It was only three miles to the battlefield. We ran straight as the crow flies, but the terrain was very hilly and, of course, we were wearing full packs. We covered the first mile in a little over ten minutes, but the pace could only slow from there. Even soldiers in good physical condition would tire quickly from running in full packs over hills.
The next mile took twelve minutes, and by the time we had almost finished that mile, the sound of battle had reached a crescendo. We were close, goddamn it. We were approaching from the northeast, and even with the fog and rain, we could see the glow of an occasional flash in the distance when a grenade popped off on Teatime Hill.
I was beginning to see just how vulnerable we were on the approach, however. The visibility was about a hundred yards, enough that the Chinese would probably be able to see us coming well before we actually hit the flank of Teatime Hill.
A troubling thought occurred to me that we had yet to see any trace of the PLA at all. I had expected that we would run into a squad or two on patrol and have to either kill or bypass them. Instead, it was as if we were out on a daytime jog through the forest.
Could the PLA have seen us coming and set up a trap? It would explain the lack of patrols. They could have cleared the way for us so that they could catch us unaware when they hit us with everything they had. Though we were agonizingly close to the battle, I remembered McCormick’s warnings. I was determined for him not to be right about the wisdom of trying to save Williams’s attack.
I called for the squad to slow to a walk. “Deploy to line,” I told the squad. “And keep your goddamn eyes peeled. We’re almost there.”
The squad deployed to a line about seventy yards long, and we moved forward at a moderately fast walk. We proceeded down the last hill before Teatime.
We reached the valley floor. Now we just needed to cross the northern road and we’d arrive at Teatime Hill on the reverse slope from where the battle was being fought.
Suddenly, three of the men in my squad fell to the ground, gunshot wounds in their head. “Snipers!” I yelled, and hit the deck. The world erupted in gunfire. We couldn’t even see the flashes of the enemy guns, and before I knew it half the squad had been cut down. We had been ambushed, and I still had no idea how many attackers we faced.
Then the grenades came. The Chinese plastered the area by the roadside with a dozen rounds from a grenade launcher, and I could hear several of my men screaming over the sound of gunfire on Teatime Hill.
McCormick was right, I had time to think. I glimpsed a muzzle flash off to the right, and I turned that way and let loose a dozen rounds from my M-4 rifle. A PLA soldier cried out in the distance, and I felt grim satisfaction that I had inflicted some pain on the enemy before I died.
A voice shouted ahead of us, sounding distant in the fog. “Throw down your weapons, Americans, and you will live.”
I responded with five shots in the general direction of the sound. “You give me yours first and then we’ll see about mine!” I yelled back. I fired the rest of my magazine in that direction, then quickly ejected the spent clip and inserted a fresh one.
That led to another hail of gunfire, and bullets thumped into the ground nearby. I had no idea how many of the squad were left at that point.
A flash of pain from my back seared into my mind. I had taken a hit that had penetrated my body armor. Screaming, I emptied my magazine toward where I thought the enemy was.
I moved to retrieve another magazine, but found I couldn’t reach my right arm down far enough. A flash of panic went through me as I wondered whether I was paralyzed. My left arm still worked, however, and I used it to retrieve my sidearm. No one else was firing around me, and I figured that meant I was the last one in the squad left alive.
Take one down with you was the only thought that occurred to me. I waited for a PLA soldier to pop up somewhere I could see him, and was rewarded when I saw a Chinese soldier walking slowly in my direction, his weapon up and raised. He was carrying the trademark silenced Ak-2000 of Unit One, and he was looking intently at the body of one of the other Airborne soldiers.
I didn’t hesitate to seize my opportunity. I brought the pistol up smoothly, took a split-second to aim, and fired.
My first round hit the Unit One solder in the shoulder, throwing him back. My second shot missed, entirely. The Chinese soldier brought his silenced Ak-2000 around, and I fired my third shot. That shot hit him in the face, and he fell back in a spatter of blood, but not before he loosed three bullets in my direction. I felt one round impact on my upper back, and I lost consciousness.
Chapter 9: Concitor
I had only made it about halfway to the elementary school when I heard the first gunfire from Devil Hill. They were trying their best to provide covering fire to the attackers who would be running up from the Coffee Line, but the Chinese soldiers were in trenches and under cover. Many of the Airborne soldiers had thermal scopes to see through the fog, but these were of limited utility from several hundred yards away. The Americans on Devil Hill inflicted few casualties on the Chinese.
Then it was time for Williams’s force to move. I didn’t look back, but I couldn’t have seen much in the fog anyway.
The Airborne soldiers emerged from the buildings and foxholes at the north end of Pinglin that comprised the Coffee Line and began their ascent. There were about 300 yards of mostly wooded terrain to cross, offering some hope of cover.
The attackers moved up the slope quietly, and I would barely have known the attack had started if not for the covering fire from Devil Hill. But the PLA were strangely quiet. While not every PLA soldier would have a thermal scope, surely the snipers at the very least had them. They had taken a shot at me while I was still in the town, surely they would be trying to pick off some of the attackers making their way up Teatime Hill.
I arrived at the elementary school and called the company commanders of my reserves together. There was no time to brief them fully, so I simply told them to gather their men for an emergency move to the north side of the town. “Move to the Coffee Line and get ready to be attacked. Stick to the north side of the road to avoid sniper fire.”
I was running amongst my soldiers, urging them to get ready when the battle began in earnest. I switched to the Coffee Line frequencies on my radio and was immediately presented with the story of the battle in clipped, panicked radio calls.
“The whole goddamn Chicom line opened up, we’re taking heavy casualties.”
“Where the fuck are they?! Can’t see ’em through the fog!”
“—repeat, heavy casualties. We need suppressing fire on the left!”
“Report status, Respect 4. Goddamn it, where are you?”
“Half my company is down, what the hell do I do?”
The PLA had evidently waited until the Airborne soldiers were a mere hundred yards or so away in the thick forest, then opened up with every available rifle. Intel suggested there were at least four thousand Chinese soldiers on Teatime Hill, and every one of them was pumping fire into the attackers. Not all of them could see what they were shooting at, but with so much firepower, they could inflict murderous damage on the Airborne soldiers regardless of visibility.
The Airborne soldiers were returning fire by that point, hiding behind trees on the hillside for cover. Thank God for the trees, or else all thousand of the attackers might have been killed in the first tense seconds. As it was, the PLA still had the dominant position at the top of the hill in the foxholes that had once been occupied by the American soldiers now being torn apart on the hillside.