The Infographics Show – I Survived 100 Days Fighting in WORLD WAR 3 (Not Minecraft)

It took us four days to make the  trip from Fort Benning, Georgia,   to Guam. This was America’s most important base  in the ongoing fight against China in the Pacific,   and it had only recently become operational again  after being absolutely savaged by long-range  

Chinese ballistic missile attacks. The Patriot  batteries on the island had done a fair job,   as did SM2s fired from navy ships in the area,  but enough got through to demolish the runway   and many facilities. The base had basically  been out of operation for most of the war,  

Seriously putting US forces at  a disadvantage in the Pacific. But China’s stockpile of long-range  ballistic missiles had been used up,   it only had nukes left and nobody thought  they were crazy enough to use themt. I was part of the first wave of draftees into  what had become the Third World War. In Europe,  

The tensions between Russia and NATO had  finally erupted into all-out war, and China   used the opportunity to invade Taiwan, believing  the US would be too distracted to interfere.   China had guessed wrong. From the first day of the  invasion US submarines were sinking Chinese ships,  

And so far the nation’s attempts to  strangle Taiwan by cutting it off   from the sea had failed. Initially the  Chinese navy did establish a blockade,   but that soon got smashed by a stand-up,  drag-down fight with the US Navy. Both  

Sides had taken significant losses, but China  had been forced to retreat to its shores. The People’s Liberation Army forces however  had made it onto the island nation regardless,   despite suffering catastrophic losses in  the invasion. Now the PLA controlled the  

Western half of the island, and Taiwan, the  US, and its allies controlled the eastern   half. The Chinese Navy was well in control of  the strait, allowing it to resupply its forces. Me and my friend Aguiar had the good luck of  getting sent to the same unit after our rushed  

Basic training and infantryman’s course. We’d  met in basic and had stuck together like glue   since then. If I was going into a living hell in  the Pacific, I was glad he was coming with me. Days 5-7 The newly repaired and expanded facilities on  Guam were buzzing with military activity. The  

Navy Seabees had done an incredible job  getting everything operational so fast   after basically being leveled by tens of  thousands of pounds of Chinese explosives.   Now practically the entire island was a  hive of military personnel and equipment. Just off shore sat a carrier strike group,  finishing preparations for a return to the  

Taiwan theater. Pilot and plane losses  were high, we just didn’t have enough   F-35s in either the Air Force or the Navy. Up  against new generations of missiles and radars,   fourth gen planes on both sides were getting  swatted out of the air on a regular basis.

That was changing though, and on one of the  flight lines sat a row of shiny brand new   F-35s. Soon they would be flown out to the  carrier to reconstitute the ship’s losses.   There were also three squadrons of F-22s here, on  their way to bases in the Philippines and Japan,  

Where they could more easily join the fight  over Taiwan. Our 5th gen planes were lethal,   but so were China’s J-20s. Luckily they were  few in number compared to F-22s and F-35s,   but China had used them wisely before running  out, targeting AWACS and aerial tankers that  

The US relied on so heavily for the fight over  Taiwan. The losses of these special mission   aircraft were devastating to the war effort. Aguiar and I sat around most of time,   typical hurry up and wait stuff. We saw  some of the wounded being returned from  

Taiwan- the United States hadn’t taken  casualties like this since Vietnam. And   they were mounting. I didn’t know if the US had  been truly prepared for the cost of this war. Days 8-12 It was finally time for us to make the transit to  Taiwan. Because the eastern side of the island was  

In allied hands, and big mountains blocked  long-range radar line of sight for China,   it was relatively safe to land air cargo on  the surviving air fields there. By now the US,   Australia, Japan, and Taiwan had enough air  power to hold off any attempt to interdict air  

Transports by China- but there was always the  possibility a surviving J-20 or two would slip   through and blow your C-5 Galaxy out of the  sky. Or at least that was the fear for those   of us making the trip. Luckly, the J-20 hadn’t  been seen since the second month of combat.

