Battlefield China

by James Rosone

  “Five minutes!” shouted the boat commander.

  Lieutenant Slater turned his gaze forward. The island before them grew in size as they got closer. Shrouded in the pre-twilight darkness, the landmass looked ominous, shadowy and unknown. Seconds later, several starburst rounds from one of the escort destroyers erupted over the top of the island, illuminating it in magnesium brilliance for them to see what lay in wait for them.

  When their boat got within a hundred meters of the shore, green tracers started to reach out for their boat. Several of the rounds hit the front hatch, bouncing harmlessly off. Another string of rounds fired from a higher elevation came in at shoulder height, hitting several unlucky soldiers before they even made it to the beach.

  The bottom of the boat scraped against the gravelly beach, and the front hatch dropped. Ian’s soldiers raced off the boat as quickly as they could up the beach to the waiting arms of enemy machine guns.

  Ratatat, ratatat, zip, zap, BOOM.

  Green and red tracers strafed back and forth between the two lines of warriors, intermixed with mortar rounds, hand grenades and antipersonnel mines as the two sides fought the desperate battle of life and death.

  “Take that bunker out!” shouted one of Slater’s squad leaders.

  Pop, swoosh…BAM.

  One of his soldiers had fired his AT4 rocket, successfully blowing the machine-gun bunker apart. First Squad charged forward while Second and Third Squads laid down covering fire. When First Squad made it to the first line of enemy defenders, his soldiers jumped right into the enemy trench line, foxholes and machine-gun positions, letting out a guttural howl. The fighting quickly devolved into brutal hand-to-hand combat.

  As First Lieutenant Slater ran toward the trench line with Fourth Squad, he saw several of his young privates and specialists using their bayonets against the enemy defenders. He witnessed one of his soldiers get shot point-blank. Another was stabbed to death by a PLA soldier. A few of them had thrown their rifles down to use their trench knives in close-quarters combat. This battle was already gruesome.

  “Behind you, LT!” shouted one of his soldiers. Slater turned to see a wild, crazy-eyed PLA soldier screaming as he lunged at him with his own knife in hand. Slater twisted his torso just enough to miss the soldier’s blade, but not before the soldier plowed into him, knocking his rifle from him. The two of them fell to the ground, and the PLA soldier landed on top of him. Slater grabbed at his own trench knife, pulling it from the strap on his IBA. With as much power and speed as he could muster, he rammed the blade into the side of the Chinese soldier’s rib cage, feeling at least one bone crunch.

  The soldier let out a guttural scream and tried to pull away from Slater’s blade. As the knife ripped itself out of the man’s chest, a geyser of blood erupted, spraying Slater’s uniform. The enemy soldier staggered backwards and fell.

  A loud roar of voices suddenly overtook the other sounds of war, intermixed with many high-pitched whistles. Slater got back to his feet and grabbed his rifle, and as he did, he spotted a swarm of enemy soldiers charging down toward them from further inland. Surveying his immediate surroundings, Slater saw that most of First Squad was either dead or wounded. Half of Fourth Squad was in the same shape.

  “That’s a lot of enemy soldiers!” yelled Sergeant Starr, Slater’s platoon sergeant. The remnants of Second and Third squads jumped into the enemy positions they had just cleared.

  “We need some damn fire support! Where’s the rest of the company?” shouted Slater.

  “Get those heavy weapons unleashed on that mob!” Sergeant Starr yelled to the squad leaders.

  “Mitchem!” shouted Slater to his RTO. Seconds later, Specialist Mitchem plopped his body next to Slater, holding the hand receiver to the radio out to him.

  Zip, zap, zip, zap, crump, crump.

  More bullets flew over their heads. Some hit the sandbags right in front of them. Dropping to a knee, Slater grabbed the radio. “Ronan Six, this is Ronan One-Six. My platoon’s secured Objective Alpha. I need help or we’re going to be overrun!” he shouted.

  BOOM, BOOM!

