Bullets over Beijing

In basic training, they always try and prepare you for war with live-fire exercises, but, as I soon found out, there is no substitute for the real thing. Even in basic training when you hear the gunshots and people yelling, in the back of your mind you know it’s not real. No matter what, you know that you aren’t going to die. But, people do die, and in November of 1942, I realized that. Live-fire took on a whole new meaning for myself, Luke Raleigh, and the fellow troops of the United States EZ Company 2nd Battalion 506 Division.
The trenches were deep and surrounded by barbed-wire, spanning over two hundred yards of battlefield. Over the first three days we were there, the intense rain began building up along with the bodies. EZ Company was stationed in the foothills of Beijing, defending an American Intelligence stronghold. There were about a hundred of us total, and our job was to defend the attacks the Chinese sent our way. Not three miles away, was a mountain-based barracks with around five-hundred Chinese who were unafraid of death.
I remember when I left Brooklyn and had to say goodbye to my family. My mother wouldn’t stop crying, and her hug seemed to last for days. It was hard to let go of her, as I pulled away, she smiled with a single tear rolling down her cheek. That one tear could have saved a man’s life if her were dying of thirst. My father was a tough man, a former Lieutenant in WWI and he shook my hand and told me how proud he was. I had always felt that my father was grooming me for the military. I could sit here and recite every war story he had ever told me in great detail. When I told my father I would be enlisting, I remember him exhaling deeply. As if, that was news he had been waiting to hear for sometime. Every time we talked, I could sense that he wanted to tell me something, try and explain what the war would be like. But he never did. I guess he didn’t want to scare me. How exactly do you reassure someone you love that everything will be okay, when you have no way of knowing that. But, I knew they were worried, and I was worried but I didn’t show it. I knew I wanted to serve my country, but I didn’t want to die. So, somewhat reluctantly, I boarded the bus that took me to North Carolina’s Fort Benning to begin my basic training. The entire bus ride I sat transfixed in thought. I thought about my family, my friends, what the war would be like, what it would feel like to kill someone.
But, those thoughts couldn’t have been more arbitrary. Because, all those thoughts go to shit when the bombs explode and the bullets start flying.
I sat deep in the southern-most corner of the trenches with Bowers and Cahill, my M1 Garand clutched tightly in my sweating hands. We all knew the importance of your weapon. I had my standard issue rifle, an M1 Garand, along with a Colt revolver handgun. I was also equipped with three grenades and extra ammunition. Your gun was your livelihood, without it, you were as good as dead.
I was close with both Bowers and Cahill as we all came up together through basic training, and we had become brothers. Since day one, I found Bowers and Cahill and we roughed it together. Bowers was a big man, 6-4, 240 pounds with wide shoulders and a solid frame from Chicago. His hands were enormous, grizzled with cuts and veins pulsing through them as they gripped his Thompson submachine gun. Cahill was a lean son of a bitch, never could gain weight, but lost it rapidly if he didn’t get a meal in him. I don’t know how he did, but Cahill was always laughing or making jokes. They both smoked cigarettes as if they were going out of style. It kept them on an even keel.
The sun was nowhere to be found the first time they attacked. It was as if God had turned off the lights because he didn’t want to see what was about to happen. There was a slight breeze blowing over the field. A faint smell of spruce trees that lined the battlefield, and somewhere off in the distance I could hear a bird chirping. In that moment, there was peace, and I almost forget about the war. BOOM!!! A mortar rounds hit just fifteen yards to the left of us. It was a noise unlike anything I had ever heard, and reality came hurtling back and hit me like a coffin hitting the bottom of its gravesite. Dirt shot up from the ground all around us as those five-pound mortar shells collide into our defenses. We were immersed in smoke, unable to see and panicked. I heard Bowers shooting his Thompson off into the distance, but the Chinese were out of range, just bombing us from a distance. I knew they were just trying to scramble us and make us waste our ammo before their infantry came in on us. I could hear someone screaming in the distance, and it made my soul shiver. It scared me, I had never heard someone scream and yell like that. Calling out to God and his family, only they couldn’t help him now. I wanted it to be over so bad, I covered my ears and blocked the sound of hell from my mind. I had never heard the sound of anyone dying before and I hoped that if I died, it would be quick and I wouldn’t make any sounds like that. For about ten minutes, the bombing stopped. But, as abruptly as it stopped, so it began again. This time, the bombing was focused on the opposite end of the trenches, which led myself, Bowers, and Cahill to believe that would be where the Chinese made their ground attack. With clear vision and no shells exploding in our vicinity, Cahill and I used our rifles to try and pick off Chinese in the distance. At that moment, a wave of Chinese, at least five hundred-strong stormed in on our left flank.
