' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (37 page)

“HESH UP!” Chuck shouted, closing the breech and informing both Che and Gary that the main armament was reloaded, and what it was loaded with.

There were still Chinese infantry from the Ming who were active, those not caught in the burning Avgas, and two were knelt and aiming RPG-26s at the Alpha tank.

“Infantry action, half left!” Gary shouted to the driver who abruptly steered their Leopard in that direction in order that the coaxial 7.62 machine gun could be brought to bear.

Even without the night sights the enemy were clearly visible in the light of the burning combat hovercraft. Gary missed with the first burst but succeeded in putting them off their stroke, a rocket launched by a rattled operator sailed above the troop commander’s tank, missing by a good ten feet. The second burst dropped them and they lay unmoving, just inside the trees. None of the enemy was wearing NBC clothing, Gary noted, and reported the fact to the troop commander.

Chuck steered Four Three Charlie back on line, looking for the access point to their first firing position.

A tree leaned drunkenly across the path of Four Three Charlie; its fall arrested by its neighbour, but as they approached it resumed its journey downwards, slowly at first as the branches supporting it gave way. Its final plunge left it supine on the edge of the copse.

“We can climb over that, no bother!” Che said as Bingo swung them hard right, away from it and towards an alternate position.

“Yeah, but could we reverse back over it, though?”

The possible alternative route out of their original choice of fighting hole was forwards, onto the soft sand of the beach where getting bogged down in full view of the enemy was a distinct possibility.

“Three Four Charlie, this is Sunray, grab a position and get busy f’fuck sake!”

The troop commander and the Bravo tank were already engaged.

“A thank you and a please wouldn’t go amiss at this point.” Che remarked to no one in particular.

Although they had been at the location a week it was now difficult to recognise where the prepared firing positions were due to the shelling.

“STOP…back up!” Gary had spotted the position just as they were passing it. Banjo steered them in, and swore when he saw what was awaiting them.

“Bugger me, but there are a lot of the bastards!”

A half dozen more of the big Ming Tz hovercraft were heading in, with amphibious Type 63 tanks, a PT-76 variant, and IFVs bringing up the rear. Behind the amphibious infantry fighting vehicles and light tanks came the infantry and tank landing craft of a more conventional nature

Far over to the right, on the far side of the mouth of the Moruya River at Shelly Beach, two more of the infantry carrying Ming Tz hovercraft were already moving up the beach, a third sat half submerged and burning in the surf. Gary reckoned the one they had already destroyed on the edge of the airfield had somehow mistaken this beach of Shelly, but either way, the enemy were already moving ashore either side of them.

To their left, there sat one of the Light Horse ASLAVs in a hull-down-hole and firing its 25mm Bushmaster auto cannon at the nearest hovercraft, but with little effect upon the Ming’s armoured hull. The high explosive rounds made a pretty sight as they exploded, but that was about all.

Che fired, aiming for the cockpit and it swerved right, clearly damaged but still a threat. The Bushmasters HE rounds had more success on its more lightly armoured sides.

“UP!”

Che ignored the damaged Ming; the Light Horsemen were directing fire into the now exposed compressors at the hovercrafts rear. Its skirt was deflating and it was settling in the water a thousand metres offshore, with its hull already perforated at the sides it would sink.

Gary put his eye to his sight to see where the gunner was aiming.

“No, forget the skirt; you’d need to make a hundred holes to have any effect.”

The tank round scored a direct hit on its cockpit and it too veered right, a slave to the engines torque now its pilots were also dead.

There was no artillery or mortar fire landing, only their own direct fire to take on the oncoming waves of landing craft.

Gary was happy that Che and Chuck had everything in hand and he quickly switched to the infantry company net. No one was answering the requests for fire missions. He flicked up to the battalion net for the 1st/19th, Royal New South Wales Regiment and they seemed to be having the same problem. Only D Company’s CP seemed to be on the air and they had fought off an attack which killed a signaller and the CSM before the attackers departed.

Gary switched back and called the troop commander but Lt Jenkins had already discovered the problem for himself. The troop commander had also tried to call in close air support to compensate for the lack of artillery, but there was a major effort on to attack the fleet itself, now that it was at its most vulnerable. The navy and the air force were fully engaged he had, been told. Obviously the good news with that was the lack of enemy air strikes on the beaches, but it was a mixed blessing.  

The Alpha and Bravo tanks both fired on the closest hovercraft as it reached the surf and its bow doors opened but the enemy who emerged flung themselves into the water to douse themselves. The HESH rounds had set the troop compartment alight.

The remaining hovercraft pulled up the beach and disgorged their loads before immediately reversing, heading back down the beach. The Infantry hammered the Chinese troops with grenades, rifle and machine gun fire. The three tanks destroyed both of the hovercraft before they could escape to collect further loads of troops.

All supporting enemy fire had switched to the A and C Company depth positions, but once they were suppressed the fire would renew on their own positions.

Pinned down on the beach the Chinese troops took cover as best they could as they no longer had the weight of numbers required, thanks to the Royal Ordnance L7 105mm rifled tank guns.

