by Rosone,James
Chang lifted himself slightly above the lip of the landing craft to sneak a peek at the beach. He saw hundreds of rockets and artillery rounds impacting all along the shore, sending geysers of sand, dirt and other materials into the sky. As his boat advanced towards the beach, he saw flashes of light from several well-hidden bunkers on the beach reach out and destroy several of the vessels around him. Red tracers (like lasers) could be seen crisscrossing the water, hitting several vehicles; some rounds bounced off harmlessly while others penetrated the lightly armored landing craft, causing some of them to explode.
As Chang’s landing craft neared the beach, he readied himself and did a check on his exoskeleton suit. He reminded his squad mates of their objective, “Men, we are assigned to take out the machine gun bunker to the right of our landing craft once we hit the beach. You have your weapons—satchel charges and RPG7s. Our goal is to disable or destroy our target as quickly as possible to make way for the second and third waves to advance.”
The soldiers had been told to expect the Americans to have heavy M2 .50 machine guns in the bunkers, but none of them were anticipating the two M134 miniguns as well. As their landing craft neared the beach, several machine gun rounds hit the front ramp and bounced off. Within seconds, the ramp dropped. Chang’s platoon began to rush forward with the rest of the swarm, trying to advance quickly towards the beach. As they were running, one of the heavy machine gunners turned their sights towards his platoon. Within seconds, nearly a dozen men in his platoon had been mowed down by the heavy guns. Chang knew he had to get his squad to some cover quickly or that heavy machine gun was going to cut them apart. Suddenly, Chang heard a loud buzzing sound and saw what looked like a flickering laser reach out from the bunker in front of him and massacred an entire platoon to his left. He had never seen one of the American miniguns used at a beach invasion, and could not believe how fast the platoon had been wiped out. They desperately needed to take out those bunkers before they were all killed.
About 100 meters in from the shoreline was a bank where the sand ended and the grass began. As Chang looked up at the horizon to the small dips and rises in the ground past that point, he could see rows of torn and partially destroyed concertina wire and obstacles, spaced about ten meters apart. PLAN infantrymen were rushing these obstacles, doing their best to either destroy it or cut open wide holes for others to follow through. Several of the armored amphibious landing vehicles did their best to plow through as much of the defensive line as they could before they were destroyed by enemy railguns, mortars and artillery. Their sacrifice was heroic, and probably the only thing preventing the first wave of the assault from being completely wiped out.
Chang moved along with his squad through the various obstacles. They all did their best not to get cut down by enemy fire, and took advantage of as many opportunities to shoot back at the Americans as they could. They were managing to plow along at a fair clip, considering the immense amount of crossfire. In an instant, an explosion occurred near Chang that was so powerful, it picked up the soldier behind him and threw him at Chang’s back. Chang fell flat on his face. He groaned; his nose was partially filled with sand, but the concussion from the blast had stunned him enough that he was powerless to move in that instant. For a brief moment, he lost consciousness. When he came to, he struggled to push the soldier off of his back. As he heard the thump of the man rolling off of him, Chang could see that he was clearly dead.
Looking back, he saw several members of his squad thrown around, some were moving slowly, recovering from the shock, and others were not moving at all. One of the soldiers had stepped on a landmine; it had nearly taken the entire squad out. He was reeling from the shock of it all.
Another loud explosion brought Chang back to reality. He quickly glanced to his left and saw that further down the beach, sand, dirt, and body parts were being blown into the air as several artillery rounds hit the beach. Seconds later, Chang was back on his feet. He yelled at his squad, “Continue to advance to the embankment for cover! And try to take that gun bunker out!”
Hundreds of other Chinese soldiers in their new exoskeleton combat suits were also moving quickly through the obstacles, rushing for the embankment and the sense of shelter. Chang was nearly to the embankment with his squad and the rest of his company when a series of explosions in front of the embankment went off. Several of the claymore anti-personnel mines had been triggered; the concussion was so strong that Chang was hurled backwards into several of his soldiers.
Each of the claymore mines had released 480 steel balls as it detonated, like a shotgun at very close range. As Chang recovered from the blast, he felt a twinge of pain in his left arm, and a throbbing in both of his legs. He looked down and saw that he had been hit by a couple of the steel balls in the arm; each of his legs had taken at least one round as well. He could not immediately get up, so he quickly crawled to the embankment, which was less than 50 meters in front of him. When he looked back, he saw that only three members of his squad remained from the ten men that had been with him when they left the landing craft. When his comrades realized that he was injured, they ran to him and dragged him by the shoulders to pull him further into the embankment. One of the soldiers began to work on his injuries with Chang’s first aid package, while the other two engaged the American soldiers in the trenches. They were about 150 meters from the bunker.
“I wrapped your injuries at tight as I could, and used the cream as we were taught,” one of the soldiers said to Chang.
“Thank you for the help Private. Take your RPG and try to see if you can hit the gun port of that machine gun bunker to our left. We have to try and take it out or no one is going to make it.” They each had an RPG7 with them, and a total of four rockets each. Chang knew the RPG could not destroy the bunker, it was too heavily reinforced. His hope was to hit the firing slit; the explosion of the RPG would travel inside the bunker and potentially destroy the gun or kill the Americans manning it.
