Battlefield China

by James Rosone

  “Ten minutes!” shouted the jumpmaster from the back of the plane, breaking Sergeant Dayan’s momentary reflection.

  Standing up along with the others, he attached his chute to the static line hanging above him, just as he had done in countless other jumps. He then proceeded to go through the various checks and processes that all paratroopers go through as they prepare to jump. He felt the tugging and pulling of the soldier behind him, checking his rig and chute as he did the same for the guy in front of him. The process helped to take your mind off what was about to happen as you became focused on the multistep checklist of preparing to jump.

  As they neared their drop zone, the side doors to the cargo plane opened, letting a rush of air into the cavernous cargo plane. The cool summer air felt good as it circulated around Dayan, drying the sweat on his face, neck, and arms. It was still somewhat dark outside, although the predawn twilight was starting to break through the darkness, heralding the day of days as their commander had told them today would be.

  It was a proud day for Israel and its military, and it was an even prouder moment for the 35th Paratrooper Brigade as they had been given a very important task. They were to secure the primary road and rail bridge that connected the mainland with the enormous container port several kilometers off shore. The deepwater port and facilities would be critical to the Allies’ ability to offload the thousands of main battle tanks and other armored vehicles that would be needed to capture the Shanghai region. More than 800,000 Allied soldiers would be participating in this operation.

  “Get ready!” shouted the jumpmaster. The red jump light next to the door suddenly turned on.

  Dayan looked at the other soldiers with him—excitement and apprehension written on their faces. They probably all felt a bit like him, psyched up and ready, but also nervous about what was waiting for them when they landed. The intelligence briefing they’d been given said there was a PLA motorized infantry battalion stationed roughly ten kilometers away from their drop zone. Other than the lone battalion of enemy soldiers, they had been told that they might encounter local police but should not meet any serious enemy resistance right away. The nearest major PLA unit was an armor brigade, fifty kilometers to their west. That unit would be stuck trying to decide if they should go after the Americans who would be capturing the Shanghai International Airport or the paratroopers looking to capture the port facilities.

  With the cool morning air swirling around inside the cargo hold of the plane, the jumpmaster next to the door shouted, “Go, go, go!” as soon as the jump light turned green. Dayan made his way forward.

  Soon he was out the door, the wind swirling all around him. He felt the sudden jolt of his ripcord pulling his parachute out of its pack, the wind and gravity doing the rest of the job of expanding his chute. Looking down at the ground, Dayan saw he was quickly approaching what appeared to be an empty grass field not far from the water. Then he spotted the bridge his unit was charged with securing.

  The ground rushed toward him. He quickly bent his knees slightly and prepared to tuck and roll. Before he knew it, his body was reacting just as it had been trained to do. Once on the ground, he quickly detached his parachute and rolled it up. His eyes scanned the area for any immediate threats. Others in his platoon were doing the same and like him, they didn’t seem to have spotted any signs of danger. Once they’d rolled up their chutes, they quickly collected them and then ran to a central point where they all dumped them together, so they wouldn’t be in the way of their fellow sky soldiers that would arrive in the follow-on waves.

  With his parachute taken care of, Sergeant Dayan called out to his squad of soldiers, “Secure the remaining gear and weapons and rally on me!”

  Once they had formed up, he explained, “We’re going to head out on foot to a road junction three kilometers west of the drop zone and set up a roadblock. Our orders are to prevent any vehicular traffic from heading in the direction of the drop zone and the port facilities nearby.”

  His men grunted and did as they were told. Five minutes later, the 48 soldiers of Second Platoon had formed up with their captain in a loose formation and had set out with two single-file columns on either side of the road as they made their way to their objective.

  Walking along the road felt surreal. Sergeant Dayan looked to his left and right at the rows of apartment buildings, many of them fifteen to twenty floors in height; there were thousands of people represented by those buildings, and yet no one was out walking around the streets at all. It was like a ghost town. As they continued to march through the area at a fairly brisk pace, he did spot some people peering out their windows, looking down at the sight of his paratroopers walking through their neighborhood. It was almost like they were on some sort of movie set.

