The first building, a small restaurant, was occupied by twenty-five soldiers of Second Company. As luck would have it, the garrison of the building included the commander of that company, Captain Harris. He was relatively new to the 101st Airborne, having dutifully served his lieutenant years in an out-of-the-way infantry unit. His father was a three-star general, and Harris himself was a fourth generation West Point grad.
Over the command radio, Harris’s near-panicked voice sounded. “Empathy Two and Four, request urgent assistance at my location.”
I quickly opened a side-channel to Empathy Two, the commander of First Company. “Unless anyone in your company has line of sight, there’s nothing we can do to help Harris. Their infantry and tanks outside will cut down anyone who runs out.”
Captain Nunez, the commander of First Company, didn’t need much convincing. I watched from the second floor of the apartment building as the Chinese infantry quickly and competently stacked up outside the door to Captain Harris’s building.
I might have been watching a U.S. unit in Iraq twenty years earlier, so practiced were the tactics. Six Chinese soldiers at each of the building’s three entrances, and four soldiers heading to the building’s windows, ready to toss in grenades and flashbangs before breaching the door.
Though I knew it was futile, I aimed my own M-4 rifle and fired off six quick shots at the soldiers moving to the windows. One or two bullets struck a Chinese soldier in the arm and back, and he spun around as he fell. The other PLA soldiers returned fire, and I quickly ducked down and retreated back as far as I could from the window, moving into the small hallway. A few seconds later, a tank round crashed through the window, spraying shrapnel around the room and temporarily deafening me.
I crept back into the room and looked out the window again. The PLA soldiers had just tossed their grenades and flashbangs into Captain Harris’s building. As soon as the grenades detonated, the PLA burst into the restaurant. Their Ak-2000 rifles chattered, and only a few desultory M-4 rifles were audible over the din. Within two minutes, the gunfire ceased. While Captain Harris’s building was being wiped out, another two Chinese squads took down another building on the other end of the farming hamlet, this one occupied by fifteen men of my own company.
“Shit,” Lieutenant Williams said, his voice betraying fear. I had no words of reassurance. We had bought ourselves a better chance by withdrawing to the buildings, but now the combination of skilled PLA infantry and suppressing fire from the T-99’s presented a new seemingly insurmountable problem.
Change the game. There were five or six tanks outside the town pouring in fire, enough that they could shoot at a window about every six seconds. Nine buildings remained under our control. We couldn’t destroy the tanks. But could we hit the infantry even with the tanks firing on our position?
I ordered my platoon leaders (as well as Captain Harris’s platoon leaders) in the other buildings to run their men up to the windows to fire on the PLA infantry for three seconds, then run back for cover. I had them repeat that process every half minute or so at different windows, trying to avoid the unlucky hit from a Chinese tank shell.
Lieutenant Barker ignored my orders. Always headstrong, she ordered the garrison in her building to start firing from every window without pause. With fifteen Airborne soldiers in her garrison all firing, they quickly eviscerated a PLA squad approaching the building next door.
The PLA tanks quickly shifted their fire to her building, however, killing seven more of our soldiers and wounding two more.
The remaining PLA infantry on the street were sitting ducks for the Airborne soldiers in other buildings. Our hail of gunfire killed twenty-two veterans before the rest scurried for cover in the buildings they had just cleared.
The PLA tried to carry their wounded with them, but in their hurry to escape, they left two men behind, screaming in the street. A last few desultory shots rang out from one of the Airborne-occupied buildings, and the men on the street stopped moving. The tanks pulled back several hundred yards down the street.
Another ragged, primal roar of celebration from the Airborne. At first I thought they were just crying a wordless shout of joy, then I detected a name rising above the din. I’m embarrassed to say, the name was “Concitor! Concitor!”
The PLA artillery started back up once the Chinese infantry had retreated to the buildings they had captured. The shells were beginning to do serious structural damage to the buildings, leading the Airborne soldiers to retreat first to the ground floor and then to the basement of the less solidly constructed buildings.
While the basements were safer, they were not an ideal position to defend the buildings against Chinese infantry. Our soldiers couldn’t easily see or fire on approaching enemies from the basement, and the Chinese could easily toss grenades and flashbangs downstairs to smoke us out.
Two battlefield decisions had saved us from defeat over the span of about an hour. With no support, we had staved off bloody defeat at the hands of hardened veterans. But now we were played out.
I sat in a remote corner of the basement, drinking from my canteen and trying to consider our options when Lieutenant Williams approached me. “What is it, lieutenant?” I asked distractedly.
Williams said quietly, “Sir, I believe we ought to consider surrender.”
My first instinct was to ask why, but I understood the reasoning. Something deep in me found the idea unappealing, so I responded, “Was our mission to surrender?”
“You’re a reasonable man, captain,” he said. “We’ve bought the rest of the brigade as much time as they could reasonably expect. Now we either surrender or die. I don’t want to die here and I don’t think you do either.”
Considering the argument, I found one hole. “Retreat is another option. We can break out of here and make a run for Pinglin.”
Williams had considered that option. “And how many of us would die on the way with the tanks out there? Half? More?”
I didn’t like Williams’s tone. “However many have to die, lieutenant. We aren’t fucking surrendering.”
Exasperated, Williams asked, “If we’re making our decisions on old school macho bullshit, why are we considering retreat?”
It was hard to put into words my exact view. “Our duty is to win. Retreating and living to fight another day can be a step in winning. Surrendering can’t be. The End.”
Williams looked like he wanted to continue the argument, but he could see it was pointless. “Yes, sir,” and walked away.
I ran a hand through my hair. No other options were coming to mind. Retreat was the only option.
I radioed Brown: “Empathy One, request permission to retreat back to Citadel,” Citadel being the codeword for Pinglin proper.
A minute passed, then Brown replied, “Negative, Empathy Four, remain in position.”
Rage rose within me. “Empathy One, we’ve delayed the enemy for an hour. In the next hour, either their artillery is going to knock the goddamn buildings down around us, or their infantry is going to smoke us out from the basements. Retreating now probably means at least forty percent casualties from enemy artillery. If we stay, none of us are going to escape back to the Citadel.”
More silence. “You have your orders, Empathy Four.”
“Fuck your orders!” Unable to slam down a radio like a phone, I slammed down the canteen I still had in my hand.
Retreat it would be, whether approved by Brown or not. The only hope now was to make a run for Citadel. There were probably no style points to be had retreating company by company — I would stay behind on the second floor of my building with a few antitank soldiers to keep the Chinese armor occupied while the rest of the force ran for Pinglin. It would take about fifteen minutes for them to get back.