Frozen Sniper

Chapter Twelve

Cole shouted, "Medic!"

In the confusion after the fight, it didn't seem likely that they were going to get any medical help. Their position remained shrouded in darkness, but they could hear other cries around them for a medic — if any of the medics had even survived.

Although the Chinese attack had subsided, they could still hear random firing from the darkness.

Nobody showed a light because that would only have drawn fire.

Cole crouched beside Pomeroy. "Where you hit?"

"I've got so many damn clothes on, I can't tell."

"Where does it hurt?"

"My side. Feels like a hot poker jabbing me."

Cole prodded at Pomeroy's coat, found a rip, but not much blood. Using fingers stiff with cold, he tore open a field dressing and got it pressed against Pomeroy's side.

"Looks like a piece of something glanced your ribs," Cole said. "You're lucky."

"Hurts like hell."

Cole couldn't argue with that. "I reckon it does."

The biggest problem was that Pomeroy shivered almost uncontrollably. Hell, Cole himself was shivering. So was the kid. The temperature was so low that it would need an elevator just to get back up to zero. Now that the fight was over, the nighttime cold settled over them. What they needed was a fire to create some warmth, but there was no hope of that.

"Get inside your sleeping bag," Cole told him. "Got to use what body warmth you got."

"The last thing I want to do is get caught inside this sleeping back if the Chinese come back."

"They won't be back tonight," Cole predicted. “We chewed ‘em up good.”

Pomeroy nodded, and struggled into the sleeping back, muddy boots and all. The effort seemed to make him shiver even more. "Anybody got water?" he asked.

Cole handed him a canteen, but when Pomeroy shook it, there wasn't any telltale sloshing. Frozen solid.

"I'll be damned," Cole said.

"Here, I got some," Tommy said. "I had it tucked inside my coat."

"You're way ahead of us, kid," Pomeroy said, taking the canteen gratefully.

Cole and the kid worked to clear the foxhole of the enemy dead, stacking the bodies in front of the foxhole to create a low wall. It was gruesome work, but if the enemy attacked again, they might be grateful for the barrier. Once that was done, there was nothing to do but settle down and wait. Cole stared out at the darkness immediately in front of them, which seemed impenetrable, though he could make out the outlines of the higher peaks against the star-filled sky. Somewhere out there, the enemy was lurking, licking its wounds and waiting.

Meanwhile, the cold was the more immediate enemy. The bitter chill crept into any exposed gap.

"Better get into our sleeping bags, kid," he said. "Let's huddle up for body heat with Pomeroy in the middle. If the Chinese don't finish us off, this cold sure as hell will."

They both struggled into their sleeping bags. Between them, Pomeroy slept fitfully. The medic never had shown up, but judging by the sounds of suffering coming to them from neighboring foxholes, there were cases a lot worse off than Pomeroy.

Cole propped his rifle against the frozen edge of the foxhole and balled up his fists within his wool gloves, trying to keep his hands warm enough to function. After a moment's consideration, he slipped the rifle into the sleeping bag to keep it from freezing up.

"It's gonna be a long night," he muttered.

Morning broke bitterly cold, a few bands of pink showing between the clouds and mountains at daybreak. Cole was surprised to see Sergeant Weber limping over. Blood-soaked bandages wrapped one arm and one leg. Gray stubble on the sergeant’s face made him look old and haggard.

"Sarge, I figured you was a goner," Cole said. “Didn’t nobody tell you to keep your head down?”

" ’Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated,’ " he said. "One of your American writers said that. Mark Twain. Huckleberry Finn. Besides, it will take more than a couple of Chinamen to kill me. How are you boys holding up?"

Cole ignored the sergeant’s literary references, which he didn’t understand anyway, and took stock. The sleeping bags had done their job, holding in enough warmth to stave off frostbite. Nonetheless, Cole’s eyeballs actually felt like they might have a coating of ice on them. He blinked a few times to get them back to normal. Cole decided that he never had dealt with such intense cold.

"Pomeroy took a chunk of shrapnel across the ribs, but he'll live," Cole said. "Ain't that right, New Jersey?"

At the mention of his name, Pomeroy finally stirred. "Yeah?" he asked groggily.

"We called for a medic, but never saw one."

"Medics are in short supply," the sergeant said. "We lost a couple in the fight last night. I think the damn Chinese are targeting them. There's an aid station set up."

"What, and get out of this nice, warm sleeping bag?" Pomeroy shook his head. "I think I'll stay right here."

"You boys did good," the sergeant said. "We all did. We held our ground."

"As far as I'm concerned, the Chinese and the North Koreans can go ahead and have this forsaken piece of real estate," Pomeroy said.

"I agree," the sergeant said, surprising Cole. "But it's not up to us, is it?"

Once again, Cole wondered what they were doing here. Fighting the Germans had been so different. The objective had been clear: defeat Hitler and capture Berlin. What was their objective here? Who was even their enemy? The Chinese? Cole didn’t know anything about them, other than what he could learn from the bodies all around them.

