Tiny holes appeared out of nowhere in the helicopter’s fuselage. Sprays of glass exploded from its windshield. It was slow, methodical sniper fire. It was unreal. The noise from churning rotors masked the sounds of the bullets’ impacts. The pilots sat motionless at their controls. They were fully exposed inside their plexiglass canopy. They watched the loading of their increasingly bullet-riddled aircraft. Clark imagined their tremendous anxiety. Their desire to get airborne. To pitch and weave their vehicle as taught. But they sat there… waiting.
The helicopter lurched into the air. A man standing just inside was almost thrown to the ground. The aircraft headed back into the wall of smoke from whence they’d come.
Clark now heard the full roar of the massive firefight The popping, bursting, crackling noise came from every direction. He heard also the tell-tale splitting sounds of bullets through air. The twelve-man Special Forces team was spread out in a rough semicircle. Their weapons were raised to their shoulders. Two female medics lay inside the tiny perimeter. So did Clark’s group of two officers and two riflemen. All were volunteers.
The first Green Berets rose to rush toward the piles of sandbags around nearby artillery emplacements. Bullets cut through the air overhead. The two soldiers dropped, but appeared unharmed.
‘That sniper’s got us zeroed in!’ Major Reed shouted. But there was nothing they could do to fight back. That was the frustrating thing about snipers. Clark remembered the afternoon he’d spent hugging the embankment of a rice paddy. He’d been soaked waist-high in muddy water. His entire forty-man platoon had been pinned down by a lone man with a bolt-action rifle.
But this war was different. You had no choice but to take your chances. No choice but to accept casualties. ‘All right, listen up!’ Clark shouted. ‘We’ll all make a run for it at the same time!’ The effort sent sharp stabs of pain through his torso.
The Captain who commanded the special forces A Team counted down.
Everyone rose at once and began their labored run toward the sandbags. The Green Berets weaved this way and that. But Clark knew it was wasted effort. At extreme distance, snipers aimed only at the area. It was luck — the law of averages — on which they counted. Since snipers had a slow rate of fire, going all at once would lessen the number of shots he’d get off. They rose and began their sprint.
Each time Clark’s boots hit the hard earth, pain shot through his side. He’d busted a rib, he knew it. His anger at himself made him momentarily forget the sniper. The singing ‘z-z-z-i-p’ by his left ear, however, refocused his attention. He ran straight toward the booming artillery pieces as fast as he could. The others ran faster. It wasn’t just that Nate couldn’t draw a deep breath. He felt like an old man.
They all made it safely to the cover of the sandbagged walls. Every few seconds the self-propelled 155-mm gun fired — its barrel at maximum elevation. The high-angle fire meant the Chinese were close. The guns were firing at their shortest possible range.
An artilleryman led them to the brigade command post. The Green Berets were all sent to the most critical sector of the defenses. Stairs made of railroad ties led down into an enormous mound of sandbags. The snow covering it was blackened and pitted from mortars. The last vestiges of what must have been camouflage netting hung in tatters from poles and spreaders.
Inside he found a wounded colonel — Brigadier General Merrill’s successor in command. He was sitting at an awkward angle — leaning against a large map table over which hung the best light in the bunker. He was in too much pain to answer Clark’s questions coherently. Clark understood, however, that Merrill had led two battalions out to try to reinforce the 2/263rd. But they’d been hit hard on the way. They’d barely fought their way back to the base. Merrill was dead.
It was a quiet story given by a man in great agony. Clark had seen it before. Pain had turned him pasty. Nauseous. Sweaty. He ordered the man to the aid station. The colonel didn’t have the energy to argue.
Clark looked up to see that everyone at brigade headquarters was staring at him. Bare bulbs hung intermittently from the low ceiling by strings of wire. Clark removed his outer garments and gear. Reed at his side did the same. At least twenty people were crammed together amid banks of radios and tables with laptops. They lived in the perpetual darkness of the bunker.
‘Call ’em to attention,’ Clark said to Reed.
‘Ten-shun!’ Reed barked.
The weary men and women stood and straightened. Everyone but a radio operator. She stooped at her small table because the wire to her headphones was too short.
‘Listen up!’ Clark bellowed. ‘My name is Lieutenant General Nate Clark! I am the commander of UNRUSFOR, USARPAC, and now — temporarily — 2nd Brigade, 25th Infantry Division!’
Clark was astounded at the sudden burst of applause and cheers. Paper flew into the air like confetti. When he saw the genuine excitement on their faces, however, he realized instantly what it was. It was a lesson he’d learned long before — first in books, then in the field. It was a lesson he now learned anew as he watched the suddenly energized soldiers await their first orders.
‘You can’t lead from the rear,’ Clark remembered, then went to work.
The brigade staff was gathering. Clark and Reed pored over unit markings on the map — Reed whispered comments and rough headcounts. When all were present, Clark shook their hands briskly.
‘All right,’ Nate said before he’d even finished shaking hands. ‘Our objective’ — he turned to the map — ‘is to defend as wide a piece of real estate as possible with inadequate resources against an unimaginably large enemy force. That means we’re going to have to consolidate our position. Tighten our perimeter. Give up ground we want and are fighting to hold right now. Ground we’ll have to take back in a week at heavy cost to be able to operate this airfield.’
He paused. Not to invite comment, but to get them to think. To consider their situation. He picked up a blue pencil and drew an irregular circle around the airfield. Its radius was about two kilometers. It was well inside the sagging lines of their current, heavily dented perimeter.
‘Even after the consolidation, we still won’t have enough people to man a continuous defensive perimeter. So I want an intelligence assessment by twenty-four hundred hours telling me what the most likely Chinese objectives are. We’ll defend those, and cover the undefended areas with artillery fire only. That means our lines are going to be porous. Chinese sappers, stragglers, even whole units are going to get through. So I want all the service and support units in the rear to put pickets out at night. They’ll also need to form provisional infantry platoons to sweep designated sectors clear of infiltrators after every attack. If the Chinese get through the lines in force, they’ll have to defend their own positions against direct assault. And since we’ve given up these dominating heights around the airfield,’ he said — drawing red ‘Xs’ on three hills — ‘we’ll be under direct fire from those hills round the clock.’ They all stared down at the ‘Xs’. ‘So I want those hills under air and artillery attack round the clock, too. I want every Chinese soldier up there either heads-down or killed-in-action.’
The enthusiasm they’d shown upon his arrival was gone.