by Andy Farman
Sergeant Burley switched to intercom.
“Okay Bingo, let’s go, get us to the first firing position, the landing craft have been spotted heading in!”
A hundred metres spacing between the vehicles, they moved slowly forwards like articulated garden features, leafy branches seemingly growing out of the steel plate. They manoeuvred around trees until reaching the chain link fence surrounding the race track and accelerated. Four Three Charlie’s driver ignored an open gate in order the trash a long length of the fence which they carried with them, entangled over the front of the Leopard.
“Well that was smart, wasn’t it?” Gary said to the driver in censure.
“Bollocks, the amount of money I’ve lost in this place I reckon I must have paid for it twice over.” Bingo grumbled back. He had picked up his nickname because he was so addicted to giving away his cash to bookies after each Army Appreciation Day (payday, in Anzac parlance), he had even been spotted sat amongst blue rinsed old ladies in Bingo Halls trying to win it back before his wife found out.
The Leopards were illuminated by the blazing spectator’s stands and stables. The horses, and much of the local population, had moved away over the previous week when it became evident that invasion was inevitable.
“Bloody hell, if you spent enough here to qualify as an owner then I reckon yer about bankrupt now, mate!”
The racecourse had received the attention of naval gunfire, as had the small provincial airport, where flames were leaping high from the hangars and buildings, clearly visible above the trees to their right.
The damage wrought to the fence seemed rather trivial in the face of what the invaders were doing. When Banjo repeated it at the other side it became snarled up with the first one they had crashed through, leaving the fence raising sparks as it trailed behind them across George Bass Drive, the coastal road.
Bingo slowed as they entered a copse of trees just before the airport runway, as this was the infantry’s in-depth position. Running over someone in the dark here was a distinct possibility.
On the far side of the runway lay the final thin strip of trees before the beach, and as the tanks reached midway across the runways tarmac something emerged from behind the extreme left of those trees.
Gary was staring through his night sight at the mass of green hues and saw the thing appear.
A Ming Tz combat hovercraft was rounding the fighting positions, outflanking the Royal New South Wales Regiment defenders before disgorging its infantry. The 7.62mm machineguns in its turret firing into the first positions, but the
Moruya 2
23mm automatic cannon mounting engaged the trio of Leopard tanks.
The Australian Leopards had the far reaching Royal Ordnance L7A3 105mm rifled tank gun, but its long rang was not required. Four Three Charlie fired on the move, the HESH round doing wicked damage to the armoured hovercraft just four hundred metres away.
Four Three Alpha also fired; the troop commander’s Leopard hit the Ming’s fuel tank. Three hundred gallons of high octane aviation fuel went up in a fireball, engulfing the hovercraft and the naval infantry.
“HESH UP!” Chuck shouted, closing the breech and informing both Che and Gary that the main armament was reloaded, and what it was loaded with.
There were still Chinese infantry from the Ming who were active, those not caught in the burning Avgas, and two were knelt and aiming RPG-26s at the Alpha tank.
“Infantry action, half left!” Gary shouted to the driver who abruptly steered their Leopard in that direction in order that the coaxial 7.62 machine gun could be brought to bear.
Even without the night sights the enemy were clearly visible in the light of the burning combat hovercraft. Gary missed with the first burst but succeeded in putting them off their stroke, a rocket launched by a rattled operator sailed above the troop commander’s tank, missing by a good ten feet. The second burst dropped them and they lay unmoving, just inside the trees. None of the enemy was wearing NBC clothing, Gary noted, and reported the fact to the troop commander.
Chuck steered Four Three Charlie back on line, looking for the access point to their first firing position.
A tree leaned drunkenly across the path of Four Three Charlie; its fall arrested by its neighbour, but as they approached it resumed its journey downwards, slowly at first as the branches supporting it gave way. Its final plunge left it supine on the edge of the copse.
“We can climb over that, no bother!” Che said as Bingo swung them hard right, away from it and towards an alternate position.
“Yeah, but could we reverse back over it, though?”
