by Chuck DeVore
As he chatted with a gunnery sergeant—a likable young man who had received only a flesh wound—it occurred to Colonel Flint that his thirty-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps was over. There would be no general’s star for him. Instead he would be relieved of his command, and soon—probably as soon as the MEU returned to Okinawa. Some dispatcher was probably writing up orders for his replacement right now. He would be transferred to some dead-end desk job for a year or two before being put permanently out to pasture. He had disgraced his profession . . .
He shook his head in disgust at his own thoughts. This was not the time to mourn the end of his career. Not when so many of his men lay wounded or dead. He would not squander the little command time he had left on self-pity. He would not go out with a whimper.
He turned to his operations officer, “Assemble the command staff in the wardroom,” he said grimly, “we have some planning to do.”
The already sober visages of Colonel Flint’s officers grew even grimmer as he began speaking. “We have failed in our mission, gentlemen. Our mission was to maintain law and order as part of the East Timorese transition to self-rule. We not only failed to carry out these orders, we blew it big time.”
“The Chicken-in-Chief sent us into a death trap,” Ramirez said in a whisper loud enough to be heard throughout the wardroom.
“Watch what you say,” the XO cut in loudly. “The Commander-in-chief is above criticism, whatever you think about his personal life. The JCS has made very clear that we are not to speak ill of the elected officials that we serve.”
“I serve the U.S. Marine Corps,” Ramirez smiled savagely, “not that draft-dodging, pot-smoking, womanizing SOB . . . ”
“Cut the crap,” Colonel Flint broke in. The room quieted instantly. “Maybe this mission was a mistake,” he continued in a low voice. “Maybe it was ill-considered, ill-timed, politically motivated, and God knows what else. It doesn’t matter, jarheads. We—I mean each and every one of us” he said, stabbing the air for emphasis, “failed to carry out our mission. Worse yet, we failed our junior officers and men. Two companies of Marines were cut to pieces.”
There was a long silence, during which each man relived the recent tragedy.
“We should have anticipated the dangers,” Colonel Flint said finally, in a voice so low his officers had to strain to hear it. “We should have developed contingency plans for different threats. Every snot-nosed second lieutenant knows that an assault is only as good as the planning that goes into it. We live or die by how well we practice the PERMA rule—planning, embarkation, rehearsal, movement, assault. This time good Marines died . . .”
The Colonel’s head bowed, but only for a second. Then he stood up and squared his shoulders. His officers found their feet as one man. “Listen up, Marines. There will be no liberty in Satahip for the command staff. From this moment on this staff is in training. We will do map drills. We will plan assaults. Once we have embarked for Okinawa the entire MEU will run rehearsals. We will be in battle dress. We will do L-form, breaking out munitions from the ship’s armories. We will board the boats, armored assault vehicles, and helos. By the time we get back to Okinawa, we will be ready for anything.”
And I will be relieved of command, he thought to himself as his studied the faces of his officers. But at least I will turn over the MEU in fighting trim.
“Are there any questions?” he barked.
“No, sir,” his officers said in unison.
“Then let’s get busy planning an assault on Satahip and Utapow. Both the port and the airfield have fallen into enemy hands, and our Thai allies have requested help in retaking them. The warriors from the sea have been ordered into battle.”
* * *
Donna carefully read and reread the reports on the disaster over Ocussi harbor. The SAMs used to down the American choppers were manufactured by a European defense contractor. Significantly, the Indonesian military was not known to possess this type of SAM. Donna ran down her mental list of who might have the money, access and motive to kill U.S. Marines in Indonesia. Indonesian nationalist groups? Too fractured and disorganized. Islamic terrorist groups? No previous interest shown in Indonesia. The Chinese? Too much to lose. . .
Donna frowned. Lose. Lose what? Would we actually accuse them of killing our soldiers? What would they gain?
Donna knew she was on the verge of an epiphany but the months of double duty and little sleep were taking their toll. She had been pushed too far and too hard trying to provide support for America’s appetite for intervention.
16
Rehearsing for War
Lieutenant Colonel Chu Dugen’s Jia Battalion held 450 volunteer commandos. The best of the best in a nation of 1.3 billion people, Jia Battalion was the equal of any similar force around the world. For two months now the battalion had been practicing airfield assault and secure operations in a remote training post in the Gobi Desert. The training was too hard to be boring for the men, but the repetition was beginning to wear on the junior officers and senior NCOs. Even Dugen was beginning to wonder why he had been sent out to the middle of nowhere under a secret set of orders from the Ministry of the Interior.
Just when Dugen thought the training was getting monotonous, three new elements were introduced to liven things up. First, Jia Battalion began to fly into the airfield on an old Boeing 747 cargo aircraft that was converted into passenger configuration (it had very few passenger windows). Second, a special construction regiment which had arrived at the base in April had just completed building a mock set of 15 buildings out of cement block and plywood. The largest building was a huge terminal-like structure with two stories. It even had simulated luggage conveyer belts. Third, two battalions of the People’s Armed Police (PAP) arrived to provide an opposition force for Dugen’s men to work against. Dugen would have preferred PLA commandos or even Army regulars to the lightly armed paramilitary PAP, but he was thankful for the new fodder for his troops who took the new challenges with an intensity rarely seen by Dugen.
