by Chuck DeVore
“I’ve two, a purple and a green.”
“Pop them and toss them out in front of you on the street right now! I’m coming in and I want a diversion. Get back to your vehicles. After you hear the first few main gun rounds I want you to get on the freeway and suppress the infantry with your .50 cals and grenade launchers from behind the guardrail. Do you understand? Over.”
“Yes sir!”
“Thunderbolt out.” Alexander took a deep breath and let the radio dangle from his wrist on its strap. “Driver, stop under the bridge. Loader, do we have a sabot round up?”
Jones replied, “Yes sir.”
“Okay everyone, listen up. The Scouts report that there’s at least two tanks and a company of ‘mech’ out there about two to three hundred meters to our left front. The infantry hasn’t dismounted yet. We’re going to destroy the two tanks first, Jones, get another sabot round ready, then we’re going to engage the APCs with HEAT rounds. Peña, once the tanks are down, I’m going to suppress the APCs with my .50. I want you to fire at will then. If I see a more dangerous target I’ll let you know. Hernandez, we’ll stay as close to the bridge as we can and still engage the enemy, if we have to come out from under the bridge to kill them, I want you to move parallel to the river bank at about ten miles per hour. Everyone understand?”
“Roger,” Peña spoke.
“Yes sir,” Hernandez sounded confident.
“Ready sir,” Jones looked up at his commander while cradling the 105mm sabot round he would shove into the breach as soon as the gun fired.
“All right then, let’s go! Driver, move out 20 meters then guide left until I say halt.” Alexander could hear the APC cannon and machine gun fire. The Chinese were reacting to the sudden appearance of Mundell’s smoke grenades. The tank edged up to the lip of the river’s bank, “Halt!” Perfect. With Traveller’s gun tube on stab, it was already depressed, lowering the profile of the tank. The only portion of the tank that was visible from the enemy’s vantage was the 105mm gun, the two machine guns on the roof, and Alexander.
The TC quickly found the first tank and jinked the turret to the left to line up the gun with the target. He began the familiar litany, “Gunner, sabot, two tanks, left tank first, fire!”
Peña didn’t need to lase or switch to ten-power—the enemy was too close for that, “On the way!”
The sabot round penetrated the Chinese tank in the left side of its hull. It immediately burst into flames and began exploding as the ammunition inside of it began to cook off.
Jones yelled, “Up!”
Peña pulled the gun to the right. The Chinese tank was already swinging its turret to face the Americans. Puffs of smoke appeared on both sides of the tank’s turret and in an instant it was obscured in a thick cloud of smoke. The smoke blotted out the TIS image.
Alexander called, “Gunner, sabot, tank, fire!”
Peña was sure he had already lined up the gun to hit the enemy tank. Unless it already moved out, he would hit it, “On the way!” He squeezed the trigger just as the Chinese tank charged out of the smoke.
The round hit the side of the turret with a shower of sparks. Inside the tank, hundreds of metal flakes knocked loose by the shot peppered the gunner, blinding him. The Chinese crew was stunned but not dead.
“Gunner, HEAT, APCs, fire at will!”
“Up!”
Alexander set to work with his .50 caliber heavy machine gun. Traveller’s muzzle flashed as a HEAT round reached out to its target. A BMP-2 exploded in a ball of flames. The muzzle flash hurt his eyes, even from behind his goggles, but he knew it was much better behind the flash than in front of it. He saw some infantry come boiling out of the BMPs, seeking cover and orienting themselves on their enemy. Small explosions tore at their ranks and several fell from an invisible hand. Alexander grunted to himself—the Scouts and MPs had now gone to work.
The tank’s gun erupted again, and once more they were rewarded with a burning enemy vehicle. Alexander heard the sting of bullets rip the air around him. “Driver, move out. Stay on the river’s bank.”
The tank’s gun remained locked in place, perfectly stabilized, even as the tank moved out at a 15-degree tilt along the river’s edge. Motion offered some protection to the TC. Alexander weighed going to open protected but rejected it. He needed to see and was willing to accept the risk. Alexander heard DPICM rounds impacting behind him near the edge of the airport less than half a mile away.
