“Zero One, Plume, pop that smoke…..I see yellow.”
“Plume confirms yellow!”
Nikki felt a jaw dropping moment as they now approached close enough to make out more detail. Looking half right out of the canopy and noting that the typical British knack of understatement was alive and well and embodied in the Coldstream Guards FAC. It was almost medieval, the ‘large numbers’ were a sea of humanity breaking upon an area marked with yellow signal smoke. The Chinese numbered in the thousands and the friendlies were a hundred, if that, and the FAC was down there where the fighting was hand to hand.
Banking hard right the F-14s came down to just a hundred feet above the ground.
Zero Two and Zero Three released the moment that they saw her Mk 77s drop away. There were enemy still pouring down the hillside beyond the embattled Geordies and after egressing to the west the F-14s circled to come back around. There were far more targets than the flights ordnance load though.
The air had suddenly a very busy place with the Pearce Wing aircraft and the A-10s active in the five mile stretch from the shore to the township of Jamberoo. Fifteen thousand Chinese infantry in a colossal human wave launched against nine thousand Australian, New Zealand and British in tactical formation, advancing in the open.
‘Zulu’ is a prefix at the beginning of a callsign to denote an empty vehicle. Zulu One One Alpha was only technically empty, 1 Section of 1 Platoon were busily engaged twenty five metres from the vehicle but had sent Guardsman Blackley back to fetch more ammunition, as much as he could carry. The driver and gunner were in the Warrior, the vehicles GPMG and 30mm Rarden firing into the approaching masses when it was hit, and hit again repeatedly by RPG-26 projectiles. The vehicle, its additional firepower, ammunition reserves for the section, and the three men were lost. The remaining IFV’s gunners prayed that the temperamental 30mm cannons would stay stoppage free and that the stored HE cannon rounds would miraculously multiply in number.
4 and 5 Company stopped before reaching the besieged 1 Company, debussing a hundred metres short as the Chinese had already closed with the Vormundberg veterans. Their fire was preventing 1 Company from being enveloped though as the enemy infantry began to lap around the flanks.
Captain Regitt concentrated on the mortar and artillery fire missions while Sgt Chamberlain, the 1 Company FAC, got some ‘air on the go’ and threw a marker smoke grenade.
From left the right the three F-14s screamed over the enemy’s heads in a staggered line, but in contrast to the fast moving aircraft the ordnance they released seemingly fell in slow motion.
The three Claymores had already been expended before the air strike arrived. The frighteningly determined enemy mass absorbed the first mines blast, and the second, and then the third with barely a pause. Firing on the move, but with only the lead troops able to put rounds down on the British, the inaccurate fire was offset by the sheer weight of the charge.
Six Mk 77 canisters struck the ground and burst open, the white phosphorous igniter lighting off the 75 gallons of kerosene and benzene each one contained. It differed from Napalm B as the Polystyrene had been removed and kerosene replaced the petrol filler. Less hazardous to store, the immediate effects were identical.
Lying prone and working methodically, Bill Gaddom was working the bolt, aiming, firing and working the bolt again. More used to engaging single targets at ten times the current range, he was fast running out of ammunition. Sgt Stephanski was on Bill’s right, already ‘out’ and the slide locked to the rear of his Glock 17. Big Stef’s face was pale with shock; his last round had taken an attacker in the face but not before a bayonet had been driven home. The sniper section sergeant was attempting to stem the arterial bleeding from the neck wound.
Oz felt the heat on his face and then the fierce gust of wind on his neck, the result of the vacuum created by four hundred and fifty gallons of fuel igniting explosively. The flames created a wall between them and the hill, but those enemies to their immediate front came on regardless. CSM Osgood rose up and in one flowing motion, parried aside a bayonet tipped AK and butt stroked the wielder, driving the toe of the SLR’s butt into his temple, returning at once to the en garde before thrusting his bayonet into a throat, twisting and recovering once more, parrying, thrusting, and defiant, like a bear cornered by dogs.
“Get forward, The Wessex!”
Baz looked at the lone Australian in the turret of the IFV who had just shouted, leaning over the side of a Light Horse armoured reconnaissance ASLAV as it sped past, with two M113s following as best they could.
“That geezer, the vehicle commander, had white hair,” someone observed.
“Well they haven’t had a proper barney with anyone since Vietnam, so promotion must be dead men’s shoes or summat?” another said.
General Norris Monroe, commanding the ANZACs, was the man in question. He had ordered the vehicle’s driver to move as far forward as the battalion headquarters of the 1st Battalion Royal New Zealand Infantry. As the dust cloud that the vehicles had raised hid their departure into dead ground, the Wessex CO was ordered to get forward to the top of that same slope and dig in, fast. If anyone had claymores they needed to be sited immediately upon arrival. The Kiwis would fall back to them and together they were to prepare to defend against a massed infantry assault. The battalion, spread out as per normal for an advance to contact on foot, behind the ANZACs, was loaded down with full bergens, but it did its best, doubling the five hundred metres, breathing heavily on arrival but got busy straight away.
To the left of the Wessex, the Grenadiers were also hurriedly digging in, and to their right the Royal Green Jackets, and beyond them the LI. To the LI’s right was the sea.
The New Zealand infantry battalion never did appear out of the dust, but the Chinese 54th Infantry Brigade did. The Kiwis last stand had been heroic, defiant to the very end, and General Norris Monroe had been the most senior allied soldier to fall that day.
The fine product from Accuracy International was a thoroughbred, but its current task was akin to hitching a Derby winner to a plough. The barrel of the L96 was the hottest it had ever been, hot enough to raise blisters if touched, although it was not glowing red, as the barrel of the GPMG to the snipers immediate left was doing. He had already tossed his water to the gun group to cool the barrel, and so had Sgt Stephanski. The GPMG was misfiring, the rounds being set off by the heat before being fully seated in the breech. Big Stef was down and now lying motionless on Bill’s right but the sniper was unable to aid his friend.
From habit, Bill carried two full magazines of 7.62mm ammunition for the weapon, and a box of twenty, for a rainy day. Today was that day.
The Ghillie suited snipers had hitched a ride with 1 Platoon, and were now on the company’s right flank.
He aimed, fired, worked the bolt to eject the empty case and slid a single round into the chamber, closed the bolt, fired and repeated the movement. There was no time to recharge the ten round magazines and on firing the fortieth round he removed the rifles bolt and flung it as far away as he was able before rising to one knee. Bill drew one of his back-ups, a 9mm Glock 17, and began double tapping. Two magazine changes went smoothly before he dropped the Glock and drew his second, and last, back-up, a Model 36 Smith & Wesson revolver that was older than he was. Bill continued firing aimed shots at the endless mass of bayonet wielding Chinese infantry, but the revolver had but five chambers. A careful and thoughtful marksman, he had never failed to count his rounds and accordingly he had never suffered the embarrassment of having a hammer fall on an empty chamber. This morning however, he very deliberately allowed that to happen. The dead-man’s-click seemed somehow appropriate under the circumstances.