Brother Fish (25 page)

I don't know why, but the Chinese preparation for battle is somehow different to any other enemy's. On the one hand the sound of their bugles is like something out of
Boys' Own Annual
, but on the other, it's scary as shit when it's combined with their various whistles signalling the start of an assault. First the bugles then the whistles, followed by silence. We knew what that meant – they were moving forward up the steep slope in the dark, heading for the A Company blokes on the spur line below us.

I could hear my heart pumping as I waited for the next set of bugle calls. They sounded suddenly, indicating the enemy had reached the correct distance from our defences to hurl their stick grenades. These now showed out of the semi-darkness as a sudden burst of fireworks, and then the screaming began. Their sound when they attack, I guess, is the equivalent of the yelling we do when we mount a bayonet charge. But, of course, when this occurs you only hear your own voice belting out the courage to rush into the jaws of possible death. It's quite a different sound when you're on the receiving end. It's frightening, yet you can sense the fear of the attackers, their muscles pumped with adrenaline, their voices attempting to silence their fiercely beating hearts.

The Chinese infantry were coming in to kill or to be killed. The vociferant charge was immediately mixed with the brash, clattering sound of our machine guns attempting to halt them in their tracks. Barrels that would soon be too hot to touch were spitting bullets determined to mow them down, to obliterate the advancing human horde, to silence it forever. The last thing they would see would be a flash of malice from the barrel of a machine gun, the last thing they would smell would be the acrid stench of cordite. Looking down I could see the red-and-yellow bursts of light as the grenades exploded and the lines of red tracers from our machine guns criss-crossing the battlefield as the killing commenced.

This was fighting at the closest possible quarters, the Chinese bursting out of the darkness only five or six yards in front of 1 Platoon, who took the brunt of the charge. Our blokes were holding their nerve, careful not to fire into the darkness, waiting until they could squeeze off a killing shot. A careless shot that missed could cost you your life. The Chinese would be dropping like flies but some would be getting through, their burp guns ablaze, and they'd have to be dealt with by bullet or bayonet from the next line of defence. The pressure was relentless – as the first wave was cut down the second appeared screaming out of the darkness, jumping over their dead and wounded comrades. By the time the third wave came at us it would be a flurry of recharging magazines and, God forbid, dealing with weapon stoppages. Regardless of loss of life the Chinese would keep coming, until you believed they couldn't be beaten. With all this going on we knew enough about the enemy to know that, in addition, their patrols would be probing to see what troops were defending Hill 504. We were going to be the next to die, nothing was more certain.

Our company commander motioned over to Ian to call battalion headquarters. ‘Comms ain't good, boss,' Ian said, then repeated his call sign, twiddling knobs and yelling into the handset. Finally, he passed it to the boss.

‘Where the hell is the artillery?' The company commander shouted, without first introducing himself. It was then that I realised I hadn't heard the familiar
crump, crump, crump
of artillery shell and mortar bombs. It is a sound that always brings hope to the soldier in his weapon pit and now it was missing. Below me the boys in A Company were fighting the chinks without artillery support. In military terms this is a bit like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. The company commander appeared to be listening for a few moments then, shaking his head in disbelief, he handed the set back to Ian in disgust. ‘Get through to A Company and bring me up to date,' he snapped, not explaining the absence of artillery.

The firing from A Company seemed to have diminished somewhat, but we didn't know if they'd been overrun and the Chinese were heading our way or they'd seen the enemy off. After some time Ian looked up from the handset. ‘They've sent 'em packing, boss, but they're sure they'll be back. They report the Chinese are in big numbers and appear even more fired up than usual.'

‘That's understandable,' the boss, still annoyed, replied. ‘We are the only thing stopping the bloody Chinese from a headlong rush to Seoul.'

So much for being a back-up battalion: the bastards had turned us into the front-line. Down below us A Company would be attending to their dead and wounded, carrying them to a position in the rear while some of the blokes in the second line of weapon pits would be filling the vacancies in the front stalls.