The tank moved north, then crossed over Pingchiang Street and followed the river’s path as it looped back around to the southwest. After two minutes of action, the tank fired a dozen rounds and hit a dozen vehicles. The broken bodies of the enemy infantry littered the compact killing ground. Some soldiers raised their hands in surrender. Alexander picked up the portable radio, “Sidewinder, Sidewinder, we have enemy trying to surrender in here!” No response. “Sidewinder, Sidewinder, do you copy?”
“This is Sidewinder, go ahead Thunderbolt.”
“Sidewinder, I see about 20 enemy infantry trying to surrender. I’m going to drive slowly towards them and push them up your way, get the MPs ready to secure them. Have them march them down to the airport and turn them over to the security forces there.”
“I don’t like this sir. It’s too dangerous.”
“I’ll be buttoned-up. They don’t have anything that can kill the tank from close in. Just cover my rear and make sure no one shoves an RPG up my ass.”
“Roger,” a reluctant lieutenant said.
Alexander pulled the hatch shut above him, “Driver, move out at a walking speed to the south.” He began sluing the turret back and forth slowly. Within five minutes they rounded up 26 dazed Chinese infantrymen, half were wounded. The six MPs in their two Humvees led them off on Pingchiung Street under the freeway overpass towards the nearby airport.
Alexander noticed his knees were beginning to shake and that he was getting a bad headache. His mouth was tremendously dry. He reached inside the turret for his web gear and canteens, found one and drained the quart of water in one long gulp. He went back on the vehicle intercom, “Everyone take a water break, we’ve been in some hard fighting. Good job men. Damn good job!”
* * *
In small city of Hsichih, midway between the Taiwanese port city of Keelung and Taipei, the commander of the 12th Tank Division was simultaneously pleased and disturbed. He had much to be pleased with. Since landing the 93 tanks and 45 infantry fighting vehicles of the 121st Tank Regiment at noon, he had quickly assembled them and moved them to the outskirts of Taipei, losing only three BMPs in the process to a solitary Taiwanese tank.
A few minutes before 1700 hours, with the other two regiments of his division now landing at Keelung, he decided to send a reconnaissance-in-force into Taipei with the limited mission of capturing Taipei’s airport to deny its use to the enemy. The area around the airport was open enough that he wasn’t worried about getting bogged down into house-to-house fighting with his mechanized forces. Further, if the enemy perceived a threat to his capital, it would make his true task—a link up with elements of the 10th Tank Division in the vicinity of Hsintien eight kilometers south of Taipei—all the easier. With the battalion at Sungshan Airport, the remainder of the 121st Tank Regiment would then be able to roll down Highway 3, skirting the eastern edge of Taipei with little fear of a Taiwanese counterattack.
Within two hours his plan was proceeding well. The lead elements of his main effort had already made it to the Taipei suburb of Musha and the town of Shenkeng two klicks to the east. Hsintien was only seven kilometers southwest of his armored spearhead making him 12 hours ahead of schedule (his armor was to arrive at Hsintien no later than noon tomorrow to relieve the 1st Airborne Division which was to begin dropping onto the city early tomorrow morning).
Meanwhile, the supporting effort had just reported reaching the bridges on the Keelung Ho. Sungshan Airport was in sight at the cost of only three BMPs from the combat reconnaissance patrol (knocked out by a s
olitary Taiwanese M60A3 tank that retreated to the northwest as the Chinese armor began to arrive). Then, chaos descended on the battalion. Within minutes, the battalion’s forward security element reported sighting a platoon of tanks—American tanks, flying American flags! The battalion commander lost contact with his forward security element in only two minutes. The general suspected the Americans were at the airport in greater numbers than the forward security element reported and called his commander, the chief of the 12th Group Army, to tell him so.
The 12th Group Army commander called him a coward and assured him that the Americans couldn’t possibly be on the island (but, just in case, he called PLA command in Beijing and demanded reinforcements to contend with the American threat).
