Brown was the commander in charge of our strategy. He was demanding updates on the radio, and I told Lieutenant Williams to fill Brown in while I tried to figure a way to counter the Chinese tactics.
There’s no help coming. The thought gnawed at me, fear tearing the rational part of my mind away from the task at hand. I shook my head vigorously and forced myself to think.
The first option every commander has is to simply continue doing what he was doing before. I eliminated that option. The Chinese had beaten our static defense concept with artillery and armor.
Change the game. I had never read that adage in a military textbook, but it was a fundamental tactical insight. When the enemy has beaten you, change the terms of the engagement.
I considered the situation. We might be able to defeat the enemy infantry if we didn’t also have to deal with artillery and armor. I couldn’t hit the enemy artillery. Our Javelin missiles had proven ineffective against enemy armor. We also had AT-4 short-range anti-tank rockets. Those could certainly knock out an armored personnel carrier, though the defensive system used to stop the Javelin missiles would almost certainly work against an AT-4 as well. Maybe the defensive systems had a limited capacity, however, and we can overwhelm them with multiple missiles. Regardless, we couldn’t effectively use the rockets until the artillery and infantry fire slackened.
The logic was clear: find a way to, at least temporarily, get some breathing room from the artillery and infantry so we could get a shot at the armor.
I looked around the hamlet at Farmers’ Ridge. The buildings didn’t look terribly robust, but wood over our heads would provide better cover against the artillery fire than the foxholes. Of course, there was a reason we hadn’t deployed to the buildings initially — once we were stuck in the buildings, there was little hope of retreat once the Chinese forces advanced. If we ran for Pinglin with the armored forces still after us, they’d race ahead and cut us down.
None of us would survive if we couldn’t take out the enemy armor, and the best chance of doing that was withdrawing back to the buildings. I radioed Colonel Brown. “Empathy One, request permission to withdraw to the buildings.”
Brown replied, “Negative, Empathy Four, hold them in front of the village.”
I swore, then remembered a joke I’d heard once and decided that desperate times called for desperate measures. I said over the radio, cutting my voice out every few syllables: “Empathy One, having trouble receiving you, please notify Empathy Two and Three”—the other companies—“that Empathy Four is pulling back to the buildings and they should do the same.”
Not ready to concede the point, Brown fairly shouted back, “Negative, Empathy Four, do not pull back, acknowledge!”
Thankfully, no one else in my company was on the command channel to hear Brown’s orders. I ordered the platoon leaders to fall back into the buildings, one platoon at a time so that the other two platoons could cover the withdrawal at each stage.
By the time the platoons had pulled back into the town, of the 107 soldiers under my command, seven were dead and another ten badly injured by the artillery bombardment or the rifle fire coming from the woods.
Deploying to the buildings steadied my boys and girls down. I could hear it from the radio calls, which had turned much more professional.
“Chicom squad pushing toward the roadsign.”
“On it.”
“Three APCs pushing up the road. Take ’em out.”
I reentered the apartment building, figuring that the second floor with a hard roof overhead would be about as safe as any of the other members of the company would get. The artillery fire was still coming, but it was rare for a round to hit a building directly, and in only one case did a building collapse from an artillery hit. That building had been a small garage, and only four soldiers had been inside when it happened.
The other companies had followed my lead, pulling back into the town. There were perhaps twenty buildings on Farmers’ Ridge which now housed about 270 soldiers. The Chinese infantry paused outside the town, perhaps waiting to see how their own command staff wanted to deal with the obstacle.
After about a minute, three Chinese APC’s roared into view, barreling ahead to try to push their way through the town. I quickly radioed my platoon leaders. “Hold your fire until the first vehicle reaches the green house. Then, all AT units in First Platoon, fire on the leader, Second Platoon, the second vehicle, Third Platoon, the third vehicle. We’ll overwhelm their onboard defense systems. Acknowledge.”
The platoon leaders acknowledged the orders. The APC’s roared into town going perhaps thirty miles per hour, slow by peacetime driving standards, but very rapid for an active battlefield. They were clearly trying to push through us before we were ready to resist.
When the first APC reached the green house, I yelled, “Fire!”
In three seconds, eleven AT-4 rockets screeched out. Too fast for the eye to see, the defense systems on the APCs intercepted three of the rockets, and two more missed, but six AT-4 rockets slammed into Chinese vehicles, and four APCs vanished in bursts of flame. The remaining six APCs shot smoke canisters and retreated at high speed.
I exhaled. Finally, a minor victory in this debacle. A cheer sounded from the buildings, and Lieutenant Barker even called on the radio, “Fuck yeah, we’re on the scoreboard!”
Curtly, I ordered, “Quiet down. They’re coming back soon.”
It had almost broken three companies of U.S. troops to temporarily stall the advance of an armored reconnaissance force of perhaps seventy Chinese soldiers and a dozen APC’s. I remembered the Chinese Type 99 tanks coming up the road. AT-4’s were only marginally capable of taking out such behemoths under the best of circumstances, I reminded myself. With the new active defense systems we had seen on the APC’s, the Type 99’s would be virtually invulnerable.
The first skirmish of the Battle of Pinglin had been a damned close-run thing, and the real Chinese attack hadn’t even begun yet.
Lieutenant Williams waved me over to his radio. “Colonel Brown calling for you, sir.”
“Shit.” I needed to use this precious breathing spell to figure out a new plan, but now I was going to have to use it to convince Brown not to relieve me on the spot for disobeying his order to retreat.
Then, I realized there was one way to ensure my bureaucratic safety, though it almost made me physically ill to consider the option.
I took Williams’s radio receiver. “Empathy One, Empathy Four here.” Before Brown could reply, I continued in an exuberant tone, “Your plan to fall back to the buildings worked perfectly! We stopped the Chinese advance cold.”
I could almost hear the wheels moving in Brown’s head over the radio. “Empathy Four, good to hear, glad my plan worked.” That asshole had less shame than a sorority girl at a Halloween party. Brown unnecessarily added, “Fortify the town, see how long you can hold out, over.”
Gritting my teeth, I managed to say, “Yes, sir.”
The Chinese came back in force fifteen minutes later. Four T-99 tanks came up the rise into view and began firing indiscriminately at buildings in the area. A dozen more American soldiers died from this bombardment, though most buildings held up fairly well against the tanks, whose explosive charges weighed barely 20 pounds. The tanks succeeded in pushing our soldiers back from the windows, however.
Under the covering fire of the tanks, the Chinese infantry surged forward. The regular infantry units of the People’s Liberation Army had been pounding away at Taiwanese forces for weeks, often in urban environments. The veterans stormed out of the woods at least a hundred strong, heading to the closest three buildings.