As Thonburi had turned, the guns in the jammed aft turret aligned with La Motte-Picquet. The gunners took the opportunity to unload them via the muzzle. The shots went wild, missing La Motte-Picquet by a wide margin but Sunan took comfort in the fact his ship was still fighting. He tried to turn Thonburi around so that her gunners in the aft turret could have another crack.
He was rewarded by two more 200mm shells heading off towards La Motte-Picquet. They missed. Sunan felt the ship shift under his feet again and the list increased. The battle was nearly over and he knew it.
“Head for Koh Ngam. We’ll beach her there.”
“Sir, overhead.”
One of the men was pointing skywards. Overhead, Sunan saw the glint of the morning sun on the wings of the Hawk biplanes. The leader made the traditional wingover into a near-vertical descent. The dive bombers had arrived.
“Air attack! Air attack!”
The lookouts screamed the warning; the crew of Dumont d’Urville cringed, remembering the attack they had experienced a few days earlier. This time, though, they watched the dive bombers drop from the sky towards La Motte-Picquet. The first pair of bombs straddled the hull, so close that the towers of water seemed to touch the hull. There was no trace of the third bomb. Babineau wondered what had happened to it. The answer was not long in coming.
“Message from the flagship. She is under dive bombing attack, has taken two near-misses and one direct hit from 100-kilogram bombs. The bomb that hit did not explode but the near misses have caused severe splinter damage and the machinery compartments are suffering from shock.”
Babineau looked at the cruiser accelerating to maximum speed and starting to weave. Perhaps it was the unexpected change in speed and direction that threw the next flight of dive bombers off, for their weapons well off target. Nevertheless, more were coming in. High overhead, Babineau saw a formation of four twin-engined bombers heading towards the formation of sloops. They didn’t have the speed to evade bombing the way La Motte-Picquet did.
“Sir, Commodore Berenger orders us to withdraw to the west at best speed.” The communications officer had brought the message up himself. The starboard lookout added to the mass of information flowing in.
“Sir, two more Thai torpedo boats are moving. They are heading up the anchorage now. And more aircraft are coming in.”
“That’s it. We’re out here without cover and the whole Thai Air Force will be descending on us. The Commodore is right. Our time here is over.”
Captain de Quieverecourt sounded disgusted. He looked over to where a pyre of black smoke marked the position of the Thai gunboat and shook his head sadly. “One ship against five and she held us off for over an hour. I would say she deserves to make it home.”
“They’re coming.”
Company Guards-Sergeant Preecha Budisalamat passed the word quietly. He had seen the shadows slipping into place amongst the trees to his front and knew that the attack was coming. He had been expecting it for over an hour, but the observation outposts had reported the French were having severe trouble moving into their assault positions. Apparently, some of their units had become lost in the maze of paths through the trees and disrupted other units that had stuck to their assigned route. Preecha didn’t condemn that; as a city man, he thoroughly understood just how easy it was to miss one’s path in forest this dense. A few street signs nailed to the trees would make life so much easier.
His Guardsmen prepared the defense line as well as they could in the short time they had available. They’d dug rifle pits and dragged trees over to help provide protection against rifle fire. Major Wuthi Wirrabut had put three of his infantry companies up on the line, with the fourth held back in reserve. The line itself was buried deep in the trees. That had already proved its value; the French artillery bombardment had been concentrated on the treeline. It missed his unit completely. Defend a treeline from in front of it or behind it, but never in it.
Preecha checked the machine guns; both the two Vickers guns that were normally part of the company and the three additional guns assigned from the battalion machine gun company. There was a minor problem there. When the battalion had been reconstituted, their infantry weapons had been donated by a patriotic group, the Wild Tiger Corps. So, the Guardsmen carried Lee Enfield rifles and had Lewis and Vickers machine guns. The downside was that they all fired British .303inch ammunition, not the 8x52mm rounds used by the rest of the Army. That was a supply problem and Preecha just knew that one day they were going to get sent the wrong ammunition.
Explosions raked across the positions held by his company. They concentrated Preecha’s mind wonderfully. They were hand grenades, tossed across the clearing and into the Guardsmen’s positions. The grenades were accompanied by a sheet of rifle fire. Brilliant white streaks of bullets flashed all around Preecha. He heard thuds as they hit the logs and whines as they ricocheted off them. The noise stunned him; compared with the silence of the forest a few seconds earlier, it was earsplitting enough to drown out his own thoughts. Half-seen figures in the darkness were swarming towards his positions, climbing over the fallen trees or gathering in groups where the going was easier. Those groups attracted the fire of the Vickers guns as they joined the battle.
Preecha knew how to handle the water-cooled machine guns. They needed to be swept, slowly and methodically, across the line of the enemy advance in a pattern of interlocking streams. If they did, nobody could survive the web of bullets. But that wasn’t possible. The range was far too short and the enemy were not advancing in regular lines. Instead, they tumbled into view; either alone, or in groups. The machine gunners were concentrating on those groups; hammering them with long bursts that cut infantry down in heaps. The Guardsmen left those groups to the experts; instead, they fired single shots at the men who were on their own. Preecha remembered the words of the advisors who had retrained the battalion. It is the machine guns that do the killing. The job of the riflemen is to protect the machine gunners. As long as the machine guns fire, your position will hold.
“Reloading!”
One of the Vickers guns had reached the end of its belt and a new box wasn’t quite ready. Almost as if by magic, the French concentrated on the gap in the wall of defensive fire that was cutting them down. They funneled towards the silent machine gun, trying to get at it before it could start firing again. Behind the logs that protected the gun and its crew, the loader frantically tried to get the ammunition box open.
“With me.” Preecha called the three men nearest to him. They ran to support the gun. The three guardsmen fired their rifles from the hip. The bullets probably went anywhere but into the enemy, but that didn’t matter. The shots themselves started to stall the French. Some of them into a dove for cover. Some tried to return fire, but the three-round magazines on their Berthiers put them at a grave disadvantage. Preecha drew his revolver, an old British Webley, and fired two shots. One of them took an enemy in the chest, spun him around and dropped him into a heap on the ground. That old .455 can knock an elephant off its feet.