The 12th Group Army chief then ordered him to take the remainder of the battalion he committed to take the airport and finish the job before nightfall—hence his discomfort. In war, a thousand praises can be wiped clean by one failure. He listened intently as the battalion’s main body approached the airport. With 28 Type 85-II tanks, 11 BMP-2s, and six 122mm self-propelled howitzers, he knew this was a force to contend with. Monitoring the battalion’s radio net he was shocked to hear the battalion’s mechanized infantry company team annihilated in less than ten minutes. The intelligence map displayed the sightings of American M1 tanks. A platoon at the center of the airport, another two tanks at the east end of the airport, still more north of the Sun Yat-Sen Freeway—at least a company of heavy American armor! This was far more than his remaining two tank companies could be expected to handle, yet. . . there was the 12th Group Army commander to deal with.
* * *
Alexander’s knees were still shaking, although now somewhat less. He was slightly nauseated too—he knew he downed his canteen too fast. The Chinese prisoners and wounded had been rounded up and he was about to head back towards the Keelung Ho and pass under the Sun Yat-Sen freeway bridge when he caught movement out of his left eye. It was one of the Chinese tanks only 50 yards away! As its turret was rotating towards him, Alexander dropped inside his tank in what seemed like a maddening eternity. He grabbed the turret control and jerked the turret around to face the threat, he used his other hand to steady himself and wasn’t able to use the intercom. He screamed, “Gunner, sabot, tank!”
Peña, still cradling his canteen of water, spilled it in his lap as he seized the control yoke.
Jones yelled, “We have a HEAT round loaded.”
Alexander roared, “Fire! Fire the damn thing!”
The enemy tank fired, its sabot round hit the American tank on the front of the turret and penetrated through four inches of armor before stopping. The reverberating clang was brutally loud.
Peña called out, “On the way!”
The breach slammed back and nicked Jones’s protective suit, tearing a small hole in the hip, “Shit!” The young soldier realized how close he came to getting his hips pulverized.
The HEAT round exploded against the enemy tank with tremendous sound and fury. The tank’s bolt-on reactive armor did its job, however, and the shot’s only effect was to shake up the enemy crew. Reactive armor, pioneered by the Israelis and the Russians, is a fairly cheap way to harden tanks against HEAT-type rounds. Reactive armor is a small metal box with sensitive explosives inside. Dozens of them can be bolted onto the side of a tank. When a HEAT round triggers the box (no other type of ammo will), it explodes outward, disrupting the shaped jet of super hot and dense metal formed by the HEAT round. Once triggered, however, it leaves a vulnerable spot where the box and its nearby companions are blown free of the tank.
Alexander, knowing that the HEAT round probably didn’t do the job yelled, “Gunner, reengage, sabot, fire at will! Driver, pull left and face the tank. Go! Go! Go!”
The Chinese tank crew, now down to two men since the gunner was blinded earlier in the battle (the Type 85-II tank had an auto loader so the tank only had a three man crew) shook off the HEAT round’s impact (with the gunner out of commission, the TC took his place while the gunner sat uselessly at the TC’s station). The TC selected another sabot round and depressed his gun tube, aiming for the more vulnerable flank of the M1’s hull.
Jones opened the blast door, grabbed a sabot round and slammed it home. He got out of the way and yelled “Up!”
The Chinese gunner was dismayed to see the M1’s hull pivoting around. He raised his gun tube and aimed for the vulnerable turret ring (the spot where the turret meets the hull). His autoloader finished ramming first the sabot round home, then the charge (unlike the American tank, his main gun did not eject a shell casing). He began to squeeze the trigger.
Happy with where he placed the last shot, Peña only slightly adjusted his aim to compensate for the just pivoted tank and yelled, “On the way!” as he pulled the trigger.
The American long rod penetrater poked its way through the Chinese armor and completely wrecked the interior of the enemy tank. A few seconds later the ammo started cooking off, confirming the kill before the American tank crew wasted another round on the tank.
Alexander felt bone tired, “Let’s get out of here before his friends show up or the artillery starts falling. Hunting will be safer tonight.” He grabbed the handheld commercial radio, “Sidewinder, Thunderbolt.”
