"Good job, kid," he said. "Keep your eyes open. Now, let's get moving. New Jersey, stick with us."
They kept advancing, Cole leading the way for Pomeroy and the kid, slowed now by the steep rise of the ground and the fire that was pouring down on them like a gale.
Off to his left, Cole glimpsed a couple of soldiers fall to their knees and then topple over. His mind went to that beach in Normandy, back in 1944, the way that blood and sand had mixed into a slurry at the water's edge. So many men had been lost on Omaha beach that to live had been the exception. The sight of those two boys going down had taken him back. Cole forced himself to snap out of it.
Everywhere along the American advance, the same scene of destruction was being repeated. This was terrible ground to attack and excellent ground to defend. The American attack seemed to be losing steam, but no one was calling for a retreat.
Even so, they were definitely getting stalled at the base of the ridge. Cole flung himself down again as bullets whistled overhead. The kid dove down next to him. Cole worked his elbows under him and put his sniper rifle to his shoulder. Their only hope was to pick off a few more of these machine gunners or otherwise thin the ranks of the defenders.
"Okay, search for targets," Cole said. "You call 'em as you seem 'em."
"Two o'clock," the kid said. "I think it's an officer." It was a target that was too good to pass up. Cole looked through the scope, saw a man who seemed to be giving orders to the others, and put his crosshairs on the Chinese soldier. The shot hit the officer square in the chest and he toppled forward down the slope.
"Got him," the kid said.
"Cole, what the hell are you doing here?"
Cole swiveled toward the voice, surprised to see Lieutenant Ballard nearby, crouched behind a rock.
"Couldn't let you have all the fun, sir."
"What are you doing with that rifle? What happened to Heywood?" Ballard demanded.
"Heywood's dead." Cole spat, clearing some grit from his mouth, or maybe the dead man's name had left a bad taste. "I picked up his rifle and thought I could do some good with it."
Ballard nodded. "Yeah, I saw how you picked off that officer. See if you can shoot a few more."
Sergeant Weber ran over and slid behind the rock like he was sliding into home plate. "We cannot stay here, sir," he said. In the excitement and stress of the moment, he sounded even more German than usual. "They will pin us down."
"You're right," Ballard agreed. He looked around as if trying to figure out where to direct his men in this crazy assault. Glancing behind him, Ballard's eyes quickly scanned the platoon and took stock of the men who had made it that far. His glance fell momentarily on Cole.
"See that machine gun up there, off to the left?" Ballard was referring to a heavy machine gun some distance away that had a field of fire that covered the ground the platoon needed to cross. In the sickly morning light, the green Chinese tracers stitched a deadly pattern across the killing field, reaching out to anything that moved. "He'll chew us to pieces if we try to move. Can you take him out? That's a hell of long way to shoot."
Cole got on the rifle. "Don't wait for me."
Ballard stood up and waved a hand to encourage his men forward into a hail of bullets. It was incredibly mad and incredibly brave.
Just as the deadly telltale tracers moved in Ballard's direction, Cole fired. The heavy machine gun fell silent and the platoon surged forward.
Cole stayed put and he reached out a hand to stop the kid before he could get up. On Cole's other side, Pomeroy hadn't made any effort to go anywhere.
"We'll do more good right here," he said. In Cole's accent, the last two words ran together and sounded like rye cheer. "We can pick off whoever we need to up on that ridge as soon as they poke their heads up and give us any trouble. Just your eyes open."
Cole quickly saw that the Chinese defenders had every advantage over the advancing platoon. Up on that ridge, they could throw down their stick grenades at the oncoming Americans, blasting yet more holes in the advance. He saw Ballard still leading the way, Sergeant Weber right behind him, leaping from rock to rock like a tough old billy goat. Cole reckoned those two must have charmed lives if they hadn't been hit yet.
Working against the Chinese was the fact that to fire down at this steep angle, they would need to expose themselves, which was to Cole's benefit. Whenever he saw an enemy soldier up on the ridge, he quickly dropped the man. Off to his right, the kid also called targets. Pomeroy popped off a few rounds at any soldiers who targeted Cole and the kid, who was armed only with binoculars.
To Cole's amazement, he saw that some of the enemy soldiers had gathered piles of large rocks, roughly the size of bowling balls, and were now lifting these rocks over their heads and hurling them down at the attackers. Their faces contorted with rage. Cole was reminded that this was how cavemen must have fought. Hurling the rocks was primitive but effective. One of those rocks was enough to bash in a head or break a man's shoulder when it struck from above.
Cole targeted one of the rock throwers and dropped him.
The attackers were not acting alone. Planes roared overhead, impossibly close. They could see the rivets on the underbelly of the planes. The planes strafed Sniper Ridge and the enemy positions hardly more than one hundred feet ahead of the American advance. Too close to use any bombs or napalm, but it was enough to decimate the Chinese defenders on the ridge.
There seemed to be fewer of them now. Were they melting away? He had heard that the Chinese had a network of tunnels and trenches, reaching deep into the ridge. Sneaky bastards that they were, maybe the Chinese had slipped away for now. They could regroup and stop the Americans at the next ridge, or the one after that. There was no shortage of hilltops to fight over.
He watched the lieutenant finally scramble up the last few feet, several men right behind him. They fired a few quick shots at whoever was left up there. Then the firing on the ridge came to a halt.
"I'll be damned," Cole muttered. "We done it."
While Hardy fiddled with his camera, the American troops had prepared a final assault and surged up the last few feet of the ridge.
By then, many of the Chinese had simply melted back into the network of tunnels and trenches that the Americans were about to discover. After all, the enemy had occupied this position for weeks now, digging deeper into the ridge. They would simply use these tunnels to live to fight another day.
The few Chinese soldiers who remained behind put up a fight using their rifles and bayonets at close range, and finally some of them even started throwing rocks desperately at the attackers before they were shot down, one by one.
Hardy's ears rang, but the battlefield itself had suddenly fallen almost quiet in comparison to the previous din. Sniper Ridge now belonged to the American forces.
He looked back at the ground they had crossed reaching this place and saw the scattered bodies of both Chinese and Americans. His news-gathering mind prompted him to wonder how many. Too many to count. Dozens, anyhow. Several bodies lay across the concertina wire where they had created a bridge through that obstacle.
So many dead, he thought. The sight of the bodies shocked him, for he had never seen such a thing. He had read about this in books, but the reality of it took him completely out of himself. His emotions swirled. He felt sorrow, joy, pride. He fought the urge to weep, and then to laugh. Was this ridge worth the price? That wasn't something he could ponder in a news story. He realized the story that he would write needed to be about victory. He could puzzle out the exact words and approach later.