Approaching the island, the C-5 hit the  deck, flying just a hundred feet over   sea level. This was a precaution, and  one I hoped was unnecessary. She rose   briefly to bleed off air speed and  then performed a combat landing,  

Meaning the pilot dropped several hundred feet in  a few seconds and we were suddenly wheels on the   deck. I barely managed to keep my lunch in, plenty  of the guys with us- including Aguiar- didn’t. We got our orders soon after landing. In the  distance you could hear the sound of artillery,  

And aircraft screaming in the skies above  us. The air war was still very much alive,   with the US beating back Chinese  fighters long enough to buy an hour   or two of mission time for ground strike aircraft. We were being used to replenish casualties  in regular units, and I was relieved to hear  

That. My worst fear was that we were  being formed into a brand new company,   at least now I’d be with veterans  who knew what they were doing. Our unit was still at the front preparing to  be relieved, so once more it was hurry up and  

Wait. The sound of artillery would come and  go, and we were told it was nothing like on   the eastern theater against Russia. With the  bulk of US air power dedicated to the Pacific,   the war in the east had turned into  a massive artillery duel while NATO  

Aircraft cleared the skies and destroyed  air defenses. In Ukraine and the Baltics,   they say that the sound of artillery never stops. Days 13-15 We finally got to meet our new unit, and it  wasn’t an encouraging sight. The men looked tired,  

Exhausted, and a lot of them were wounded, though  not bad enough to get sent to a rear area hospital   or home. Cuts and bruises from shrapnel or  impacts on their body armor. I was grateful   we had gotten assigned armor, I heard that as  more draftees were rounded up the stockpiles of  

Modern equipment were running out. We had plenty  of rifles to spare, but things like night vision   and body armor were expensive and the US was  starting to struggle to fully equip new troops. Night vision was critical- it was our biggest  advantage. While many Chinese troops were  

Equipped with NVGs, a lot weren’t. For  Russia the situation was even worse.   Both the Chinese and Russians tended to  stick to defensive maneuvers at night,   while the US would launch most of its  offensives under cover of darkness.

Aguiar and I were introduced to our squad mates.  With us two it was now back up to full force,   the two we were replacing had gotten caught  in Chinese mortar fire. That was it- they   didn’t really say anything else. Death was  just sort of taken as a given around here.

Then… we waited again. We trained and got  briefed by our platoon on how the Chinese fight,   do’s and don’ts, and other ins and outs of war.  But our unit was taking some R&R in the rear,  

So we weren’t due to return to the front anytime  soon. From the look of the guys, they needed it. Days 16-20 It was weird being at war, mostly  because I expected to actually be   at war. I didn’t expect to fly around the  world just to sit around for a week or two.

I managed one phone call home, bandwidth was very  limited and the Chinese were always launching   electronic attacks against US networks. So  far, infrastructure networks had not been   targeted- both China and the US had an unspoken  agreement that they would not destroy each other’s  

Infrastructure via electronic attacks. This could  cause collapse of power grids or water delivery   to major cities, and kill thousands. It would be  tantamount to a WMD attack on home soil, and both   nations had avoided it so far. Everything else,  including financial networks, were fair game,  

And both sides waged a brutal electronic war  with ripples that spread across all cyberspace. My dad had been a veteran of the wars in  Afghanistan and Iraq, and had told me what   to expect. He’d left out the part about waiting so  long to actually go to war. I knew it was stupid,  

But I was kind of eager for it. It’s sort  of like when there’s something you really   dread coming up- I rather just get it  over with than have it linger forever. My parents told me they loved me and to  stay safe. On day 21, my war would start. Days 21-23

We’d just left OB Bravo, as the main staging  area for US forces was known. Maybe an hour   had gone by, down mostly empty roads through  the large fields of Taiwan’s east. Suddenly,   we were under attack. Chinese ground strike  missiles rained down on our formation,  

Obliterating three of our humvees and one  of our supply trucks. Over a dozen people   dead in the blink of an eye. It was our good  luck a Taiwanese F-16 had been in the area,   spotting the stealthy drone that blew  its cover by popping open its weapons  

