by James Rosone
Ski stayed somewhat close to Lieutenant Dobbs, but also in a position that allowed him to see as best he could where the other squads were. The jungle in front of them was still somewhat thick, albeit a lot less dense than it had been two weeks prior. The artillery and air strikes had done a decent job of thinning the place out, even if they hadn’t destroyed as many of the enemy bunkers as they would have liked.
The gunfire, shouting, and explosions grew in intensity as they approached the Devil’s Head. Alpha Company was having a rough go of it.
Zip, zap, zip, zap.
A string of bullets started ripping through the area at head level. Ski saw one of the new replacements maybe thirty feet in front of him take a round right above his left ear. It blew out the right side of the man’s face as his body collapsed to the ground, dead before he’d even had a chance to react.
“Everyone, down! Contact left. Where’s my LMG?” barked the squad leader on the left flank. “I want that gun up and running now!”
Boom!
Dirt and debris flew into the sky as an artillery round exploded near their positions. A handful of the replacements started doing exactly what they’d been taught and returning fire. They worked in their fire teams to advance under covering fire. They fired in short, controlled bursts or single-fire shots as they zeroed in on the muzzle flashes of the enemy.
Ski ran over to one soldier he saw curled up at the base of a tree. The young kid was scared half to death. He was still gripping his rifle, but he was frozen in fear.
Squatting down next to the young private, Ski grabbed him by his shoulder with a firm grip to get his attention. “Private, look at me.”
The young man, who couldn’t have been older than eighteen, looked up, his eyes betraying his terror.
“We’re all scared, Private,” said Ski. “But right now, I need you to push that fear aside and do your job. Now take your rifle and aim at those bunkers over there,” he said as he pointed to several of the enemy positions off in the distance. He knew the kid had no hope of hitting them—they were too far away. But at that exact moment, he just wanted the kid to fire his weapon and overcome his fear.
“Yes, Sergeant,” came a weak reply. The kid lifted his rifle and aimed at the enemy position. He fired one shot, his eyes practically closed the entire time.
“See, you can do this, Private,” Ski reassured. “Fire again, but this time, keep your eyes open.”
The kid did; this time he fired several shots. The fear in his eyes started to fade, and a new confidence took over. He turned to Ski. “I can do this.”
Even though bullets continued to fly around them, Ski smiled. “That’s right, soldier. You can do this. Now go help your fire team; they’re right over there.”
With the encouragement, the young man darted forward to join his squadmates, moving from one covered position to another.
The rest of the squads steadily advanced, closing the gap on the enemy. The closer they got, the easier it would be to take ’em out.
“Ahh! I’m hit! Medic!” screamed one of the veteran soldiers.
“Backblast clear!” yelled out one of the SMAW soldiers.
Whoosh…BAM.
“Nice shot! Get another in there just like that!” yelled out a soldier as the rocket hit the lip of a bunker, blowing a hole right into the structure.
“Over here, Sergeant!” called out a handful of soldiers to Ski.
When he looked over to them, Ski smiled. He knew what they were up to and he wanted in. He sidled up next to one of his squad leaders. “You guys ready to clear that bunker?” he asked.
The five other soldiers grinned and nodded.
“Jenkins, get us a smoke round right in front of the bunker or as near to it as you can,” Ski directed. “Adler, I want you to take two guys and break to the right and try to come at the side of the bunker from that angle. The rest of you are going to come with me and we’re going to move to the left. Everyone got it?”
“I love it. Let’s do this thing!” Sergeant Adler echoed eagerly.
Private Jenkins, who probably had one of the strongest throwing arms in the platoon, unfastened one of his smoke grenades from his vest. He pulled the pin and held it tight for a second while he waited for the guys to lay down some covering fire before he threw it.
“Now!” Sergeant Adler shouted to be heard over the gunfire.
Jenkins rose up and threw the grenade for all its worth. The metal can flew through the air and bounced on the ground once, landing a few feet in front of the bunker. Moments later, it started billowing a thick cloud of white smoke, obscuring the view of the crew manning it.
