Page was a man with one idea: the airstrip had to be finished. He ran to a tank, leaped atop it behind a .50 caliber machine gun and shouted to the crew inside. The tank rumbled away from the runway, straight toward the snipers, right to the fringe of the enemy-infested hill. Page found his targets carefully, fired in lethal bursts. The snipers rolled down slopes or slumped in foxholes, dead. Quite suddenly it was quiet. The battle was over.

Page stationed lookouts around the airstrip, and work went on. Then he heard a shout. Eleven Chinese soldiers came out of a gully, their hands in the air. They'd had enough. Page and one of his lookouts hustled them to the Marine command post for interrogation, then sprinted back toward sounds of heavy firing on the airstrip. The Chinese were charging out of the gullies, trying to take the runway. They reached the edge of it before the Marine fire stopped them. Then suddenly, they broke and ran for the hills.