Rubbing the stubble on his face with his right hand, Colonel St. Leo answered, “As long as our airbridge continues to hold and we stay supplied, I suspect we can hold for a while longer. My real concern though, is not the losses we’ve been sustaining — they’re bad, to be sure, but I’m more concerned with how these massive human wave attacks are affecting the troops psychologically. A good soldier never wants a fair fight, he always wants the odds stacked in his favor — but this is pure madness. What these PLA commanders are ordering is mass suicide. They know they can’t break through our lines — we have too much artillery and air support. Yet they keep ordering these poorly trained, poorly equipped militia units to their deaths.”
Colonel St. Leo had just gotten back from a tour of one of the COPs a few minutes ago. He had seen firsthand what the front lines looked like. The ground in front of the Allied positions was covered in dead, dying, and torn bodies. It was utterly horrific, and the stench of it was only getting worse with each day those dead bodies baked in the August sun.
“We will need more reinforcements if don’t get relieved shortly,” McCoil added.
As the two officers were conferring with each other on what to do next, one of the staff officers walked up to them. “Sir, I just received a message from one of the Germans. He wants to speak to you,” said the young captain.
McCoil gave St. Leo a quizzical look and then made his way over to the table with the radios set up on it. He picked up the handset from the sergeant who held it out for him. Depressing the talk button, he said, “This is Gladiator Actual. To whom am I speaking?”
A second later the radio clicked and there was a short beep as the SINCGAR radio synced. “Gladiator Actual, this is Löwen Actual. My lead element, the 13th Reconnaissance Battalion, is approaching your lines from the southeast. We should arrive near your perimeter within the next half hour. Please advise friendly units in the area of our arrival. How copy?”
Colonel St. Leo gave a look of surprise to the captain and sergeant who’d been manning the radio. Before he could get out a question, the captain grabbed a sheet of paper that had the radio call signs of the Allied unit that was supposed to relieve them. He quickly noted that Löwen was the call sign for Major General Ernst Graf, the German 10th Panzer Division commander.
Brigadier McCoil smiled broadly. After nearly eight days, their relief was finally starting to arrive.
He depressed the talk button again. “Löwen Actual, that’s a good copy. We’ll relay your arrival to our perimeter units. Please be advised that we have two PLA battalions of motorized infantry on the north side of Suzhou and at least three brigades of PLA militia. Our positions have been under siege by these units. Intelligence also shows at least one battalion of armor heading toward the city from the northwest near Wuxi. How copy?”
If the German unit was still in fighting shape, then maybe they’d be able to hit these enemy formations before they were able to reorganize themselves to attack their positions again. With only eight Abrams battle tanks, McCoil wasn’t confident they would have been able to prevent that PLA armor battalion from finally finishing them off.
A few seconds went by before the radio crackled for a second and beeped again, syncing the crypto keys. “That’s a good copy. We’ll move to engage them once we’ve lifted your siege. Out.”
With that, the enormous weight McCoil and St. Leo had been carrying was lifted. Within an hour, elements of the German division would arrive at their perimeter while the rest of the German tanks moved to rout the rest of the enemy units from his beleaguered COPs.
General Yang Yin sat in the command center, deep underground in the bowels of the August First Building, looking at the most recent reports coming in from the Shanghai sector. None of the news was good. The division commander that had insisted his force would be able to crush the British and French airborne force at Sangyuanli had failed yet again.
“Eight days they had that force encircled, cut off from the world, and they still couldn’t wipe the British out,” Yang thought in disgust. If they lost the war, it wouldn’t be because of lack of will; it would be due to the incompetence of military leaders like this one.
Yang was angry at the sheer level of ineptitude of many of the division commanders; generals that largely held their positions prior to the war did not actually have the ability to lead men, but because of their political and family connections, they had found themselves a place here in this very building. If he didn’t purge the PLA of these incompetent generals and get new officers — men who knew how to lead and fight — they were doomed.
When he had taken over command of the PLA nearly a week ago, he had brought with him most of his senior staff from his southern command. He wanted officers he knew and trusted. The first few days had largely been spent trying to organize some sort of effort to block the Allies from entrenching themselves in Shanghai region. If the Allies were able to solidify their position, then it was only a matter of time until the Chinese were officially defeated.
The major problem Yang faced right now was that he had very little in the way of armor or mechanized forces in the Shanghai region. Most of those units had been sent to his southern command when the American Marines had landed in the Guangdong Province and to the north, around Beijing, to battle the Allies’ multipronged offensive driving on the capital. Even now, hundreds of thousands of civilians were busy building hundreds of miles of tank ditches, trenches and other fighting positions at strategic points as far as a hundred kilometers from Beijing. Like the Russians had done with Moscow at the height of World War II, General Yang planned on turning the capital into a fortress.
What troubled him most was how effective the Allies’ strategic bombing had become. Something just wasn’t adding up.
Sensing that someone had walked up to him, General Yang looked up from his reports. He smiled when he saw Colonel Su Yu, the commander of the vaunted PLA Unit 61398, the Chinese group responsible for nearly all of the PRC’s cyberwarfare and espionage activities. Yang pushed his chair back and he stood up to greet his visitor.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” he said with a bow. “Please, let’s go into my office and talk away from prying eyes and ears,” Yang offered. He gestured toward a door nearby.
Colonel Su smiled and followed Yang to his office. Once inside, Yang closed the door and gestured for them to take a seat in the set of chairs that sat on one side of the room with a small coffee table between them.
Once seated, Yang opened the discussion. “Colonel Su, I’m not like my predecessor. I don’t want to be told that everything is going well, and we are winning the war. I want the honest truth, no matter how bad it may be. I need to know what’s happening in the war, or I’m not going to be able to make appropriate decisions. Will you agree to be honest with me?” Yang asked.
Colonel Su’s face registered no emotion at all. Yang couldn’t get a read on him.
“He’s probably not used to a straight shooter,” General Yang realized. Su must be calculating whether or not he would be shot for being honest. He might also be trying to assess whether or not Yang was trustworthy.
Finally, Colonel Su nodded. “I agree, General Yang,” he responded. “If we aren’t honest and forthright about what’s going on with the war, then we can’t make the necessary changes to defeat the enemy. What can I do for you?”
Yang smiled. “I need your help in understanding something technical, outside my area of expertise. When President Xi gave the order to bring down the world’s satellite infrastructure, it was supposed to have greatly affected the Allies’ ability to wage war. This should have nearly crippled the Americans. However, while I can point to significant reductions in the effectiveness of the American military, in many cases, we have seen an increase in the Allies’ ability to target critical aspects of our ability to wage war.”