  As they continued their forward progress, Dayan thought to himself that the faces looking down at them from their homes were the faces of Chinese citizens who, up to that point, had not seen the realities of war apart from the occasional bombing or cruise missile attack.

  It took the paratroopers thirty-five minutes to reach their objective. Once they did, they realized this thoroughfare was going to be a lot tougher to defend than they had thought. The road junction was six lanes wide, three lanes going in either direction with on and off ramps on either side. The sun at this point was now cresting above the horizon, and the morning traffic, while still light, was starting to increase. At first, people didn’t know what to make of the Anglo-looking soldiers with strange uniforms and oddly-shaped helmets. Most people had never before seen a mitznefet, which looked like a cross between a night cap and a chef’s hat.

  The Israeli soldiers flagged down the drivers, motioning for them to head toward the exits. One truck driver decided he didn’t want to get off the highway. Despite the soldiers waving their weapons in the air, he gunned the engine toward them.

  “Shoot his engine out!” shouted Staff Sergeant Dayan to his light machine gunner.

  The young soldier leveled the weapon at the truck and fired a short burst of rounds into the engine block of the truck, which instantly veered off course and slammed into the center divider of the highway with a screech. At that point, several other drivers slammed on their brakes as they realized these strange-looking soldiers were not Chinese and weren’t going to let them pass. Once the vehicles came to a halt, the paratroopers moved forward with their weapons leveled at the drivers, yelling at them, “Get out of the vehicle!”

  While nearly none of the Israeli soldiers could speak Chinese, having their weapons leveled at the drivers was a pretty universal symbol the Chinese people seemed to understand without a problem. The drivers exited their cars with their hands held high as the Israeli soldiers herded them off to the side of the road. Several of the soldiers jumped into the cars and positioned the vehicles to act as a better barricade. Other soldiers used road flares and their weapons to signal and guide motorists off the highway. Then they set up a spot for another squad to direct traffic back in the direction it had come from, down the frontage road.

  It took them nearly a half hour to get the roadblock up and running and to finish creating a path for the vehicles to turn around. With the roadblock operational, the platoon went to work on improving their defensive positions in case they needed to repel an attack.

  *******

  Yangshan Shenshu Island

  The Merlin gently lifted off from the deck of the HMS Albion, like the pilot had just laid his son or daughter down in the crib and was quietly slipping out of the nursery to finish that glass of red wine in the family room. Then the helicopter shifted to the right. It continued to gain altitude and speed, forming up with the dozens upon dozens of other choppers as fighter planes flew overhead.

  The Royal Marines of 3 Commando Brigade held on to the troop straps dangling from the roof, shifting side to side with the momentum of the helicopter. Forty-five men hunkered down in their kits and body armor with extra magazines and hand grenades strapped to various spots on their vest. Th
ey were ready for war. The Marines were primed for this heliborne assault after having missed out on most of the major ground combat action in Europe. This would be their brigades time to shine as they moved in to rapidly secure one of the largest deepwater island ports in the world.

  When the Merlin banked to the left and headed toward their target, Sergeant Neil Evans could not believe the sight below them. It was both awe-inspiring and terrifying to think of the sheer military power that was floating in the hundreds of warships, transports and container ships below. It was like those images of the Normandy landing he had seen on the telly as a child.

  “This is it, lads, our time to go kill us some Chinamen!” Evans bellowed in his best Marine voice to be heard over the noise of the engine and the swirling of the air inside the cabin.

  The Marines around him with faces painted in multicam just grinned and snickered. A few howled like wild animals, waiting to be released from their leash. They’d been pent up on a ship and then in various holding stations for far too long. They wanted to be turned loose on the enemy.