The sergeant started to walk away, then hesitated, seeming to think something over. "Walk with me, Cole," the sergeant said. "I'm going to check on the rest of the boys, and I might need a runner to take a message to the lieutenant, depending on what I find. My leg isn't much for running."

"All right." Cole was surprised at how reluctant he was to leave the relative warmth of his sleeping bag. He had kidded New Jersey about it, but the man had the right idea.

As Cole shrugged off the warm sleeping bag, the cold air slapped him. Now he knew how a newborn baby felt, forced out into the cold world. He paused to work the action on his rifle, making sure that it still functioned. The bolt snapped shut was a loud click that carried in the morning air. "Kid, look after Pomeroy."

"I don't need anybody to look after me," Pomeroy grumped. "What I do need is for someone to fix me a nice breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, bacon, lots of hot coffee."

"Good luck with that," Cole said. "Best you can hope for is a drink of water, if it ain't frozen."

Out of the foxhole now, Cole looked around. Now that it was daylight, the sight of so many dead was shocking. Here and there, he spotted a few American uniforms among the fallen, although a detail was already out, trying to retrieve the bodies. By far, most of the dead were Chinese.

In the cold, the faces of the dead on both sides had frozen to capture their final expressions. Some of the dead men's features showed surprise. Those were the lucky ones who had died instantly. Other faces had frozen into twisted agony. What bothered Cole was that many of the faces of the dead Chinese looked so young. Sure, last night they had been endeavoring to kill Cole and his countrymen, but they were just young men following their orders as soldiers. They were the enemy, but there was now a kind of innocence about them in death. Cole certainly took no pleasure in seeing them by the light of day.

The shock at the number of dead must have shown, even on Cole's face. He could be a hard man, but he had never seen such carnage.

"Pretty awful, isn't it?" the sergeant asked. "No matter how many we killed, they kept on coming. I wouldn't have thought much of the Chinese before last night, but I've got to say, they are determined."

"Never seen anything like it," Cole agreed.

"Come on," the sergeant said.

They made their way to the next foxhole, the one from which the BAR had done its deadly work. Three lumps lay in the bottom, wrapped in their sleeping bags. Cole thought at first that they were dead. Sluggishly, the three men waved up at them. Haggard eyes peered out from under frosty helmets and hoods.

"You all right?" the sergeant asked.

"Need ammo," one of the soldiers stammered.

"I'll see what I can do," the sergeant said.

"Any chance of something hot to drink?"

"I've got to say, coffee is scarcer than bullets out there," the sergeant said. "But maybe the cooks can get a pot going."

"Amen to that."

They moved on. "If we're going to win this fight, we are definitely going to need hot coffee and bullets, in that order," the sergeant said.

Looking around at the frozen landscape, Cole said, "Don’t look promising."

"I was not joking when I said that hot coffee was going to be harder to find than bullets. We've got to worry about the cold as much as we do the Chinese."

"The cold don't run at you with bayonets, though," Cole pointed out.

"Yes, there is that."

He looked sideways at the sergeant, surprised that the man had singled Cole out to accompany him on these rounds. "Sarge, I got to say, I never reckoned that you liked me much."

Sergeant Weber snorted, causing a cloud of frozen breath to hang in the air before it was whisked away by the icy wind. "Back at that ambush on the road, I thought you were some kind of chicken shit. Nutzlos. Never fired a shot at the enemy. But then I got to thinking about it and realized that you weren't a coward. You were just keeping your cool, I guess you'd say. I see how you look out for that kid and even for Pomeroy. Anyhow, I saw you in action last night, Cole. You are no coward. You are a soldier. You never missed a shot."

"Everybody did what they had to do, or we wouldn’t be here today."

"There was some talk, you know, about you being a hot shot sniper back in France and Germany. Any truth to that?"

Cole took a while to answer. "Maybe some. I ain't no hot shot, though."

The sergeant gave him a look. "You sure about that? I seem to recall some stories about a sniper named Lucas Cole. One of the best. Some say he ought to have the Medal of Honor."

"Same name," Cole agreed. "But I ain't necessarily the same man, anymore."

"That might be said about any of us that was in the last war, Cole. Hell, that was five years ago. Half a decade. There were a lot of times back then that I didn't know if I was going to live another half a minute. Hell, I was fighting all of you. Americans. Yet here we are."

"Yep," Cole said, surveying the bleak scene around him. "Can’t say this place was worth the wait."

"Listen, Cole, what I wanted to say was that I told the lieutenant that you should be my replacement if some Chinese son of a bitch gets lucky."

Cole was taken aback. "Me?"

"Well, why not you? I'm half shot to pieces, Cole.” Weber often struggled to hide his accent, but he sounded very German when the word well slipped out with a “v” sound. “The men need someone to lead them if the other half of me gets shot up."

"I ain't but a private."

"Didn't you get the news? That's the Army for you. Lieutenant promoted you to corporal this morning. Congratulations. A battlefield promotion. Good luck finding an extra stripe around here, much less a needle and thread."

