by Andy Farman
In response to public and political pressure US military forces had, over several years previously, been withdrawn from Taiwanese territory. The same situation existed throughout the region, with the exception of South Korea. The US military garrison’s, airbases and naval installations had been drawing back in scale since the seventies until they existed in token only.
The Taiwanese troops dug in along the defence line had heard that morning that the Japanese Island of Okinawa had fallen during the night. Four days before in a spookily similar situation to the landings in 1945, elements of the PRC Tenth Army landed on Higashi beach, where the US Tenth army had landed fifty-seven years before. Unlike that earlier conflict, Japanese defence forces had not been able to mount the same fierce resistance; the attack from Mainland China on her island neighbours had been too much of a surprise and the PRC too well informed of troop dispositions and defences. Reported atrocities against the civilian populace were unverified by independent sources, yet the Tenth Army’s VI and VII brigades who had carried out the landings, were known to be the Penal Units of the People’s Liberation Army of China.
Huddled down in the bunkers and trenches of the Taiwanese final defence line, many a soldier or the naval and air force personnel pressed into service as infantry now that the ships, aircraft and installations were no more, checked watches as 1200hrs drew near.
From the plain in the west, across the mountains to the eastern shores there existed a graveyard of men and machines from both sides. For the past five days the armed forces of Taiwan, the ROCs, had given ground only when the alternative was that of being overrun. The PRC had split the island, and its forces, in two. The forces in the south had their backs to the sea as they held the last ten miles of the tapered southern tip; the front line there was the town of Ch’e-ch’eng.
The northern line was forty miles from the capital but it was the last natural barrier of any substance. Taiwan had no ships left with which to stem the flow of equipment, men and supplies from the mainland. A determined effort had been made before the invasion had been a day old, to snuff it out by driving the PLAN ships from coastal waters, but although they had sunk troop transports and warships, it had failed and cost them dearly. Swarms of PLAAF fighters had swamped the navy air cover almost as soon as it had taken to the air. They had started the day with a surface combat fleet of four Kidd class air defence destroyers, twenty-nine frigates of the Perry, Lafayette, Knox and Gearing classes plus sixty-nine missile and patrol boats. None of the destroyers or frigates had got within range to engage the invasion fleet, only fast manoeuvrable missile boats had managed that but of those that had gotten within range, none had returned. The three surviving air defence destroyers had been given anti-ballistic missile duties protecting Taipei and Chiang Kai Shek airport, where the last one had been sunk by a PLAN submarine the day before.
Sixteen frigates had been sunk during the attack on the invasion fleet and the remainders were picked off by air attacks over the following three days, as had the last of the missile and patrol boats.
Two of Taiwan’s four submarines were tasked with the removal to safety the countries gold and diamond reserves, whilst the last two now sat in Taipei harbour with just their conning towers above the surface awaiting the members of the government seeking to continue in exile.
Just after prior to midnight almost ten hours’ before, the PRC had issued an ultimatum to surrender by 1200hrs that day or they would do unto Taipei and the Taiwanese what Genghis Khan had done to Beijing and its citizens in the year 1215. Surrender or die was the Mogul chieftains’ favoured phrase.
Since the landings, over 23,000 Taiwanese troops had been killed or wounded in the land battles. PLA losses were twice that number but with the constant barrage of missiles on Taiwan’s town and cities, the civilian casualties evened the score. The night attacks by the PRC army and air force had ceased at midnight although the monotonous rumble of detonating missiles on the capital had continued unabated and unchallenged. The few surviving Patriot sites had run out of missiles two days before.
At two minutes to twelve a missile landed in the filthy waters of Taipei harbour, exploding close enough to drench the captain and crewmen of a submarine as they waited on the last boatloads of members of the government going into exile, but causing no damage other than to nerves already frayed. Forty miles to the south the ROCs prepared for the promised attack that the PRC boasted would overwhelm them, and at that distance the detonation in the harbour did not reach them as those that struck land had.
At 1213hrs the last of the passengers were clambering up the sides of the conning towers and the citizens of Taipei were bracing themselves for the next high explosive warhead to land. Taiwan shook and the skies to the north and south lit up with the unbearable brightness of five-megaton warhead's air bursting at an altitude of 10,000’.
To Be Continued In Volume Two
Appendixes
The Cast
Terminology & Acronyms
Terminology & Acronyms
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andy Farman was born in Cheshire, England in 1956 into a close family of servicemen and servicewomen who at that time were serving or who had served in the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and British Army.
As a 'Pad brat' he was brought up on whichever RAF base his Father was posted to.
In 1972 Andy joined the British Army as an Infantry Junior Leader at the tender age of 15, serving in the Coldstream Guards on ceremonial duties at the Royal Palaces, flying the flag in Africa, and on operations in both Ulster and on the UK mainland.
Swapping his green suit for a blue one Andy joined the Metropolitan Police in 1981.
With volunteer reservist service in both the Wessex Regiment and 253 Provost Company, Royal Military Police (V) he spent twenty four years in front line policing, both in uniform and plain clothes. The final six years as a police officer were served in a London inner city borough and wearing two hats, those of an operation planner, and liaison officer with the television and film industry.
His first literary work to be published was that of a poem about life as a soldier in Ulster, sold with all rights to a now defunct writers monthly in Dublin for the princely sum of £11 (less the price of the stamp on the envelope that the cheque arrived in.)
The 'Armageddon's Song' trilogy began as a mental exercise to pass the mornings whilst engaged on a surveillance operation on a drug dealer who never got out of bed until the mid-afternoon.
On retirement he emigrated with his wife to the Philippines where he relaxes by distance jogging with the famous ‘IGAT Runners’ .