  With the sight of the fleet below them gone, they found themselves alone, the lead helicopter of this massive aerial assault. Looking out in the distance through the cockpit between the pilot and copilot, Evans could see the first glimpse of land just as the pilot dipped the nose of their airborne chariot down to the water. Evans grabbed for something to stabilize himself as the helicopter dropped altitude like a rock, picking up speed as it went. The sight of the water below them raced up quickly, filling the window of the cockpit before the pilot deftly pulled hard on the stick, leveling them out near the wave tops. The whitecaps and the choppiness of the water racing just meters below them were evidence of why they were doing a heliborne assault instead of an amphibious landing.

  The copilot sensed Evans hovering nearby and turned. “Five minutes out, Sergeant. Be ready to get the hell off our bird, because we aren’t sticking around long.” He had a serious look in his eyes—he meant every word of it.

  Evans turned back to his Marines and walked down the center aisle, pushing and shoving his way toward the rear ramp. He yelled out, “We are five minutes away! Be ready!”

  Having positioned himself near the ramp, he saw small fishing boats whip past them at a dizzying speed as the tail gunner swiveled his heavy weapon toward each boat, ready to return fire should it be necessary. A few breaths later, they were over land. Below them were hundreds of cargo containers waiting in large yards to be loaded onto ships to be sent abroad, and railcars prepared to be brought to the mainland.

  The Merlin flared up hard, dropping the ramp to just meters above the ground as the pilot pulled the nose up to bleed off their high-speed run to the island. Just fractions of a second later, the helicopter thudded on the ground, tall grass swirling all around them from the rotor wash as the crew chief screamed at them, “Get off!”

  “Follow me, boys!” shouted Evans. He charged off the ramp, ready to conquer China on his own.

  Racing off the ramp of the helicopter, Evans moved maybe fifteen meters away from the helicopters before he suddenly realized there were strings of green tracers zipping right past him and all around him. His body instinctively hit the dirt.

  A loud scream pierced the air as one of the Marines screamed for a corpsman. Another Marine yelled out that he’d been hit as well.

  Ratatat, ratatat, ratatat, pop, pop, pop.

  His Marines returned fire at the enemy that now had them well-bracketed. Looking behind him, Sergeant Evans saw the Merlin they had just left do its best to lift off and gain altitude. It turned back toward the sea from which they had come. One of the door gunners fired a long burst of machine-gun fire at the enemy, his red tracers looking like a laser show as they reached out to hit the PLA soldiers who were doing their best to shoot them down from the sky.

  “They’ve got machine guns set up on that bluff and in those buildings over there!” shouted one of the corporals. Evans looked to see what the young man was pointing at.

  Bbbzzzzzz. One of the Apache gunships’ 30mm chain gun tore into the enemy machine-gun bunker on the top of the bluff. As the attack helicopter flew over them, its machine gun still spitting death, Sergeant Evans and his Marines were blanketed with the red-hot spent shell casings. A second Apache fired a series of rockets right into the multistory buildings adjacent to the field where they had just landed, silencing a couple of the gun positions.

  Several of the remaining enemy machine-gun positions then turned their attention to the attack helicopters, giving Evans’s Marines a chance to advance. While they ran to attack the enemy positions, a missile streaked out of one of the building’s windows, slamming into one of the Apaches before its defensive systems had time to react. As soon the flames ignited the chopper’s fuel bladder, the entire helicopter burst into one spectacular orange firework.

  Evans and his men reorganized and continued to return fire at the numerous enemy positions that threatened them. While he aimed and made several well-placed shots, Sergeant Evans overheard a helicopter’s blades nearing him. He paused for a moment and saw that the Apache that had flown over them had circled back around. He caught sight of it just in time to watch the chopper unload a series of rockets right into the building.