Cole shook his head. "You better stay healthy, Sarge."

"I will if I can help it, but there you are just in case."

A sound reached down from the skies. Cole heard the whine of approaching planes. These had become far more familiar. Approaching at incredible speed, the Corsairs swooped low over the American position and headed for the hills beyond. A ragged cheer went up from the Americans. They knew what the enemy was in for.

All that Cole could see were the brown hills, but the pilot must have spotted a target. As he and the sergeant watched, transfixed, one of the planes dropped a payload of napalm. The jellied gasoline burned a strip of mountainside, black smoke roiling up. Something about the orange flames was far more horrifying than any artillery burst. It was hard not to feel sorry for the poor bastards on the receiving end of that, enemy or not. Cole shuddered.

They moved on to the next foxhole. Two men lay in the bottom, apparently sleeping.

"Price? Harper? How you two holding up?"

But there was no answer to the sergeant's question. Cole started to get a bad feeling about this one. Both soldiers were barely more than high school kids. They should have had someone more experienced out here with them — or maybe they had, and those men were now among the dead. Not that far away, a detail was retrieving the bodies of the Americans that had mixed among the Chinese dead. They were stacking the frozen dead like cordwood.

Down in the foxhole, Cole noticed that neither of the young soldiers was inside a sleeping bag, but they were huddled together for warmth.

"Hey!" the sergeant said, louder now. “You two lovebugs better wake up!”

Looking closer, Cole could see frost coating their eyelashes, the flesh of their faces white and frigid. There was no sign of blood or injury. They had survived the battle last night, only to freeze to death.

"They're dead, Sarge," Cole said quietly.

"Don't you think I can see that?" the Sarge snapped. But his anger immediately dissipated. He muttered, "Goddamn. How many others are we going to find like that?"

It was a good question, but the answer was going to have to wait. They heard the sound of more approaching planes, high above, but moving fast in the cold air. They both turned in time to see parachutes floating down from the planes.

"C'mon!" Weber shouted. "It looks as if somebody remembered us, after all."

Several other soldiers joined them as they ran for the rear area where the drop was taking place. The planes were low enough that they could get a good glimpse of them. These Fairchild Flying Boxcars were twin-engine propeller-driven cargo planes with a unique divided tail design — almost making the planes resembled a giant tuning fork. The fuselage ended in a wide cargo door, wide open as crates spilled from the hold. Surely, the Chinese could see the incoming planes, but not a shot molested them. Without any Chinese Air Force to speak of, the cargo planes approach unmolested. The cargo was being dropped at low altitude so that there would be little chance of missing the encircled Americans and accidentally supplying the Chinese troops instead.

The problem was that the crates were coming in too hard without enough time for the parachutes to slow them down.

"Look out!" someone yelled. Men scrambled to dodge the incoming crates.

Some of the cargo hit nearby small trees, snapping off the frigid branches with a godawful racket. Other crates hit the frozen ground and popped open.

Overhead, the planes were gone as quickly as they had appeared.

"Just like Christmas!" shouted a soldier, pawing through the materials.

After all, the troops were now desperately low on supplies. But the soldiers were soon disappointed.

"What the hell is this?" Sergeant Weber demanded, inspecting a crate filled with .40 mm ammunition. What they needed was more .50 caliber ammo. "It’s the wrong damn ammo. Scheisse! If worse comes to worse, maybe we can throw this at the enemy."

Nearby, another soldier held up cooking pots. The entire crate was apparently filled with pots, pans, and cooking utensils. That was a hoot, considering that the soldiers barely had any wood for fires. "What are we supposed to do with these? Make soup?"

Weber reached into the crate and extracted a well-wrapped bundle. Pulling away the wrapping, he revealed a bottle of bourbon. "At least it's not a total loss, boys," he said, and handed the bottle off to a nearby soldier. "Somebody back there had some sense and was looking out for us. Share that around. It is not schnapps, but it might help take the chill off."

The sergeant started back toward the front line, Cole walking beside him. Most of the supplies, sent at great expense and effort, appeared to be entirely useless. One exception seemed to be several jerry cans of gasoline and some medical supplies. For the most part, they had just witnessed a typical Army SNAFU. Situation Normal, All Fouled Up.

"Looks like we're on our own," the sergeant said. "Word is that we are basically surrounded and cut off. The question is, how long do we have to hold out?"

"We ain't gonna hold out for long if the Chinese keep attacking like they did last night and if this cold keeps up," Cole said. They were coming back to the foxholes occupied by their own squad. Nearby, the burial detail was still moving among the dead, gathering American bodies stiff as frozen slabs of beef. He looked away. Cole shook his head. "We'll be down to bayonets and rocks."

"God help us," Weber said.

At that moment, a rifle cracked somewhere off in the surrounding hills, and one of the soldiers in the burial detail suddenly threw back his arms and fell over. The others dropped what they were doing and ran for cover.

"Sniper!" Sergeant Weber shouted.

Then he and Cole jumped down into the foxhole with the frozen soldiers for company, keeping their heads down as the sniper fired again.