BG Lee looked at Thornton for a second, then responded, “Look, Joe, I know you are still new to being an officer, and there is a lot you do not understand about being a Lieutenant Colonel, or what is expected of you at your rank and position. You are a fighter. Right now, that is all I need you to be. As we get more reinforcements, I’ll get you a good XO who has experience and that can help you with the administrative parts of being a battalion commander. Right now, I want you to get your battalion organized. Find out how many soldiers you have left that are able to fight, see what equipment you have, where everyone is located, and then send your request for replacements to my staff. I will do my best to get you fully staffed.”
Still in a bit of shock, LTC Thornton responded the only way he knew how to. “Yes, Sir.” Then, wanting to get on with the business at hand, he inquired, “Where do you want me to deploy?”
BG Lee smiled. “That’s the man I need…we have reinforcements coming in constantly; I’m going to start syphoning some of them off and will send them your way to get you back up to strength. Have your unit camp out in your headquarters building and give them some rest. As new units arrive, they will be sent here. Unless something drastic changes, I’ll contact you in six hours with your new order. In the meantime, I need to find out what shape the rest of the division is in.”
“Yes, Sir,” responded LTC Thornton.
BG Lee shook Thornton’s hand one last time, then turned around and walked back towards his armored vehicle and drove off to the next unit.
Thornton stood there for a second, trying to comprehend everything that had just happened. The division must really have been hit hard for them to have promoted Lee to BG and him to LTC. Finally, he shrugged, then turned around and began to walk back into his headquarters building. As soon as he got back to his operations center, he brought everyone else up to speed on his conversation with BG Lee. He also promoted several of his lieutenants to captains and the one other captain to major. He also informed his First Sergeant that he was now the battalion Sergeant Major, until another one showed up.
Over the next hour, Thornton got the rest of his battalion relocated to his position and bedded down for some sleep. As new reinforcements continued to arrive, about a third of them were being syphoned off and sent to his position as replacements, just as BG Lee had suggested. When Lee got back in touch with him later in the day, his battalion had received enough replacements to bring them back up to 85 % strength. The Marines had been told to stand fast in their current positions while the rest of the 32nd infantry division’s EHDs continued to advance across the Yangtze River.
The Air Force was bombing the enemy positions into oblivion. Between the Air Force and the Naval guns off-shore, the enemy was under continuous bombardment. By the end of the third day of the invasion, the Allies had secured a solid foothold around the Shanghai area and had begun to offload thousands of tanks and other armored vehicles. Hundreds of artillery units began to arrive, and started to add their own muscle to the offensive against the enemy positions. By day five, the Allies had the entire city and the surrounding area of Shanghai completely cut off. Tens of thousands of Allied ground forces were arriving every hour through the ports, beaches, landing zones and at the one airport they had managed to secure.
The Allies had also lost a tremendous number of soldiers. Nearly 68,000 soldiers had been killed, and nearly four times that number wounded. Not all the wounded needed to be evacuated; many could continue to fight on. The Allies had also lost several thousand EHDs, a loss that was going to affect the next several invasions. Because of the daily Allied losses, General Gardner postponed the Taiwan invasion for at least two months. Until the situation in the Shanghai area could be further stabilized, he needed to hold those forces in reserve. The PLA was throwing everything they had at his invasion force in Shanghai, trying to both break the siege and destroy the Allied landing force. However, their forces in Shanghai were trapped and were daily being pounded from the air, sea and ground artillery.
Taiwan’s Role
It had been four months since the Allies had invaded mainland China. The invasion of Shanghai had eventually ended in success, but not before it claimed the lives of nearly 136,000 Allied soldiers. The PLA had suffered a debilitating defeat, grinding four separate army groups into the dirt trying to crush the Allied invasion force. The Allied introduction of the enhanced humanoid drones and the large number of soldiers equipped with the Raptor combat suits had proven too much for the PLA to overcome, even with their superior numbers.
However, after the surrender of Shanghai, the PLA had fought the Allies to a standstill. The Allies had a 46-mile bubble around Shanghai that they controlled, but after several attempts to break out, a halt had been called to any further attempts. Once a pause to any further offensive operations had been ordered in the Shanghai region, General Gardner ordered the invasion of Taiwan. The PLA fought ferociously for the first eight days of the invasion, but then their forces collapsed. They began to run low on munitions, supplies, and more importantly, the morale needed to keep fighting. The US employed another 6,000 EHDs in the invasion, and the mechanical killing machines were having their desired effect on the PLA, forcing many of them to just simply give up and surrender.
As the PLA forces in Taiwan began to collapse, the Chinese high command knew they needed to end the war soon or they might have further desertions or surrenders. President Jinping reached out to President Stein, asking for a 72-hour ceasefire to discuss terms of an armistice. After months of horrific combat and casualties on both sides, President Stein agreed to peace talks, selecting Sydney, Australia, as the neutral meeting location. Jinping was reluctant to meet in Sydney, but knew if he did not agree, Stein was the type of man who would continue to fight on, despite how many soldiers he might lose.
A New World
The Australian government quickly accepted President Stein’s request to secure several downtown hotels and the zone surrounding them for the peace talks with the Chinese. The world was on the cusp of ending the bloodiest war in history, and if the Australian government had to kick out a bunch of tourists from some swanky hotels and ask people in the local area to endure some stricter security for a few days, it was worth it.
The American delegation would be staying at the QT Sydney, a ritzy hotel with cozy meeting rooms that would host the peace talks. The hotel was one of the few locations that could be fully secured to the US Secret Service’s standards as the President had previously stayed at this hotel, just prior to the start of the war. The Chinese delegation would be staying at another luxury hotel just across the street. Both nations’ security advance teams had arrived within 24 hours of the location having been agreed upon. The security teams and the Australian government had less than a day to secure the two facilities before both President Stein and President Jinping would arrive to begin the talks. A lot of work needed to be done with very little time.
As President Stein sat in his office on Air Force One, he was going over several of the main points of the tentative terms of the peace deal the Chinese had sent ahead of time. The President was not surprised by the demands, though he was not about to let the Chinese get everything they were asking for. The question he had to ask was what negotiating points could be given away, and what were the points he absolutely would not bend on.