The first day of basic training was filled with running and yelling. That’s really all it was. I can’t remember how many times I heard our CO say something like, “It’s my job to make sure you don’t get killed over there.” Our CO was a real ball-buster, his name was Briggs and he spit when he talked. He had it in for Bowers, I think because Bowers was so fucking big that Briggs wanted to prove his dominance over all of us by picking on the biggest bad-ass we had in our outfit. A lot of the things we did were just useless, but they made us do it just to keep us busy and sane. Latrine duty, kitchen duty, barracks duty, just pointless shit that wasn’t necessarily going to make us better soldiers, more so to give us the mental dexterity to keep it together when someone is trying to kill you. You could be the strongest, the fastest, you could shoot your rifle straighter than God himself, but if you lost your mind on the battlefield you were already dead. Being mentally strong and cool as a cucumber in the face of adversity was the life force that drove the United States Army. Our gunnery sergeant taught us a lot about warfare and weapons. For instance, during a combat situation if you were being fired at and the bullets were snapping, that meant they were far away. On the other hand, if they were hissing that meant they were just missing you. Two days before graduation, we had one of our last tests before they would be allowed to send us into battle. We had to make four successful parachute jumps from an aircraft at least 1,000 feet above sea level. Before we went aboard, they reminded us of some key strategies, you know don’t forget to pull your chute and shit like that. So, we boarded the plane, and as it began to rise, my mind wandered to things like my family and my chute not opening. But, but then I started thinking about the soldiers with me. Over the past 6 months, Bowers and Cahill and the other men in our unit had become something more than just soldiers. They too, were my family. You can’t let down your family. As the plane leveled out, Cahill tapped me on the shoulder and winked at me.
“You nervous,” Cahill asked.
“No, I’ll be fine, I just want to get the first one out of the way,” I said.
“I was just thinking, how cool it would be to take a piss right now off this fucking plane. Think about the poor bastard I might be pissing on. I think it might kill him, coming from this high up,” Cahill said with a grin.
“That’s disgusting,” I said as I started laughing.
We lined up down the plane and walked towards the rear as the tail opened. First, we double-checked all our equipment. One by one, we toed the edge of the opening, and when given the signal dived out into the cool evening air. The rush of wind against my face was refreshing. I wasn’t nervous anymore, I was alive. I pulled my chute and glided down peacefully towards the ground. I reveled in that moment, like a father holding his newborn son the first time. It was a joyful experience. I made the next three jumps actually anticipating it, with Bowers and Cahill at my side along the way. With those successful jumps under my belt, I graduated along with Bowers and Cahill and some other 300 paratroopers.
The Chinese overran our forces, and as we heard cries of retreat coming from all around us, Cahill and I mounted our bayonets and prepared for close range combat. I’ve never ran so fast in my life. I remembered when I was little, my seven or eight, I got chased by dog. I remember running as fast as I could and thinking the whole time that if this dog catches me, I’m a goner for sure. That’s what it’s like running from an enemy actually trying to kill you. The worst part is, you can’t see what’s going on behind you because you can’t turn around and look. Cahill and I easily outran Bowers although we didn’t realize it at the time. We ran over dead bodies of soldiers we knew and jumped down into a trench, turned around and laid down some cover-fire for Bowers who was about fifteen yards behind us. I just squeezed the trigger, even though my rifle only carried seven rounds, I must have squeezed it twenty times. It was the first time that I killed someone. It was like time stopped, the man’s body was suspended in air, and I was forced to watch as he made his peace with God. I wish I was braver, hell even tougher. But, it felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. I remember thinking that if this is what it felt like every time you killed someone, that I didn’t want to kill anyone else. I didn’t revel in it, because I didn’t have time to as Bowers was almost to us. The huge bastard jumped in and knocked both of us down. We sprayed some more fire in the gooks’ direction, and then turned and started running again. The attack didn’t stop, they just kept coming. They were everywhere, I ran and shot, ran and shot and before I knew it, I was back at the intelligence stronghold with about thirteen other soldiers. We spread out, about fifteen yards between each man and just fired. We couldn’t count how many we killed, but it wasn’t enough. They were too many, and we were too few. Our men started retreating again, everyone but Bowers who continued shooting.
Bowers was unafraid, his hands shook as he sprayed bullets everywhere. I had to get him. As I ran towards him, he took a shot to the stomach. The bullet shot out the back, followed by blood. His huge hands dropped, and his head keeled over. I dropped my gun and ran after him. My adrenaline got the best of me. I tried to lift him up and throw him over my shoulders, but he was too big. So, I grabbed the shoulders of his uniform and dragged him on the ground. I could hear Cahill yelling behind me, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. I wasn’t scared until the first bullet tore through my shoulder.
I didn’t stop, I kept moving. When the second bullet hit my thigh, I dropped down to one knee. But, I got back up, there was a determination that reverberated throughout me. A feeling that failure wasn’t an option, retreat wasn’t option, leaving my best friend to die wasn’t an option. But, to die honorably was. So, when the third bullet tore through my ribs and punctured my lung, I couldn’t go on. I laid there, on the grass with Bowers’ lifeless body in my arms as my vision blurred and my heart pounded. It pounded because it didn’t want to stop beating.
I can’t remember dying, what it felt like or what I did, I can only remember living. I can’t remember the terrible things I did throughout my life, the people I hurt or neglected. But, I do remember making my mother smile, and making my father proud. As the light of my life faded, I see my mother and father holding each other. My mother’s head is in my father’s arms, and I see a single tear, slowly roll down my father’s face. A tear that could quench the thirst of a dying man.