by James Rosone
As the aircraft got closer to the ground, they leveled out a bit and opened fire on the remaining enemy vehicles. Those 30mm guns made their distinctive ripping sounds as hundreds of depleted uranium rounds strafed across the swarm of enemy vehicles. Dozens of explosions ripped across the UN lines as the Maverick missiles found their marks and the 30mm guns did their thing.
A couple of MANPADs flew up from the UN lines as they tried their best to swat the Warthogs from the sky. The A-10s began spitting out flares at a prodigious rate while the pilots banked hard to the left and applied more power to the engines. Once they’d fired off the series of flares, the planes then swooped lower to the ground as the pilots sought to confuse the enemy missiles.
Both A-10s managed to escape and appeared to get themselves in position for another attack run on the UN forces.
That’s the way, Tabankin thought. There was no reason to go back home when they still had some ordnance left and the enemy was gearing up for another attack.
Looking back at the UN forces, Captain Tabankin saw that the field before them was quickly becoming filled with burning wrecks and charred enemy vehicles from the Apache and A-10 attacks.
Grabbing his pocket binoculars, Tabankin looked further back behind the enemy force. He could see that the next group to hurl themselves at his position was a wave of infantry soldiers intermixed with a few infantry fighting vehicles and six light tanks. The tanks appeared to be the new Chinese-made ZTQ-15 light tanks. The smaller, lighter armored tanks still sported a 105mm cannon, which made them deadly to the defense network he and his men had built.
Tabankin turned to his radio operator. “Start relaying what we’re encountering back to the battalion headquarters. I want them to know what we’re running up against,” he ordered.
When the A-10s lined up for their next attack run, they swooped in like hawks, ready to snatch an unsuspecting rabbit. They fired their 30mm guns at the light tanks, specifically looking to take them out first. As they moved over the enemy lines, they also released a stack of six five-hundred-pound dumb bombs across the charging infantry.
Before the explosives hit the ground or the A-10s could get away from the scene, two Type 09 self-propelled anti-aircraft artillery trucks opened fire with their two 35mm autocannons. The sky around the Warthogs suddenly filled with bright red tracers. Those vehicles used a radar-guided system to help lead the guns to where the targeting computer believed the aircraft were traveling next.
The first string of rounds slammed into the lead A-10, shredding its right wing and summarily blowing out its right engine. The second string of bullets tore into the rear half of the same plane, nearly ripping the entire tail section off. Chunks of the aircraft fell to the ground.
The pilot did his best to bank his aircraft hard toward the American lines as he applied power to his remaining engine. As Captain Tabankin watched the scene unfold in horror, he thought about how the pilot was like a racer at the end of a triathlon with a sprained ankle, just hoping he could push just a few more feet to get across that finish line. Another string of tracer rounds found the last engine of the aircraft and blew it up. Tabankin saw the pilot eject and said a prayer that his brother-in-arms would somehow be able to land somewhat close to their lines.
The second A-10 was also met with a barrage of 35mm tracers, but somehow, it didn’t seem to sustain any critical damage—at least not until several SAMs flew after it. One of the SAMs homed right in on the left engine and blew it apart. Then several new strings of tracer fire slammed into the plane. It exploded before the aviator had a chance to eject. Tabankin put his hand over his heart.
Captain Tabankin looked to his left down the trench line and saw Staff Sergeant Harris, one of the squad leaders in First Platoon. “Staff Sergeant!” he yelled, waving his arms to gain Harris’s attention. “Grab your squad and go fetch our pilot before the Chinese can grab him.”
Harris turned and nodded. “Form up on me!” he yelled. Tabankin saw Harris direct his squad before they moved out.
Tabankin had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. The pilot who’d ejected had nearly drifted to the ground at this point. He was probably about three hundred yards in front of their position—right in the middle of no-man’s-land.