“Let’s go!” Grabowski yelled as he jumped up and led the way forward on the left flank while Sergeant Adler led his small team on the right.
Ski knew that smoke cloud would only last for so long, and they had a lot of ground to cover. He sprinted as he could through the underbrush to get as close to the bunker as possible before the smoke dissipated.
They were probably halfway there when the gun crew opened back up, laying down a torrent of fire at Grabowski and the four soldiers following him. Everyone dove for a tree or something to hide behind as red tracers flew all around them.
Ski glanced over to Sergeant Adler and his three guys; they were making good progress. They were nearly to the enemy position when one of them must have tripped a mine or something, and the soldier ten feet behind Adler was blown apart. The blast wave knocked everyone else to the ground.
Ski knew Adler and his team were all likely hurt and needed help. He also knew the only way he and his own men were going to help them was if they took this bunker out.
“You three, I want you to stay put and keep firing on that bunker,” he ordered. “Do your best to try and get a few rounds inside the gun slit if you can. You two, come with me. We’re going to try and get a few grenades in there and take ’em out.”
When his three guys laying covering fire opened up, Ski made a dash for it. He ran fast and hard. He hoped the two other guys coming with him were able to keep up, because he wasn’t slowing down for them. Sergeant Adler and his guys needed help, and Ski and his guys needed to take this gun crew out or they wouldn’t get that help.
An explosion went off somewhere behind Ski as he ran. Something bit the back of his left arm. I’m almost there, just a little closer, Ski thought. He was finally parallel to the bunker and out of their line of sight.
As he was about to advance on the bunker, a string of red tracer fire and bullets started flying all around him. Damn, they must have another bunker nearby that we didn’t see.
Ski stayed on his belly, trying to keep himself low and out of sight of the other bunker. He hoped the crew might believe they’d gotten him. As he neared the enemy soldiers he was trying to get after, Ski saw the barrel from the machine-gun swivel from one position to another as it spat pain and death toward his platoon.
Ski glanced behind him, but he couldn’t see the other two soldiers that were supposed to be following. I need to take these two bunkers out first, then I can go find them or help them if they’re wounded, he determined.
Ski got up into a kneeling position, then unfastened one of his grenades. He pulled the pin and held it tightly in his hand. Then he jumped up and ran the handful of feet to the bunker. He ducked down just in time to feel a string of bullets fly through the air where he’d been moments earlier.
He released his grip on the grenade and let the spoon fly off, counting two seconds before tossing it in the gun slit. Moments later, it went off. Grabbing a second grenade, Ski tossed it inside the position for good measure.
Sensing something behind him, Ski turned around, his rifle at the ready. He saw a soldier stumble out of the back of the bunker and attempt to move away from it. The man lurched forward a couple of times, likely injured from the grenade. Ski pulled the trigger, sending a couple of shots into the man’s back, dropping him where he stood.
Then Ski spotted another bunker, maybe th
irty meters to the right and slightly behind this one. This was where the gunfire was coming from that was trying to kill him.
Looking behind him, Ski saw his three soldiers that he’d left to provide covering fire still shooting. For the life of him, he couldn’t find the other two guys he’d started out with.
I can look for them after this next bunker is taken out, he thought. He started doing his best to low-crawl through the thick vegetation towards the enemy position.
A new sound joined the battle—a slight whistling before a handful of explosions rocked his platoons’ positions. Great, freaking mortars now…
Ski grabbed the only smoke grenade he had. He pulled the pin and gave it a good throw toward the bunker. It landed almost on top of it. He waited just a moment for it to start billowing its smoke. Then he leapt to his feet and ran like hell to cover the distance.
“Get down, Ski!” someone shouted from further away.
Ski dove for the ground, the sound of angry Hornets whipping overhead followed by the crumps of a grenade. Something bit into his left leg, making it feel like it was on fire.