The boss departed and Ian got off the radio to take a break, getting out the makings to roll a smoke. ‘Here, mate.' I struck a match, shielding its light in my pile cap, lit a fag I'd previously rolled and offered it to him. ‘Where the bloody hell's our fire support?' I asked, not really expecting him to know.

He took a slow drag, careful to shield the glow, then exhaled. ‘Just about to tell you. The New Zealanders, with the Middlesex Battalion alongside them, were way up the valley supporting the no-hopers in the South Korean division. Now they've come back, retreating among the rabble clogging the roads. The Poms are supposed to occupy a position on our left flank but they're somewhere way to our rear now.' He paused and took another drag of his fag. ‘Christ knows where the guns are. If you ask me, it's an unholy fuck-up – a wide-open left flank and bugger-all artillery support.' Forgetting himself he waved his fag in the air. ‘Christ help us if the chinks come at us now.'

What he was saying was that there were less than 400 of us blocking the enemy's way to Seoul and the Chinese intended to go through us like a dose of salts and get to the capital pronto. With no artillery support and an unprotected left flank we'd have Buckley's – or as Ian put it in his colourful way, ‘We're going to hell in a hand basket!' He went back to the radio, twiddled a few knobs then listened, and moments later looked up. ‘Fuck me dead! The cunning bastards!'

‘What? What's happening?' I asked anxiously.

‘Some of the Chinese must've infiltrated to our rear by placing themselves among the fleeing South Koreans, and now they're having a go at battalion headquarters!' he explained. ‘HQ are saying we can't expect mortar support – they've got their hands full and can't fire 'em.' He jumped up from his weapon pit and walked over to the boss, and I heard him giving the company commander the bad news.

When he returned I asked, ‘What about the Yank crew? Their heavy mortars are supposed to be there to support us!'

‘Can't raise the bludgers. They must have caught bug-out fever and headed for the hills,' Ian replied.

‘Jesus, mate, we're up shit creek!'

I'd hardly completed this remark when we heard the Chinese bugles, followed by the whistles, then the dreaded waiting in silence, broken at last by the exploding grenades, their screaming and the burp guns banging away like cracker night. Our answering fire came almost immediately. Below me was a confusion of thousands of muzzle flashes criss-crossed by red tracer fire from our Vickers machine guns. Exploding grenades, like camera flashes, momentarily illuminated the grim battle.

Three hours passed with the sound of bugles and whistles continually in my ears, the pale moonlight not sufficient to see the battle. A thousand or so Chinese had attacked 1 Platoon and Ian informed me they were down to thirteen men from the original strength of thirty. Christ only knows what the chink casualties must have been, but later we were told the dead were piled high on the perimeter. Anyway, thirteen men were not enough to hold out any more attacks so 1 Platoon withdrew back up the spur line to company headquarters, and now the chinks occupied their position. That was the first link in our chain of defence broken. Things were looking decidedly crook.

The company commander was back trying to make contact on the handset, though without much success. Finally he handed it back to Ian.

‘What happens if A Company can't survive the night?' I asked him. It wasn't my place to ask such a question. And I didn't really expect an answer. Besides, I almost knew what would be going through his head:
No artillery or mortar support, no barbed wire or anti-personnel mine defences. Let's say, maybe fifty men alive and still able to fight, only machine guns, rifles, bayonets, grenades and courage against an inexhaustible number of fired-up Chinese soldiers.
He sighed, then to my surprise, answered, ‘If they can hold out 'til morning, the Chinese won't have such freedom to move and we'll have a chance to maybe find out what's happened to the bloody artillery. Might even get some air support.' The way he said it made it painfully obvious that, short of a miracle, A Company was doomed. What this meant was that D Company would be next onto the starting blocks. But then he added, ‘Yeah, well, with A Company gone the Chinese will get behind us, then we're surrounded.' It was his way of saying we wouldn't be able to withdraw and would almost certainly share the fate of A Company.