  Slater lifted his head above the lip of the trench and saw several large explosions erupt amongst the enemy soldiers charging toward them. Many of the PLA soldiers were now seeking shelter amongst the shrubs, underbrush and secondary line of defense they had built. Despite that turn of fortune, the rate of enemy fire being directed at his men was tremendous. That kept his troopers’ heads down, which would mean that squads of enemy soldiers would soon be bounding forward toward them again.

  “Ronan One-Six, this is Ronan Six. Good copy. Hold your positions. Charlie Company is hitting the beach as we speak. They’ll move forward to assist. Out!”

  Shaking his head, Slater knew the other platoons must be in as much crap as they were. Sneaking a quick look behind him, he saw another wave of Mike Boats landing. “That must be Charlie Company.”

  Looking to his left, Slater shouted to Sergeant Starr, “Have the guys on your side of the line start laying covering fire for Charlie Company as they rush off the beach toward us.”

  Slater then dashed down to his right, making sure his guys were firing at the enemy. When he found one of his soldiers who’d been shot in the gut, just below his IBA, he stopped briefly to help get a pressure dressing set in place before moving on.

  “They’re charging!” shouted a young private, who was only maybe five meters from Slater’s position.

  “I need you to hold this in place, Private,” said Slater hastily. “I’ve got to get back to killing them before they overrun us.” The poor kid was bleeding pretty bad, but he just nodded through gritted teeth and unstrapped his Sig Sauer, in case he needed it.

  Looking at the enemy charging again, Lieutenant Slater saw what must have been several hundred enemy soldiers rushing toward them. “Where do they keep coming from?” he thought with a mixture of awe and fear.

  Raising his rifle to his shoulder, he sighted in on one guy and squeezed the trigger. Pop, pop, pop, pop. Enemy soldier after enemy soldier dropped as he carefully aimed each shot. A couple of the PLA soldiers got back up and resumed their charge; clearly some of them had been issued body armor. Slater changed his aim and pointed more toward their guts or midsection, where the body armor usually stopped. “Aim small, miss small,” he thought, taking a deep breath to calm his nerves as he continued firing. Slater’s only goal at this point was to slow the enemy soldiers down until their own reinforcements arrived.

  Several American soldiers jumped into the fighting positions Slater and his soldiers were occupying. One of the newly arrived soldiers plopped his M240G down with the bipod setup and swiftly tore into the advancing enemy. In seconds, the Americans had shredded most of the enemy soldiers before they finally broke and ran back, further into the wooded areas of the island.

  In short order, the volume of fire directed at Slater and his soldiers tapered off until it nearly ended completely. With the first real break in fighting, Slater ordered his soldiers to help the wounded, getting them stabilized and then bringing them back to the beach area five hundred meters behind them.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump.

  The mortar platoon finally arrived and started to drop rounds in the tree line where the PLA soldiers had retreated. The soldiers of Charlie Company then advanced past Slater’s company toward the tree line to pursue the enemy. Slater stood and surveyed the area. Everywhere he looked, he saw torn and broken bodies. Enemy and friendly soldiers called out for help, pleading for someone to save them, or at least be with them so they wouldn’t die alone.

  Captain Wilkes ran toward him. “Lieutenant Slater,” he shouted, “I need your platoon to help move the wounded back to the beach area and work with the medics to get them loaded on the next set of boats that come in. I’m taking the rest of the company with me to go support Charlie.”

  Slater nodded.

  With that settled, Wilkes shouted out to the other platoons. “Form up on me!” Soon he led the w
ay after their sister company.

  Lieutenant Slater turned to look for his platoon sergeant and found him helping one of their wounded soldiers with another medic. He walked over to check on them and saw his RTO, Specialist Mitchem, lying on the ground with his left arm ripped off. The medic was working on getting an IV in him.

  “I hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t by my side since I last used the radio,” Slater thought, ashamed of himself for not having looked after his radioman. The kid had done a great job of staying by his side, and here Slater hadn’t even known he’d been shot. He’d been so busy with trying to keep his platoon from getting overrun, he hadn’t seen him get hit.

  Kneeling down next to him, he placed his hand on his shoulder. “Hang in there, Mitchem. It’ll be OK. Doc’s taking good care of you now. We’re going to move you back to the beach and get you back to the ship, OK?”