Grabowski looked down to make sure he still had his leg; he saw some blood soaking part of his trousers near a small piece of metal lodged in his calf.
“This is going to hurt,” he said to himself as he reached down, grabbed the piece of metal and pulled it out. For some reason, he stuck it back in one of his pockets. He grabbed for his pressure dressing and placed it over the wound before he tied it tight.
Twenty meters to that bunker…
Ski started low-crawling again, using the brush as cover the best he could. He was banking on the enemy thinking they’d had gotten him when he’d gone down and hadn’t popped back up. Scanning the bunker, he saw this one had two guns in it. One appeared to be a Type 85 heavy machine gun, which fired a 12.7mm slug—the Chinese version of the Russian-made .51-caliber machine gun. The other weapon in the bunker looked to be the standard Type 80 light machine gun, the Chinese version of the American M240. The two of them were spitting out rounds in a controlled fashion at the American attackers.
Ski continued to crawl toward it from an angle to stay out of the shooters’ direct line of sight. He was almost close enough to lob a grenade in front of it when he spotted something. There appeared to be a couple of foxholes he hadn’t seen before on the side of the bunker. If he’d crawled much closer, they likely would have spotted him and killed him before he knew what was happening.
Rolling onto his back, Ski swapped out the magazine in his rifle for a fresh one. He didn’t want to run dry when he made his move. Next, he unfastened one of his grenades and got ready. Kneeling next to a fallen tree, Ski pulled the pin and hurled the grenade at the foxhole. He couldn’t have thrown that thing better if he’d tried.
One of the soldiers yelled something in Chinese as he jumped out of the fighting position; the second guy did the same. The third guy was just about clear when the grenade went off. Ski raised his rifle and fired on the two exposed soldiers, hitting them both with a handful of bullets. The third guy moaned and yelled out for help as he worked on pulling himself out of the fighting position.
Don’t shoot him, he thought. Let him draw his comrades out to help. He hated leaving the man in agonizing pain like that, but he knew if they had a fighting position on this side of the bunker, they likely had one on the other side with three more soldiers in it. He wanted to lure them out.
Sure enough, two other soldiers came over to help him. One tended to his wounds, and the other had his weapon pointed in Ski’s general direction, looking for possible threats. Sighting in on that guy, Ski squeezed the trigger, sending a three-round burst into the man’s upper chest, just below the neck and right above the body armor.
As the soldier clutched at his wound, Ski fired again and hit the other guy several times in the back. Ski jumped up and ran as fast and as hard as he could to cover the short distance between himself and the enemy position.
As he steamrolled the position, Ski saw the guy he’d shot in the back roll over and aim his gun at him. Ski put a couple more rounds into his neck and face, ending the fight.
He raised his rifle in the direction where he thought the next enemy position was and fired. The last remaining soldier fell forward, dead.
The gunners inside the bunker apparently hadn’t heard what was going on around them. They kept firing controlled bursts at the Americans a few hundred meters away, keeping their heads down. Ski unfastened another grenade and pulled the pin. He let it cook down two seconds before he tossed it in through the gun slit.
He heard some shouting and commotion within before it exploded.
Suddenly, the back door leading into the bunker swung open, catching Ski by surprise. His right hand held another grenade he was about to toss in, and his left hand was holding on to his rifle. He swiftly lobbed the grenade toward the soldiers exiting the bunker so he could free up his right hand for shooting.
When the enemy soldiers saw the grenade sailing towards them, they all dove for cover. It landed practically in the middle of the gaggle of four soldiers, but it didn’t go off. Ski hadn’t pulled the pin yet. He hadn’t had the chance.
With his right hand now free, he had his rifle up and on the enemy soldiers in a fraction of a second. He shot and killed the first two. The last two both dropped their weapons and put their hands up in surrender. Ski hesitated. He didn’t pull the trigger. He motioned with the barrel of his rifle to one of the fighting positions and they climbed in.
