Long turned to face the next enemy soldier, still filled with an instinctual rage. Like a demonically possessed crazy person, he ran into a throng of enemy soldiers and screamed wildly. He slashed at the enemy soldiers with the entrenching tool, oblivious to his own pain and everything going on around him.
A Chinese soldier, not more than a few feet away from Master Sergeant Long, leveled his rifle at him. Knowing he was seconds away from being killed, Long instinctively grabbed the man whose throat he had just sliced open, and with every ounce of strength he could muster, Long threw him at the man who was about to shoot him.
In that instant, his right hand fell to his side, and his mind registered that he still had a sidearm on him. He grabbed the SIG Sauer and leveled it at the enemy soldiers who were overrunning their position. He fired multiple rounds at them, killing several of the advancing soldiers with headshots and hitting several more in the center mass before his pistol locked to the rear, empty.
Master Sergeant Long reached down to grab another magazine. Just then, he heard the familiar sound of American machine guns firing. Suddenly, the enemy soldiers near him clutched at their chests, hit by multiple rounds. Half a dozen Marines ran past him, killing the remaining Chinese soldiers as they pushed them back down the ridge.
Long spotted an M4 on the ground next to a dead Marine and quickly reached down to grab it. Checking the chamber, he joined the fray, picking off the remaining enemy soldiers, now in full retreat.
Master Sergeant Long looked back behind him and saw dozens of tracked and wheeled vehicles bringing additional reinforcements to their position.
“‘Bout time the cavalry arrived,” he thought. Suddenly, he involuntarily dropped to his knees and fell forward on the ground. His body ached everywhere, and he felt incredibly tired and thirsty.
“Hang in there, Master Sergeant. I do not give you permission to die yet,” Captain Culley said as he knelt down next to him. “This is the second time I’ve come to your rescue and seen you surrounded by dead enemy soldiers. We’re going to have to award you another valor medal, aren’t we?” he joked with a smile.
Tim snorted. “Cutting it a little close there, Captain. They nearly had us this time.”
“You just hang in there, Tim. You guys did a heck of a job. Now if I could just get you to stop collecting Purple Hearts and actually stick around long enough to do your job…”
A corpsman ran up to them and began to treat Tim’s multiple shrapnel wounds.
The battle for Hill 597 at Taechon lasted for nearly 24 hours before the Americans managed to stop the Chinese advance. As the weather cleared, the Allies were able to resume tactical air support. Between that and the multiple Arc Light missions by the heavy bombers, they eventually decimated the Chinese assault into North Korea. With the aid of 60,000 Marines, the Army and ROK Forces were able to recapture nearly all the territory lost and pushed the Chinese back across the Yalu River, saving the Allies from a repeat of the disastrous retreat that defined the previous Korean War.
Sergeant First Class Ian Slater stumbled briefly as the older Chinese soldier shoved him with the butt of his rifle and yelled at him, “Move faster!”
Only one of their captors, the crotchety old soldier who kept shoving him, spoke English. He kept insisting that they walk more rapidly and telling them that hot food and shelter would be given to them once they made it to their end destination.
“I’d like to take that rifle and club him with it,” thought Slater angrily as he continued to march further north with the two dozen or so American prisoners. While the blizzard-like conditions had largely dissipated over the last few hours, the heavy cloud cover and steady snowfall still meant visibility was shoddy.
“At least the wind has died down,” Sergeant Slater thought, trying to be positive for a moment. “Now if I could just keep my hands from freezing, I’d be in better shape.” When he had been captured, the Chinese soldiers had stripped him of his body armor, but at least they had let him keep his jacket once they had made sure he had no weapons in it.
Slater’s mind kept flashing back to that horrific walk out of the shattered bunker when he had been captured. He felt sick to his stomach as he pictured the ground, littered with bodies. He heard the crunch again as he unwittingly stepped on a hand that had been separated from one of the members of his unit — there had hardly been a place to step without walking on body parts that had been torn apart and mangled by high explosives, grenades or heavy machine-gun bullets. A wave of grief washed over him. Many of the dead had been part of his unit, and some of them had been friends.
“I miss Joe,” Sergeant Slater thought as he remembered his friend who had died dramatically in his arms. He wished Joe hadn’t been lost in the bunker, but as he trudged along, he wondered if maybe his friend had gotten it easy compared to what was about to happen to him and the rest of the prisoners.
Slater wasn’t sure what time it was since his watch had been taken from him, but as his column of prisoners neared the city of Chijiabao, they heard a soft whistling noise high above them. That noise steadily grew in intensity as it got closer. Sergeant Slater knew immediately what it was, and he suspected the other American soldiers recognized the sound, but the Chinese soldiers didn’t seem to care.
The first explosions rocked the ground, and then thunderous booms followed as bombers delivered a high-altitude bombing run across their old positions to wipe out the Chinese advance. The noises drew hastily closer. Sergeant Slater quickly ran to the ditch next to the side of the road, trying to seek even a semblance of shelter. The other Americans quickly followed suit.
The Chinese soldiers suddenly realized the imminent danger approaching them and scattered in all directions, looking for a place to hide from the incoming bombs. Some of them ran into each other as they scrambled away in a disorganized horde.
Sergeant Slater saw this as his golden opportunity to try and make a break for it. All of the Americans had instinctively followed their training, dropping to the ground; however, they were all still somewhat clustered together. The Chinese had run off to every corner of the field, leaving them alone and unguarded. As the bombs got closer and the explosions louder and more violent, Slater yelled to the others, “Follow my lead!”
Slater ran toward a small cluster of their captors who had taken shelter in a ditch not far from them, several of his American comrades right behind him. Together, they pounced on their terrified captors like lions on their prey. The PLA soldiers were so surprised by their captives’ attack, they hardly had time to react. They had been so terrified of the falling bombs heading toward them that they had forgotten about the danger of leaving a group of American prisoners alone.
While dozens of 500-pound bombs landed nearby, the American soldiers attacked their captors in hand-to-hand combat, using their fists, rocks and anything else they could grab to overpower them. As shrapnel flew everywhere, Sergeant Slater and his fellow prisoners grabbed their captors’ weapons and ammunition and summarily killed the remaining cadre of PLA soldiers the bombs had missed. Once the dirt, snow, and chaos from the bombing subsided, the newly freed soldiers looked to Sergeant Slater and asked, “What do we do now?”