*******
“Sergeant Schneider, I want your fireteam to move forward as quickly as you can to secure the pilot. Bravo Team, we’re going to move with them, but if they come under any fire, I want you guys to stop where you are and engage the enemy. We need to make sure Schneider’s team can get to the pilot before the Chinese do. OK?”
“Yes, sir!”
With his orders given, Sergeant Schneider yelled out to his fireteam. “Follow me!” Then he climbed up and over their trench wall. Right away, he saw that the pilot had somehow gotten himself hung up on a tree not too far from their position. This made him an easy target for the Chinese soldiers who were now running toward him.
We have to get there first, Schneider thought.
One of the American machine-gun positions opened fire on the charging Chinese soldiers as they tried to keep them from getting too close to the downed pilot while one of their squads tried to recover him.
Schneider ran at a near full sprint, despite his full eighty-four-pound kit. Between his body armor, helmet, magazines, grenades, camelback, sidearm, and his M4, it really was a lot of weight to run with, but he knew speed was life at the moment. They had to get to the pilot before the Chinese did, or he was a goner. The American aviator in that tree had probably saved his entire company from being overrun by this armored horde that had appeared from out of nowhere, and Schneider was going to do everything he could to make sure that he survived. However, as he sprinted like an Olympic athlete competing for a gold medal, bullets started kicking up dirt and splinters of wood from the nearby trees and underbrush all around him.
“I’m hit. I’m hit!” yelled out one of his soldiers somewhere behind him. “Medic!” he shouted.
“On my way!” Schneider heard the medic yell. He must’ve been farther back with Bravo Team because his voice sounded farther away, but Schneider didn’t stop, trusting the medic to take care of his fireteam member.
Behind him, Sergeant Schneider could tell that Bravo Team’s M249 SAW had just opened fire on something. His own team’s M240 gunner had just passed him in sprinting to the pilot.
That nineteen-year-old kid is a beast, thought Schneider. The guy could run two miles in under ten minutes, and he’d pretty much maxed out every other aspect of the PT test. Running at full speed with that pig of a machine gun and all that ammo and body armor barely made the kid sweat.
As they got closer, Sergeant Schneider could hear the pilot scream, “Help me!” Wood splinters flew as bullets hit the branches near him. The pilot fired two random shots with his pistol in between struggling with the ropes. He’d already thrown his helmet to the ground, and he kept fighting to untangle his left leg. Apparently, his survival knife was attached to that leg, and he couldn’t cut himself free from his parachute until he reached it.
Schneider’s gunner made it to the pilot first. He stood right under the pilot and yelled, “I’m going to throw you my knife so you can cut yourself free. Catch it, OK?”
The nineteen-year-old made sure the dangling prisoner was ready, then tossed the knife. Sergeant Schneider breathed a little easier when the pilot caught it. He immediately cut away at his chute and fell into some of the lower branches. The pilot had been just high enough that Schneider and his men would have had a tough time cutting him down themselves—especially under heavy enemy fire.
Dozens of Chinese soldiers were closing in on Schneider and his four remaining men. Bravo Team did their best to lay down suppressive fire. Schneider’s M240 gunner quickly set up his weapon and began hammering away at the enemy soldiers.
“Incoming!” shouted one of the soldiers just as an RPG sailed over his head and impacted on the tree, blowing apart the lower portion of the pine, knocking it over. The
pilot fell to the ground along with the top part of the tree.
Sergeant Schneider dashed forward and found his aviator, pinned to the ground by one of the larger branches. Schneider screamed a torrent of obscenities, then scrambled to figure out how to free the pilot’s trapped leg.
One of his soldiers yelled, “Hurry up, Sergeant! They’ve got a couple of armored personnel carriers heading toward us.”
“He’s trapped under part of the damn tree!” Schneider barked. “I’m going to need a few minutes to get him out. Johnson—use your AT4 on that APC and take it out before it lights us up.”
At that precise moment, Bravo Team bounded up to them and set to work setting up some sort of perimeter.
“You should make a break for it, Sergeant,” the pilot said defeatedly. “Save your guys. You did your best.”
