Sniper Ridge

Chapter Eleven

When the order came to attack, there was no blowing of bugles or beating of drums, as there had been from the Chinese lines. The officers and sergeants simply shouted, "Let's go!" and waved their hands. With that, the American troops surged up and over the ridge.

Some poor bastards never made it more than a few feet before an enemy bullet cut them down.

Cole found himself screaming the same rebel yell that had echoed at Gettysburg and Antietam and a hundred other battlefields. Cole realized that he felt no fear. He felt unleashed.

Just like the Yankees who had heard that weird, high pitched yelping nearly a century ago, the Chinese who heard it now felt their bellies clench in fright. Something bad was coming for them. Maybe these Americans were not as soft as their leaders had told them.

Through the valley where they had driven back the earlier Chinese assault as dawn arrived, Cole, Pomeroy and the kid ran with the others, their rifles at the ready, but careful to be spread out so that a single burst of machine-gun fire or a mortar round wouldn't wipe them all out. Dimly, Cole was aware of the reporter somewhere off to his right, still wielding a camera instead of a rifle. Dang fool. He looked ahead. Their objective was the top of a steep hill with the name of sniper ridge.

From behind them, they could also hear shooting as the soldiers in the encampment held back the Chinese attack in the rear area. The American assault on Sniper Ridge would bring the attack to the enemy.

They were close enough now that he could see some of the Chinese defenders up there. From the looks of it, they were spread too thin, which was a good thing. The bad thing was that the American attackers would have to scramble to climb this steep ridge.

He reckoned that somewhere up on that ridge was the Chinese sniper that he had taken a pot shot at this morning. Unless Cole had gotten lucky and settled his hash, this same sniper would be shooting at them again soon enough.

"Keep it moving, keep it moving!" Lieutenant Ballard was shouting, leading the way. If Cole had his rebel yell, all that Ballard needed was a sword to play the part of an old-time infantry officer.

Cole had to give the lieutenant at least some credit. He didn't much like Ballard. Hell, the feeling was mutual, because Ballard had made it clear that he didn't much like Cole.

On the battlefield, those issues melted away. They attacked the enemy as one. He had the lieutenant’s back, and the lieutenant had his.

The lieutenant was right out in front of his men. It took some brass to do that, Cole decided. Meanwhile, the Chinese weren't simply going to let them stroll up the hill. From the heights of Sniper Ridge, the enemy began to pour fire down on the advancing American troops. It was light enough now that there was no predawn twilight to screen them from the enemy guns. They were crossing a no-man's land filled with shell holes, rocks, and bodies. If it wasn't exactly hell itself, then it was at least hell's front porch.

Walls of tangled concertina wire impeded their progress. Some men had brought along wire cutters and were hacking away now at the coiled strands, but it was taking too damn long, holding up the attack. The advancing line was out in the open and made an easy target for the Chinese defenders.

"We're pinned down," Cole said. "Gonna be hell to pay."

When the attack began, Don Hardy ran with the others, stumbling over rocks and shattered tree stumps. There was no time to think, but only to act.

He didn't get far. His boot caught on something and he went flying, but struggled to keep the precious camera from smashing into the ground. Instead, he ended up sprawled face-down in the dirt. His breath went out of him with an oopf sound and sensation that he remembered from his schoolyard football days. It was like he had just been tackled by Korea.

He was tempted to lay there and claim that he had twisted his ankle, but in the end, his conscious wouldn't let him. He hadn't signed on to be part of an infantry attack. Instead, he had pictured himself interviewing soldiers in the foxholes, before heading back to the mess tent for a hot cup of coffee.

There was no time to whine about the situation in which he had found himself and there was nobody to listen, anyhow. He forced himself to his knees. As soon as he tried to get up and run, he saw that the attack was moving so quickly that he was already some distance behind the others. Some reporter you are, he thought. You're letting the story get away from you.

Back on his feet, he sprinted after the other soldiers to keep up, the carbine bouncing on his shoulder. He was more intent on observing the battle and shooting pictures than on shooting his weapon.

