by Andy Farman
The night attacks had been determined affairs which had exhausted the emplaced Claymores and their copies but the attacks kept on until dawn, when the snipers took control of movement in the British and French lines. There had been no opportunity to replace the Claymores so work parties were already been warned for the task after last light, this coming evening.
The Chinese dead were starting to smell rather ripe very rapidly in the hot sun, which was another unpleasant facet of fighting here, as opposed to their last battlefield, Germany.
The sun was already high in the sky, and that sky was a deep cloudless blue, just as it had been for the previous three days. The destruction of the desalinisation plant was now the cause of the men’s greatest discomfort and water was rationed to a half pint a day. If the 3rd Marines did not arrive today though, the ration would be reduced to a quarter of a pint.
“Anyone got any buckshee water?” a voice asked from one of 3 Platoon, A Company’s trenches, the occupant wisely not sticking his head up to make the enquiry. The Chinese had some very good snipers out there somewhere.
“Sorry mate.” A voice answered.
“Nope.”
“I’m in a tropical paradise praying for rain, how sad is that?” said the parched enquirer.
“A guy in C Company got shot in the arse last night while doing a rain dance on the edge of his trench.” another said conversationally, somewhere over in 2 Section.
“It wasn’t a rain dance; it was just the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes with different words he made up.” A Welsh voice said from the platoon’s gun pit, and it sang a few lines.
“The tosser got what he asked for then.” someone else offered up harshly. “That was bloody awful.”
“It took his balls off, I heard?”
“Well that’s just nature’s way of ensuring that come World War 4 the gene pool will be rid of wankers doing the wrong pagan themed dance at inappropriate moments, isn’t it like?” offered the gentleman from Llanfairfechan in final judgement. There was little sympathy for the would-be Shaman from C Company but a lot of sniggers.
“A guy in the Assault Pioneer Platoon made a piss still.” another trench added. “He’s selling it for twenty fags.”
“The still or the end product?”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I didn’t think to ask.”
“Well you should’ve.” said the gun pit. “It’s likely to leave a bad taste if you were wrong, boyo.”
“How do you make a piss-still anyway?”
“A long trouser leg and loads of soil. The soil filters it.”
“Anyone got a spare pair?”
“Nah.”
“Well” called gun pit. “There’s a guy on the wire who don’t need his no more.”
‘Really?”
“He’s only a five foot Cantonese Commando like, so you’d have to filter it through twice.”
The crack of a high velocity round brought a second of silence from the men as they listened to the sound of someone’s helmet bouncing away down the slope to the waterway behind them.
“You okay?” gun pit asked. “You didn’t stick yer head up for a look did you?”
“Aye.” the, now, sheepish voice replied.
“Well there’s a silly sod of an Englishman for you, isn’t it!”
“I made a start on the piss-still though...”
In his hide, the sniper wondered what all the laughter was about.
Jim Popham wore a dead man’s camouflage trousers but his jump boots still bore a little colour here and there. He left the two riflemen who had accompanied him in cover as he himself crawled through the rubble, staying low and slow so as to avoid raising any dust. He did not go all the way to the forward O.P though, staying in cover to call out softly.
The O.P near the north west of the island doubled as a listening post at night and had heard noises coming across the water all through the previous night following a mass attack that had forced the Legionnaires across the channel to give more ground. 2 REP’s perimeter was shrinking as attrition began to bite.
Jim had come out to listen when it had first been called in around midnight.
“It sounds like dem guys is doin’ stone masonry over there, sir.” Sergeant Tony Beckett had told him at the time.
‘Over There’ was a bricks and mortar factory on Cebu’s shore, with wharfs along its western side. The south side which faced them was just sun-bleached brickwork. It was the closest point to one of the few spots on Mactan’s northern shore that was not locked in by concrete docks or sea walls.
