Cole felt pleased that they had taken the Chinese by surprise, slipping up on them in the darkness.
But any element of surprise on the main body of defenders had now been lost. Cole knew that these enemy soldiers in the trench had likely been in forward positions intended to detect the enemy advance. They had served their purpose. Higher on the hill, the Chinese would have heard the gunshots and known that the enemy attack was coming.
The next round of the fight over Outpost Kelly had begun.
He turned to look behind him. “All right now, don’t bunch up. We’ve got to get through this trench up to the main defenses as fast as possible. They know we’re comin’ for ‘em, and they’ll be ready.”
He started forward, but didn’t get far. As it turned out, the Chinese had a few tricks up their sleeves.
What Cole hadn’t suspected was that some of the enemy lurked outside the trench, hidden in the jumble of debris. They had the advantage of surprise and of height in that they were attacking the soldiers in the trench from above. They had been waiting for just this moment. And now, they pounced.
A screaming shape launched itself at Cole from above.
He was fast, but not fast enough. An instant later, he found himself knocked into the muddy bottom of the trench. A Chinese soldier stood over him, shouting and stabbing down at Cole with a bayonet on the end of a rifle.
Cole rolled just in time. The blade sank into the mud. His rifle had been knocked out of his hands. There was no time to go looking for it.
With his left hand, he grabbed the end of the rifle that the Chinese soldier was about drag free of the mud. With his right hand, he drew his Bowie knife and slashed it at the Chinese soldier’s leg.
The enemy went down, his angry shouts now turned to screams of pain. Cole’s knife slashed again and the screaming stopped.
Behind him, similar fights were taking place. Cole turned back to do what he could to help. The kid was grappling with a soldier and with another quick swipe of the knife, he ended the fight in the kid’s favor.
He reached down and dragged the kid to his feet.
“Holy cow, where did they come from?” the kid wanted to know.
“They done got the jump on us, that’s for sure.”
The rest of the squad had made quick work on the attackers. Lucky for them, there had only been four Chinese. If they had only dropped a grenade into the trench, or fired their weapons instead of using bayonets, the outcome would have been different.
The kid must have had the same thought. “Why didn’t they just shoot at us?”
“Maybe they’re low on ammo,” Cole said. “Maybe they just hate us. A bullet is one thing, but a bayonet is personal. Let’s just count ourselves lucky. One thing for sure, it ain’t even sunup and it’s been an interesting day.”
“Yeah, I just hope we live to see sundown,” the kid replied.
“Me too, kid. Me too.”
They surged forward, no longer worried about being quiet. The sounds of battle erupted all around them, with the stillness shattered by mortar fire, grenades, and machine guns. Red and green tracers etched patterns up and down the hill.
“Hot enough for you?” somebody shouted.
“Just you wait.”
The Chinese must have been spread thin, because after their encounter with the enemy, they ran into no one else in the outlying trenches. The trouble was that the only way forward was straight up the hill, following the line of the narrow trench.
While the trench gave some cover, Cole worried that one well-placed machine-gun burst would knock out the whole squad like so many dominoes lined up one behind the other. He ordered the men out of the trench as they approached the main defenses that circled the hilltop. Better to take their chances out in the open.
“Find whatever cover you can,” he said. “Try to pick the bastards off.”
Fortunately, there was no shortage of rocks and even clumps of scrub brush. With the others, Cole scrambled out of the trench and got behind a rock. As enemy tracers streaked overhead, he just wished that the rock was bigger. It was just like Korea to be stingy with its rocks when you needed one.
Finally, he was in range to do some good with Old Betsy. The Chinese were close enough that he could make them out clearly. Cole put the sights on the machine gunners and pulled the trigger. The stream of machine-gun bullets stopped like a faucet being shut off.
A soldier stood to throw a stick grenade at the Americans, but Cole put him down. The soldier fell back into his own trench and the grenade detonated, resulting in cries of agony.
In the respite from the machine-gun fire, the Americans crept closer, keeping up a steady fire.
“You’ve got a good arm, kid,” Cole shouted. “See if you can get a couple of grenades into that trench.”
“I’ll have to get closer,” the kid said.
Without further explanation, he sprang up and ran at a crouch toward the enemy position.
Cole swore. Though brave, a move like that was going to get that stupid kid killed. He raised his rifle and fired just as a Chinese soldier rose up and took aim at the kid.
He worked the bolt and scanned the trench to pick off anyone else who tried to get the kid. By now, the kid wasn’t more than fifty feet from the trench. In rapid succession, he threw two grenades that dropped neatly into the trench. Seconds later came the flashes and bangs. The firing from the enemy line directly ahead of them stopped.
Up ahead, the kid was already plunging ahead toward the trench. “Wait a minute, kid,” Cole muttered. He waved the others forward.
It was now or never. Had they gotten all the Chinese? There was only one way to find out.
Panting with the effort of charging forward up the steep hill, the men of the squad covered the distance to the trench and leaped inside. Some had fixed bayonets, ready for hand-to-hand fighting.
But the enemy was wiped out. A handful of bodies lay in the trench, taken out by the grenade. One soldier was trying to crawl away, and someone slipped a bayonet into him.
“All right,” Cole said. “We hold here.”
To their right and left, similar battles were taking place as the Chinese defenses were attacked from several directions. To defeat the attack, the Chinese were sending more defenders from higher on the hilltop down toward the trenches.
Cole saw them coming.
“Swing that machine gun around,” he ordered.
Two men scrambled for the abandoned Chinese machine gun, a nasty bit of weaponry supplied to the Communists by their Soviet allies. There was nothing like it for turning Americans into mincemeat. Now, the Americans returned the favor, opening up on the enemy soldiers running downhill toward them. By the time the magazine was empty, the wind had gone out of that attack.
Things weren’t going as well in other sections of the trench. Off to their left, the boys there were having a hot time as the Chinese attackers spilled into the trench. Cole could see men grappling with one another. He raised his rifle and shot an enemy soldier who was about to bayonet an American.
Off to their right, the situation looked better. The soldiers had made it into the trench and were occupying it without any intervention from the Chinese. Cole was glad to see it because the trench was like a chain and any weak link was going to mean trouble for the other attackers.
“Now what?”
“Now we wait for word from the lieutenant. Once this trench is secure, we’ll push on up toward the top of the hill. Our job will be to take one of the bunkers.”
“Hold on. Where the hell are those guys going?”
Cole turned away from the struggle on their left to look to where the kid was pointing to their right. In disbelief, he watched as the American soldiers there started climbing back out of the trench and returning down the hill. What was even more surprising was that they seemed to be taking their time, retreating at a leisurely pace in groups of two and three. It reminded Cole of watching a baseball game breaking up.