Our Next Great War

by Martin Archer

  “Our job,” Stransky repeatedly explained to the tank commanders, and then again to the officers of the battalion’s command group when he summoned them, “and that of the tank battalion and artillery across the valley is to hit them on the flank as they pass in front of us.” At least, that’s the plan. But will it work? And how, for God’s sake, will the Chinese react?

  What really bothered both Colonel Stransky and me was that there has been no Russian air support to help the army stop the Chinese advance or take out the Chinese pontoon bridges. The Russian artillery and armor got some of the bridges, but the Chinese built new ones even faster. That enabled the Chinese armor to pour across the river despite the heavy casualties the Russian tanks and the three infantry divisions inflicted on them.

  What does it mean that the Russian air force is totally missing? All we’ve heard are rumors and snippets of information on the radios about Chinese paratroopers and big air battles.

  Apparently the Russian troops have not been told anything about the absence of the Russian air force and fear the worst. Stransky’s men were obviously worried to the point of hysteria at a couple of the tanks we visited. I was not exactly calm myself. It was no fun being an observer without a couple of inches of steel between me and the Chinese.

  On the other hand, from what I’d observed, and my translator’s take on the radio chatter on our jeep radio, it sounded like the SAMs of the three Russian infantry divisions in the valley made the Chinese attack helicopters and planes pay a terrible price for supporting the Chinese infantry as they came over the river – and took a lot of casualties doing it.

  Obviously the Chinese infantry casualties and their helicopter and plane loses have not been enough to stop the Chinese. Hell, when the smoke clears down towards the river anyone up here on the ridge with binoculars will again be able to see the Chinese pontoon bridges and all the armor and vehicles they are steadily bringing across. It won’t be long now before they reach us. I wonder who will break first. I hate to say it but I think it will be the Russians.

  “Good luck, Comrade Colonel” I said to Stransky as I saluted and held out my hand to him.” I really meant it.

  And then to my interpreter.

  “Come on, Simeon, it’s time for to get on the other side of this here ridge and try to find a radio so I can call home with a report.”

  ******

  All day the men strung out along the little ridge stood on their tanks and watched as more and more Chinese armor and vehicles crossed the river and formed up on the north side. Then the sun went down and Stransky and his men spent the entire night anxiously peering through their thermal night vision sights and waiting. Nothing.

  Stransky and his men didn’t know it, and many of them wouldn’t live long enough to find out, but the Chinese tanks were not as well equipped as the Russian tanks. They did not have night vision sights.

  A heavy Chinese artillery barrage finally began just before dawn. The valley below was filled with flashes and explosions. The little village and the Russian lines behind it were absolutely inundated with artillery fire for almost an hour. It was almost as if the Chinese thought the entire Russian army was there and in the valley around it.

  Initially there was a some return fire from the Russian artillery further up the valley, but it was not very much and it soon stopped as the Chinese begin dropping counter battery fire on it. The artillery behind us and across the way remained strangely quiet.

  Colonel Stransky wondered why the artillery was silent, and then began to worry that it had pulled out and left him and his men stranded. But he never tried to find out; instead, he merely watched as the Russian division dug in behind the little village took the brunt of the Chinese barrage. It had obviously already suffered serious casualties from the Chinese artillery and was barely able to defend itself by the time the massive tank-led Chinese advance started forward at dawn.

  The division in the valley broke almost immediately. Stransky and his men watched from the ridge as the division’s vehicles begin to stream towards the rear in the midst of smoke and explosions.

  ******

  General Bulganin himself stood in the turret of his command BMD and orchestrated the Russian response as the Chinese attempted to breakout of their beachhead of the north side of the Amur.

  He was watching from the north end of Stransky’s ridge when he ordered the Russian heavy artillery to commence firing and the two tank battalions on the ridges in front of the artillery to hold their fire. Russian artillery fire immediately began dropping on the advancing Chinese.

  In the smoke and confusion it was difficult for the Chinese to determine where the Russian artillery fire is coming from. The helicopters they sent forward to scout the Russian positions were immediately shot down by handheld Russian SAMs.

  As a result their confusion, the Chinese mistakenly assumed the artillery fire was coming from their front and, after two or three minutes, the Chinese artillery began firing counter-battery fire over the heads of the Russians retreating from the village and into the approaches to Kharbarovsk.

  Chinese counter-battery fire continued to slam into the general area of where the Chinese thought the Russian artillery might be located as the mangled Russian Guards division in front of Stransky and his tanks put up a brief fight, a very brief fight, and then tried to pull back.

  At the same time, the entire Chinese army surged forward to move up the valley in a great mass attack. It was led by hundreds of Chinese tanks, armored personnel carriers, and self-propelled artillery—and, as they moved forward without any air cover, they begin to pass directly in front of the ridge where Stransky's hull-down tanks and BDMs were dug in under their camouflage nets. Only the observers for the silent heavy artillery were positioned on the ridge; the guns themselves were his to his rear and behind the crest of the ridge.

  This is impossible, Stransky thought to himself as he watched the Chinese advance. Surely the Chinese know we are here. Is it possible they do not because their communications are so poor or our SAMs knocked down all the helicopters that came this way and might have seen us?