Bay and spitting out the three missiles. Thirty  seconds later the drone was a flaming wreckage   as the quick acting F-16 closed towards the  drone and within range of targeting radar. This was the war of stealth, and both sides  had invested heavily in the technology. The   modern aerial battlefield was  an incredibly deadly place,  

And stealth technology wouldn’t make you  invisible, but it did buy you a lot of time   before you could be targeted. That gave aircraft  precious minutes to carry out their mission. Suffering catastrophic losses in the air,  the Chinese air forces had redirected their  

Efforts towards quickly producing and launching  stealthy drones. The strategy was working too,   small, stealthy drones were regularly penetrating   past the US and Taiwanese radar pickets and  combat air patrols, to deadly consequences. After seeing to the wounded, our convoy set  back on its course to the front. The entire  

Company had just been fully reconstituted and  already we had a dozen dead and six wounded.  Days 24-30 The front line was everywhere. It shifted  back and forth house by house, block by block,   as the US and Taiwan fought off a Chinese  land invasion in the cities. The Germans  

Had called it ‘Rattenkrieg’, or rat war, and it  hadn’t changed much in nearly a hundred years. At first both sides brought modern  technology to the fight. Urban   drones and microwave sensors that  could detect human movement through   walls. Real twenty first century hardware.  But the war had chewed that all up in the  

First few months. Now it was dirty house to  house fighting, with little tech involved. The US had brought the fanciest gadgets  to the fight given its twenty year history   in close quarters battle, but while most of  those had been destroyed or damaged in war,  

The lessons of twenty years of urban combat  had stuck around. The Chinese had no such   comparable experience. Matter of fact, they  had no experience at all in modern combat,   their last war having been fought in the late  seventies against Vietnam. Both China and Vietnam  

Claimed victory, but it was Chinese troops  who found themselves retreating from strategic   gains. Since then they’d mostly just bullied  fishing and oil vessels in the South China Sea. This inexperience cost the nation dearly,  but China was a quick learner. Its troops   performed significantly better  than Russia’s had in Ukraine,  

But there were complexities of modern combined  arms war that the Chinese leadership had yet   to learn. The US on the other hand  was the veteran war fighter, and that   veterancy showed in the dramatically reduced  casualties it took in comparison to its rival.

During the day we defended whatever  home we were cooped up in. We might   have another few squads a house over, or  we might just be half a platoon holding   a single building surrounded by the  enemy. The war had no real front line,  

Measured less in kilometers than in  city blocks held. By night we attacked,   taking advantage of the fact that we still had  more and better night vision than the Chinese. I don’t know what I thought war was going  to be, but it wasn’t this. I pictured the  

Same big open battlefields of World War 2  like every other recruit in this war. Not   fighting and living like city rats in  extremely close quarters. Aguiar and I   learned to fall asleep to the sound of an M240  Bravo hammering away at some distant target. 31-35

I thought it’d take longer to get used  to the violence, but I guess when it’s   kill or be killed your mind can be pretty  elastic. I felt afraid of what would happen   when I snapped somewhere home, far away  from the hectic atmosphere of this place.

Aguiar did his best to cheer me up. He  always liked telling jokes and funny stories,   and somehow he found the joy to crack  a few funny jokes when the rest of us   needed it the most. I think we all needed that  from him, though none of us would admit it.

We took a house the day before yesterday and  found a Taiwanese family inside. The Chinese   who’d take the home before us had locked them  away in the back rooms, trying to keep them out   of the line of fire. They’d even supplied them  with food and water. Despite the fact that they  

Were trying to kill us, I could at least respect  them for not treating civilians like chattel.  Of course I heard different stories from  other parts of the front, so it was hard   to know how well the civilians were faring  under Chinese occupation. The divide between  

China and Taiwan was political, not racial or  religious, so treatment of captured civilians   had generally been fair. At least for as long as  western media still had access to the conflict,   and that had been months ago. Who knows  what had happened since? War makes us ugly. Days 36-40

Something big was shaping up. I’d  only been on the front for two and   a half weeks but I already had a good  sense for the pulse of things. Jesus,   was it really just two and a  half weeks? It felt like months.