Baggy-arsed diggers didn't see much of the company commander, he being somewhat out of our realm up there with God directing operations. Now I was to have the doubtful pleasure of dying alongside him on a lonely hill that didn't even rejoice in a name and was simply known as number 504 on a military ordnance map.

We waited for the inevitable attack from the chinks who now occupied 1 Platoon's position, but it didn't come. Not much happened for a while then, close to two a.m., the Chinese sent a barrage of mortars, including incendiaries, into A Company. The incendiaries set alight the low brush and started fires racing through their positions.
This is it!
I thought. With the fires raging I was able to see more clearly for the first time and could now make out a few of our blokes moving about and the Chinese dead lying right up against our weapon pits. Only the Kiwi artillery coming back on line could save them now. But to my surprise the Chinese attacked in far fewer numbers and with a great deal less shouting and enthusiasm when next they came at us. Maybe they'd taken too many casualties and were looking for a softer target for their main effort. The boys in A Company had put up such fierce resistance that the chinks may have been unaware of how close they'd come to breaking through again. I recall thinking,
Please God, don't let them wake up to the situation and mount an all-out attack while it is still dark
. In the meantime, A Company wasn't answering our calls.

Dawn came and A Company was still holding out, and with daylight the hope was that as the Chinese preferred to fight at night they would withdraw. Ian managed to get A Company back on the radio and was told they were down to less than fifty men and had been trying to raise our own battalion headquarters without success. They'd finally managed to get through on the radio to the headquarters of an American outfit. Ian first told the boss and when he returned, told me the story, the way he'd heard it from his A Company counterpart:

‘Hello one, hello one, how do you hear me, how do you hear me? Over.'

This, he claimed, was repeated several times with no response, then an American voice came on.

‘One, this is Red Dog three, send, over.'

‘One for Red Dog three, we are out of comms with our headquarters. We are under Chinese attack and need artillery support and relief. Can you help? Over.'

‘This is Red Dog three, send your unit name and location in clear, over.'

‘One for Red Dog three, A Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment with the British Commonwealth Brigade, location five miles north of Kapyong 487356.'

There is a pause. ‘Red Dog three, say again your unit, over.'

‘One, we are bloody A Company 3RAR. You bastards deaf or something, over!'

Silence. Then, ‘Red Dog three, our information is firm, these units were overrun and destroyed last night. Whoever you are, leave the net immediately, out.'

I'm not sure how much of this dialogue was Ian Ferrier's sense of drama at play, but what was obvious was that the Yanks had written us off and the only hope of help – ‘rescue' is probably a better word – was to get through to someone at our own battalion headquarters. The fighting appeared to have stopped, with only an occasional mortar bomb going off. With daylight, the chinks would be expecting an air attack and artillery and I wondered how long it would take for them to realise that neither of these was going to eventuate. The Americans were convinced we had been wiped out, the Kiwis hadn't yet been located and we couldn't talk to battalion headquarters. With no help coming the question was were we in for it or would the Chinese melt away until nightfall?

We hadn't long to wait for the answer. The need to break through and go on to capture Seoul was imperative because no sooner had Ian told me the radio communication story than I heard some small-arms fire coming from the direction of 12 Platoon. I listened in dismay as my platoon defended the forward edge of the company position, aware that I should've been with them copping the flak.

You don't like to be standing by while your mates are in the firing line, and when the boss arrived a short while later I requested permission to join my platoon. ‘Yeah, righto, now it's daytime we can do without you. On yer bike, son.'

As I arrived, the medics were taking out Ray Davis, who appeared to have a shattered arm. Ivan the Terrible yelled out for me to take his place beside Ted Shearer, Ray's partner. I slipped into the weapon pit. ‘G'day,' I said to Ted. ‘What happened to Ray?'