“My butt is killing me, and this rigging is tearing into my back and shoulders,” reflected Staff Sergeant Conrad Price. He tried unsuccessfully to shift positions for what must have been the hundredth time since they boarded the flying deathtrap of a C-17 nearly seven hours ago.
“We’re five minutes out! Everyone, stand up for equipment check!” shouted the jump master, who was standing near the exit of the plane.
“Finally!” Sergeant Price thought, barely keeping himself from exclaiming aloud.
Standing up, Price checked the man in front of him to make sure his equipment was properly set up and ready. He could feel the guy behind him doing the same to his gear and then felt the familiar pat on his shoulders letting him know he was good to go. With these formalities taken care of, the jump master yelled out a string of additional commands as they prepared to jump.
Catching a glance out the window, Price could see the sun was starting to break through the evening sky. Soft yellow, red, and blue hues were ever so slowly trying to push the blackness of the night away, bringing with it a new day. However, this would be a day filled with sheer terror, excitement, and uncertainty.
A couple of minutes went by, and then the lights inside the cabin turned from a light blue to red. Seconds later, the two side doors they’d be jumping out of were opened. The chilly, humid air buffeted their faces as it quickly circulated throughout the cargo hold of the plane.
To Sergeant Price, the aircraft looked like it was still too low for them to jump. The water whipping past them looked practically close enough for them to land on.
“Man, these pilots aren’t messing around,” he realized.
Without warning, the aircraft’s engines decreased power and the plane shifted sharply upward in altitude, forcing the paratroopers to grab for anything they could to keep themselves from falling over onto each other.
“A little warning would have been nice,” Price grumbled to himself.
Seconds later, the plane leveled out and the jump light turned from red to green. The jump master started screaming, “Everyone, get off the aircraft as fast as possible!”
Not knowing if the plane was about to be blown up, the Rangers practically shoved each other out the jump door to try and get on the ground.
Following the lead of the soldiers in front of him, Sergeant Price quickly made his way out the door to the wild blue yonder below. Less than a second after exiting the plane, his chute opened, jerking him hard and preventing him from becoming a six-foot lawn dart. Looking around, Price saw strings of green tracer fire reaching out for the planes that were now flying across the runway of the airfield, dropping Rangers as fast as humanly possible.
With the sun not fully up just yet, they could easily spot the illumination flares going off several thousand meters above the air base, which further illuminated the paratroopers who were dangling from their parachutes and the planes delivering them. The AC-130 Spector gunship loitered above and behind them, then suddenly opened fire on the enemy antiaircraft guns that had shown themselves, silencing several of them before they could down any of the American aircraft.
Craning his neck to his left, Sergeant Price saw what appeared to be three ZU-23 antiaircraft guns that the gunship had not silenced yet. A dizzying rate of fire crisscrossed the sky above the runway. One string of rounds tore into one of the C-17s, causing it to explode before its human cargo had a chance to jump.
“Holy crap. That was two platoons’ worth of Rangers,” Price thought in horror.
Seconds later, the AC-130 gunship obliterated the gun positions, but the damage had already been done.
A minute later, Price found himself quickly approaching the ground and positioned himself to tuck and roll just as he had done in dozens of practice jumps. Before he knew it, he was on the ground, and his body had instinctively done what it had been trained to do.
Once on the ground, he quickly brought his weapon to bear. He’d spotted a machine-gun position that a handful of PLA soldiers were running to, and he wanted to take them out before they could start mowing down his fellow Rangers. Just as Sergeant Price was about to fire, a hail of bullets rained down from the sky and the running figures evaporated, cut to pieces by a five-barrel 25mm Equalizer cannon, which spat out thousands of rounds a minute. With the immediate threats neutralized, Price went to work on getting his pack strapped to his back and rounding up his squad.
Glancing back up toward the sky, Price saw the horizon continue to fill up with parachutes as the rest of the battalion arrived. He also spotted two smoke trails streaking up nearby and watched as missiles headed straight for the gunship that had been providing them with direct fire support. The AC-130 turned hard to one side as it spat out flares at a high rate of speed as it quickly changing altitude and revved its engines. Then, one missile successfully impacted against the plane, and one of the engines exploded and caught fire. The second missile was diverted by one of the flares and detonated harmlessly away from its intended target. However, the gunship was now trailing smoke with an engine out as it lumbered out of view. Price wasn’t sure what happened to it, but he knew he needed to get his squad moving to their next objective. He could contemplate what had happened to the Spector gunship later.
Seeing the other members of his squad unstrapping their parachutes and grabbing their packs and weapons, Price shouted, “On me!”
He swiftly led them toward the opposite side of the base. Their objective now was to clear the munition bunkers and then press on to secure the western edge of the base perimeter before expanding out further up the ridgeline that overlooked the base.
As they approached the road that led to the munition farm, his squad nearly ran straight into an enemy machine-gun position, which appeared to have been hastily manned, since the Chinese soldiers there were still feeding a belt of ammo into the gun.
At once, Price brought his rifle to his shoulder and fired at them. He was quickly joined by the members of his squad, killing the four enemy soldiers before they were able to react to their presence. With the enemy gun position taken out, they pressed on, now joined by at least two other squads of soldiers.
They continued unhindered until they reached the building that led to the entrance of a massive bunker complex. The relative silence was broken by a fuselage of enemy machine-gun fire.
Zip, zip, zang. BOOM.
Bullets and grenade explosions struck everywhere as the two sides fought it out in relatively close quarters.
“Frag out!” yelled Price. He threw one of his grenades at a cluster of enemy soldiers that had just arrived from deeper in the bunker complex.
BOOM.
“On me!” he shouted. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and fired a string of shots into the gun slit on the bunker, then charged.
Bang, bang, bang!
The sounds of his rifle echoed off the surrounding cement walls of the bunker system. Price slammed his body against the cement wall just to the left of the gun slit, then reached down and grabbed another grenade from his vest.
“Frag out!” he shouted as he tossed the second grenade inside the bunker. He had held the grenade for a couple of seconds before he threw it in, trying to cook down the timer. This would give the soldiers inside very little time to react to it.