Beckett had rejoined what had remained of the battalion in the UK during the formation of 111th. The President had delayed Beckett’s return to Germany after the delivery of Colonel General Serge Alontov and the disc that became known as ‘Church’ until the final battle had been decided. Beckett had been with 4 Company in the old Coldstream/82nd lash up, and the President’s action had probably kept the young man alive, although Tony was having guilt trips. All his squad had been amongst the dead on Vormundberg’s muddy hillside.
“Sergeant Beckett?” Jim now called out.
“Just listen quiet like, sir.” Beckett’s voice answered.
Listening was the problem though as the marines had fought their across the mountains and were now noisily stopped by another obstacle, a solidly built former US Officers Club that had been built by the same engineer who constructed the first airbase on Mactan, back in the late ‘40s. Funny how these things can bite you in the ass a generation or two later.
The former officers club the US Marines were loudly attacking was now an exclusive restaurant and hotel, or rather it had been until it became the residence of the commanding general of the garrison, and fortified accordingly. It had an amazing view out across the city, Mactan, the Cebu Straits and to Bohol, and the tenure upon Mactan’s airfield by the stricken USS Constellation’s air wing had been curtailed by artillery observers on its terraced garden. Visiting aircraft now made pallet drops of water and medical supplies without landing.
The single road from Toledo had proved a serious impediment to the US Marines who had lost men and vehicles to mining that had dropped stretched of the road down the steep hillsides and ravines into the valleys below, and those sections required bridging by the engineers before they could continue with the advance.
Jem Stanford of the US Marines and Snowy Hills had already surmised that the Chinese were probably looking to force the bridges, retake the island fortress and pull up the drawbridge behind them, as in blowing the bridges. They would then tough it out until the Chinese fleet and their 3rd Army’s 3 Corps secured the Spratly Islands and came to the rescue.
The US’s own naval units had withdrawn beyond the range of land based aircraft to lick their wounds and repair the damaged vessels. The Tañon Strait was now blocked to anything drawing more in draft than a tramp coaster as the USS Constellation had gone down with her bows toward Cebu and her stern pointing at the Negros coast, blocking the deep water channel.
The US Marines held Toledo and most of the mountain road now, aided by the fact that the PLA’s 86th Mechanised and those reinforcement from neighbouring islands were in and around Cebu and Mandaue.
Serious damage had been both given and received by the resistance forces and their regular troops from the Green Berets and 3 Para at Carcar. The residents evacuated the town before two companies of Type 98 main battle tanks from the PLA 70th Mechanised Brigade that was garrisoning Negros had arrived. With diminished stocks of all types of ammunition, and in particular anti-tank weapons, Major Brooks had planned to try the old fashioned tactic of Molotov cocktails from the rooftops onto the armour passing through Carcar’s narrow streets. but the Chinese infantry burned the town that first night, and had motored through the charred ruins with machine guns blazing at dawn the next day. There was nothing that the small force could do except withdraw back into the hills with those who had survived.
“There, hear that?”
“Armor.” Jim said. “Not much it can do over there, except to the REP guys.”
The wall of the factory fell outwards with a massive splash into the shallows. Dust billowed outwards too but from it emerged that venerable favourite for amphibious assaults the Type 63 light tank. The Chinese had chiselled away the cement between the bricks during the night, leaving enough of the brickwork to act as pillars and prevent the roof from landing on their heads. They had next moved the tanks inside the factory, as close as possible to the exit point out of the channel that the O.P currently occupied.
A pretty good plan for a surprise night attack so why throw away that element of surprise now, in daylight? The US Marines must be close to breaking through, Jim surmised.
“I thought all the waterways were mined?”
“Apparently not everywhere…Beckett, leave the O.P and follow me!”
There was no argument coming from that quarter, Tony and his trio grabbed their equipment and ran up the back after Jim. Jim Popham’s men were covering them all as they ran back into cover, and Lt Col Popham was calling for the reserve troop of Scimitars. The first rounds of Chinese artillery rounds began to fall and the sound of the ‘incoming’ sent everyone diving for shelter.