“Screw that!” Schneider yelled. “We’re going to get you out. I’m going to raise this branch just enough for you to slip out. When I lift it, you need to crawl out as fast as you can.”
The pilot just nodded. Sergeant Schneider reached behind his body armor and grabbed his breaching prybar and sledgehammer. He unscrewed the breaching tool at the center and extended its telescopic arm with the sledgehammer. That added another six inches to the tool, which he hoped would give him just enough leverage. Schneider looked for a rock or something hard he could place on the ground near the tree branch he needed to lift.
“Hurry up, Schneider!” yelled Staff Sergeant Harris. “We’re going to be overrun in a few minutes.” The rest of the squad had made it to their position.
Schneider didn’t say anything and focused on the task at hand. He finally located a stone he thought could work, then slid the prybar under the branch, keeping the head of the tool on the rock. He looked at the pilot.
“Get ready to move!” he yelled.
He shoved down on the tool with all that he had, putting all his weight and muscle strength into it. The pilot wiggled as hard as he could. For two very tense seconds, it almost looked like he wasn’t going to get away, but then he slid an inch. Then he pushed a couple more inches, and he was finally out.
Just as the pilot got out from underneath that large branch, Schneider looked up and saw a wild-eyed Chinese soldier, screaming and charging him with a bayonet. In a Herculean move perpetuated by adrenaline, Sergeant Schneider raised his arm back with the prybar on one end, and the sledgehammer on the other. Then he swung the tool with all the force he could muster toward the charging soldier.
The sledgehammer side of the breaching tool connected with the man’s face, driving itself several inches into the mush that used to be his skull. The soldier fell to the ground less than two feet from Schneider. His body twitched a bit, like a chicken that’s been separated from its head.
The now-freed pilot grabbed his own pistol and shot at the charging horde, hitting several enemy soldiers.
“Duck, Sergeant Schneider!” yelled his M240 gunner from somewhere to his right.
Schneider jumped on top of the pilot as his machine gunner opened fire, throwing dozens of rounds right over their bodies and cutting down several PLA soldiers.
“Frag out!” yelled another soldier.
Crump.
“We have to get out of here!” yelled Staff Sergeant Harris. “Start falling back!”
Getting up, Schneider grabbed the pilot by his harness and yanked him to his feet. He pointed toward the bunker he’d left and shouted, “Run to our lines! We’ll cover your back.”
The pilot looked utterly terrified. Sergeant Schneider realized that the man before him was used to flying in the sky, delivering his weapons from a distance, not having to be up close and personal with the enemy like the ground pounders.
After a brief hesitation, the pilot took off, sprinting to safety as the rest of the squad did their best to cover him and keep the enemy off them. First, Alpha Team fell back ten or twenty yards. Then they turned around and provided covering fire for Bravo Team. The two teams alternated covering each other as they progressed toward their lines.
The one big obstacle they still had to overcome right at the end was crossing the vehicle bridge on State Road 9. It was wide open, but it was also close to several of their machine-gun positions.
The Chinese must have seen what was going on because they were doing their level best to gun them all down. Two more of Schneider’s guys got hit and tumbled to the ground. Sergeant Schneider saw that one of the guys who’d been hit was being helped by another soldier to cross the bridge.
He stopped to see how bad his trooper’s injury was. He’d been hit a couple of times in the leg. Once he discerned that despite the volume of blood, his comrade in arms hadn’t been hit in an artery, Schneider made the call that they had to get the heck out of Dodge. He couldn’t stop to give him medical aid, not with bullets whipping all around them in front of the bridge. He had to get them to safety first.
Reaching down, Schneider grabbed the private and threw him over his shoulder. The sergeant grunted involuntarily as he felt every pound of the man’s weight, but he did his best to race across the bridge. In his peripheral vision, he could see many of the other soldiers doing their best to cover his run. Then Schneider saw one of his men get hit in the face—half of his head disappeared, and his body dropped to the ground.