  The young soldier looked at him, pain written all over his face and fear in his eyes, but he managed a nod. “You saved our platoon, Sir. I’m sorry I got shot and couldn’t do more to help,” he replied with tears streaming down his face.

  “No, Mitchem. I should have been there for you,” Slater answered, almost choking up himself. He’d lost so many soldiers under his command, but seeing Mitchem lying there like that really got to him in a way the others hadn’t, not since his friend Joe had been killed in front of him in that bunker on the Yalu River in Korea.

  “We need to get him back to the beach, Sir,” the medic instructed. He and Sergeant Starr lifted Mitchem up and carried the young man to the aid station that had been set up.

  A string of six Mike Boats pulled up to the beach, dropping their front hatches and allowing the next wave of soldiers to exit. This was Delta Company. A platoon of medical personnel also came ashore, along with a platoon of engineers. The medics rushed forward to the temporary aid station, immediately going to work on the dozens of wounded soldiers. Before any of the newly arrived boats could leave, one of the sergeants ran inside two of them, making sure they knew they needed to wait so they could load up the wounded.

  As the four other boats pulled away, dozens of soldiers assisted in carrying nearly forty wounded Americans to the remaining two boats to be brought back to the motherships and a higher-level trauma center. Looking at the gravelly beach, Slater saw a lot of dead Americans still lying where they had shuffled off this mortal coil. Looking inland toward where his platoon had just been fighting, he saw more dead Americans covering the ground, mostly the soldiers of Alpha and Bravo companies, who had borne the brunt of the initial casualties.

  Once ashore, the engineers went to work tying det cord to various trees not far from the beach. Their goal was to get a swath of trees cleared so the artillery battalion could start to bring their howitzers ashore. Big Army was determined to turn this little island into an artillery firebase. Being situated in the center of the Zhujiang River Estuary, it was spitting distance from all of the major ports in the area. The howitzers would be able to provide a solid twenty-four-kilometer radius of fire. The eighteen 155mm howitzers of the 1st Battalion, 108th Field Artillery Regiment, would provide one heck of a punch to support the Army and Marines as they continued to move inland.

  *******

  Shenzhen, China

  Futian Residential District

  Bullets ricocheted off the armored shell of the LAV as Lieutenant Colonel Long’s battalion continued to race down Binhe Avenue on their way to the Chiwan Container Terminal and the Shekou Container Wharf. His battalion had been in nonstop combat since they’d hit the mainland nearly twelve hours earlier. The PLA had rushed two brigades of motorized infantry into the city of Shenzhen, which had bogged them down for several hours. A company of battle tanks had finally been offloaded at the first port they’d seized, which had helped them break through the bottleneck they had been stuck in. Now they were rushing through the city, buttoned up in their armored vehicles as they raced to the two remaining ports they had to secure.

  “Loki Six, this is Rogue Six. How copy?” asked Lieutenant Colonel Long’s regiment commander.

  Long depressed the talk button on the handset. “Rogue Six, Loki Six. Send it.”

  “How close are you to securing objectives Chiwan and Shekou?”

  “We’ve broken through onto Binhe Avenue. Taking heavy small-arms fire as we race through the city. We’re two kilometers from both objectives. ETA five mikes until we have a visual,” he replied. His commander had been all over his butt for over an hour to secure their objectives. Never mind the fact that they only had three tanks left for heavy armor support.

  “Good copy, Loki Six. Keep the pressure on. 3/6 is pushing to your north. The Army secured a new firebase for us. You’re going to start using call sign ‘Lightning Eight’ for future artillery missions. 1/10 has been retasked to support 3/6 further north. Out.”

  “They changed our artillery support?” asked Long’s S3, who was sitting next to him in the command vehicle.

  “Yeah, looks that way…an Army 155mm battalion.”

  “As long as they can deliver steel-on-steel, that’s all that matters,” the S3 said, seemingly having a change of heart.

  “We’re approaching Objective Shekou!” shouted the turret gunner.

