engineer Sim Su-Hon became quite the card when submerged in several glasses of rice wine, and the distilleries within the city of Seoul had been one of the operations prioritized by the military's food supply apparatus. Troops fought better when strengthened with distilled rice-based courage. Only Soju would've lifted their spirits even more, but Gyeongsang was no longer under the army's firm control. Cases of it that were removed from the area during its occupation were highly valued amongst the construction crews working on the defenses around Seoul.

It was a happy night. The engineers could celebrate the first batch of Baekje submachine guns, a simplified and improved version of the Type 49 PPsh copy that had been produced on the continent for two years, rolling off the production line and going immediately to reinforce the front lines. They could celebrate shared interest and knowledge, love of firearms and moving parts. They could celebrate the cosmic irony of finding themselves together, linked by fate and socialism, making guns in another bombed city as the Soviets had done, as the Germans had done, and as the Koreans were now doing.

"We used to wonder what the American bombing was like," one of the Russians from TsKB-14 plant said to his German comrade, who had picked up Russian remarkably well. The statement was translated into the non-Russian Korean's ears.

"Not this much, surely!" the German replied. Laughter erupted in language-barriered waves around the room.

The day been filled with long conversations about grenades, a subject that Chief of the General Staff, Kang Gon, had been cabling Engineer Sim Su-Hon all month. On the table in front of them sat several conversation topics.

The RPG-6 anti-tank grenade was of particular interest to the Koreans. The American propensity for large amounts of tanks in their infantry divisions was not something the KPA had been prepared for. The pretender regime's army had no tanks and few war-vehicles of any description, but the American largesse towards their expeditionary force had contributed to the clobbering perpetuated upon the KPA around Busan, and during the American's amphibious landing at Gunsan. The grenade was large, over a kilogram. It was fantastically cheap and could punch through 100mm of armour, enough to knock out a Sherman tank from almost any direction. One of the Korean Army Adjutants pointed out the difficulty of getting close enough to a tank to knock it out - though it was conceded it would be very useful within urban fighting, as it could be dropped down onto the thin upper armour of a tank and destroy it without giving away the attacker's position.

"An ideal partisan weapon," Korobov advised.

The RG-42 hand grenade was also well-liked by the Korean engineers for its extraordinary simplicity and ease of manufacture. As with the Baekje, it could be assembled by cottage labour, and even by partisans behind the lines. Only the fuse required complicated manufacture.

The F-1 grenade, the "limonka" was a rather more complicated design. Yet the German engineer Albrecht was adamant that it, too, should be considered.

"From a defensive position, the limonka has excellent performance. The RG-42 is a well-engineered design but fragmentation can be poor. It is best used offensively, while the F-1 is an ideal defensive grenade."

Considering the dire circumstances of production, though, it was decided that the F-1 would not be considered seriously for production during the war.

The most unique object on the table was a Mosin rifle brought by Korobov. One of the many thousands of accurized M1930 rifles, it mounted a PU 3.5x scope. Korobov claimed it saw combat in Berlin at the end of the war, though reneged on the exact details of his coming by it.

"I believe Korean snipers would provide another layer of defense to the city," he stated.

Sim Su-Hon readily agreed. "The soldiers of the IVA disseminated many stories about the Sniper-Heroes. We would do well with those of our own."

The orders for production were thus put out:

• RPG-6 anti-tank hand grenade as Type 43 anti-tank hand-grenade

• RG-43 hand grenade as Type 52 hand-grenade

Sim Su-Hon made a mental note, even in his drunken state, to return Kang Gon's cables with demands of his own.

To be continued...