We lost another guy from our squad to a sniper.  So far we’d given far better than we’d gotten,   but the fighting was still a slow, knock-down  fight for individual buildings. Air support was   largely nonexistent- in an age of extremely  capable MANPADS, nobody could fly aircraft  

Near the front. Drones were frequently used  in both suicide attacks and for intelligence   gathering or targeting, but even those were  having great difficulty. Both sides were   filling the air with electronic noise, jamming  communications between drones and their operators. We’d been using switchblade suicide drones  pretty effectively, and even had some 600’s,  

The type with an anti-tank payload. They were  good at dropping the ceiling on people too. But   the Chinese had their own, and that’s how  one of our other squads had lost two guys. Aguiar’s got a new joke he’s  been telling everyone- “What  

Did the Atlantic and Pacific oceans  do when they met? They waved!”. It’s   so bad I want to throw him out of  cover and straight into enemy fire. Days 41-46 We got relieved for three days and pulled  back to one of our forward staging areas in  

The suburbs of the city. It wasn’t like Guam,  or even being at OB Bravo back on the coast,   but it was significantly safer.  The small base had been set up in   an industrial park with barbed wire and  lookout towers to guard the perimeter.

We’d gotten chewed up in three weeks of  fighting, suffering somewhere around 40%   casualties. Of those, a third were KIA.  A handful were lightly wounded and would   return with us back to the fighting in three  days. For the rest we got replenishment,  

Though these were not draftees- they were  veterans from other units that had suffered   too many casualties to remain cohesive. Their  platoons and companies existed only on paper now. Sergeant Krystoff had been our squad  leader since we got to the front,  

And had come to be a sort of mentor figure-  exactly what a good squad leader should be.   He told us that the fact we were getting  replenished with veteran troops meant we   were about to get thrown into the mix in a real  bad way. He knew what he was talking about,  

He’d been here since month two of the war, when  US ground forces had arrived to reinforce the   Taiwanese defense. It had been an extremely  unpopular decision back home, but commitment   of ground combat power was seen as critical to  keeping Taiwan free and reclaiming the island.

Sgt. Krys would end up being  completely right, as usual. Days 47-52 We managed to get a few   extra days in the rear which was a relief. I even  got to call back home. I can’t believe it’d been  

A month since I’d joined the fighting, I already  felt like I’d been at war for years. My dad seemed   to understand how I felt, he didn’t ask many  questions and encouraged my mother to do the same. Aguiar’s family wasn’t military the way  mine was, and both he and his parents ended  

Up weeping on the phone. There’s no shame  in it though, we were way past that point. I also got to watch some news coverage of the  fighting from back home. They were calling it   the heaviest fighting the United States has seen  since World War II, and they were right. At sea  

We were winning, at a cost. The Chinese ballistic  missile force had devastated the US Pacific navy,   but inevitably the US won the seas. That meant  putting vessels on the Straits of Malacca to   blockade Chinese trade. Cruise missile  strikes into northern China had severed  

The oil pipeline between itself and Russia’s  Kamchatka peninsula. Now the oil transfer was   reduced to a trickle from a few pipelines in the  far west of the nation, all leading into Russia. A lot of these pipes were underground, making  them difficult to hit. Instead, the US had sent  

B-2 stealth bombers through neutral Kazakhstan  to strike at oil refinery facilities in the   south of Russia. China had been furious about  the attacks, blaming Russia for being caught   so off guard. It was a raid that was unlikely  to repeat itself as a dense SAM network was  

Quickly deployed to the area, but it had all but  crippled Russia’s ability to export oil to China. And that was China’s achille’s heel- its  inability to protect its oil imports.   There was talk that the war would be over  in weeks as the Chinese economy tanked. Days 53-56

Our extended vacation was courtesy of an entire  delay in the general logistics of the pending   operation we were to take part in. Now we were  on the way back to the front, but in armored   vehicles. Then, it was hurry up and wait all  over again. Finally, we got briefed on the plan.

