Over the past two days, the Chinese counter-battery fire was starting to become more effective, and they had lost nearly half of the soldiers in their platoon. They had also seen a difference in the forces they were facing. The first day it was clear they were fighting Chinese naval infantry; those soldiers were equipped with exoskeleton combat suits and fought more as individual teams rather than large clusters. During the second day of the fighting, they began to be swarmed by human wave attacks, overrun by just the extreme number of fighters. They reported their observations to higher headquarters. Their sergeant came back and told them, “The naval infantry is probably gearing up to invade the next set of islands, or maybe the mainland.”
The fighting was gnarly and bloody, raging nearly non-stop since the Chinese had invaded. Slowly and steadily, the PLA had captured one firebase after another, despite the valiant efforts of the division to repulse them. The PLA’s heavy use of artillery and human wave assaults were starting to take their toll. The American lines continued to shrink.
Battle at Anchor Point
Staff Sergeant (SSG) Paul Allen was a twenty-one-year-old young man from Wisconsin. He had joined the Army after graduating high school during the American military build-up. His main objectives in volunteering were to get the $25,000 signing bonus and GI Bill to pursue a degree in mechanical engineering once his four-year commitment was done. SSG Allen had been transferred to the 32nd Infantry Division, XI Army Group, Second Army, Alaska after recovering from the wounds he received while fighting as part of the 1st Infantry Division in the battle over Jerusalem. He had managed to survive several bullet wounds to the chest, and after going through several surgeries and physical rehabilitation, he was ready to continue his service to his country. His wounds had afforded him a promotion to Staff Sergeant, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart medal. Now his experience was being put to good use in helping form the NCO leadership of the new 32nd Infantry Division. Close to half of the NCOs and officers had been previously wounded in the Middle East or Europe-rather than returning to their old units, they were becoming part of the nucleus of the new infantry divisions being formed in the US.
Paul missed his friends from his old unit and tried to stay in touch with some of them as best he could. They had been together during the initial invasion of Mexico, and then through the war in Israel. He knew they were fighting the Russians now, and he was glad to see that several of them were still alive after the last major battle. A couple of them had not been so lucky… this saddened him greatly. He had lost so many good friends during these past eight months. It was a lot to take in for a twenty-one-year-old man. On top of the loss of his comrades in arms, SSG Allen was dealing with tragedy on the home front. Both of his parents had been killed in Baltimore while visiting his sister and her husband for Christmas. No one could have predicted that the IR would detonate a nuclear bomb in the city. Paul still had two brothers, both living in Madison, Wisconsin, where they were from, but the weight of the grief SSG Allen carried was beginning to wear like a heavy anchor around his soul.
Since arriving in Alaska six weeks ago, Paul had been assigned as the platoon sergeant until their new Sergeant First Class completed his advanced NCO career development course. The Army was trying to run as many of their NCOs through these advanced courses as they could when the soldiers were not actively in combat (they were doing their best to rebuild and expand their NCO cadre after so many losses and the massive expansion of the military). Paul’s company had been assigned to Anchor Point, less than a few miles from Homer, Alaska. They had the unenviable task of defending the several mile-long beach front from the Chinese. It was anticipated that the Reds would land their troops all along the peninsula to secure it for their eventual assault on Anchorage and the rest of Alaska. It was up to the men of the 32nd Infantry Division to stop them.
An engineering battalion had assisted them in developing a series of integrated trenches, machine gun nests and bunkers to ride out the eventual Chinese bombardments. They knew the Chinese naval infantry would be using their new exoskeleton combat suits, so to slow them down they had designed a number of obstacles and mazes of concertina wire that would force them to have to navigate into carefully designed kill boxes. Thousands of landmines, claymore anti-personnel mines and other explosives had been woven all across the beaches and the first several hundred meters inland. They had also set up numerous anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns and missile systems in their defensive network. The 9th Armored Division deployed a battalion of Pershing main battle tanks, and the engineers dug a number of tank berms for them to hunker down in. A tank would usually fire a couple of shots from one berm, and then quickly move to the next one, rotating between locations to avoid shooting from the same position too many times and being easily identified.
When the construction of this well-laid trap was complete, SSG Allen had looked at their work, stretching back to see the entire landscape. He smiled confidently, thinking to himself, “When the Chinese do eventually land their forces on Anchor Point, they will be in for a surprise.”
General Black had positioned nearly 60,000 soldiers on the Peninsula, along with 400 tanks. It was important to bog the Chinese down on the beaches for as long possible and to bleed them dry. The Reds could only bring a limited number of soldiers with them for the invasion. Preventing them from establishing a strong foothold was key to keeping them out of Alaska. That was why General Black had spent so many resources on turning Kodiak Island and Anchor Point into the fortresses they had become. It would take time for the Chinese to ferry troops from the mainland to Alaska, and the longer they could keep the Chinese from establishing a forward base of operations, airports and seaports, the better the chances were of eventually repulsing their invasion before the weather turned back to the Americans’ favor with the arrival of winter.
Despite the best-laid plans, the past three days had been horrific for the soldiers of the 12th Infantry Division. The Chinese fleet had parked their ships offshore, and were launching volley after volley at the American coastline. Though most of the attacks were taking place on the Aleutian Peninsula and Kodiak Island, Anchor Point and Homer were starting to be bombarded on a regular basis. Since the Americans still did not have visual contact with the Chinese landing craft, most of the soldiers continued to ride out the bombardments in their various bunkers, turrets and machine gun bunkers, reading books, praying, writing letters to home or simply sleeping, waiting for the inevitable.
On the second day of the invasion, several Chinese ground attack aircraft and drones started to bombard the trench networks, only to be shot down quickly by the various air defense systems. The battle for the skies above Anchorage continued to rage as hundreds of drones and manned fighter aircraft continued to fight for dominance. This limited the volume of air strikes that could hit Anchor Point and Homer, but did little to dissuade the Chinese navy from using their naval guns.