He then reached down and picked his grenade off the ground. Trying to keep an eye on the two prisoners and the open door to the bunker behind him, Ski pulled the pin and tossed the grenade inside. He wanted to make sure everyone in there was dead. When it went off, he called out to his three guys he’d left a couple hundred meters away to get up here and help him secure the area.
Five minutes later, two squads from his platoon had finally made it up to him. They finished clearing the Devil’s Head bunker complex, ending what had been more than a week’s worth of bloody fighting that had claimed the lives of dozens of soldiers and wounded three times that number. The rest of the battalion could now move up the hill and finish taking this mountain fortress.
“Sergeant Grabowski,” Lieutenant Dobbs called out as he walked over to him.
Ski was sitting against the wall of the bunker while one of the medics cut away at the left sleeve of his blouse so he could see where the blood was coming from.
“It only took us three tries to capture this,” said Grabowski triumphantly as their platoon leader stood next to him.
“That was some real hero stuff you did back there, Ski—taking out two enemy bunkers like that. You single-handedly killed fourteen enemy soldiers and took two prisoners, all while being injured twice during your one-man assault,” the LT recounted.
“I couldn’t have done it without my guys laying down covering fire. Those three right there kept the gunners occupied so I could get close enough to use my frags.”
“Eh, in either case, you saved a lot of lives and did good here, Ski. I’m going to have the medics get you back to the aid station so they can get you patched up. We’ve got it from here. Charlie Company just joined the fray. They’ll push on ahead of us and Alpha. We’re going to get things cleaned up here and then we’ll likely join them. We still have the rest of this mountain and the surrounding hills to clear out. I’ll try and check in on you when I’m able to. In the meantime, take a break, Sergeant. You earned it,” Lieutenant Hobbs announced. Then he barked some orders to a couple of the squad leaders to finish rounding up the enemy dead and account for the weapons.
“There you go, Sergeant First Class,” said the medic. “I was able to grab the small piece of shrapnel in your arm and pull it out. I’ve got a pressure dressing on it. When you get back to a field hospital, they can get the wound cleaned up better and get you stitched up. None of your wounds look too serious—you should be back in action fairly quick,” the spec
ialist explained. He grabbed his aid bag and went looking for the next wounded soldier he could help.
“Come on, Sergeant. I’ll help you back,” offered one of the privates with an outstretched hand. It was the same private who had been paralyzed with fear just an hour ago. He looked like a completely different man—a man full of confidence, a man who’d seen the elephant and survived.
Smiling, Ski reached for the young man’s hand and pulled himself up to his feet. He winced as his weight settled in on his left leg again. His calf was sore from where he’d pulled that piece of shrapnel out. At least the pain medication the medic had given him was helping to take the bite out of it.
The two made their way to a casualty collection point, not far from the original front lines. A number of trucks and JLTVs with red crosses painted on them were loading up the wounded as they were brought in. The urgent surgical patients were being picked up by helicopter.
Ski turned to the young private who’d helped him. “You did good today, Private. Don’t let fear paralyze you. You got this; you can do this,” Ski offered as the two shook hands and parted ways.
“Here, Sergeant, let me help you get on the truck,” one of the soldiers helping the medics offered. “We’re about to leave for the field hospital not too far away.”
Ski climbed into the back of the truck. He recognized a few of the faces. Some were from his platoon and company; others were from Alpha or Charlie Company. Most of their wounds looked like his. They needed stitches and patching up, but nothing too bad. They’d all be back in action in a couple of weeks to a month.
Chapter Fifteen
Battle of the Red Sea
U-39
Mouth of the Red Sea
Captain Johann Lassen checked his watch. The timepiece was a family heirloom from his great-uncle, Georg Lassen. Georg had been a U-boat commander in World War II. He’d been awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds for sinking more than one hundred and forty ships. Admiral Karl Donitz himself had awarded him the medal toward the end of the war. Captain Lassen’s aunt had told him his uncle had worn that medal with great pride until the war had ended. Then it had to be tucked away in a chest, along with the other mementos of his time in the silent service.