We were going to thrust deep  into the city’s financial sector,   the area full of high rises. Chinese forces  had made it a base of operations and ran   their defensive lines north and south of  here. It was an incredibly bold attack,  

Given it was the most heavily defended stretch  of the front, and the high rise buildings   would be a nightmare to wrestle away from the  Chinese. But if we could pierce the heart of   their defense it would split their lines in two  and force them to withdraw or be overwhelmed.

There were other parts of the plan we weren’t  privy to of course, just in case we were captured.   Finally, on Day 57 we cranked our vehicles to life  and made the push into the center of the city. Days 57-62 The fighting was immediately fierce. Anti-tank  guided missiles rained down on us from above,  

Exactly as expected. But we weren’t completely  defenseless. Our vehicles had all been equipped   with the Israeli made Trophy system which used  explosive projectiles to intercept incoming   missiles. We also had laser countermeasures  that burned out the seeker in a missile. They   both worked great, but eventually Trophy  would run out of countermeasures and laser  

Countermeasures weren’t effective all of the time.  Plus, we were largely being fired at from above,   so even if a missile’s seeker was damaged it  still had a high probability of hitting something. Air power made the difference. Apaches  were supporting our attack and eliminating  

Enemy machine gun and rocket teams as they  popped up in the high rises above us. Small,   nimble Little Birds, two seater helicopters  armed with machine guns and rocket pods were   even more useful though, darting in between  buildings and nimbly responding to threats.  

They fared better than the Apaches, which  were taking significant casualties to MANPADS. But the enemy had to be cleared out of each  building the old fashioned way, and the fight   for the heart of the city turned into a grudge  match as US troops slowly climbed the high-rises  

Floor by floor. The assault was ceaseless, as we  retreated down a few floors to catch some sleep,   other squads continued the push up. The  US had committed significant manpower to   the risky operation, and was using constant  pressure to exhaust the Chinese defenders. Days 63-65

We’d done it, albeit at significant cost.  The last Chinese command post had surrendered   after eight days of fierce fighting. US  armor had struck deep into the enemy rear,   bypassing the dense urban terrain, and cut  off resupply lines into the city. The US  

And Taiwanese air forces had fended off Chinese  air attacks attempting to destroy this armored   thrust. Casualties were high all around, but  the joint US-Taiwan operation had succeeded. Cut off from resupply, the Chinese  in the urban center had surrendered   as the situation became hopeless for  them. That meant the entire Chinese  

Line on the southern tip of the island  was split in two, and Taiwanese maneuver   forces were quickly exploiting the gap and  flanking both sides of the defensive line. Our squad celebrated by relaxing  on a helipad at the very top of  

The skyscraper we’d just fought and bled  over floor by floor for over a week. The   sun was setting and if it wasn’t for the  sounds of distant battle and the roar of   military jet engines overhead, it  would’ve been a beautiful sight. Days 66-70

We spent four days going over the former Chinese  positions in the building, taking everything apart   with a fine-tooth comb and looking for any  intelligence that may have been left behind.   They had destroyed most of their documents  and computers when defeat became inevitable,  

But we managed to secure a stash of shredded  documents which the intelligence guys had us   sit down and spend an entire day taping back  together. It was such maddening work that   almost all of us preferred to be back on  the streets below, fighting for our lives.

Aguiar cracked jokes the entire time,  at least keeping us entertained. Then   suddenly out of nowhere there was  a massive roar and bright flash of   light. I felt myself get thrown a dozen feet  across the wide open former office space,  

Crashing into desks that had been piled on  top of each other in makeshift barricades.   For the next minute I struggled to breathe  and see clearly through cloudy vision. I remember someone calling for a medic,  and then I passed out. When I came to,  

I found myself on a stretcher  in one of the lower levels,   a large dining room that had been cleared  out and turned into a field hospital. A Chinese drone had slipped through the air  defense net, hugging the buildings to stay out  

Of line of sight of radar. Our thermal signature  would’ve been easy to spot through the giant glass   windows of the office tower, and one missile later  half the squad was dead. Aguiar was next to me   when I woke up, as usual he’d dodged death without  a scratch. But he wasn’t telling jokes anymore.

