Given more time, the PLA infantry might have noticed that the explosions had slackened momentarily, and the gunfire from the mountainside died down as well. But the platoon on the ground knew that their comrades’ lives were in their hands, so they continued pouring heavy fire onto the mountainside, creating an illusion of frenetic battle.
Meanwhile, the two platoons that had run for the farmhouse had entered the two buildings and immediately posted men to the windows to search for the attackers that had fallen upon their advance.
“Initiate phase three.”
Large explosions ripped through the ground floors of the twin farmhouses, tearing asunder the once idyllic homes and massacring the Chinese soldiers within.
The battle was about twenty-five seconds old now, and the situation had suddenly jumped outside the experience of the PLA company commander. McCormick and his team gave him no time to get his bearings.
McCormick came storming down from the second floor of one of the farmhouses. The PLA within were still stunned by the explosion, and barely knew he was there for several seconds. During that time, he shot several and tossed another grenade into the mess.
At the same time, Dietrich did the same thing in the other farmhouse. Of the sixty men who had run to the farmhouses at the outset of the battle, nine managed to scramble back to the tree line to the north.
Covered in blood and nearly all suffering from minor or major wounds, they screamed to the remaining platoon in Mandarin. It wasn’t hard to figure out the meaning — fall back, fall back!
McCormick and Dietrich paused to reload, then began firing into the retreating PLA in the woods. They hit a few, but more important than the casualties inflicted by the American and the German was the noise, the fear that they kept hounding at the remaining forty or so Chinese soldiers.
The Chinese ran. While the survivors of the two platoons who had come to the farmhouses might have been totally shattered, the platoon that had stayed in the woods was merely on the edge of panic. They still had a semblance of order. They ran north, and I spotted an officer shouting orders into a chest-mounted radio.
My own radio buzzed in my ear. “Initiate phase four. Finish the bastards off,” McCormick said coldly.
I took aim at the officer. In a frozen moment, I saw the fear on his face, the determination to save his men, the strength of character to remain calm in a crisis. Then I fired, and saw pain and death overtake him as three bullets crashed into his chest.
Volodya had circled around the Chinese to a position on the other corner of the tea field, and now he too opened fire. The Chinese were caught in a crossfire, with McCormick and Dietrich keeping up steady fire from the south and Volodya and I cutting them down from the north.
It was slaughter. Though the Chinese still had more than eight times as many soldiers as we, they broke. The rational ones fell to the ground and covered their heads. Others, crazed by fear or pain, kept running toward me and Volodya.
We kept our fire up, cutting down more and more as McCormick and Dietrich pushed from the south, darting for cover from one tree to the next.
The remaining living Chinese were either wounded early in the battle or were lying prone on the ground, screaming something indecipherable.
They were trying to surrender, I realized. “I think they’re giving up,” I said into my radio.
Angrily, McCormick snapped back, “Keep the fire up, don’t let them get a second wind.”
I thought back to the phrase book I had looked at briefly on the flight from the United States. Into the staccato of automatic rifle fire, I shouted, “Toe-zhang yi-sue!” Having never studied Mandarin, I didn’t know if my accent was correct, or if my call for surrender was even understandable.
“Shut the fuck up, captain!” Volodya shouted into the radio.
But the Chinese evidently understood what I was saying. Over the din of rifle fire, I heard a voice shout back. Around the field, PLA soldiers threw their rifles as far as they could and reached their hands to their heads.
The gunfire stopped. McCormick, Volodya, Dietrich, and I converged on the Chinese lying on the ground near the edge of the tea field. The cries of wounded Chinese to the south suggested perhaps a dozen more wounded PLA in addition to the eight before us now.
McCormick took a swig of water from a canteen. Wiping his mouth, he gestured to the battlefield and said, “That is how you destroy a company.”
“I don’t suppose you actually speak Mandarin,” McCormick said to me.
I shook my head. “No, just read a few phrases on the plane ride over.”
McCormick rolled his eyes. He turned to the Chinese and asked slowly, “Do any of you speak English?”
One of the prisoners responded shakily, “Yes, I studied at Georgia Tech.”
The American sergeant snorted in amusement. “Alright, what’s your name?”
“Corporal Xi Peng, 22nd Infantry Division.”
“Tell your men to lie still, we’re going to search them for weapons. Tell them we’ll kill them if they move.” McCormick said icily.
“Y-yes, I will,” Corporal Peng stammered.
McCormick turned to his men. “Let’s frisk ’em.” I moved to join the Lafayette Initiative members to help search the prisoners, and McCormick put up a hand. “Not you, captain. You keep an eye on the situation and let us know if any of these bastards moves.”
I thought that McCormick just didn’t trust me to competently frisk a prisoner, but I didn’t make an issue of it. I watched as the three took a few minutes to thoroughly check each of the prisoners.
Once the searches were done, McCormick said, “Corporal Peng, get your men into a single file line, two steps between each man.”
I was surprised. “I thought you said you didn’t want to interact with the 101st?”
McCormick grimaced. “I didn’t, but now that you’ve forced these guests on us, we have to dump them off somewhere, and it’s either Pinglin or Yilan, twenty miles away. How long do you think it would take to bring eight prisoners twenty miles with no food or water?”
Corporal Peng interrupted, calling over, “Pardon me, sir, I have a request.”
McCormick reflexively yelled back with the standard joke of sergeants everywhere. “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ I work for a living. What do you want?”
Peng wasn’t fazed. “Please allow me to examine our wounded comrades. Several might be carried away to safety.”
I could see indecision on McCormick’s face. Finally, he answered, “You have five minutes to check them out. Captain Concitor will go with you.”
“I will need to take another of my soldiers. There are too many to check in so short a time.”
McCormick took two steps toward Peng and said neutrally. “We are not allowing time for more PLA to get here. You, and just you, have four minutes and fifty-five seconds. Get to it.”
Peng walked off at a brisk clip, obviously trying to go as quickly as possible without making it look like he was running away. I hurried along behind.
Dozens of PLA infantry lay on the ground, bleeding red patches onto the verdant forest floor. Some were obviously dead, and Peng didn’t even bother to take their dogtags. He didn’t have time for the dead — only the living.
About thirty-five of the wounded PLA in the vicinity were at some level of consciousness. Peng appeared to have very little medical training to speak of, but did his best to make quick judgments.
One man was missing both legs and crying softly in pain. He was rapidly bleeding to death. Peng must have known the man. He exchanged a few impassioned words, and the man pressed a letter into Peng’s hand. Peng blinked back tears and moved on.