Eventually, they turned off the main highway and moved up a winding road to get to the top of a ridgeline. The higher-ups had decided that this crest would be the Marines’ “line in the sand.” As they continued traveling along the twisting road, the constant cutbacks and turns caused a couple of the Marines to get car sick. Then, one of the pee bottles’ caps came undone, and urine spilled across the floor of the track, further adding to the stench.
“Are you kidding me? I told you guys to take a leak when we refueled!” Master Sergeant Long yelled, irritated.
“Oh, for crying out loud! How much longer is it going to take us to get there already?” one of the young privates moaned. “My butt is killing me and this track stinks like a port-a-potty at Oktoberfest.”
Just as Long was about to respond to the young Marine’s grumbling, the vehicle commander yelled back to them. “Heads up, guys! I just received word we should be approaching the Army’s positions.”
“The track finally seems like it’s on level ground,” Long realized. “We must be at the top of the ridge.”
Master Sergeant Long’s radio crackled to life in his ear, and he immediately recognized the voice of Captain Chet Culley. “Falcon Three, Falcon Six. When we approach the Army’s lines, I’m going to need you to get your platoon filtered into their prepared positions. Remember, these guys have been fighting nearly nonstop with the Chinese for two days. They’re going to be exhausted. Take charge of the situation, and I’ll check in on you later. How copy?”
“Copy that. Out,” Long responded.
When their vehicle got closer to the Army’s positions, bullets started to hit the hull of their armored vehicle. The vehicle gunner in the front of the track returned fire at an unseen enemy.
“Get ready to dismount! Enemy troops to our front, 500 meters!” the vehicle commander shouted over the roar of their chattering gun. Shell casings fell to the floor of the vehicle. They came to a halt and the back hatch dropped, allowing the twenty-one Marines to exit the vehicle and rush out into the cold air.
The chattering of machine-gun fire from the heavy and light machine guns on the amtracks continued as the Marines fanned out to take up positions in front of their armored chariots.
“Shift fire to that gun position on the right!” one of the sergeants yelled.
Snap, zip, snap, snap!
Master Sergeant Long heard the distinctive chattering of the nearby gun and immediately agreed with the other sergeant’s assessment. It looked like a small cluster of Chinese soldiers were setting up a heavy-caliber weapon a few hundred meters below them.
“Jeez, where did all of these enemy soldiers come from?” he thought in bewilderment.
As his Marines set up their lines, small clusters of Army soldiers fell back to his position, gladly accepting the reinforcements.
An Army lieutenant walked up to Long. “Man, am I glad to see you guys,” he said. “I’m Lieutenant Nick Davis. Where’s the rest of your company, Master Sergeant?”
Looking around as his platoon started to secure some defensive positions, Long realized his men were heavily outnumbered, even with the Army soldiers falling back into his lines. “This is it for now, Sir. The rest of the company is scattered along the line,” he explained as he waved to the rest of the ridge.
Lieutenant Davis sighed. He was exhausted but determined to hold this position. “OK, Master Sergeant. We’ll make do, then…. Here’s what I need from your Marines. I’ve got maybe 42 soldiers left from my company, and they’re steadily falling back into the lines here. I need you to get your heavy weapons set up facing this section of the line. The PLA pushed us off that ridge over there, and now this ridgeline we’re on is our last line. We have to hold them here no matter what. I’ll get my remaining soldiers organized into the line here, but I need to know that your Marines can help us hold this spot.”
Long nodded as he took in the information. Their amtracks had followed a trail up to the top of this ridge, so they could still provide fire support, but they were also bullet magnets. “Copy that, Sir. I’ll get our tracks moved back to that location over there, so they can still provide us fire support while hopefully not attracting artillery fire. We’ve got plenty of ammunition in the tracks, and the rest of the 1st Marine Division is coming up behind us. We’ve got this, Sir!” he said with enthusiasm, trying to reassure the young Army lieutenant.
Turning to his men, Master Sergeant Long shouted, “NCOs, get your positions ready!”
Several of his machine gunners were exchanging shots with PLA soldiers a few hundred meters away. The sergeants in Long’s platoon yelled at their men. “Get digging!”
Every third soldier or Marine kept his rifle and continued to engage the Chinese soldiers when an opportunity presented itself, while the other two soldiers or Marines pulled their e-tool entrenching shovels out and started to reinforce their positions. The light and heavy machine gunners set up their guns, and extra ammunition was brought over from the tracks.
Pulling a small set of binoculars out of one of his pouches on his vest, Master Sergeant Long surveyed the ridge across from them and the valley that separated them. The swirling snow had stopped, and the sun was starting to break through the cloud cover in beautiful shafts of glowing light.
“As long as the snowfall doesn’t pick back up in intensity, we’ll be able to get some air support soon,” Long realized.
Lieutenant Davis interrupted his contemplation. “What are your thoughts, Master Sergeant?” he asked.
Long lowered his binos. “Well, if they try to bum-rush our positions, they’re going to take some horrible losses. The intense snow has finally stopped, and if it truly is done snowing, then we’ll have air and artillery support, which will decimate them. I’d place our chances of stopping them at better than 50 %, Sir,” he responded.
Davis nodded in approval. “I think you’re right, Master Sergeant. When we fell back yesterday, they let us take up residence on that ridge, and that gave us a bit of time to organize ourselves. Then they hit us relentlessly. It’s like they stacked all their units up and then threw them at us one after the other. At first, we were slaughtering them. Though the first two assaults were brutal, we decimated them. But then the third, fourth and fifth waves came, and they just kept coming. We started running out of ammunition, the barrels on our rifles and machine guns were overheating, and eventually we had to fall back again. We nearly didn’t make it out of the valley below, but then you guys showed up, and they turned their attention to you. That allowed us to get away,” he said.
Master Sergeant Long placed his hand on the young officer’s shoulder. “It sounds like you guys did your best, Sir. That’s all any of us can do. You held them long enough to let us Marines come rescue you guys. Now we’re here, and we’ll save the Army,” he said with a slight laugh, trying to add a bit of humor to an otherwise horrible circumstance.
Lieutenant Davis snorted. “Yeah, I’m never going to hear the end of this from my West Point classmates — the Marines coming to rescue me,” he said with a smirk.
The next hour was spent trading pop shots with the PLA soldiers and getting their positions set up. The Army soldiers took the opportunity to reload their empty rifle magazines, grab additional hand grenades and chow down on some MREs. Once those essential tasks had been completed, many of them simply fell asleep, desperately trying to catch up on some rest while the Marines remained on watch.
The radio crackled. “Falcon Three, this is Falcon Six,” Captain Culley said.