  Bulganin repeatedly ordered Colonel Stransky and his counterpart across the way to hold their fire. And each time Ivan dutifully ordered his remaining forty-nine T-62 tanks and twenty-two BMD fighting vehicles to hold their fire.

  “This is Tabriz one. Remember your orders. Hold your fire until I give the word. Pick three or four of the Chinese tanks and BMDs immediately in front of you and be ready to hit them quickly when I give the order. If your targets pass by pick three or four more. And don’t forget; when I do give the order you are to keep firing anytime you have a good target.”

  Then Stransky remembered that the lieutenants commanding his two platoons of SAM shooters would also be listening on the battalion net. So he added “SAM shooters are, of course, are to immediately fire anytime a plane or helicopter comes within range. Don’t wait a second. They won’t be ours.” No goddamnit they won’t be ours.

  ******

  About ten minutes after dawn the Chinese mass began moving up the valley. And it kept moving until it moved through the little village and filled the valley all along the entire front of Stransky’s two kilometer-long line of Russian armor on the ridge. That’s when he suddenly realized he had an uncontrollable urge to poop. Well it had been quite a while.

  Then the inevitable happened. One of Stransky’s gunners couldn’t contain himself; or perhaps he squeezed the trigger by mistake. It didn’t matter. The cat was out of the bag.

  “Fire,” screamed Stransky into the battalion radio net on his tank commander’s microphone. “Fire.” And promptly forgot all about his once desperate need to relieve himself.

  Stransky’s tank fires and lurches backward even before he finished shouting “fire” into his mic. He knew his tank commanders would have to see what they were doing if they were to make every shot count. So before the battle even started he ordered them to stay in their turrets in the open for as long as
possible. Only when they begin drawing return fire were they to drop into their tanks and shut their hatches behind them. At least that was the order he gave.

  Stransky had barely a moment to register the effect of his battalion’s initial salvo when his tank rocked back and fired again. And it continued to lurch and fire and lurch and fire until somewhere in the back of his mind he came to realize that the battalion across the way and the artillery behind them was also firing.

  He was wearing his leather helmet and the bulky earphones designed to protect his hearing, but the noise is beyond anything he has ever experienced. His ears began to ache and the noise overwhelmed him. Never had he been in a tank that had fired so often.

  The scene in the smoke-filled valley below was surreal, the colonel was thinking as his tank bucked and shuddered under his feet. Chinese tanks and vehicles were puffing up black smoke and on fire everywhere—and those that were not destroyed merely drove around them and continued to move up the valley.

  Yes, he thought, I should have become an architect.

  ******

  “Colonel Sir,” … “Colonel, are you alright Sir?” … “Colonel?” He became aware that someone is pounding on his leg.

  “Oh” … “Yes Piotr, what is it?”

  “Vassily says we are running out of armor piercing ammunition, Sir. Should I start using the HE or the AP? Others are asking too, Sir?” … “Is everything okay, Sir?”

  “Oh yes. I am okay thank you.” My God, what happened?

  Then he suddenly realize he’d been looking in fascination for some time at the terrible destruction in the valley. It was like I was hypnotized. He was still shaking his head in surprise when the Chinese MiG flashed along the top of the ridge and unleashed the rockets that blew him to pieces.

  Seconds later a Russian SAM fired by an infantry conscript from Smolensk reached backwards from behind the line of tanks and plucked the MiG from the sky. If anyone had being looking they would have seen the light that flared as it crashed near the snowline of the mountain beyond the ridge.

  ****** Railroad supervisor Zhang

  My railroad repair crew and I could see the first of the three locomotives of the stopped train hanging over the edge of the bridge. The other two locomotives and the flat cars loaded with military equipment and troops remained on the tracks and were stretched out behind it all the way back to where the track curves its way around the side of the hill. Some of the men had already dismounted and were pissing and shitting along the tracks.

  The train had obviously been going slow when the engine driver saw the destroyed bridge and slammed on the brakes. That was crew supervisor Zhang’s first thought. Then he saw the engine driver and his assistant waving frantically from the driver's window of the locomotive hanging down over the water.

  “Well,” Zhang said to his crew as he waved back to acknowledge that he had seen them. "It's time to get to work."

  “First things first. We’ll have to get Old Chou out of the locomotive before he has a heart attack.” I wonder what happened.

  ******

  The Chinese Central Committee members were well-satisfied with what they heard later that afternoon.

  “The war continues to go well, comrades,” boomed Marshall Wu with a satisfied smile. “I’ve just gotten off the phone with Red Banner Street. The runways we captured at the Irkutsk and Angarsk air fields have been cleared and are already receiving our fighters. Indeed, and well ahead of schedule, our pilots have already begun flying missions to intercept any Russian transports that might try to bring in reinforcements and supplies from Moscow and the west.

  “Also I am pleased to report that the second phase of our major attacks towards Vladivostok and Khabarovsk began right on schedule this morning. It is, of course, much too early to know how they are proceeding. I hope to have much more to report to you about this at tomorrow morning’s briefing.