The training went in five-day cycles without a break.
Day one was spent at the north end of the runway in the old post buildings. The men cared for equipment and conducted physical training, including martial arts workouts. The officers planned the next assault and briefed their chain-of-command.
Day two consisted of packing the 747 and rehearsals of actions on the objective, using an elaborately prepared sand table, replete with miniature renditions of the buildings to be assaulted at the south end of the runway.
On day three Jia Battalion boarded the 747, took off, and circled the runway for an hour and a half, then landed. Upon landing, the commandos burst out of the giant aircraft and began to take control of the airport from the PAP troops. Dugen and his men loved this part of the training—pyrotechnics erupted everywhere: smoke grenades, blank ammunition, grenade simulators and an occasional canister of CS gas riot control agent.
Day four usually held more of the same as Jia Battalion expanded its control to include the entire post. The hardest part of this portion of the training was capturing and detaining the larger force of PAP troops while aggressively taking and holding more buildings. Dugen was puzzled as to why his commandos weren’t just ordered to “kill” the PAP defenders instead of taking the additional time and effort to “capture” them. Still, orders were orders.
Day five also held interesting training. Usually at midnight of Day four, Dugen was called into Lieutenant General Kung’s office and given a follow-on mission. Often the assignment was a simple as “commandeering” some “civilian” vehicles and performing a route reconnaissance 30 kilometers to the nearest village. Of course, the route reconnaissance was never routine. Often PAP “guerrillas” planted “mines” along the road or tried to ambush Jia Battalion en-route.
After six five-day training cycles Jia Battalion was given a day off (not that Dugen’s men could do anything personal with the time—they were not permitted to call or write home). Rather than allow
his men to be idle and swap unhealthy rumors, Dugen arranged for a day of sports competition with the PAP men. Jia Battalion thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Other than a loss at the table tennis competition (one of the PAP battalions had an aspiring national champion in their ranks), Jia Battalion swept the games.
That evening, Dugen was called to General Kung’s office.
“Colonel Chu,” Kung looked at the young lieutenant colonel with a stone face as he always had, never betraying a hint of emotion and always keeping their contact painfully formal, “Jia Battalion has done well to date.”
“Thank you General.”
“My comment is a statement-of-fact, not a complement. Had your men not done well, you would have been removed from command weeks ago.” Kung glared at Dugen.
“Yes General!” Dugen stood, ramrod straight, eyes fixed forward—the perfect model of a commando officer.
Kung sighed as if in the presence of mere mortals when he expected gods, “I am modifying your training regime. Beginning tomorrow you will do in three days what you have taking five to accomplish. On day one your men will rest while the officers conduct after action reports on the previous assault and plan the next one. On day two you will assault the airport and capture the PAP soldiers. One day three you will conduct your follow-on mission. I have another item for you to incorporate into your training as well: beginning with your second operation four days from now, your men will conduct their assault in chemical weapons protective gear. In addition, your assault will be conducted using live chemical agents.”
Dugen’s eyes narrowed. The bulky chemical weapons suits would make the assault very difficult, especially in the growing heat of the Gobi Desert spring. He would have to rigorously enforce hydration discipline to keep his men from becoming heat casualties. Still, with live chemical agents, the PAP would probably be worse off.
General Kung interrupted Dugen’s calculations, “Do you have a problem with that, Colonel?”
“No, sir!”
“Do you have any questions Colonel Chu?”
“Yes General. May I ask, what chemical agents will be used?”
“We intend to use a variety of agents. We will begin with riot control agent. While effective against untrained mobs without protective masks, it has severe limitations against a force trained and equipped for chemical defense. Half of the PAP troops will be without protective masks, half will possess them—plan accordingly.
“Later we will introduce some classified agents. These agents are very hard to detect. Extremely small amounts can incapacitate the enemy. It is our belief that the correct agent, used in the proper fashion, can enable Jia Battalion to achieve their objectives with minimal casualties and in minimal time.”
“Yes General!” Now this training was getting very interesting. As Dugen saluted and left the General’s office he knew one of two things were happening. Either Jia Battalion is being used as a testing ground for new commando tactics or Jia Battalion was going to be committed to a specific and very important combat operation in the very near future.
* * *
Fu found himself growing to like Admiral Wong, the senior officer in charge of the Quemoy invasion preparations. The admiral was mostly jovial, although he was given to occasional dark moods. The first of these episodes took Fu aback. He had been in Admiral Wong’s office listening to the Admiral’s daily briefing when the Admiral stopped, looked at Fu and said, “I think we shall lose at least 100,000 men in the attack. Is it worth 100,000 lives to capture Quemoy?”
Fu, instantly on his guard, responded, “That is not up to you or me to determine. But, if you think it so, I will put it in my next report to the Party.”
“Put in your report. I’m sure the leadership will not be deterred but I feel it my duty to honestly assess the costs of their actions.”
