Hundreds of other Chinese soldiers in their new exoskeleton combat suits were also moving quickly through the obstacles, rushing for the embankment and the sense of shelter. Chang was nearly to the embankment with his squad and the rest of his company when a series of explosions in front of the embankment went off. Several of the claymore anti-personnel mines had been triggered; the concussion was so strong that Chang was hurled backwards into several of his soldiers.
Each of the claymore mines had released 480 steel balls as it detonated, like a shotgun at very close range. As Chang recovered from the blast, he felt a twinge of pain in his left arm, and a throbbing in both of his legs. He looked down and saw that he had been hit by a couple of the steel balls in the arm; each of his legs had taken at least one round as well. He could not immediately get up, so he quickly crawled to the embankment, which was less than 50 meters in front of him. When he looked back, he saw that only three members of his squad remained from the ten men that had been with him when they left the landing craft. When his comrades realized that he was injured, they ran to him and dragged him by the shoulders to pull him further into the embankment. One of the soldiers began to work on his injuries with Chang’s first aid package, while the other two engaged the American soldiers in the trenches. They were about 150 meters from the bunker.
“I wrapped your injuries at tight as I could, and used the cream as we were taught,” one of the soldiers said to Chang.
“Thank you for the help Private. Take your RPG and try to see if you can hit the gun port of that machine gun bunker to our left. We have to try and take it out or no one is going to make it.” They each had an RPG7 with them, and a total of four rockets each. Chang knew the RPG could not destroy the bunker, it was too heavily reinforced. His hope was to hit the firing slit; the explosion of the RPG would travel inside the bunker and potentially destroy the gun or kill the Americans manning it.
As Chang looked back over the beach, he saw the third wave was already starting to hit the beach. He also saw dozens of bodies bobbing in the water all around burnt and blown out amphibious vehicles and landing craft. The beach itself was covered in bodies: some were stuck in the concertina wire, others were missing limbs or even half of their bodies from the various mines, and some were simply blown to bits by the mortars and artillery rounds that had landed in their midst. As he watched, he witnessed more soldiers getting cut down by those machine gun bunkers. He knew they had to be taken out.
One of the privates popped up long enough to fire his rocket at the bunker. Unfortunately, it impacted about two feet below the gun slit. The second private jumped up to fire his rocket, but was hit by several bullets from the Americans in the trench line in front of them. He died instantly.
Chang grabbed the RPG from his fallen brother-in-arms and slithered several feet down the embankment. He waited a moment to make sure that no enemy fire was aimed in his direction, and then he propped himself up to take aim at the bunker. He knew that the rocket would fall a little as it flew, so he set his sights just slightly above the gun slit. He fired the RPG, and then quickly ducked just as a stream of bullets and tracers flew over his head. When he did look up, he saw that his rocket had hit the gun slit and the machine gun had gone silent. Then smoke started emanating from within the bunker as it started to pour out of the gun slit. They had done it; they had accomplished their mission.
With the machine gun bunker now silent, hundreds of naval infantrymen rushed through the paths that had been made for them by the first two waves of the assault. They moved quickly to close the distance between them and the American soldiers in the trenches. Several rounds of claymore mines were detonated by the Yankees as the Chinese soldiers rushed forward, but without the second bunker, the lines were being overrun by sheer manpower.
Suddenly, dozens of Chinese soldiers were jumping into the trenches, fighting hand-to-hand with the Americans. Chang took another rocket from one of the dead privates and reloaded the RPG. He fired another round at the second gun position to their right. Chang saw a soldier open a side door briefly and fire a flare into the sky. Not knowing what this green glow meant, Chang took one more shot with the RPG, aiming at the steel door he had just seen the soldier shut; he was hoping to take him out.
Suddenly, the remaining American soldiers still in the trenches ran to the bunker and opened the now severely damaged steel door. In mere seconds, they were all inside the bunker. The Americans tried to close the door as best they could after Chang had hit it with the rocket. Seconds later, several Chinese soldiers blew the door open and rushed the entrance of the bunker. As they did, the entire thing exploded, killing everyone in it and injuring other soldiers nearby.
Chang looked to the two privates left in his squad. “Well done, soldiers! Continue on with the rest of the company while I wait for the medic to come and further address my injuries.”
Without any hesitation, they immediately moved forward, joining the rest of the naval infantrymen and advancing past the first trench line towards the second line of defense much further back.
As Chang looked at the carnage that was before him, he thought to himself, “If every battle with the Americans on their homeland is going to be like this, we are going to need a lot more men. ” He had to give the Americans credit, they fought like savage dogs. They had made the Chinese pay dearly to take this land from them.
On the coastline, several larger landing crafts pulled up to the shore and opened their doors to offload a heavy main battle tank. “We sure could have used those things to help take out the gun positions,” thought Chang to himself. As the tanks moved across the beach, they ran over dozens of dead bodies as well as those of the wounded who could not get out of their way fast enough.
Immediately after the MBTs offloaded, a wave of medical personnel sprang forward and immediately went to work tending to the wounded and loading them back on to several of the landing craft that were still at the beach. As additional soldiers and medics advanced to Chang’s position, an officer came up to him and angrily asked him, “Why did you not advance with the rest of your company?”
Chang simply pointed to the bloody bandages on both of his legs, and a medic ran up to him. The officer hurried off and started to yell at another batch of soldiers he had found near the American trenches.
Chang was loaded onto a stretcher and moved to a landing craft, which then headed back to sea and to the troop transports. Chang’s part in the war was over for the time being.
The PLAN infantry had secured Homer and Anchor Point, dislodging the Americans after twenty-one hours of continuous combat. They had moved ten kilometers inland before they were finally stopped by a battalion of American Pershing MBTs and several battalions of the older, yet still venerable, Abrams Tanks.
In the battle for Anchor Point, 14,373 American soldiers had been killed, wounded, or found to be missing. However, the PLAN naval infantry had been effectively destroyed as a fighting force. They had lost 41,235 soldiers who were killed, missing or wounded during the battle before the PLA began to land their force and assume the role of attacker. The PLAN had started the Alaskan campaign just three weeks prior, with 150,000 soldiers fully equipped with the new exoskeleton combat suits. Between the battles of Kodiak Island, the Aleutian Peninsula and the battle of Anchor Point, they had lost 86,438 soldiers. The PLA, by contrast, had lost less than 43,000 up to this point, but they still had not fully dislodged the American defenders from Kodiak Island.