From behind four inches of armor plating, they could barely hear the bullets splashing against the metal. To Hardy, it sounded a bit like rain falling on a tin roof. Of course, that was a peaceful sound. There was nothing peaceful about bullets hitting the tank.
“I’d shoot back if I knew what to shoot at,” the sergeant muttered.
“All dressed up and no place to go,” Lieutenant Dunbar agreed. “We’ve got all this firepower and we can’t even use it.”
Once the firing had subsided, the crew emerged.
Now that the excitement was over, the night seemed very quiet.
After an hour with nothing doing, Lieutenant Dunbar doubled the guard and returned to the bunker with Hardy. “You may as well try to get some sleep,” he said. “Besides, the rats are getting lonely.”
“What about you?”
Dunbar shook his head. “I’m going to make the rounds to the other tanks and make sure they’ve got both eyes open,” he said.
“You think the Chinese will be back?”
“It’s hard to say, but they’ve lost the element of surprise. If I were them, I’d wait a couple of nights and try again.”
Hardy curled himself tight in a blanket to keep out the rats, and much to his surprise, fell into a dreamless sleep.
He was awakened early to find Dunbar and his crew making coffee on the gasoline-fueled heater.
“Anything else happen last night?”
“All quiet on the western front. But now that it’s daylight, we’re going to walk out and see if we can figure out where that patrol came from and what they were up to.”
After a quick cup of coffee, he joined the tank crews on the line.
By light of day, they were able to inspect the damage to the tanks. The hail of Chinese gunfire had still caused its fair share of damage.
The radio antenna used to communicate between tanks drooped, having nearly been severed by a bullet. A second antenna for the radio to the command post had been shot clean off. Bullet splashes were spread across the flat surfaces of the tank. The bullet-proof glass of the viewing port was chipped and cracked from bullet strikes. Even the inside of the turret hatch had a bullet splash from when it had been flipped open. If the sentry hadn’t dropped inside to radio for help at that moment, he would likely have been killed.
Inspecting the damage, all that Lieutenant Dunbar could do was shake his head.
“I’ll bet you thought that we were giving you a quiet place to rest lay your head,” he said to the reporter. “Instead, it turned out to be one hell of a night here on Outpost Kelly. How’s that for a story?”
Lieutenant Dunbar formed the men into a skirmish line, just in case any of the enemy was still lurking in the tall grass and brush, and they moved forward from the tank position.
One of the first things they found was the sentry’s shattered carbine.
“I’ll be damned.” Dunbar picked it up and stared dumbfounded at the pieces. It really had been shot right out of his hands, the bullet smashing the stock to kindling. The man had been lucky that the wooden rifle stock had been there to stop the bullet, or he would have been the one to be mangled.
“Sir!” a soldier called.
Dunbar ran over and looked down at what the man had found. It was a Chinese soldier, shot through the chest. It looked as if he had died instantly, his eyes open and staring. He wore the familiar padded uniform, the once bright fabric gone grayish from hard campaigning. On his feet were a pair of thin-soled sneakers that wouldn’t have done much to keep the soldier’s feet warm. He wasn’t even wearing socks.
The dead combatant had been carrying a captured M-1 rifle, still slung over one shoulder. The sight of the rifle rankled them. Knowing the awesome firepower of that weapon, nobody wanted to see them used against their own troops.
“Our sentry managed to fire a few shots before that bullet wrecked his carbine, and I suppose he must have hit this guy.”
“Looks like the bullet drilled him right through the breastbone. He was dead before he hit the ground.”
“Poor bastard,” Dunbar said, shaking his head. “I’ll never get used to the sight of a dead man or feel good about it, either, whether he’s the enemy or not. Then again, I guess it was either him or us.”
As it turned out, the lieutenant wasn’t far wrong about that. Near the Chinese soldier’s body lay not one, but two, Bangalore torpedoes. These were essentially shaped charges on a stick, designed to destroy vehicles or even penetrate tank armor. Wielding them was basically a suicide mission.
The small arms fire had done enough damage to the behemoth tank. The blast from a Bangalore torpedo would have had a far worse outcome and probably killed most of the tank crew.
Oddly, scattered around the dead soldier’s body they could also see several leaflets in English. Dunbar picked one up, read for a moment, then snorted in disbelief. “Get a load of this. The Chinese want us to surrender and come over to their side. They’re asking us to abandon our imperialist ways and join our Communist brothers.”
“Do you think that ever works?” Hardy wondered.
“Hell, the Germans tried the same tactic in the last war,” Dunbar said. “We know how well that worked. Let’s just say that when they weren’t dropping leaflets, the Germans with any sense were busy surrendering.”
It did seem unlikely that any American soldiers would join the Chinese Communists, but Hardy supposed that stranger things had happened. Maybe one in a million switched sides just because he was crazy.
On the other hand, it wasn’t nearly as unusual for the Chinese or North Koreans to abandon Communism. One ploy that had worked was the U.S. Government offering a reward for a Soviet-made MiG. A North Korean pilot had taken them up on the offer, earning himself a hundred thousand dollars and amnesty for delivering a MiG that could be taken apart and studied by the military.
Unfortunately, the rumor was that MiGs were outflying U.S. planes due to a superior design. The design came from German engineers snatched up by Stalin at the end of the last war. This was all part of the on-going chess game known as the Cold War.
But here on Hill 122 overlooking Outpost Kelly, there were more immediate concerns.
“If that Chinaman had gotten through with his Bangalore torpedo, we might have lost the tank, not to mention the crew.” Dunbar shook his head. “We need to be on the lookout in case they try this stunt again. Knowing the Chinese, you can bet they will.”
Chapter Ten
Cole returned to the main line, having outfoxed the pursuing Chinese and delivering the downed pilot and three civilians to safety — not to mention himself and the kid. Considering what they had been up against, it was no small feat. But if Cole had expected praise, he was sadly mistaken.
“Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again, Cole, you got that?” demanded Lieutenant Ballard, hands on hips, as he glared down at the sniper using all the advantage of his six-foot-three height.
“Yes, sir.”
Ballard always seemed to have it in for him. Even after all that they had been through, the lieutenant did not seem to trust him entirely or much like him. It probably had something to do with the fact that Ballard was a college-educated officer and Cole was a nobody hillbilly — but deep-down, Ballard likely knew which of them was the more capable man.
For his own part, Cole didn’t give a damn what Ballard thought. He considered the lieutenant to be a decent officer, just as Ballard would have reluctantly admitted that Cole was a capable soldier. As for being a hillbilly, no arguments there — that had been Cole’s nickname for years now.
The lieutenant could dress him down all that he wanted, but to Cole, the words were only like so much water off a duck’s back.