Sniper Ridge

Chapter Twenty-Five

In the valley below the ridge, Lieutenant Ballard was leading his platoon through a hail of gunfire. The attack was on to recapture Sniper Ridge.

Turning to assess how his men were positioned, he watched with dismay as his radioman was hit in the chest, the round passing all the way through Private Gordy and bursting out through the radio itself. Gordy toppled forward under the weight of the radio and didn't move again.

Cursing, Ballard reached down to grab Gordy by the shoulder, turning him just enough to see the sightless eyes. The poor son of a bitch was already dead — as was the radio.

The lieutenant carried one of the new-fangled M-2 carbines, a short-barreled affair that Ballard had pulled some rank to obtain because he liked the idea of carrying the newest and best. Also, the carbine could be fired on a fully automatic setting, although that chewed right through the 30-found magazine.

Ballard was a tall man, and the weapon looked extra small in his big, gangly hands. To be sure, he was regretting the choice right now because the carbine resembled a child's pop gun rather than a serious weapon.

Leveling the carbine at the top of the ridge, he fired several shots at the Chinese defenders. Take that, you sons of bitches. He was sure that he hadn't hit a thing, but it made him feel better.

The apex of the steep ridge was the objective of their attack. Once again, it didn't help that all the enemy troops up there had to do to defend the ridge was to throw rocks down on the attackers. That was something of an exaggeration, but it wasn't far from the truth.

Ballard thought that it didn't help that they had already made this attack a few days before, across this same rough terrain. Although they had managed to capture the ridge, the company that had been left to hold the ridge had been overwhelmed by a nighttime Chinese counter-attack. Now, they were trying to get it back again.

With the radio out of commission, Ballard was going to need a runner to carry messages. Preferably someone small and quick, who wouldn't be missed much in the actual attack.

Looking around again, he caught sight of the kid with glasses. Tommy Wilson. He seemed to recall something about Wilson having played football back in high school. Plus, he was within earshot.

"Wilson! Get over here!" The kid scrambled to the lieutenant's side, both of them taking a knee as bullets whined overhead. Lucky for them, the tendency was to overshoot when firing downhill, which the Chinese were doing now.

"Sir."

"I need you to take a message to Corporal Laurel. You know him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Tell him to move his squad right when we reach that gulch up there. He needs to make contact with the next platoon. We don't need any gaps."

"OK, sir."

"Now repeat that back to me."

Ballard had learned the hard way that half the time, messengers never remembered a damned thing in the heat of combat. He nodded with satisfaction when the kid repeated what he'd said verbatim. Maybe those glasses were proof that the kid wasn't a complete idiot.

The kid started to get up to deliver the message, but the Chinese fire up on the ridge intensified and Ballard pulled him back down. He looked up at the ridge and saw, incredulously, that a Chinese soldier stood up there on a rock, emptying a machine gun at Ballard's troops down below. Several men returned fire, but the man jumped back down, apparently unscathed.

What they needed was a sniper. Where the hell was that hillbilly when you needed him? Cole hadn't been present this morning when the platoon had formed up for the attack, a fact that rankled Ballard, although his absence wasn't all that unusual. Cole liked to be out before dawn, sniping at the Chinese.

Ballard thought again about how Cole had taken this bespectacled kid under his wing. Cole was a tough nut, but he seemed to have a soft spot for the kid. He’d also been loyal as hell to Pomeroy.

"Where the hell is Cole?" Ballard asked.

"He said he was going hunting this morning, sir."

The explanation had not immediately registered with Ballard. "Hunting for what?"

"Why, for Chinese, sir. What else?"

Hunting was one hell of a way to put it.

Now that the enemy fire had slackened, Ballard gave the kid a shove. "Go!"

Watching him run off, Ballard was thinking that they were going to need a miracle to pull off the attack this morning.

He got to his feet, waved the inadequate little carbine, and shouted, "Let's go, boys! We've got a hill to take!"

Ballard led his men forward up the hill, toward the peak of Sniper Ridge. Quickly, he checked the position of his platoon, knowing that the attack had to be coordinated. The idea was for the company to move in a straight line up the slope, putting constant pressure on the Chinese defenders.

"I want suppressing fire on that ridge," he shouted at the top of his lungs, straining to be heard over the din of weapons and incoming Chinese mortars.

"Yes, sir!" shouted back a couple of the men, their heads low over their rifles as they squeezed off round after round. The only way that they were going to push the Chinese off that hill was by sheer firepower.

Not that the Chinese were ready to give up. He could see their heads and shoulders up there, just as intent on shooting Americans as the Americans were on shooting the Chinese. Their deadly light machine guns chattered away at them, kicking up dirt and rocks as the gunners walked their fire toward the attackers.

Ballard ducked involuntarily as more shrapnel went flying by, the chunks so big that he could see them whir past like supersonic sparrows. Some claimed that they had found spent pieces stamped with names straight out of American factories — Kenmore, Ford, Fisher — indicating that the metal used to make Chinese ordnance had been sold to them from American scrapyards. Ballard didn't know if that was true, but he appreciated that there was a certain irony of getting cut in half by metal your own side had made.

Off to his right, he saw that his men were just where they should be. Ballard had started out in the center of his unit, but had now placed himself to the far left of his men so that he could more easily anchor them; he was the pin and they were the string on the map table.

Sergeant Weber came running over, crouched low, stopping once to help a man whose weapon had jammed. To say that Weber was cool under fire would have been an understatement.

"Sir, we need to pivot and hit them right at that gap."

"What gap?"

Weber pointed with a gunpowder-stained finger. "One of our mortars hit there and knocked the hell out of the enemy."

Ballard looked closer. He could, in fact, see now where some of the loosely built rock wall had been scattered at the top of the ridge. The Chinese already seemed to be spread thin to cover the length of the ridge. They would be spread even thinner at that point.

"All right, let's do it." He looked around for his runner, then sent the kid out to the end of the platoon's position with that message. Sergeant Weber was already hustling away, ready to help push the men up the ridge.

Ballard waved a hand to indicate that his men should follow, and then ran up the slope toward the gap. Bullets pecked at the dirt around him. He leveled his carbine at the defenders, closer now, and made them duck down with a burst.

A soldier jumped to the top of the low wall, holding a handful of stick grenades. He started to cock his arm back to throw one, but Ballard heard a rifle crack off to his right. He looked that way and saw the sergeant lowering his weapon. The Chinese soldier dropped and there was an explosion as the grenade that he'd been holding went off, taking out whatever defenders were in the area.

Helped by the grenade, the fire from the ridge suddenly slackened and the platoon surged forward. The last twenty feet up the face of the ridge required slinging their rifles and digging in with their hands and knees as men below covered the assault team.

But suddenly, Ballard and the others reached the top of the ridge. He crawled over the low stone wall and dropped down into a trench, weapon at the ready, but the Chinese were running away. He shot one in the back for good measure.

All around him, other soldiers began piling into the trenches, spreading out, eliminating any opposition.

He looked back down the slope. Somehow, his men had managed to outpace the rest of the company that was still struggling up the slope.

Ballard shouted orders, but his men already knew what to do. They had spread out along the ridge, attacking the flanks of the remaining Chinese defenders.

The rest of the company surged up the last few feet of the ridge and climbed into the defenses, making short work of any defenders who hadn't already fled.

They heard a few grenades, a handful of shots, and then a ragged cheer.

Sniper Ridge was back in American hands, hopefully for good this time.