The possible alternative route out of their original choice of fighting hole was forwards, onto the soft sand of the beach where getting bogged down in full view of the enemy was a distinct possibility.
“Three Four Charlie, this is Sunray, grab a position and get busy f’fuck sake!”
The troop commander and the Bravo tank were already engaged.
“A thank you and a please wouldn’t go amiss at this point.” Che remarked to no one in particular.
Although they had been at the location a week it was now difficult to recognise where the prepared firing positions were due to the shelling.
“STOP…back up!” Gary had spotted the position just as they were passing it. Banjo steered them in, and swore when he saw what was awaiting them.
“Bugger me, but there are a lot of the bastards!”
A half dozen more of the big Ming Tz hovercraft were heading in, with amphibious Type 63 tanks, a PT-76 variant, and IFVs bringing up the rear. Behind the amphibious infantry fighting vehicles and light tanks came the infantry and tank landing craft of a more conventional nature
Far over to the right, on the far side of the mouth of the Moruya River at Shelly Beach, two more of the infantry carrying Ming Tz hovercraft were already moving up the beach, a third sat half submerged and burning in the surf. Gary reckoned the one they had already destroyed on the edge of the airfield had somehow mistaken this beach of Shelly, but either way, the enemy were already moving ashore either side of them.
To their left, there sat one of the Light Horse ASLAVs in a hull-down-hole and firing its 25mm Bushmaster auto cannon at the nearest hovercraft, but with little effect upon the Ming’s armoured hull. The high explosive rounds made a pretty sight as they exploded, but that was about all.
Che fired, aiming for the cockpit and it swerved right, clearly damaged but still a threat. The Bushmasters HE rounds had more success on its more lightly armoured sides.
“UP!”
Che ignored the damaged Ming; the Light Horsemen were directing fire into the now exposed compressors at the hovercrafts rear. Its skirt was deflating and it was settling in the water a thousand metres offshore, with its hull already perforated at the sides it would sink.
Gary put his eye to his sight to see where the gunner was aiming.
“No, forget the skirt; you’d need to make a hundred holes to have any effect.”
The tank round scored a direct hit on its cockpit and it too veered right, a slave to the engines torque now its pilots were also dead.
There was no artillery or mortar fire landing, only their own direct fire to take on the oncoming waves of landing craft.
Gary was happy that Che and Chuck had everything in hand and he quickly switched to the infantry company net. No one was answering the requests for fire missions. He flicked up to the battalion net for the 1st/19th, Royal New South Wales Regiment and they seemed to be having the same problem. Only D Company’s CP seemed to be on the air and they had fought off an attack which killed a signaller and the CSM before the attackers departed.
Gary switched back and called the troop commander but Lt Jenkins had already discovered the problem for himself. The troop commander had also tried to call in close air support to compensate for the lack of artillery, but there was a major effort on to attack the fleet itself, now that it was at its most vulnerable. The navy and the air force were f
ully engaged he had, been told. Obviously the good news with that was the lack of enemy air strikes on the beaches, but it was a mixed blessing.
The Alpha and Bravo tanks both fired on the closest hovercraft as it reached the surf and its bow doors opened but the enemy who emerged flung themselves into the water to douse themselves. The HESH rounds had set the troop compartment alight.
The remaining hovercraft pulled up the beach and disgorged their loads before immediately reversing, heading back down the beach. The Infantry hammered the Chinese troops with grenades, rifle and machine gun fire. The three tanks destroyed both of the hovercraft before they could escape to collect further loads of troops.
All supporting enemy fire had switched to the A and C Company depth positions, but once they were suppressed the fire would renew on their own positions.
Pinned down on the beach the Chinese troops took cover as best they could as they no longer had the weight of numbers required, thanks to the Royal Ordnance L7 105mm rifled tank guns.
The Leopards now engaged the amphibious tanks, and IFVs but these were turning away, heading for the beaches north of them.
The enemy were ashore either side of them and the landing on their beach had been diverted as the Chinese reinforced those successes.