As Chang looked back over the beach, he saw the third wave was already starting to hit the beach. He also saw dozens of bodies bobbing in the water all around burnt and blown out amphibious vehicles and landing craft. The beach itself was covered in bodies: some were stuck in the concertina wire, others were missing limbs or even half of their bodies from the various mines, and some were simply blown to bits by the mortars and artillery rounds that had landed in their midst. As he watched, he witnessed more soldiers getting cut down by those machine gun bunkers. He knew they had to be taken out.
One of the privates popped up long enough to fire his rocket at the bunker. Unfortunately, it impacted about two feet below the gun slit. The second private jumped up to fire his rocket, but was hit by several bullets from the Americans in the trench line in front of them. He died instantly.
Chang grabbed the RPG from his fallen brother-in-arms and slithered several feet down the embankment. He waited a moment to make sure that no enemy fire was aimed in his direction, and then he propped himself up to take aim at the bunker. He knew that the rocket would fall a little as it flew, so he set his sights just slightly above the gun slit. He fired the RPG, and then quickly ducked just as a stream of bullets and tracers flew over his head. When he did look up, he saw that his rocket had hit the gun slit and the machine gun had gone silent. Then smoke started emanating from within the bunker as it started to pour out of the gun slit. They had done it; they had accomplished their mission.
With the machine gun bunker now silent, hundreds of naval infantrymen rushed through the paths that had been made for them by the first two waves of the assault. They moved quickly to close the distance between them and the American soldiers in the trenches. Several rounds of claymore mines were detonated by the Yankees as the Chinese soldiers rushed forward, but without the second bunker, the lines were being overrun by sheer manpower.
Suddenly, dozens of Chinese soldiers were jumping into the trenches, fighting hand-to-hand with the Americans. Chang took another rocket from one of the d
ead privates and reloaded the RPG. He fired another round at the second gun position to their right. Chang saw a soldier open a side door briefly and fire a flare into the sky. Not knowing what this green glow meant, Chang took one more shot with the RPG, aiming at the steel door he had just seen the soldier shut; he was hoping to take him out.
Suddenly, the remaining American soldiers still in the trenches ran to the bunker and opened the now severely damaged steel door. In mere seconds, they were all inside the bunker. The Americans tried to close the door as best they could after Chang had hit it with the rocket. Seconds later, several Chinese soldiers blew the door open and rushed the entrance of the bunker. As they did, the entire thing exploded, killing everyone in it and injuring other soldiers nearby.
Chang looked to the two privates left in his squad. “Well done, soldiers! Continue on with the rest of the company while I wait for the medic to come and further address my injuries.”
Without any hesitation, they immediately moved forward, joining the rest of the naval infantrymen and advancing past the first trench line towards the second line of defense much further back.
As Chang looked at the carnage that was before him, he thought to himself, “If every battle with the Americans on their homeland is going to be like this, we are going to need a lot more men. ” He had to give the Americans credit, they fought like savage dogs. They had made the Chinese pay dearly to take this land from them.
On the coastline, several larger landing crafts pulled up to the shore and opened their doors to offload a heavy main battle tank. “We sure could have used those things to help take out the gun positions ,” thought Chang to himself. As the tanks moved across the beach, they ran over dozens of dead bodies as well as those of the wounded who could not get out of their way fast enough.
Immediately after the MBTs offloaded, a wave of medical personnel sprang forward and immediately went to work tending to the wounded and loading them back on to several of the landing craft that were still at the beach. As additional soldiers and medics advanced to Chang’s position, an officer came up to him and angrily asked him, “Why did you not advance with the rest of your company?”
Chang simply pointed to the bloody bandages on both of his legs, and a medic ran up to him. The officer hurried off and started to yell at another batch of soldiers he had found near the American trenches.
Chang was loaded onto a stretcher and moved to a landing craft, which then headed back to sea and to the troop transports. Chang’s part in the war was over for the time being.
*******
The PLAN infantry had secured Homer and Anchor Point, dislodging the Americans after twenty-one hours of continuous combat. They had moved ten kilometers inland before they were finally stopped by a battalion of American Pershing MBTs and several battalions of the older, yet still venerable, Abrams Tanks.
In the battle for Anchor Point, 14,373 American soldiers had been killed, wounded, or found to be missing. However, the PLAN naval infantry had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force. They had lost 41,235 soldiers who were killed, missing or wounded during the battle before the PLA began to land their force and assume the role of attacker. The PLAN had started the Alaskan campaign just three weeks prior, with 150,000 soldiers fully equipped with the new exoskeleton combat suits. Between the battles of Kodiak Island, the Aleutian Peninsula and the battle of Anchor Point, they had lost 86,438 soldiers. The PLA, by contrast, had lost less than 43,000 up to this point, but they still had not fully dislodged the American defenders from Kodiak Island.