“You all right Thunderbolt? I heard some serious shootin’ a few seconds ago.” Mundell’s southern accent was measure of home in a strange land.
“Yea, one of the tanks wasn’t quite dead yet. You have those EPWs secured, over?”
“Roger. We even have our medics tending to them, over.”
“Right, get your scouts out and cover the bridges. We need to conduct some maintenance.” Alexander clicked off the transmitter and switched to the intercom, “Hernandez, take us back to the airport via the route under the bridge by the river. Move out fast.”
The tankers closed on the airport. Alexander ordered Hernandez to pull Traveller into an aircraft hangar near the ACE dozer. The crew got out and stretched. Dan noticed a large wet spot on Peña’s crotch, “So, the Chinese scared the piss out of you, eh?”
Peña looked down. Hernandez and Jones crowded to look at him. The gruff old sergeant said, “Oh, no sir! I spilled my canteen during that last engagement!”
Hernandez ribbed his senior NCO, “Sure, Sarge, we know you wet yourself. . .” he turned to the colonel, “Sir, does this mean he doesn’t get any medals?”
Jones finally smiled, “If he doesn’t get any, can I have his?”
Peña laughed, “Okay, okay, I pissed my pants—but tell anyone and I’ll rip your heart out!”
Everyone laughed hard, then got to work preparing Traveller for a long night of work.
26
Ghosts
It was Sunday morning, July 22. Commercial and military Chinese aircraft had been landing follow-on forces at CKS for 22 hours now. Where only a battalion of commandos were the day before, some 34,000 infantry and 10,000 People’s Armed Police paramilitaries were now concentrated.
The ROC Air Force was nowhere in sight. The one feeble air strike the Taiwanese did try to mount was detected by one of the new Chinese airborne early warning aircraft (featuring an Israeli Elta Phalcon phased array radar on a Russian-built Il-76 cargo aircraft). The Chinese AWACS vectored fighter aircraft to intercept and destroy the attackers.
The only moments of true concern occurred a few hours before when the airport began to receive some artillery fire. PLA artillery and American-built counter battery radar systems rapidly answered the enemy and silenced his artillery.
In spite of all this success, Lieutenant Colonel Chu Dugen felt little consolation. Instead of soaring at the height of his professional military career, Dugen’s thoughts returned to his father and mother. His father: dead. His mother: languishing in a jail, probably in Lipu County. He thought of the reasons why his mother was in jail—his father’s brave, but foolish stand against the Party’s corruption and his mother’s silent faith in something larger than herself, the Communist
Party, or even China. He had never attended church with his mother—he never even knew she was a Christian until she told him during his last, brief visit home (although, in retrospect, he had his suspicions). Dugen pondered the words of the regimental political officer before he left for Hong Kong, “Do well in Taiwan and the State may show your mother leniency.” He knew his mother and the God she held so dear would not approve of his actions—and yet, he had his military duty and honor to uphold. And, if the State wished to spare his mother because he simply did his duty to the best of his abilities, then so be it.
Dugen sighed and reported in to 10th Group Army headquarters in the basement of the modern CKS terminal. “Lieutenant Colonel Chu of Jia Commando Battalion reporting for orders.” He announced himself in the operations center, saluting the senior colonel seated behind a commandeered civilian office desk. He glanced over the colonel, trying to observe one of the situation maps. A major general and a civilian, no doubt a Party official by the looks of his grooming, partially blocked his view.
The colonel stood up, and smiling, took Dugen’s hand. Dugen was taken aback as the colonel shook his hand and said, “Excellent! Well done, Colonel Chu. I have orders here promoting you to colonel!” The senior colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out two new colonel’s epaulettes, their three stars almost filling the length of the small pieces of cloth (the senior colonel’s own four stars looked cramped for space by comparison). He then unbuttoned Dugen’s epaulettes and replaced them with the new rank insignia.
“I was just performing my job, sir.” Dugen felt a rush of conflicting emotions. He hadn’t even been shot at and now he was getting promoted.
The major general by the map tapped the civilian on the shoulder and pointed at Dugen. Dugen was growing increasingly uncomfortable. He simply wanted to get his new orders and get back to his men.