  The Apache continued along its flight path, over the carnage it had just unleashed. Two missiles suddenly flew toward it, launched from the remaining buildings. The chopper spat out flares and chaff canisters, while the pilot deftly banked the helicopter hard to one side. The first missile went right for the countermeasures, exploding harmlessly. The pilot banked hard. The second missile was a few seconds behind and seemed to recognize the change in direction, altitude, and speed made by the pilot; its trajectory adjusted accordingly. It met its mark and slammed into the tail rotor of the Apache, blowing it cleanly off.

  The pilot fought hard as the helicopter almost slid in the air. He quickly lost control and altitude, and the chopper slammed into the side of the bluff, a hundred meters in front of Evans’s men.

  When Evans didn’t see any flame or visible smoke billowing from the downed helicopter, he yelled out to his Marines, “Follow me!” and they ran to go check on the crew.

  Bullets continued to zip and snap all around him as he ran forward, his eyes searching for a target he could take his frustrations out on. His men were roughly 300 meters from the perimeter of the housing area near the port, where most of the enemy fire was coming from. The bluff ahead of them was still smoldering from the attention the Apaches had given it, and for the time being, it was not a threat.

  Sergeant Evans looked back. The other platoons were already bounding forward, attacking the condo complex. “God speed,” he thought. He continued his dash forward.

  In minutes, half of Evans’s men had secured the crash site and were pulling the pilot and his gunner out of the helicopter. When that task was completed, the rest of his men maneuvered to get in closer to the condo complex where the enemy was still firing away at the charging Marines.

  Evans turned to his radioman. “Try and raise the fleet,” he ordered. “I want to see if we can’t get some air support out here to help flatten those buildings.”

  The field the Navy had dropped them off in was a superb piece of real estate to offload a few hundred Marines, but it was also wide open, with little in the way of cover for them to hide behind once the PLA had made themselves known.

  While he waited for additional support to arrive, Sergeant Evans lifted his SA80 to his shoulder and fired several shots at one of the windows where a machine gun was shooting from. He watched as the PLA gunner shifted his fire from one group of Marines to another cluster that was charging forward. Evans saw three of the four Marines get cut to pieces by the enemy machine gunner, tracer rounds ripping through their bodies, impacting the ground around and behind them as they fell to the dirt. The fourth Marine made it to the boulder they had been running toward unscathed.

  Aiming again at the window, Evans calmed his breathing a
nd squeezed the trigger methodically, placing round after round into the window. After his third shot, the machine gun stopped firing, at least for a few moments. More Marines rushed forward during the reprieve. They sprinted across the ground quickly, unsure if that same machine gun would start to spit more death in their direction.

  In the distance, Evans heard the thumping sound of more helicopters. He turned and saw the second wave of choppers coming in to drop off the next batch of Royal Marines. Several attack helicopters sped ahead of them, flying straight for the condo complex. Not waiting to be shot at, the two attack helicopters unleashed their antitank missiles and their rocket pods on the remaining structures. Explosions pockmarked the buildings, blowing out windows and throwing shrapnel from the façades swirling at lightning speeds toward the ground.

  Once the debris stopped its violent trajectory downward, the first batch of Marines Evans had landed with rushed forward, into the rubble. They swept for what remained of the enemy soldiers; it didn’t take them long to clear the position.

  Seeing that his squad of Marines was closest to the bluff where the helicopter had been downed, Evans led his group to the top to make sure no PLA soldiers were playing possum there. When they got to the crest, they saw nearly a dozen PLA soldiers shot to pieces, bodies torn, limbs separated from their owners. Next to their eviscerated remains were two heavy machine guns and a couple of light machine guns.

  “Clearly, the PLA had planned on making this a hornet’s nest to attack us,” Sergeant Evans said, speaking mostly to himself. “It’s a good thing those Apache gunships came through here, or they would have caused a lot of casualties for us from up here.”

  Looking down at the gunship below him and the medic tending to the two pilots, Evans felt mighty glad they’d survived. He determined he’d like to buy them a pint one day for all the Marines they’d invariably saved.