  “Russian ground forces, as expected, have launched major efforts to retake the airfields east of Lake Baikal from our parachute volunteers. They will, as we know, succeed. But it will be at great cost and it will be too late—our men will have already destroyed all their planes, arms, and refueling facilities.

  “Finally, I am pleased to report that this evening at 2100 there will be a banquet and entertainment in the Party Pavilion. A troupe of Red Army singers will sing for us.”

  There were many questions but everyone seemed quite pleased.

  ******

  Jerry and I jumped up with our binoculars when the Russian troops around us started shouting and standing to their positions. The sun was still about an hour away from going down in the west and there appeared to be movement in the tree line across the way from Bikin and the railroad line. The fourth troop train since the fighting started had clanked through the village an hour ago, its flatcars stuffed with troops and armor moving north.

  According to Colonel Chernenko, if the tracks are cut beyond Bikin, the train commander’s orders are to use the rails and equipment his train is carrying to repair them and keep going. If repair is totally impossible, however, he is to dismount his men and fight his way north until he reaches the Russian forces dug in south of Khabarovsk. He is not under any circumstances to turn back.

  It had been several hours since the Chinese in the forest across the way from us have been heard from. But they were almost certainly still there in the trees on the hill in front of us. All that movement likely means they’re getting ready for another attack. Probably sometime after the sun goes down in about thirty minutes.

  Wonder if they’ll hit us immediately or wait until it’s oh dark hundred in the middle of the night. I’d just as soon get it over with. That way there’ll be more hours of darkness to get away in if the Russians are overrun and Jerry and I have to boogie.

  Jerry and I were eyeballing the tree line closely because Colonel Chernenko had accepted Jerry’s suggestion that the Russians hit the Chinese with a preemptive strike if at all possible. The Russians were suddenly going to simultaneously fire all their mortars and tank tubes at the forest behind the tree line about ten minutes after the sun went all the way down. With a little luck they would catch some of the Chinese out in the open while they were still forming up for the attack we all knew was coming.

  Runners were passing the word for the mortar crews to bring their rounds forward and get ready. Everyone with a weapon that could reach the tree line, meaning the mortars and armor, will fire ten airburst rounds as fast as possible when Colonel Chernenko fired a red smoke flare. They were to start just inside the tree line and walk their fire deeper and deeper into the trees in twenty five meter increments. The entire exercise would be repeated again after two or three hours.

  ******

  A runner from the colonel showed up while we were peering over the top of the trench waiting for the big show to start. He chattered away with Eugene, our balding little interpreter, and then turned around and jogged back towards Chernenko’s position. Eugene motioned us to follow him.

  “Colonel want talk you.”

  Colonel Chernenko greeted us with a smile and an apology. It seems that Vern and I have again been ordered to evacuate. But there is a problem, a big one—no one can come up with a way to get a helicopter in here to pick us up. At the moment, it seems, there are none available within a thousand miles.

  Chernenko understood the significance of Vern and me being captured and the dim prospects of his isolated brigade. He also knew, and so did we, that sooner or later Bikin was going to be overrun. Perhaps in the next few hours. Accordingly, he ordered Vern and me to retreat down the railroad line to the bridges and cross them before they were cut. Then we were to continue on south to Vladivostok and safety, legging it all the way if necessary.

  “Frankly,” he tod us after we walked over to see him and got the word that we have been ordered to leave, “You have been so useful I was tempted to pretend the message was not received.”

  Then we shook hands and give each other big comr
adely hugs and a kiss on both cheeks. We have known each other as men who can be depended on under fire. It’s a bond that never expires.

  Vern and I had long ago talked about how we'd leave and our plan was simple. As soon as it gets dark we are going to put one of the old rusty handcars on the track, throw on our weapons and some water and rations, and pump our way south towards Vladivostok as fast as we can go. We’ll take Eugene with us to translate and go as far as we can on the pumper—and then start walking. With a little luck the bridges will still be up and we won’t have to swim.

  We plan to start when the second round of preemptive fire starts a couple of hours after sundown. Eugene and a Russian volunteer will go with us to help pump the little cart southward.

  Chernenko was quite helpful. He used the radio in one of the tanks to contact Major Malinovsky, the commander of the army and Spetsnaz troops at the bridges, and ordered him to alert his men that we were coming and to provide whatever help he could.

  I had another concern.

  "Dick, I sure hope the bridges are still up when we get there. It’s probably not too cold to swim but we’ll sure as hell die of hypothermia when we get out wearing wet clothes."

  “Eugene, please see if you can get four or five of cigarette lighters for each of us. Here’s some money; buy them from the smokers.”

  ******

  We got back to our equipment in the slit trench right before the sun went down, just in time to watch the big show. We had barely reached our position when a red smoke flare zoomed up from one of the Russian mortars and all hell broke loose.

  All around us we could hear the click and thump as mortar rounds were rapidly dropped into the mortar tubes and headed we hope towards the Chinese. A few seconds later, so they would have the same time on target, the brigade’s three tanks fired their cannons and the four BMDs began raking the tree line with their chain guns.