The banks of the waterway had been recognised by the Vespers planners as a weak spot and likely approach for an enemy. It had been heavily mined with China’s own Type 72 anti-tank weapons from the stores on the island.
The artillery rounds first fell in the Mactan Channel whereupon the enemy observers began ‘walking’ the barrage up the beach. The unpleasant work of half a night by Jim’s men was slowly but methodically undone as the shells worked the beach over.
Six-wheeler Type 92 IFVs were next entering the water in the tanks wake, literally.
The US 111th Airborne Infantry were dug-in back from the shoreline or had built rubble sangars. Jim and the four men made it back to their lines.
The defenders obvious move was the wait for the armour to crawl out of the water and hit them with all the AT weaponry they possessed. They had far more RPG-26s than they had water, so it should not be a problem. The artillery observers on the mountainside who had evicted the Navy air wing now set about preventing the 82nd men from doing just that.
“Bugles and whistles?” the voice from 3 Platoon’s 2 Section shouted. “My granddad told me about them in Korea, they aren’t still using those are they?” The noise had come from the north east, a direction they had not been attacked from before on account of the ground being, basically, a bog. It was distracting though.
Another Chinese tactic in Korea had been to arm half a regiment with swords, axes and broom handles, and the other half with rifles and machines guns. They sent the first half off with its medieval level of weaponry and the second half following close behind. The UN forces expended much of their ammunition on the first wave.
Quantity versus quality, and all that stuff.
“Holy…STAND TO!”
Not all of the dead from the final battalion strength night attack had in fact been hors d combat; over two hundred had endured the heat and stench throughout the morning.
IFVs, tanks and a thousand infantry on foot were emerging from cover over half a kilometre away to the north, but two companies worth were sprinting forwards less than a hundred metres from the wire.
The leading men threw themselves on the coils for their comrades to use as thoroughfares into the 3 Para positions. The expended Claymores had not been replaced from the previous night and A Company were immediately engaged in close quarters combat.
Major General Snowy Hills watched quietly, a centre of calm amidst the hubbub in his divisions operations centre. Jem Stanford’s 3rd Marines were breaking through on the mountain so it was all or nothing down on the plain.
2 REP and 3 Para were receiving human wave attacks, an amphibious assault was coming ashore on Mactan and the Chinese seemed to be happy to expend their remaining artillery ammunition in a frenzy. The safest place was apparently on the bridges themselves.
The divisions own artillery was sat in deep recesses hand-dug by the gunners and covered by camouflage nets where they fired continuously. The 105mm guns of the US, British and French were creating hills of empty shell cases behind the positions, tossed there by gunners stripped down to the waist, shiny with sweat and moving like automatons as they served the guns.
General Hills only reserve were the lightly armoured Scimitars of the Blues and Royals, and those vehicle’s best defence were their rapid acceleration and speed. The 30mm AP rounds were proving effective against the Chinese 6 wheeler IFVs, particularly at the sides. However, only seven of the vehicles remained now, three were burning on the edge of the airfield where they were supporting a 111th that was in danger of being overrun. If that happened then the artillery gun lines would be the Chinese armours next victim.
A Javelin missile struck one of the big Type 98 tanks just short of the wire, killing it with a single hit but it was the Chinese-made RPGs that the paratroopers were favouring. The FGM-148 Javelin missile took its own sweet time with each missile that was connected to the CLU, and as a result the captured weapons were more popular even if several were required to make a kill.
The stink, like a Parisian public convenience in mid-summer, hung over all the gun pits of the Para’s and French Foreign Legionnaire’s. GPMG barrels, glowing red hot were dropped into old shermouli cans filled with the crews urine and those barrels still hot replacements were swiftly connected to the weapons bodies with barely a pause in the firing.
The Chinese infantry came on, and on, seemingly never ending and the dusty floors of the gun pits were becoming paved in spent 7.62mm brass casings and black metal links.
