“There, hear that?”
“Armor.” Jim said. “Not much it can do over there, except to the REP guys.”
The wall of the factory fell outwards with a massive splash into the shallows. Dust billowed outwards too but from it emerged that venerable favourite for amphibious assaults the Type 63 light tank. The Chinese had chiselled away the cement between the bricks during the night, leaving enough of the brickwork to act as pillars and prevent the roof from landing on their heads. They had next moved the tanks inside the factory, as close as possible to the exit point out of the channel that the O.P currently occupied.
A pretty good plan for a surprise night attack so why throw away that element of surprise now, in daylight? The US Marines must be close to breaking through, Jim surmised.
“I thought all the waterways were mined?”
“Apparently not everywhere…Beckett, leave the O.P and follow me!”
There was no argument coming from that quarter, Tony and his trio grabbed their equipment and ran up the back after Jim. Jim Popham’s men were covering them all as they ran back into cover, and Lt Col Popham was calling for the reserve troop of Scimitars. The first rounds of Chinese artillery rounds began to fall and the sound of the ‘incoming’ sent everyone diving for shelter.
The banks of the waterway had been recognised by the Vespers planners as a weak spot and likely approach for an enemy. It had been heavily mined with China’s own Type 72 anti-tank weapons from the stores on the island.
The artillery rounds first fell in the Mactan Channel whereupon the enemy observers began ‘walking’ the barrage up the beach. The unpleasant work of half a night by Jim’s men was slowly but methodically undone as the shells worked the beach over.
Six-wheeler Type 92 IFVs were next entering the water in the tanks wake, literally.
The US 111th Airborne Infantry were dug-in back from the shoreline or had built rubble sangars. Jim and the four men made it back to their lines.
The defenders obvious move was the wait for the armour to crawl out of the water and hit them with all the AT weaponry they possessed. They had far more RPG-26s than they had water, so it should not be a problem. The artillery observers on the mountainside who had evicted the Navy air wing now set about preventing the 82nd men from doing just that.
“Bugles and whistles?” the voice from 3 Platoon’s 2 Section shouted. “My granddad told me about them in Korea, they aren’t still using those are they?” The noise had come from the north east, a direction they had not been attacked from before on account of the ground being, basically, a bog. It was distracting though.
Another Chinese tactic in Korea had been to arm half a regiment with swords, axes and broom handles, and the other half with rifles and machines guns. They sent the first half off with its medieval level of weaponry and the second half following close behind. The UN forces expended much of their ammunition on the first wave.
Quantity versus quality, and all that stuff.
“Holy…STAND TO!”
Not all of the dead from the final battalion strength night attack had in fact been hors d combat; over two hundred had endured the heat and stench throughout the morning.
IFVs, tanks and a thousand infantry on foot were emerging from cover over half a kilometre away to the north, but two companies worth were sprinting forwards less than a hundred metres from the wire.
The leading men threw themselves on the coils for their comrades to use as thoroughfares into the 3 Para positions. The expended Claymores had not been replaced from the previous night and A Company were immediately engaged in close quarters combat.
Major General Snowy Hills watched quietly, a centre of calm amidst the hubbub in his divisions operations centre. Jem Stanford’s 3rd Marines were breaking through on the mountain so it was all or nothing down on the plain.
2 REP and 3 Para were receiving human wave attacks, an amphibious assault was coming ashore on Mactan and the Chinese seemed to be happy to expend their remaining artillery ammunition in a frenzy. The safest place was apparently on the bridges themselves.
The divisions own artillery was sat in deep recesses hand-dug by the gunners and covered by camouflage nets where they fired continuously. The 105mm guns of the US, British and French were creating hills of empty shell cases behind the positions, tossed there by gunners stripped down to the waist, shiny with sweat and moving like automatons as they served the guns.
General Hills only reserve were the lightly armoured Scimitars of the Blues and Royals, and those vehicle’s best defence were their rapid acceleration and speed. The 30mm AP rounds were proving effective against the Chinese 6 wheeler IFVs, particularly at the sides. However, only seven of the vehicles remained now, three were burning on the edge of the airfield where they were supporting a 111th that was in danger of being overrun. If that happened then the artillery gun lines would be the Chinese armours next victim.
A Javelin missile struck one of the big Type 98 tanks just short of the wire, killing it with a single hit but it was the Chinese-made RPGs that the paratroopers were favouring. The FGM-148 Javelin missile took its own sweet time with each missile that was connected to the CLU, and as a result the captured weapons were more popular even if several were required to make a kill.
The stink, like a Parisian public convenience in mid-summer, hung over all the gun pits of the Para’s and French Foreign Legionnaire’s. GPMG barrels, glowing red hot were dropped into old shermouli cans filled with the crews urine and those barrels still hot replacements were swiftly connected to the weapons bodies with barely a pause in the firing.
The Chinese infantry came on, and on, seemingly never ending and the dusty floors of the gun pits were becoming paved in spent 7.62mm brass casings and black metal links.
Bodies lay thickly about the positions, Chinese mainly, but paratroopers and legionnaires were evident in the mix, the result of the hand-to-hand fighting after the surprise rush into their lines. Once again, entrenching tools had proved their worth in dual usage.
On the small island Jim took twenty men, each with as many RPGs and Javelins as they could manage and led them to the right flank of Charlie Company and behind the Scimitar tank troop that was there. Only two of the vehicles, as the third was shaking with the force of internal explosions two hundred yards away, and the large Guards Division flag on its antennae was crisping in the flames.
They had to plug the flow of amphibious armour crossing the channel, and looping around the side of the enemy penetration was the way he planned on doing it.
His companies were fully engaged so his battalion headquarters were providing this effort and James Artemus Aluicious Popham, Lt Col, was not going to send men to do what he would not.
They used smoke for cover from view, and the vehicles themselves as protections from small arms fire as they crossed a shell pitted taxiway and entered the ruins of the town.
The sounds of all-out battle from across the water in the direction of 2 REP echoed off the walls that still stood in the dead town as they neared the waterway and changed direction, jogging behind the vehicles and knowing that time was critical.
The dirty exhaust fumes of swimming vehicles hung like a haze in the still air above the water as the US paratroopers got into cover and made ready their weapons.
Climbing up the side of a Scimitar Jim shouted to its commander, a Corporal-of Horse, pointing across the channel to where the armour was still appearing.