Days 71-74 I got held under observation for a few days.  There wasn’t much physically wrong with me   but the doctor said I suffered a concussion  and would need to be monitored. My helmet   and body armor saved me from the worst, can’t  say the same for my squad though. There was me,  

Aguiar, Sgt. Krys, a brand new draftee from  Kentucky named Stevens, and the medic that had   been attached to us. The rest of the squad  was either in pieces or seriously injured. Our company was essentially dissolved, and  we got absorbed into a different company  

Altogether. Yet another US military  unit that existed only on paper. If   anyone had thought this war would be easy,  they were receiving a rather rude surprise. Days 75-79 The war had been a grind and now  suddenly it turned into a sprint.   Chinese forces were in retreat across  the entire city, trying to consolidate  

Their lines in the suburbs. The US armored  force at the rear was there to greet them,   but getting absolutely hammered by fierce  Chinese counterattacks from the west trying   to neutralize it before it did its work  on the retreating Chinese in the city.

Our job was to chase them, pushing them through  the city and straight into the waiting arms of   Bradleys, Abrams, and Taiwanese M60s. If they  could survive the onslaught from the west. Sergeant Krys, Stevens, our medic, Aguiar,  and I all got assigned to a brand new platoon,  

Itself a frankensteinian creation  from other random units that got   thrown together. The war was moving too fast  for the US to wait for full reconstitution,   and with fighting in Europe there was no  telling when there might be manpower to  

Make a unit whole again. Every week more  US units began to exist only on paper. Days 80-85 We were winning, at least this part of the  war, and that felt good after months of   barely nudging each other’s lines. China’s  economic troubles were catching up with it,  

And its military was suffering for it. The  momentum was slowly shifting in our favor. Stevens saved my life as we pushed the  Chinese deeper into the suburbs. Someone   had tossed a grenade out a house window,  right at my feet. In a split second Stevens  

Had picked it up and chucked it back.  It exploded right outside the house,   showering it with shrapnel. Stevens had  to drag me down to the ground because I   was still dumbfounded and in shock from  seeing the grenade land at my feet.

He’d been with us two weeks? Three weeks?  Was it a month? Time seemed to drag on   here. I felt like I’d been here for years  and was shocked to discover I hadn’t even   been on the island three months. Yet I was  a full-blown combat veteran with two months  

Of urban door-to-door fighting experience. I  remember my first job out of high school at a   donut shop. I was barely confident enough to  use the oversized fryers after three months.  Days 86-90 “I’m up they see me I’m down.”, I thought to  myself- that had been my mantra for the last  

Week straight. The terrain here was giving  out to large fields as we neared the very   outskirts of the city. There wasn’t much  to hide behind so you ran in short bursts,   never long enough for someone to get a good bead  on you. Then you hit the ground and rolled over  

Left or right. That way they wouldn’t pick  you off when you stood back up. While down   on the ground, you put out suppressing  fire for your buddy who’s moving up. I heard Aguiar murmuring it under his breath  as he crashed on the ground near me, “I’m up  

They see me I’m down!” Despite myself,  I couldn’t help but laugh as I dragged   myself up and rushed forward. I’d seen what  war was, nice and up close- not what they put   on the tv screen. I think without Aguiar  around, I’d have lost my marbles by now.

