Standing near the front ramp of the landing craft utility or LCU, First Lieutenant Ian Slater couldn’t help but wonder how the Army had gotten stuck with carrying out an amphibious assault on this island and not the Marines. This was his second such amphibious assault of the war. “Don’t the Marines train for amphibious landings?” he mused.
Their mothership, the USS San Antonio had brought them close to the shore, less than four kilometers away, so their LCU wouldn’t have far to ferry them. Fortunately, the water remained relatively calm. At fourteen knots, they weren’t exactly traveling fast, but the entire company fit on the landing craft, so at least they’d all land together. Slightly ahead of them were several dozen smaller, faster landing crafts that would drop the first wave of soldiers ashore.
Intelligence had told them that the main PLA garrison and headquarters was located in the nearby city of Ranai, but despite their ever-increasing proximity, Lieutenant Slater still hadn’t heard any explosions or the chattering of machine guns. “Perhaps the Chinese already left?” he thought wishfully.
Ten minutes went by. One of his fellow soldiers shouted out, “We’re nearing the shore. Prepare to disembark!”
Moments later, Slater felt the bottom of the landing craft scraping across the surf. The vessel slowed, and then, without warning, the front ramp dropped, splashing him.
Lieutenant Slater looked to his right and left as he ran through the shallow water. All he saw were hundreds of other soldiers doing exactly as he was, dashing as quickly as possible toward the beach and hoping they weren’t about to be cut apart by some hidden machine-gun bunker. So far, there was silence.
Slater continued scanning the horizon around him. Off to the left, maybe a kilometer away, he spotted the top of a large mosque at the base of a mountain. Not far from his position, he saw a small row of houses, surrounded by brush.
He yelled out to the men of his platoon, “Search those houses over there!”
Several soldiers rushed off ahead to follow his order. When Slater finally made it to the first batch of houses, several of his soldiers had already kicked in the door of one of homes and started searching it. One of the specialists exited the building. “There’s no one in here, Lieutenant,” he announced as the rest of his fire team followed him out.
They quickly moved to the next house. Soon Slater was getting the same news from each of the groups — no civilians or enemy soldiers in these houses.
With the houses cleared, one of his squads started to move up what appeared to be a dirt road, heading toward their primary objective, the Islamic center. Without warning, the lead soldier’s head snapped back, and he collapsed in a heap. In a fraction of a second, several machine guns opened fire, cutting down several more of Slater’s soldiers before they could react.
“Enemy gun bunker, three o’clock!” yelled one of his squad leaders.
One of their heavy machine gunners laid into the enemy position. Ratatat, ratatat, ratatat, pop, pop, pop!
With several members of Second Squad lying either dead or wounded near the dirt trail, First and Third squads came online and directed some heavy fire on the enemy positions. A couple of his grenadier gunners fired their 40mm grenade guns at the bunkers as well.
“Use one of the AT-4s!” Slater shouted to one of his sergeants.
The sergeant then directed one of his soldiers, who quickly got his antitank rocket ready, aimed and fired. The projectile punched through the air with a firm thud and flew flat and true. Unfortunately, although the rocket hit near the gun slit, it had little effect. The steady stream of machine-gun fire paused for less than five seconds.
“Damn! I wish we’d been issued more of the those M141 bunker-buster rockets,” Slater said angrily to himself. He looked around for his Fourth Squad leader — he had to move to plan B.
Once he found Matz, he flagged down the sergeant. “Sergeant Matz, I need you to take your squad and try to flank those bunkers. There are two of them, roughly fifty meters apart. Do you see them?” he asked as he pointed in the direction of the two enemy positions. Bullets zipped over their heads, snapping tree branches and underbrush.
“Yeah, I see `em, Lieutenant. We’ll try to move in from over there,” Matz responded, pointing to where his guys were going to try and sneak up on the bunkers. “When we get close, I’ll have one of my guys pop a smoke grenade. When you see that signal, I need you to tell everyone to hold their fire, so we can crawl up there and toss some grenades in.”
Slater nodded, and Sergeant Matz yelled for his squad to form up on him. He briefly explained what they were going to do while Slater went back to seeing if they could try and retrieve their wounded brothers out there on the trail.
While Lieutenant Slater’s platoon was fighting it out, the rest of the company started to take fire from a couple of other fortified positions not too far away from the Islamic center. They were well-sighted positions with good fields of fire, and more importantly, they were shooting down into Slater’s men from a higher elevation.
Stealing a quick look toward the city to their left, Slater saw soldiers quickly moving through the streets. It didn’t look like they were running into any enemy fire just yet.
A handful of minutes went by, and then a purple smoke grenade started puffing away near one of the gun bunkers. “Everyone, hold your fire!” Slater yelled. He had to shout it a few more times to be heard, but eventually, everyone stopped shooting.
Another minute went by, and then Slater heard the telltale crumps of hand grenades going off.
While Slater’s platoon held their fire, the remaining enemy bunker continued to shoot at them, kicking up dirt and snapping tree branches overhead. Over this continued noise of battle, Lieutenant Slater now heard the cries of the two wounded soldiers who were out on the trail. With each passing moment, their voices became weaker.
Just as Slater didn’t think he could take listening to them anymore, a handful of grenade explosions thumped in the distance, and the last enemy bunker stopped shooting at them. Sergeant Matz briefly stood up near the enemy bunker and waved to them, signaling to Slater that all was clear. Several of the platoon’s medics dashed forward and sprinted to the wounded.
Slowly at first, the rest of the platoon got up and crept forward. When they reached the fortified positions, they saw five dead enemy soldiers lying next to each bunker. There were no other foxholes or trenches nearby.
“My money says we’ll probably run into more fortified positions like this once we get closer to the mountain at the center of the island,” said Lieutenant Slater.
“Forever the optimist, eh, Sir?” Sergeant Matz retorted jovially.
Slater grunted. Looking behind them, he saw another pair of LCUs pull up to the beach and offload eight of their Stryker vehicles. When gunfire erupted off by Third Platoon, two of the Strykers headed off in that direction, looking for a target to blow up.
Two more LCUs pulled up, and Slater saw the first tanks arrive to the island. “Having heavy armor will certainly help,” he thought and breathed a sigh of relief. If they ran into any more enemy machine-gun bunkers, he’d be able to call one of the tanks over to help take them out.
His platoon was now less than a kilometer from the outer perimeter of the Islamic center and mosque. They had fanned out into a wide line; First and Third squads moved parallel with each other while he walked in the center with the remaining guys from Second Squad. Fourth Squad followed up as his reserve.