The officer walked to the central aisle and removed his helmet. ‘I’d like to have your attention,’ he called out politely. ‘I’m sorry to have to bother you men, but things have taken a turn for the worse. The Chinese are giving it their all this go around. And I’m afraid we’re going to have to do the same if… if we’re going to pull this thing out. Now I know you’ve done all your country could ask of any man. But right now we need everyone who can still fire a weapon. All the headquarters, supply and support units have been stripped clean of fillers. The combat units aren’t even sending their wounded back any more unless they’re critical. So I’m gonna have to ask for some volunteers to rejoin the fight. You won’t have to do any moving around. Just use a weapon from a fighting hole. We won’t even make you dig it.’
It was intended as humor, but nobody laughed. The doctors and nurses all glared at the staff officer.
Andre lay on his stretcher and watched the captain nervously twirl his helmet. At first no one rose, and the man stood there all alone. Slowly, however, the first men hobbled up and were sent to the exit. Nurses scolded the wounded soldiers and tried sending them back to their beds. The officer interceded, but finally allowed a doctor to check each volunteer out. Only one man was rejected as too seriously hurt.
‘Stupid fucks,’ the man next to Andre said. But Andre was already swinging his feet to the floor.
He hesitated, but decided not to listen to the guy. ‘Hey, man,’ he said, ‘if nobody stops the motherfuckers, we’re all dead. They’ll just toss a charge through that door and move on.’
His neighbor made a face — unconvinced.
Andre put weight on his feet. Nothing hurt too badly to walk. But he knew it was in part the painkillers. He limped up to the captain and was directed to the doctor. The man stuck a cold stethoscope onto Andre’s chest as a nurse took his blood pressure. ‘You feel up to this?’ the doctor asked while listening to Andre’s heart.
‘No-o-o,’ Andre answered.
The exhausted man didn’t bother with a reply. ‘Nurse, give this man some ampicillin and some Vicodin.’ He turned to the next wounded recruit.
The nurse gave Andre two bottles of pills — the larger one the painkillers. ‘Take the antibiotic every four hours — the Vicodin as needed,’ she said while still holding his hand. Standing close, she whispered, ‘You don’t have to do this.’
When the next man arrived, she abruptly left Andre there holding his pills. He reconsidered his decision to leave the clean, warm hospital. But men arrived with rifles and outer gear, which were handed out to the volunteers. Although Andre’s wounds were impressive enough — large bandages over his left ear and all up and down his right side — other volunteers were much worse off. There were bandaged faces leaving only one eye uncovered. Legs were wrapped so thick they looked like tree trunks. Blood soaked through dressings from all manner of hidden wounds.
Andre donned the gear and took an M-16.
The provisional platoon numbered over twenty wounded men. They had to climb high into the rocks of a steep hill. About a dozen men preceded Andre. They turned the light dusting of snow into slick ice. His slips were painful, but Andre didn’t complain about the effort. The higher the better, as far as he was concerned. They all helped each other make the slow trek in the darkness. The more seriously wounded were lent shoulders by the few healthy soldiers. The sound of fighting was a now constant and sonorous roar.
The captain who led them there had lied about the fighting holes. He placed the men among the rocks in unprepared positions. Andre lay on a ledge behind a jagged outcropping. Andre could see none of his new comrades. They were hidden — as was he — in the hilltop’s dark crevices. But they were so tightly packed the captain addressed them all in a conversational tone. ‘Your job up here is simple. Don’t go anywhere, and don’t let the Chinese take this peak.’ The orders seemed ridiculous. They were as far away from the fighting as they could possibly be. ‘From up here,’ the officer said as his men handed out extra ammunition, ‘enemy troops could fire down on our rear areas. We’d no longer be able to move freely to react to Chinese breakthroughs.’ A soldier handed Andre eight magazines. When added to the one in his rifle and two others he’d been given outside the hospital, Andre had over a hundred and fifty rounds. It was the most he’d had at any one time since the first couple of days in the valley.
He couldn’t help but wonder why they were being so generous with ammo.
‘Good luck,’ the captain concluded. ‘We’ll relieve you as soon as we can… hopefully in the morning.’
After he left, the conversations sprung from the dark hiding places like mushrooms. Andre briefly saw the profile of a helmet about ten meters to his right, From the sound of the voices there were men on each side of and above him.
‘Anybody got a machine-gun?’ someone asked.
After a few moments of silence, they all heard, ‘I’ve got a SAW.’
The answer didn’t seem to sit well with the questioner. A Squad Automatic Weapon had an impressive six-hundred-round box magazine. But it fired 5.56-mm rifle rounds, not the heavier 7.62-mm NATO rounds of the M-60. And it would overheat quickly with sustained firing.
‘How about grenadiers?’ the same voice asked. ‘Call it out.’
‘I got one,’ someone replied. ‘Two!’ another man said. ‘Three.’ The count ended at five.
At least that was good, Andre thought. Five 40-mm grenade launchers — M-279s mounted underneath M-16s — could do some good at such a high elevation.
A deep whine rose to a fearsome roar as a jet passed low overhead. Jeeze! someone shouted as the glowing twin exhausts banked steeply. The jet screamed down the valley and exited the far end uneventfully. It seemed odd that it would risk flying so low.
Then the night erupted in a string of sixteen brilliant flashes. The clouds of flame cooled from white to orange to red as the crackling rumble rattled Andre’s insides. Moments later another fighter-bomber crested the ridge. They each wrought the same devastation. In all, eight jets dropped 128 500-lb bombs. They fell along the road and the surrounding foothills. Despite the painful ringing in Andre’s ears, he found the display of pyrotechnics entrancing. Soon after the fighter-bombers streaked a hundred feet over their ridge line, a ripple of explosions lit the forested valley in brilliant fire. The flashes darkened before their concussion pounded his eardrums. The lightning and thunder were a half-second out of sequence.
But the more Andre watched, the more his sense of dread grew. The strings of bombs fell closer and closer to their hilltop position. They finally pounded the base of the hill where they lay. When the terrible violence came to an end, the nature of men’s chatter had changed. It took on an urgency — a sense of purpose — that was new.
‘Look alive!’ someone called out. Tracers streaked through the woods below. The fighting raged as the Chinese surged forward.
‘Let’s do this right! My name is Master Sergeant Golden. I’ll command for as long as I can. We appear to be in a semicircle! And we got a 16 on the far right at the edge of a cliff. You’re number one. Call it out, son!’
‘One!’ a man said, sounding fit enough.
There was grunting, then a loud, ‘Shit!’ from the master sergeant. He puffed and hissed his way to the next position. ‘About five meters to the left of number one we got a grenadier and some flat ground. He’s coverin’ the approach we took to get up here, so we might have to react this way. If we’re threatened with an overrun from over here, I want you two guys to call out “Right! Right!” We’ll organize a reaction team to reinforce this sector. When I get around the perimeter, I’ll designate which guys are on the team. You’re number two,’ he said at a lower volume. ‘Call it out.’