PFC Grabowski looked up at him, tears streaming down his face. “Help me, Sir. My guts are spilling out of me and I can’t stop it.”
In that moment, Long wanted to turn away, to throw up or do anything other than walk toward the young man. But he knew he needed to help him. He moved quickly to the young man’s side. “Hold on, Grabowski. I’m here now. Help will be here soon.”
Long helped Grabowski slide down to lie flat on the ground. He grabbed Grabowski’s first aid bandage and quickly applied it across the gash across his stomach. The bandage now held the man’s innards where they belonged. He placed Grabowski’s good hand on top of his abdomen.
“Hold this in place,” Captain Long instructed gruffly. Then he grabbed his combat application tourniquet and tied off the crushed and bleeding part of Grabowski’s left arm. Long knew he needed to stem the bleeding if the young Marine was to have any chance at surviving.
Turning to look for help, he spotted a group of Marines heading his direction. “I need a corpsman over here now!” he shouted.
One of the people in the group ran toward him at a sprint as the others trotted behind. The Navy corpsman immediately went to work on Grabowski. He gave him a shot of morphine and then did his best to get his abdomen wound sealed up.
“We need some medevacs here ASAP!”
“Romeo Company is almost here, Sir. Once they land, we’ll load the wounded onto the Ospreys and get them brought back to the Portland. Are you OK yourself, Sir?” asked one of McKnight’s lieutenants.
“I’m fine, but clearly most of my headquarters staff have been killed,” he replied, waving his hand around at the torn and dead bodies. Many of these tattered remains represented Marines he had only known for a few months, most of them new to the Corps, fresh from training.
“I think you should set up with Captain McKnight, Sir. We have a command post over in that tree line,” the lieutenant said, pointing in the direction of where he had just come from.
Lieutenant Colonel Long nodded. He knew the lieutenant was right. “Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
As the two of them walked toward the CP, several other Marines looked for more survivors. Long glanced down at the beach; the second wave of LCACs was approaching, bringing with them the rest of 1/10’s artillery battalion. He sighed. Of the sixteen howitzers that had landed in the first wave, only four of them were still carrying out fire missions. The rest of the guns had either been destroyed or disabled.
When they entered the tree line, Long spotted McKnight on the radio and he waved for him to come over. “Yes, Sir. He’s right here,” he said to the person on the other end. Then he handed the radio receiver to him.
“It’s General Tillman,” McKnight explained in response to the quizzical look Long had given him.
Long nodded. “This is Loki Six. Go ahead.”
“Loki Six, this is Rogue Six. What’s going on over there? I heard you guys got hit by an airstrike. Is your firebase still operational?” asked General Tillman, voice filled with concern.
“Two fighters plastered our position pretty hard,” Long explained. “I lost my entire headquarters staff, and twelve of our sixteen howitzers are down. The rest of 1/10 just showed up, so we should have them operational shortly. I’ve also got Romeo Company inbound in five mikes to reinforce our position. How copy?”
A minute went by before the radio beeped and the SINCGARS synced up. “Good copy. 3/6 Marines will head to shore in two hours. Can your battalion hold until they arrive, or do I need to push them to arrive sooner?”
“We can hold, Sir, but I need some air cover and gunship support. I have three battalion-sized formations heading toward our positions. Two are entering the northern side of the city heading toward the port, and the third is heading overland up the peninsula toward our firebase. How copy?”
“Good copy on all. I’ll see what I can do about the air cover. I’m going to dispatch Attack Helicopter Squadron 167 to hit those targets for you. When 3/6 arrives, you need to do your best to have your battalion disengage and move to your next objective. How copy?”
Long sighed for a second. He could see McKnight shaking his head at him with a grin on his face. “That’s a good copy, Sir. We’ll be ready. My vehicles start to arrive on the next wave of LCACs. Out.”
“He’s eager to get us moving to Shenzhen, isn’t he?” asked McKnight.
“Semper Gumby, McKnight. That’s about all I can say. Speaking of that — when Romeo lands, I’m going to have them reinforce your second and third platoons on our perimeter. I need the rest of your guys to work on getting those new guns showing up ready. See if the gun bunnies need some help getting some of those howitzers turned back over. Maybe a few of them can be salvaged.”
Long looked for a spot to sit down. He was still a little rattled from the airstrike that had wiped out his headquarters staff. So far, only two other Marines from his headquarters unit had survived unscathed.
Minutes later, they heard the thumping sound of the Ospreys’ helicopter blades as the giant flying machines landed in the clearing they had built. The helicopters landed two at a time, disgorging their human cargo. As the newly arrived Marines ran off the back ramps, medics and others loaded the wounded Marines onto the helicopters to bring them back to the Portland, which had a level one trauma center.
As the newly arrived Marines headed toward their positions, Lieutenant Colonel Long walked out to find Captain Nickles, the Romeo Company commander.
Nickles saw Long and trotted over to him while the rest of his men filtered into the tree line. “It looks like you guys took a few hits, Sir,” he said when he got closer.
“You could say that,” Long said with a snort. “Listen up, Nickles — McKnight’s got two platoons that are about to be a speedbump for an element that’s at least battalion-sized and heading our direction.” He pulled a map out and hastily pointed to it. “I need you to get your men over to this position here and hold the line. We’ve got some gunship support headed our direction, so use them as you see fit. Once McKnight’s and your LAVs and JLTVs arrive, we’ll mount up and head over to help you out. We need to push the PLA back to Sha Tau Kok. When 3/6 Marines land, the rest of our battalion will rally on us here, and then we’ll take the Sha Tau Kok Road to the San Tin Highway and the Shenzhen interchange. From there, it should be a straight shot to secure the next port.”
The two of them talked for a bit longer before Romeo Company took off at a quick trot to get in position. Meanwhile, the LCACs finished offloading the remaining guns of 1/10 FA and headed back to the ships offshore to pick up Long’s battalion of LAVs and JLTVs to bring ashore, along with a company of tanks that had been assigned to them. The next few hours would see some of the heaviest fighting of the campaign as the PLA desperately tried to throw the invaders back into the sea before they could establish a foothold.
As he rode in the LCM-8 "Mike Boat," First Lieutenant Ian Slater thought he was going to get sick. Several of his soldiers had already puked their guts out, adding to the acrid aroma of diesel fuel, feces, and urine that wafted toward him from the front of the boat.
He found himself wondering how in the hell his company had gotten stuck doing yet another amphibious assault. “I swear — I thought we had a Marine Corps,” he thought angrily. Ian had fought in the slaughter that was the Second Korean War, then invaded Indonesia, then India, and now China. He wasn’t sure his luck would hold out much longer.