He cradled his precious camera in his hands, realizing that he was too worried about taking a few pictures to even be afraid. He wondered if something was wrong with him for thinking that. He was only dimly aware of the battle sounds around him: chattering machine guns, the pop, pop, pop of rifle fire. Dimly, he reminded himself that these were details that could go into one of his dispatches from the front.

He spotted a few men he recognized up ahead and decided to stick with the squad that he had found himself with earlier. That squad had included the hillbilly sniper. At least, that was how Hardy thought of him. He saw the man raise his rifle to fire, and Hardy snapped a photograph.

Something about the sniper was reassuring, simply because he seemed like one tough customer. If anybody was going to survive this attack, it was probably going to be somebody like that hillbilly. It came to Hardy in a flash that this was the same man with the Confederate flag on his helmet that he had seen when the Jeep carrying him into the camp had arrived.

Wait for me, he thought.

Hardy shadowed Cole and the two other squad members that he seemed to hang around with. A part of him registered that the most terrifying aspect of combat was the noise. Bullets whistled overhead and mortar rounds exploded, spewing rock and dirt into the air. He could hear men screaming battle cries as they ran up on the steep ridge where Chinese guns blazed down at the Americans. He could see the muzzle flashes in the distance like little firecrackers going off on the Fourth of July. But those flashes were far deadlier than a few firecrackers. All around him, men stumbled and fell, never to rise again. Although his mind dimly registered that these men were dead, Hardy had no choice but to keep running and keep up with the squad. When the soldiers ahead of him threw themselves down, he did the same and got his camera up long enough to shoot a few photographs of the assault.

He took another photo of the sniper at work and hoped that his hands weren't shaking so much that the photograph would be too blurry. Then the sniper and the others got up and ran on. Hardy launched himself after them, running pell-mell toward the ridge with the others.

The assault on the ridge seemed impossible. The ground was too steep. There were too many defenders and their bullets filled the air.

Hardy was fairly certain that he was going to die.

His heart hammered in his chest. His ears rang from the concussions. Color seemed to have leached out of the world, like a faded film.

There was nothing glorious here. It certainly wasn't like Lord Tennyson's poem about the Light Brigade riding to death and glory. There was only dirt and smoke and gore on the ground, and the screams of the wounded and the terrified attackers. Hardy gripped his camera for dear life, like a talisman, remembering to snap a few photos whenever the assault paused. He realized, though, that he kept forgetting to use his thumb to wind the roll, thus shooting one exposure on top of another.

Hardy took a deep breath and forced his shaking hands to advance the film.

Cole and the rest of the squad fired at the ridge, but they were stuck. If they didn't advance through the tangled obstacle created by the tangled wire, they were going to be caught out here in the open while the enemy cut them to pieces.

"This whole damn thing is getting bogged down," Pomeroy muttered, taking a knee next to Cole and watching for enemy targets.

"Go across my back!" somebody shouted nearby.

To Cole's amazement, he watched as a soldier threw himself down on the barbed wire, creating a human bridge through the mess.

Normally, his comrades might have been shocked, but in this case, out of fear and with adrenaline pumping, they simply ran across his back, crushing him deeper into the barbs.

Somebody else got the same idea, but this time they took the corpse of a dead Chinese soldier and threw him across the wire. Then they added a couple more bodies and the wire was pressed down effectively enough to create a bridge across the barrier.

American soldiers began to pour across that bridge of corpses and swarm up the steep ridge ahead.

"Stick with me, kid," Cole urged Tommy Wilson, throwing himself down beside the kid as a burst from a machine gun chewed up the rocks and dirt.

"Can you see him?" Cole wondered, putting his rifle to his shoulder. "You point me in the right direction and I'll shoot him."

The problem was that for Cole to see any larger area of the ridge, now that they were so close, he would have to take his eye away from this telescopic sight. Using the kid's eyes instead would help him to stay focused on individual targets.

"There he is. Ten o'clock," the kid said.

Cole swung the muzzle and spotted the heads of the machine gunners trying to mow them down. He was fairly certain it was one of the Degtyaryov light machine guns provided to the Chinese courtesy of the USSR. He popped off two quick shots and the machine gun was silenced, at least for now.

"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.

Meanwhile, Hardy took a deep breath and realized that he was just glad to be alive.