Fu was troubled by such an attitude. His career was dependent on Admiral Wong’s successful execution of the invasion of Quemoy. Admiral Wong’s attitude was defeatist and dangerous. Still, the Admiral did display an exceptional amount of candor for an officer. Fu decided Wong’s merits outweighed his frailties. To be safe, though, he still reported every nuance to Beijing.
In his constant touring of the Nanjing Military Region (this region included the Shanghai Garrison, Jiansu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi and Anhui Military Districts of China’s central East Coast) Fu was impressed by the thoroughness of the military preparations. Huge numbers of planes, rockets, and artillery were being mobilized. Much of the equipment was moved at night, then hidden in warehouses or caves.
Curiously, little of the equipment around Amoy under the direct command of Admiral Wong was hidden. Fu inquired about this and was assured that the PLA was making every effort to disguise the mobilization of the 85th Infantry Division and the eastward movement of the 71st and 73rd Infantry Divisions to staging areas around Amoy.
Even more difficult to conceal were the gathering naval forces of Admiral Wong’s amphibious task force. Day by day more ships arrived until at last the Admiral had assembled 60 amphibious vessels capable of lifting almost 20,000 troops and 340 tanks into combat at once. In addition to these ships, People’s Liberation Army-Navy (PLAN) had dispatched 11 destroyers, 19 frigates, 20 submarines and more than 100 patrol and missile craft. Amoy Bay was fairly bristling with armament.
Still, that was not enough. Other elements of the preparations surprised him. Hundreds of J-6 fighters had been flown in from other regions and packed into hangars, wingtip-to-wingtip. Dong Feng (East Wind) 11s and 15s, advanced, solid propellant, short-range ballistic missiles with ranges of 200 and 375 miles respectively, were being set up by the hundreds throughout the province. These road-mobile missiles, launched from a transporter-erector-launcher, were being set up under canopies and moved frequently in a shell game to keep foreign intelligence services from noticing too much. Fu knew they were equipped with new Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers to improve their accuracy—the army assured him that they could target and hit any major building in Taiwan now.
With such a massive amount of firepower concentrated on such a small space, Fu was sure that Quemoy’s defenses would be quickly overwhelmed. With a force like this it would be possible to assault Taiwan itself. Fu dismissed the thought. The leadership has made its decision and you have been charged with seeing it through. Perhaps the leadership is correct. Surely the Taiwanese will see that this force is unstoppable and we might reach a political accommodation—didn’t Sun Tzu himself say that
“. . .subduing the enemy without fighting was the acme of skill”?
In early May, Fu had the opportunity to observe, first-hand, a practice naval operation. Having never been on the open ocean before, he was nervous. He hid his discomfort by being more officious than usual. In response, the naval officers around him were of no help, preferring instead to let him get seasick on the heaving deck of the flagship Luhu-class destroyer he was aboard.
Listening to the operations briefing in advance of the exercise, Fu was struck at how clinical and precise everything was. Admiral Wong’s task force commander intended to move a screen of 35 warships in front of 20 amphibious assault ships to within one kilometer of Taiwan’s territorial limits off Quemoy’s main island. The operation had two main purposes: one, practice the coordination and timing needed for a successful attack; and two, analyze the Taiwanese Navy’s reaction to the mock attack.
As Fu once more vomited into the brass pan offered to him (not out of sympathy, only out of a desire to keep the mess on the bridge to a minimum), he noted how wrong his initial academic impression was of this operation. All sailors manned their battle stations. The bridge was buzzing with activity. Orders were shouted. Eventually Fu’s stomach was empty and, with weak knees, he noted the distinct smell of the salt air and the powerful vibrations of the ship’s turbine engines. Other than dealing with the ocean being in the navy wouldn’t have been such a bad assignment, Fu thought, not really caring that the idea was inherently foolish.
&n
bsp; Suddenly the destroyer cut hard to starboard. Fu had to grasp his chair to keep from tumbling out of it. The horizon looked tilted at an impossible angle. Fu was certain the ship would capsize but all the officers on the bridge simply grabbed whatever handhold was nearest them and continued their work as if they were in an office on dry land.
Fu felt the destroyer slow down and a moment later he saw a French-made Dauphin helicopter take to the air, rapidly heading off the destroyer’s port beam. Fu now felt strong enough to ask a question, “What’s the helicopter doing?”
A junior officer replied, “Comrade Fu, we have launched an anti-submarine warfare helicopter. It will drop sonobuoys in an attempt to locate enemy submarines.”
The officer never looked away from his radar screen. Fu knew he had been slighted. Fu also knew he hardly turned in an admirable performance on the flagship. He decided to let the young officer’s insolence slide—this time.
“Where are we now?”
“118 degrees, 16 minutes, and 24 seconds east by 23 degrees, 46 minutes, and 37 seconds north,” the officer was playing with him. Fu waited patiently for the answer he was really looking for and was not disappointed, “We are in Weitou Bay north of the Quemoy fishing village of Shamei—about one kilometer from enemy territorial waters.”
The officer finally looked back at Special Emissary Fu Zemin with a thin smile, “Sir, if you please,” he stepped aside and showed Fu his radar screen, gesturing for Fu to rise up and take a closer look.