Twenty more feet. Come on. You can do this, the sergeant told himself.
Suddenly, it felt like a sledgehammer had hit him in the back. Unable to control the momentum from the sudden kick, Schneider tripped and fell forward. The wounded soldier he was carrying let out a scream of agony.
Sergeant Schneider tried to get up, but it felt like a hot poker had been rammed through his left leg around the calf. He realized he couldn’t stand up to run the rest of the distance back to their lines, and instinctively yelped in pain.
One of the soldiers jumped out of the trench and ran toward them. Schneider yelled, “Grab him first! He’s hurt the most. I’ll cover you.” He turned onto his back and sat up just enough to see the enemy and proceeded to open fire. He hit several of the PLA soldiers before his bolt locked to the rear, letting him know his magazine was empty.
Of all the times to run out of ammo, Schneider thought.
He cursed Murphy’s Law, then dropped his rifle to the ground and grabbed for his Sig Sauer. He pointed it at several of the enemy soldiers closest to him and fired. In less than ten seconds, he had emptied all seventeen rounds from his magazine. Then Schneider dropped the empty magazine and proceeded to grab a fresh one from his pouch. As soon as he’d slapped the fresh magazine in, he slapped the slide release and aimed at the closest enemy soldier to him. He fired a couple of times before he felt someone grab the handle at the top of the back of his body armor. Whoever had grabbed it yanked him hard and pulled him back across the bridge with him, still shooting at the enemy soldiers.
When Schneider had finally been pulled back over the bridge and into one of their fighting positions, a medic ran up to him and examined his leg. He poured some Quick-Clot on his wound and then applied a pressure bandage, which hurt like hell as he pulled it tight.
“I’m going to try and get you back to our aid station,” the medic announced. A second later, the man pulled Schneider upright, swung his arm over his shoulder, and helped him back to the rear of their position.
While he hobbled along, Schneider’s ears were suddenly overwhelmed by the booming of half a dozen massive explosions nearby. The ground beneath them shook like an earthquake.
“What the hell was that?” Schneider exclaimed.
“I think more air support arrived,” replied the medic. “We’re nearly to the aid station. I’m going to hand you off to the other medics while I go back for more wounded.”
A second later, they were back behind a small cluster of houses near an open field. They had picked this location as their medevac spot two days ago because it had a large enough field but was still just far enough away from their main trench line so the helicopter hopefully wou
ldn’t get all shot up trying to pick up the wounded.
Surveying the other wounded soldiers, Sergeant Schneider spotted three of the five soldiers from his fireteam. He also saw two other soldiers from Bravo Team, along with the Air Force pilot. There were a few more wounded soldiers from some of the other platoons there as well. Less than five minutes later, Schneider heard the thumping sound of incoming helicopter blades.
Soon, a Blackhawk helicopter with a bright red cross painted on several sides of it set down. A couple of soldiers got out of the chopper and ran toward the cluster of wounded soldiers. The ones that could walk on their own started hobbling toward the Blackhawk while the few of them that had leg wounds like Schneider waited for someone to help them or load them on with a stretcher.
Two medics ran up to him and pulled him to his feet. They each grabbed an arm and threw it over their shoulders and then ushered him as swiftly as possible to the helicopter. Schneider flinched as two enemy artillery rounds landed nearby, seeking to take out their angel of mercy before it could leave with its cargo of wounded warriors. As soon as he was inside the Blackhawk, the two medics ran back to their position, waiting for more wounded to show up.
With no more people getting on, the pilot immediately applied power to the engines and got them airborne. Once they broke above the trees, Sergeant Schneider saw the true carnage of the battlefield before the helicopter turned away to race back to the naval air station to their north. There were dozens upon dozens of burning wrecks strewn across the area for nearly two kilometers.
Bodies were lying everywhere, practically covering the ground for more than a kilometer from the edge of the river all the way back to the wooded area. It was horrifying to think their battalion had inflicted that level of destruction and death on the enemy.