US armor got absolutely hammered,  but held the line long enough to   tear into the retreating Chinese forces.  It had been “apocalyptic” I’d been told,   with incredible losses on the Chinese side. We’d  taken hundreds of prisoners from surrenders alone. The US Air Force even pushed back  the Chinese air defense umbrella,  

Meaning we could put our JTAC guy to work calling  in air support. In my three months of war,   I’d yet to experience the use of close air  support, and I immediately regretted that   we hadn’t had it always available. It was  like a magic button you pressed and poof,  

Your enemies disappear under a withering storm  of napalm, high explosives, and 30mm cannon fire. Days 91-95 The Chinese tried to throw us back in a brutal  three day counter-attack. We dug ourselves three   feet in the dirt and created slit trenches to  weather the incredible artillery being lobbied  

At us. The tube artillery was the best artillery  to get shelled by, because you could hear the   whistle of incoming from the lower velocity  rounds. It still beat the rocket artillery.   Dozens of rockets all impacting at once,  before infantry could get into the cover of  

Trenches. That had been the entire point of their  development, and it worked with deadly efficiency. Both air forces had thrown each other’s air  defense zones back and away from the front,   with China hurling what must be the last  of its reserves of modern fighters into  

The fight. Jets fell from the sky in their  dozens as both sides went to work on each   other. Stealth fighters are nice, but  the fighting quickly turned into a knife   fight where F-35s and even F-22s could be  identified and targeted by weapon radar.

What that meant for us though is that the enemy  finally had a chance to use its own close air   support, something I hope to never experience  again. Our side retaliated, and losses of CAS   aircraft were high for both sides. Artillery ruled  the battlefield once more, and both sides traded  

Deadly salvos. In between salvos though Chinese  infantry would attack, supported by its armor.   Abrams was the superior killer here, China’s  type 99s were formidable monsters, but US Abrams   could shoot more accurately at longer ranges. And  exchanges at close range proved China still had a  

Bit to learn about tank armor. However, Taiwan’s  M60s were easy prey for even older Chinese models. On the second day of the assault, the Chinese ran  straight into a minefield that had been laid the   night before by a US aircraft. The GATOR mine  system consists of a cluster munition filled  

With mines instead of explosives. With one pass  each aircraft could lay out a 200 meter by 650   meter swathe of mined territory, and this even  included anti-tank mines. It almost felt like   cheating to be honest, but it blunted their attack  significantly. I was concerned about when it’d be  

Our turn to cross that field, but Sgt. Krys told  me the mines detonate themselves after a set time. Days 96-97 We had two entire days of peace on the front. I  remember reading about it in accounts of the First  

World War. After the chaos of battle for days  on end, it would suddenly go eerily quiet. This   was like that, and was only broken when we got  orders to move forward- the Chinese had retreated. Picking up my rifle and rucksack, I climbed  out of the hole I’d been living in for days  

And began to cross the fields ahead of us.  The sun was shining, but not enough to be hot,   and we had a nice breeze coming in from  the coast. The grass was tall and green,   real soft as it brushed up against  your legs. If it wasn’t for the  

Sight and smell of smoldering wrecks and  corpses, it would’ve been a fine hike. Days 98-100 In the… numbness of war, Aguiar is  one of those rare people that brings   life back to the lifeless. He’d crack a  joke here or there, almost tactically,  

As if he knew just what to say and who needed  to hear it for a quick up-lifting chuckle. He   reminded us every day of the other side of life,  what existed out ‘there’, away from ‘here’. I think that’s why it hit  us all so hard when he died.

It had been a sniper, hiding out in one of the  small houses that dotted the countryside. Good,   clean shot from at least two hundred  meters away. I was grateful for that. He hit the ground but was gone  before impact. No screaming in pain,  

No cries of terror- just… sleep.  I was grateful for that too. One of our Abrams put a round through the  house, then for good measure sprayed it   with .50 caliber fire. When they sent us in to  look for remains, we found the shooter. Well,  

Enough of him to know it had been some  old guy dressed in civilian clothing. Not all the Taiwanese opposed reunification,   some had been calling for it for years- sometimes  violently. A lot had been former PLA soldiers   who made the move to the island decades ago.  Some of those soldiers had been good shots.

We were going to get rotated to the rear in  another day or two for some light rest and   reconstitution. I knew I’d have to call his  mother then, it was only right she heard it   from me first than from a soldier in  dress uniform knocking on her door.

At least we were winning. This  is what winning feels like. No go watch I survived 100 days of nuclear  war, or click this other video instead!