Less than a minute later, the town was engaged from one end to another. John steadied his scope over an enemy soldier taking aim at a second-story window. Squeezing the trigger, he let off two clean shots and watched as the infantryman crumpled.
Glancing to his left, John saw that the AT-4 team next to him was cowering. “Get those rockets into action,” he yelled, but they stayed glued to the roof, rounds cutting through brick and ricocheting around them.
When it was clear that these townspeople had lost their nerve, John grabbed the AT-4 and aimed it down onto the street. That was when he saw the M1A2 and two Bradleys over on Second Avenue burning. They’d been caught out in the open and destroyed.
Then the distinct sound of anti-aircraft fire joined in the fight. John focused on the Chinese column entering Oneida from the south and finally recognized what was making that sound. A four 25mm-barrelled Type 95 anti-aircraft tank was chewing up the Walgreens like some ravenous beast. Anti-aircraft fire from each direction soon told John the Chinese had anticipated an American ambush in town and were ready. In horror he watched as one AT-4 team after another rushed out from alleyways or exposed themselves from rooftops only to be immediately decimated by 25mm cannon fire.
Running over to the hole in the roof, John slid down the ladder. Several fighters inside were wounded, some even dead. Captain Bishop was busy engaging targets with his M4 when John asked for his walkie-talkie. He tossed it over and John radioed headquarters.
“Henry or Rodriguez, come in.”
For a terrifying moment there was no response.
“Henry or Rodriguez, please come in.”
“What is it, John?” Rodriguez said at last.
“You need to get a message out to all AT-4 teams. They need to focus all their fire on those anti-aircraft tanks first. They’re killing us out here.”
“Roger that.”
The message went out a second later, but whether it was going to do any good, he didn’t yet know.
Keeping the walkie by his side, John climbed back up the ladder and onto the roof, knowing what he needed to do. The AT-4 team he’d left a moment ago was still pinned down. Grabbing their rocket launcher, he moved to the edge and peered through a haze of gunfire. There he spotted one of the AA tanks directly below them, its guns swivelling up toward the animal hospital.
“Oh, no,” he shouted, but it was too late.
The Type 95 opened up, sending cannon fire bursting into the building’s first and second stories. Shards of brick and powder flew out from the impacts. Moss, Bishop and the other soldiers beneath him were being turned to Swiss cheese.
Rounds from Chinese infantry below thudded all around John as he leaned over and aimed at the rear of the AA tank. When he was sure he had it, he depressed the trigger, releasing a violent backblast as the rocket raced toward its target, only to bounce off a slope in the armor and explode in a shop window. John cursed his bad luck right as fire from infantry below made him take cover.
This was the last rocket on the roof, which meant John would need to find another way to destroy those AA tanks.
What about the mortar teams?
Yes, he could call in a barrage of 60mm mortars, but friendlies were all around. A single miss could be disastrous.
John peered over the edge just in time to see the Type 95 on the street below tearing up a nearby building with 20mm cannon fire. From inside came the screams of the wounded and the dying.
He got on the walkie, his palms slick with sweat. “Kiowa 55, this is Overmountain, prepare for mission, over.”
After a moment of silence the radio came to life. “Overmountain, this is Kiowa 55. Go ahead, over.”
“Kiowa 55, adjust fire, shift TP15. Danger close, AA tanks, two, in the open. ICM in effect, over.”
“Bravo, one round, HE. Out.”
A moment later the first mortar round whistled through the air and exploded in the intersection of Alberta and 2nd, wounding a handful of Chinese infantry.
“Right fifty,” John hollered into the walkie. “Drop thirty, over.”
The fire team repeated the order.
The Type 95 began moving just as the second mortar landed right where it had been a moment before. Asphalt and chunks of rock were kicked into the air, pelting the nearby buildings. Any closer and the round would have landed on the vet hospital, killing John and everyone else in the building.
The Type 95 ground to a halt, perhaps unsure what had just happened.
“Kiowa 55, you nearly got him that time,” John told them. In fact, you nearly got all of us. “Right twenty, add fifteen. Fire for effect, four rounds, HE, Danger close, over.” He closed his eyes for a moment, unable to stop himself from thinking about Nasiriyah and the men lost there because of him.
The AA tank began to lurch forward as the last mortar shell slammed into the turret, causing a deafening explosion.
“Bullseye!” John shouted, scanning down the street for the next Type 95. “Great shooting, Kiowa 55. You ready for the next one?”
One by one the other 25mm cannons were silenced by mortar fire, allowing the remaining AT-4 teams to get back to work on the main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Once the lead and rear vehicles in each column were destroyed, the remaining trapped tanks became easy prey.
With every passing minute, the fierceness of the fighting began slacken until at last it stopped altogether. The enemy infantry had been denied a foothold in Oneida and most of their armor was either burning, disabled or abandoned.
John and the other survivors from the roof made their way down to find a second floor covered with bodies. Only three had lived through that AA assault against the second floor. One of them was Moss. In several cases, the dead weren’t recognizable, let alone treatable. Lying in a corner still clutching his M4 was a dead Captain Bishop.
John took Moss’ arm as the latter was reaching down to move a corpse. “You’re lucky to be alive,” John told him.
Moss’ eyes found Bishop’s body. “Are we lucky, John?”
Those words echoed in John’s ears as night began to fall and he braced himself for a list of American casualties which was sure to be staggering.
Chapter 49
The enemy could return in force at any moment, a fear that was on the minds of nearly everyone as they combed through the streets separating the living from the dead. Needless to say, priority was given to wounded friends and allies. Enemy dead were carried off, sometimes in wheelbarrows on account of the difficulty of moving about on the cluttered roads, and dropped into a mass grave on the edge of town.
In all, the defenders of Oneida had suffered just over four hundred dead and three times that number of wounded. Even John had to admit that grim as those numbers were, they’d fared far better here than during the attack on Willow Creek.
The Chinese hadn’t fared nearly as well. Initial estimates claimed as many as five thousand dead and less than five hundred wounded. The wounded tended to outnumber the dead three or four to one, but in this case, the scarcity of medical supplies and the townspeople’s insistence on caring for their own first were likely to blame.