  More rounds pinged off their armored shell. Crump, crump, crump. A handful of small explosions shook their vehicle, adding to the chaos that was going on all around them. The turret gunner returned fire at something, hoping to keep the enemy’s heads down.

  “Romeo Company is entering Objective Shekou,” announced the vehicle commander. “Papa Company is continuing on to Objective Chiwan. Which location do you want us to stop at, Sir?”

  “Go to Chiwan,” Long ordered. “We’ll set up our headquarters there.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Long turned to his S3. “Get on the horn to Sierra Company and tell them they need to head to our location. I want our mortars with us, along with the medical unit.”

  As they approached the outer part of the port, they saw a couple of buildings near the wharf and headed toward them. When they reached the building, several dozen Marines dismounted from the vehicles and began to clear the surrounding structures.

  A few moments passed before Long got out of his command vehicle, and one of the sergeants walked up to him. “We’ve cleared the buildings, if you want to use them, Sir. They look to be warehouses for something.”

  “Good job, Sergeant. Yes, let’s make this building the battalion HQ and the aid station. See if we can’t get some machine guns set up on the roofs to act as lookouts and keep any enemy forces at bay. I want the LAVs to help create a perimeter as well,” he directed.

  His devil dogs went to work on transforming the terminal into a forward command center. While his Marines carried some of their equipment and radios into their newly acquired building, the rest of Sierra Company started to arrive. The mortar platoon went to work getting their tubes set up, ready to deliver fire missions. The medical section prepared their aid section, and two landing zones were quickly identified and prepped for use by medevacs.

  Once they had their new HQ prepped, Long sent word out to regiment that his battalion had secured their objectives and were holding in place. He also let the other companies know they had the aid station up and running, so if they needed to start ferrying some of their wounded over they could.

  In the distance, he heard the sound of rotor blades thumping. He stepped outside the new HQ and saw a pair of Cobra attack helicopters fly overhead on their way to support one of his companies. The Cobras were quickly followed by two Ospreys that had spotted them and headed toward their newly established LZ.

  Once the helicopters landed, a platoon of fresh Marines trotted off, and a small group of men and women that he figured must be officers headed in Lieutenant Long’s direction. Some of the corpsmen and their lone field surgeon rushed a couple of wounded Marines to the helicopters before they could take off.

  “No sense in letting a perfectly good ride back to the fleet l
eave without evacuating our wounded,” Long thought with a smile.

  Brigadier General Tillman approached him. “Lieutenant Colonel Long, hell of a job securing these ports!” he shouted over the rotor wash and the distant sounds of battle.

  Long gestured for them to head into the warehouse, where several of the newly arrived Marines worked on unloading a couple of pelican cases of radios and other gear they had brought with them. Once they were inside the building, Long turned to his mentor.

  “Sir, we’re still securing the area,” he explained, concern in his voice. “My guys only got here thirty minutes ago. It’s not safe to have you this far forward.” Long had really taken a liking to General Tillman since he’d promoted him to captain. Working on his staff for five months prior to taking command of 4/6 Marines had taught him a lot about the man as a commander and a leader, and he respected him greatly.

  Waving off the concern, Tillman replied, “Nonsense. I need to see what’s going on up here at the front. Besides, I’ve brought another platoon of Marines with me. Once I get a sense of where the front is, I’m going to order 8th Marine Regiment in. I still have them sitting offshore, begging to be unleashed.” He grinned. “Bring me up to speed, Long.”

  They walked over to a map board one of the sergeants had just set up. Perusing the map briefly, Long reviewed the locations of his Marines as well as the designations that showed which of his groups were currently engaged and which weren’t seeing any action. “Right now, most of the heavy fighting is happening over in Sector Five, two kilometers north of where we are.” While he spoke, they overheard several thumping noises. The mortar platoon must have started a fire mission.

  General Tillman in approval. “OK, then that’s where I’m going to unleash the 8th Marines. We’ve got to do our best to push the PLA out of the center of the city and secure a wide perimeter. I’ve got 2nd Tank Battalion on two Ro-Ro ships, navigating their way to the port right now. We need to get those tanks and other armored vehicles and equipment unloaded.”