“There’s a marked absence of artillery and mortars, have you noticed?” Che said.
“We know.” Gary replied. “Something got fucked up good and proper… we’re picking up the grunts and moving out before we get cut off.” The troop commander was passing on the orders of the 1st/19th’s battalion commander to the B Company platoons.
Che’s jaw dropped and he looked back in his sights at the dead hovercraft.
“Well that’s not bloody fair!”
The infantrymen were appearing now, carrying their wounded, and abandoning the dead. Their comrades, the fallen, had been stripped of weapons, ammunition and specialist equipment. The I.D tags went to the platoon commanders of which one was now a corporal, the platoon commanders and platoon sergeants shared trench having received a direct hit.
To their north and south the amphibious IFVs and tanks were approaching the shore.
Someone rapped on the turret with a bayonet and Bingo backed up.
“There’s not that many grunts on board, are you sure we got the lot?”
They headed back across the runway, but at a tangent this time. The hovercraft behind the trees was burning fiercely still, onboard ammunition cooking off in the heat.
Gary could see the depth platoon on the infantry falling back towards their company headquarters location. According to their contingencies they were to withdraw through it and back to where their transport was cammed up and waiting.
Naval gunfire resumed, falling on the positions they had just vacated. Trees fell or exploded when struck directly by the warships shells.
The troop now headed parallel with the runway, the infantrymen clinging to the strapped on natural camouflage. Ahead of them the airport buildings were a raging inferno, but there were no shell craters on the tarmac of the runways that Gary could see. Obviously they wanted serviceable runways for immediate use. He switched to the battalion net where their troop commander was requesting an RV with a Casevac. Whoever was the ‘Hawkeye Rep’ for the Army Air Corps on the other end was not being helpful, requesting an NBC Chemrep be prepared and sent before deciding whether to agree to a dust-off or not.
“Tango Four Three Alpha…listen up!” said their boss, losing his patience. “As already reported, the enemy were not suited and booted, and the fact that we have wounded IS a Chemrep. They’d be dead otherwise!”
A voice cut in, having obviously been listening to the exchange.
“Gremlin Zero Two inbound along the river.” The New Zealander accented pilot said. “Where do you want us?”
“Tango Four Three Alpha, on the highway west of the airfield.”
“Gremlin, roger that… ETA four minutes.”
‘Hawkeye’ remained silent throughout the brief exchange between Aussie tanker and Kiwi Huey pilot but could not have been happy at being bypassed in such a brusk fashion.
Gary went back to trying to get a handle on what had occurred during the last twenty minutes. The company sized combat teams to the north and south had been defeated, as in destroyed or sent packing. The 105mm howitzers of A Battery had certainly not fired on the craft approaching their beach, and neither had each infantry company’s 81mm mortar section.
There had been no obvious air support but no enemy aircraft either, so perhaps somewhere something had worked as desired.
Shattered light aircraft lay wrecked, the Cessna 172s and Piper Cherokees, the pride and joy of the holders of PPLs the world over were smashed or burning.
“Tango callsign, Gremlin…?” the RNZAF helicopter pilot shouted. “We took ground fire from Princes Highway Bridge as we overflew it.”
“Tango Four Three Alpha, nervous Foxhounds or enemy forces, over?”
“Gremlin, not known, and we will egress southeast to avoid.”
The troop of Leopards and ASLAVs were drawn up in a hurried all-round-defence and the casualties were being carried by their mates when the distinctive heavy ‘thwopp, thwopp’ of the Huey’s wide blades drew close. It swung in from the river, which it had followed from its own holding area.
The PNG equipped door gunners leaned out, not trusting mere ‘grunts’ with the safety of their aircraft as they looked for telegraph poles, cables and other obstructions.
The machine settled on the highway without shutting down and the door gunners waved over the casualties. The wounded were loaded up, including the two who had died on the short journey between the beach and the Huey.