*******
Dr. Dewei Zhong was in a holding pattern off shore. He would be part of the last group to reach Anchor Point. The first wave of doctors were Tieh Ta practitioners, who specialized in trauma injuries; they triaged the patients and would get to work setting broken bones and treating the soldiers who had lost limbs. The Tieh Ta practitioners would also offer to assist those who were too far beyond treatment in ending their lives peacefully. Dr. Zhong had mixed feelings about this practice, but Buddha had been tolerant of monks who had committed suicide in such cases, and so he kept his mouth shut and followed along, knowing that those who received such an offer were struggling under great suffering.
As Dr. Zhong waited offshore, he smiled to himself thinking about how much more equipment the Americans would need in order to do his job. He was quite sure that death rates with the American doctors would be at least double what theirs were with the limited amount of equipment they had under their budget. Dewei didn’t need all of those fancy gadgets in order to do his work. He could simply look at a patient’s face and their tongue and have a very good idea of whether or not infection had spread in the body, if IV fluids would be necessary, and which medicines would be of greatest use in restoring balance to the body.
While he was reflecting, his landing craft suddenly bumped into the shore, and he almost lost his balance as his ship lurched forward. Once everyone caught their footing, they all rushed forward as one unit, lugging their bulky bags of supplies. As more and more of the scene came into view, Dr. Zhong was no longer smiling…what unfolded before him was horrific, even past the limits of what he had imagined in his mind. The sheer enormity of the agony in front of him was overwhelming. There was hardly a place to stand where there wasn’t blood or the remnants of a soldier blown apart by an explosion. Dewei took a deep breath; if he allowed himself to think about it all, he was going to become useless. He needed to calm himself and focus on what was immediately in front of him.
Dr. Zhong set to work; once he started working with the patients, the automaticity kicked in, and he was able to be effective and swift. He moved steadily from patient to patient, administering a combination of traditional Chinese herbal medications and Western drugs, dressing wounds, starting IVs, and motioning to the medical transporters when a patient was stabilized enough to move back to the ship. Hours went by in what seemed like minutes, and then suddenly all of the wounded were cleared from the beach. Dewei returned to the boat, accompanying a patient who was not quite as stable as the rest.
As they took off towards the Middle Kingdom, Dr. Zhong continued his work. There would be very little sleep until they returned home and were relieved by other practitioners. Dewei moved swiftly from patient to patient, feeling the temperature on different parts of their body and giving instructions to assistants who would add or take away blankets. Dr. Zhong was a little more liberal with the pain medications than most of his colleagues; he knew that his fellow Chinese service men were very stoic in nature and that most would not ask him for assistance, but he felt that easing their suffering would be one way to bring better karma to himself. His movements were like a well-rehearsed dance; he did not waste time or energy, but steadily moved along, caring for others well into the night.
The final ships would come to collect the bodies of the dead, so that their families could give them a proper burial. If a soldier’s body was too damaged to be returned to the family, the family was given a set of their dog tags, along with any cremated remains that might have been collected. The Chinese believed that this dignity in passing would help ensure that the souls of the departed would continue to look after and care for their loved ones after their death.
Changing Tactics
14 June 2041
White House, Situation Room
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Branson, had been discussing the casualties and the state of the war in Alaska with Eric Clarke (the Secretary of Defense) for close to half an hour before the start of the national security meeting with the President. Slowly, other members of the President’s national security team were filtering in with their aides in tow. They were reviewing their portions of the brief with their aides as they prepared for the grilling the President usually put his team through. Henry Stein was usually tough but fair in the meetings; he wanted unfiltered information about the situation on the ground. He typically did not get directly involved in the minutia of decisions, but he certainly wanted
a clear picture of what was happening. Having served in the Second Iraq war and worked in the Department of Defense for many years before starting his own business, he had an adept understanding of the complexities involved in both fighting a war and the bureaucracy of managing one.
*******
In the Oval Office, President Stein sat in his chair talking with his Chief of Staff, Michael Montgomery (or “Monty” as he was usually called). They had been talking about domestic priorities and issues with Jeff Rogers, the Senior White House Economic Advisor, and Secretary of Treasury, Joyce Gibbs, before the National Security meeting. Secretary Gibbs had been reviewing the state of the economy.
“As you know, Sir, the US has been experiencing exponential growth the past five years since you have taken office. The America First Corporation (AFC) has been a boon for the U.S.A. As millions of Americans have been hired for reconstruction and infrastructure jobs all over the nation, the country has begun to turn around.” Jeff reviewed various charts and metrics with more detailed information, and Henry couldn’t help but start to daydream during the explanation. The President had established AFC to become a sort of sovereign wealth fund for the country, allowing it to leverage the various resources on federal lands all across the country. The money being generated by AFC was being used to shore up Social Security and help fund other aspects of the federal government in addition to providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. AFC was the only company allowed to mine and drill on federal land. They also planted fruit and nut trees along federal freeways and highways all across the country. It beautified the highways across America and again provided tens of thousands of jobs and tens of millions of tons of food a month.
Monty brought his boss back to reality as he asserted, “The economic news is good, Mr. President. Despite the draft and the fighting in Alaska, the economy continues to remain strong.”