"I brought you ammunition," Wu said, settling himself on the ground beside Chen. Chen noticed that the officer spoke as if he had been the one who had carried the ammunition, rather than the panting young soldier. He waved a hand at the scene below. "Someone else can shoot the deserters tonight," he added with a tone of disgust.
Before tonight's attack, the soldiers had received a limited number of bullets. But that did not seem to be an issue any longer for Chen.
Wu barked at the young soldier to stay behind them and to keep an eye out for trouble. The young man did not have a weapon.
Then Wu took out a pair of binoculars and began to observe the defensive positions below. "You should target the machine gunners and mortar crews first. I will direct your fire. If you see any officers, you should shoot them as well."
Chen turned his attention from his own comrades and focused on the defensive positions below. He saw the enemy scrambling like rats as they prepared for the oncoming assault. A man stood, clearly visibly in the light from the flares. Chen guessed that he was an officer, perhaps giving orders.
He put his sights on the man and squeezed the trigger. The figure below crumpled.
He slid the bolt, then searched for another target. From above, he could see down into the foxholes so that the defensives did not offer much protection.
Off to his left, the first wave of the assault poured down the long slope toward the enemy. The roaring sound of the attacking Chinese gladdened his heart. He felt patriotic pride stirring in his chest. Then the enemy opened fire, tearing great holes in the advance. Tracers from the machine guns seared the night. His heart ached at the sight. But more than anything, he wanted to avenge those comrades who had fallen.
Chen turned his attention back to the targets below. He had a great deal of work yet to do.
"At ten o'clock from our position, there is a machine-gun nest," Wu said.
Chen's sights settled on the gleam of a helmet behind a machine gun. Again, his rifle fired, claiming another of the enemy soldiers. His sights returned to the American machine-gun nests below, and he squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Seventeen
Tonight, the Chinese attackers seemed emboldened, as if determined to finish off the Americans for good. Maybe they'd had enough of hunkering down by day and hiding from the planes dumping napalm on them. Shouting and firing as they came, they seemed intent on finishing the job that they had started last night. A bullet snapped past Cole's head and he flinched, causing his next shot to go wide.
The Chinese were definitely within mortar range and he heard the thump of mortar rounds being fired from the American lines. However, the mortar fire seemed wildly inaccurate. There were also a lot of duds. What Cole couldn’t know was that the severe cold had caused many of the mortar tubes to warp, affecting their accuracy. The middle of a battle was one hell of a time to discover the problem.
A few of the GIs launched rifle grenades at the attackers. Once they came close enough, they hurled grenades instead.
The problem was that the Chinese themselves were close enough to throw grenades. Their arsenal included stick-type grenades similar to what the Japanese and Germans had used in the last war. They also used a relatively crude type of grenade with a burning external fuse. The hissing grenades began to fall among the defenders, exploding with a deadly thump. From time to time, the Americans got lucky and the snow snuffed out the fuse. The snow did not affect the function of the American “pineapple” grenades — the problem was that they just didn't have enough of them.
"Jesus, I'm almost out of ammo!" Pomeroy shouted. "What the hell are we gonna do?"
"Pitch some grenades at the sons of bitches."
For the defenders, each foxhole had become like an island in a storm or a castle in a siege. Desperately, they tried to keep the swarms of attackers from overwhelming them.
This wasn't like fighting the Germans, who had approached each attack with an almost mathematical precision. The Germans had not exposed themselves needlessly, but worked forward using cover and suppressing fire. They had been tough and tenacious bastards who knew their business.
Cole was certain that if they had faced a German force this size that the defenders would have quickly been swept into oblivion — and most likely the Germans would have detailed a company to deal with the Americans while the bulk of the division went around them. But the Chinese didn't seem to have any strategy or plan other than to overwhelm the defenders through sheer force of numbers.
It was a strategy with a terrible cost, as shown by the bodies now piling up like snowdrifts in front of the American and ROK positions. So far, the defenders still possessed superior firepower thanks to the BARs and M-1s.
The Chinese crept closer, some of them literally leaning forward into the hurricane wind of rifle fire. More and more of them fell, but they kept coming, closer and closer.
Cole realized that the Chinese were within thirty feet of him. A soldier broke away and charged toward the foxhole, shouting and firing from the hip as he ran. Cole shot him, but the man kept coming, so Cole shot him again.
Beside him, Pomeroy grunted with the effort of hurling a grenade. "Down!" he shouted, just before the grenade went off uncomfortably close. But it had given the Chinese something to think about. For the first time, the attackers seemed to hang back.
But still, a few attackers broke away and ran at them. Cole fired at one man, but the second got within six or seven feet of the foxhole, so close that Cole's muzzle blast actually burned a hole in the soldier's white cotton tunic. Another grenade went off, pushing them back yet again.
Cole noticed a Chinese soldier sitting in the snow just a few feet away. Both of the man's hands gripped an ugly wound in his belly. The wounded soldier was looking right at him, saying something to him in Chinese. You could always pick out a word or two of German, but the Chinese sounded like raucous birdsong to his ears, like angry crows bickering. Did the man want to surrender? Was he begging for help? Cursing Cole? He shot the man through the heart, ending his suffering and silencing him forever.
Another soldier appeared, launching himself at Cole. From down in the foxhole, Cole jabbed at him with the bayonet, which caught in the man's belly and refused to come out. Screaming in agony, the soldier fell into the hole, his weight dragging Cole's rifle out of his hands. He grabbed his Bowie knife and slashed at the soldier's throat, finishing him, then wrapped his hands around the rifle stock and kicked at the body until the bayonet pulled free. Cole smelled blood and the tang of waste from the dying man's shattered bowels.
Someone leaped over the foxhole. Cole caught a glimpse of the puffy white uniform and fired at the man's back, sending him sprawling in the snow. When the man fell, he dropped something into the bottom of the foxhole. Cole realized that the soldier had been carrying a Bangalore torpedo, probably to use it against one of the trucks that was parked just inside the American line of defense. The torpedo consisted of a bamboo pole, from which dangled a silken bag filled with high explosives. A fuse sputtered and smoked, burning steadily toward the charge.
A Chinese grenade would have been bad enough. This was more like an actual bomb. They had maybe a few seconds before they were all blown to kingdom come.
"Look out!" Cole shouted, trying desperately to scramble out of the foxhole. Weighted down with gear and his rifle, he realized he wasn't moving fast enough.
"I've got it!"
Suddenly the kid was down in the bottom of the hole, scooping snow onto the fuse, which fizzled one last time and went out.
"You just saved our sorry asses, kid," Cole said gratefully. "Another few seconds and we would have been blown to kingdom come."