Once full, the aircraft immediately took to the air again, heading across the river as there was little chance the sentries air recognition skills had improved in the last few minutes, if indeed so called ‘friendly fire’ by nervous sentries was the case, and not the enemy, Gary thought.
He was in the hatch of the Charlie tank with the GPMG on its pintle mounting, ready to provide covering fire, and as the infantrymen of the two platoons remounted he was shocked to see how few remained. Half their number was missing. He looked back towards the beach, where the bombardment was now tailing off. He realised that less than half an hour had passed since the order had been received to move into that position. Only their own infantry’s dead were occupying it now.
The Alpha tank moved off, taking them along the road beside the Moruya River to where the infantry’s Unimogs were harboured up and they again took up all-round-defence as they debussed and remounted the Unimogs.
The depth platoon arrived, carrying the extra burden of the 81mm mortars and news of what they had found at the CP location. The mortar crews were dead, grenaded in their holes, as too had been those in the CP and its defence trenches on either side.
The enemy, probably special forces, had no doubt been disconcerted to find the troops Leopards with the CP but once C Troop had moved out the enemy had moved in. It was an unsettling feeling to know the killers had been so close.
The ASLAVs led the way now, taking them to an RV to reorganise with whatever remained of the battle group.
After a few hundred yards they came to the small North Head Drive Bridge which was wired for demolition and guarded by a section of sappers. The combat engineers were all dead and their bodies dumped in the water. The wiring from the demolition charges had been cut and the cables removed. Also missing was the engineers Unimog. The 105mm Howitzer battery lay beyond the bridge but it had been destroyed by naval gunfire before firing a shot.
Gunfire from further upriver turned out to be their own tanks of A Troop, less Four One Bravo, and the depth platoon of A Company 1st/19th Royal New South Wales Regiment. They had caught the special forces in the process of doing to the Princes Highway Bridge what they had already accomplished at the North Head Drive Bridge.
An ASLAV reconnaissance vehicle was burning on the southern bridge approach,
having been destroyed by a shoulder launched weapon.
The sound of the gunfire being exchanged between the Australians and the Chinese masked the sound of their own approach, taking the Chinese troopers by surprise. Two escaped by diving from the bridge and into the Moruya River but the remaining six fell to the Leopards coaxial and pintle mounted machine guns.
The senior surviving infantry officer and the troop commander dismounted to inspect the demolition charges as A Troop and the surviving A Company men crossed the river. A Chinese trooper hung suspended beneath the bridge by a safety harness. He looked to be dead but neither man was feeling particularly charitable or particularly willing to approach in case he was only playing dead. These men had caused a level of death and disruption seemingly out of proportion to their small numbers. Mr Edwards gave the signal to his loader, who was now manning the Alpha tanks pintle mount and the trooper received a short burst.
“If he wasn’t dead before, he is now.”
Approximately a quarter of the charges had been removed and all the wires cut, however the cables had not been removed as they had been at the previous bridge and stripping insulation in order to reconnect the wires by twisting them together did the trick for a forty metre section of bridge. Not enough to permanently deny them the use of the bridge but enough to require the service of a bridging unit.
“Sir!”
The infantrymen had searched the dead and come up trumps with a map.
Very disquietingly, all of their positions were marked upon the Chinese map, but so too was a chinagraph circle, the significance of which was immediately apparent.
“Sneaky fuckers... but why didn’t we think of that, too?”
The Chinese planners had spotted the flaw in the Australian defences centred on the few roads through the forests.
Two things linked all the communities in New South Wales, no matter how far from the coast or how high up a mountain, the all-weather tarmac roads, and power lines. 125m wide swathes had been cut through the forests to accommodate the tall steel pylons. Like Roman roads they tended to take the shortest route between two points and the inclines these pylons marched up could be pretty fierce, but it had not rained for some time, the ground was baked hard in the sun and the hills were negotiable by the Chinese Type 98 and 96 as well as the older Type 88 MBTs. The circled area was on one such cleared avenue that led all the along the coast to the Kings Highway, the Canberra road, behind Bateman’s Bay where the bulk of the brigade was.