Bodies lay thickly about the positions, Chinese mainly, but paratroopers and legionnaires were evident in the mix, the result of the hand-to-hand fighting after the surprise rush into their lines. Once again, entrenching tools had proved their worth in dual usage.
On the small island Jim took twenty men, each with as many RPGs and Javelins as they could manage and led them to the right flank of Charlie Company and behind the Scimitar tank troop that was there. Only two of the vehicles, as the third was shaking with the force of internal explosions two hundred yards away, and the large Guards Division flag on its antennae was crisping in the flames.
They had to plug the flow of amphibious armour crossing the channel, and looping around the side of the enemy penetration was the way he planned on doing it.
His companies were fully engaged so his battalion headquarters were providing this effort and James Artemus Aluicious Popham, Lt Col, was not going to send men to do what he would not.
They used smoke for cover from view, and the vehicles themselves as protections from small arms fire as they crossed a shell pitted taxiway and entered the ruins of the town.
The sounds of all-out battle from across the water in the direction of 2 REP echoed off the walls that still stood in the dead town as they neared the waterway and changed direction, jogging behind the vehicles and knowing that time was critical.
The dirty exhaust fumes of swimming vehicles hung like a haze in the still air above the water as the US paratroopers got into cover and made ready their weapons.
Climbing up the side of a Scimitar Jim shouted to its commander, a Corporal-of Horse, pointing across the channel to where the armour was still appearing.
“Hit those, the pillars, not the armour.”
His men began firing on the tanks and IFVs in the water, and the Scimitars turrets rotated, steadied and the cannons began firing three round bursts, the 30mm shells visible as they arced over the intervening space to impact on the brickwork.
It was working, the combined fire chewed away the brick of a pillar before moving to the next until the remaining ones were no longer capable of holding up the steel girders of the building and it started to sag, slowly at first and then with then as momentum took over the remaining pillars collapsed and a great pall of dust
hung over the ruin.
The Corporal-of- Horse laughed aloud but then someone gave the world a shake, some giant shook the earth so that the ground and the sky rotated before Jim’s eyes, and when it stopped someone was screaming in agony. Blood caught the light as it fountained upwards, bright red arterial crimson, and with something of a shock Lt Col Popham realised that both the screams and the blood were his.
Kondor-138. 18° North of the Equator in low orbit.
It took some time and considerable expense to realign the ‘smart’ photo reconnaissance satellite. Its memory had several thousand shapes programed into it which, if seen, would trigger an automatic response. It was merely facial recognition software that included those things a human photo recce analyst spends hours looking for. From faces to firearms, tattoos to tanks and car number plates to carrier combat groups; it watched for them all as it orbited the planet because Kondor-138 would not ‘sleep’ between passes over the contested Spratly Islands. Wide awake, it remained alert for chance encounters.
CHAPTER SIX
Brisbane, Queensland: Saturday 15th December, 0214hrs.
The long voyage to Australia, and Operation Matins, ended as the first Ro-Ro entered Moreton Bay and discharged its vehicles at the docks. Having arrived via the longer, more scenic, route, and thereby avoiding the prying eyes of Chinese intelligence, the convoys had crossed from the Atlantic to the Pacific during a night passage through the sparsely populated lands bisected by the Beagle Channel at South America’s tip.
Tank transporters and heavy plant low loaders supplemented the railways in transporting the European forces and equipment into New South Wales, the final 350 miles of a 14000 mile journey from one battlefield to another.
Far south of the discharging convoys a tricky military maneouvre was being carried out by several units. A relief in place is an ideal moment for an enemy to catch two units while neither is fully deployed for defence. Deception plans and artillery barrages are tested methods of keeping the enemy too busy to cotton on to what is occurring under his nose. This night however it was being done stealthily and if the PLAN 1st Marines twigged what was going on they may well assume it was a rotation of companies, a frequent occurrence on the defence line in NSW.