The Leopards now engaged the amphibious tanks, and IFVs but these were turning away, heading for the beaches north of them.

The enemy were ashore either side of them and the landing on their beach had been diverted as the Chinese reinforced those successes.

“There’s a marked absence of artillery and mortars, have you noticed?”  Che said.

“We know.” Gary replied. “Something got fucked up good and proper… we’re picking up the grunts and moving out before we get cut off.” The troop commander was passing on the orders of the 1st/19
th
’s battalion commander to the B Company platoons.

Che’s jaw dropped and he looked back in his sights at the dead hovercraft.

“Well that’s not bloody fair!”

The infantrymen were appearing now, carrying their wounded, and abandoning the dead. Their comrades, the fallen, had been stripped of weapons, ammunition and specialist equipment. The I.D tags went to the platoon commanders of which one was now a corporal, the platoon commanders and
platoon sergeants shared trench having received a direct hit.

To their north and south the amphibious IFVs and tanks were approaching the shore.

Someone rapped on the turret with a bayonet and Bingo backed up.

“There’s not that many grunts on board, are you sure we got the lot?”

They headed back across the runway, but at a tangent this time. The hovercraft behind the trees was burning fiercely still, onboard ammunition cooking off in the heat.

Gary could see the depth platoon on the infantry falling back towards their company headquarters location. According to their contingencies they were to withdraw through it and back to where their transport was cammed up and waiting.

Naval gunfire resumed, falling on the positions they had just vacated. Trees fell or exploded when struck directly by the warships shells.

The troop now headed parallel with the runway, the infantrymen clinging to the strapped on natural camouflage. Ahead of them the airport buildings were a raging inferno, but there were no shell craters on the tarmac of the runways that Gary could see. Obviously they wanted serviceable runways for immediate use. He switched to the battalion net where their troop commander was requesting an RV with a Casevac. Whoever was the ‘Hawkeye Rep’ for the Army Air Corps on the other end was not being helpful, requesting an NBC Chemrep be prepared and sent before deciding whether to agree to a dust-off or not.

“Tango Four Three Alpha…listen up!” said their boss, losing his patience. “As
already
reported, the enemy were
not
suited and booted, and the fact that we have
wounded
IS a Chemrep. They’d be dead otherwise!”

A voice cut in, having obviously been listening to the exchange.

“Gremlin Zero Two inbound along the river.” The New Zealander accented pilot said. “Where do you want us?”

“Tango Four Three Alpha, on the highway west of the airfield.”

“Gremlin, roger that… ETA four minutes.”

‘Hawkeye’ remained silent throughout the brief exchange between Aussie tanker and Kiwi Huey pilot but could not have been happy at being bypassed in such a brusk fashion.

Gary went back to trying to get a handle on what had occurred during the last twenty minutes. The company sized combat teams to the north and south had been defeated, as in destroyed or sent packing. The 105mm howitzers of A Battery had certainly not fired on the craft approaching their beach, and neither had each infantry company’s 81mm mortar section.

There had been no obvious air support but no enemy aircraft either, so perhaps somewhere something had worked as desired.

Shattered light aircraft lay wrecked, the Cessna 172s and Piper Cherokees, the pride and joy of the holders of PPLs the world over were smashed or burning.

“Tango callsign, Gremlin…?” the RNZAF helicopter pilot shouted. “We took ground fire from Princes Highway Bridge as we overflew it.”

“Tango Four Three Alpha, nervous Foxhounds or enemy forces, over?”  

“Gremlin, not known, and we will egress southeast to avoid.”

The troop of Leopards and ASLAVs were drawn up in a hurried all-round-defence and the casualties were being carried by their mates when the distinctive heavy
‘thwopp, thwopp’
of the Huey’s wide blades drew close. It swung in from the river, which it had followed from its own holding area.

The PNG equipped door gunners leaned out, not trusting mere ‘grunts’ with the safety of their aircraft as they looked for telegraph poles, cables and other obstructions.

The machine settled on the highway without shutting down and the door gunners waved over the casualties. The wounded were loaded up, including the two who had died on the short journey between the beach and the Huey.

Once full, the aircraft immediately took to the air again, heading across the river as there was little chance the sentries air recognition skills had improved in the last few minutes, if
indeed so called ‘friendly fire’ by nervous sentries was the case, and not the enemy, Gary thought.

He was in the hatch of the Charlie tank with the GPMG on its pintle mounting, ready to provide covering fire, and as the infantrymen of the two platoons remounted he was shocked to see how few remained. Half their number was missing. He looked back towards the beach, where the bombardment was now tailing off. He realised that less than half an hour had passed since the order had been received to move into that position. Only their own infantry’s dead were occupying it now.

The Alpha tank moved off, taking them along the road beside the Moruya River to where the infantry’s Unimogs were harboured up and they again took up all-round-defence as they debussed and remounted the Unimogs.

The depth platoon arrived, carrying the extra burden of the 81mm mortars and news of what they had found at the CP location. The mortar crews were dead, grenaded in their holes, as too had been those in the CP and its defence trenches on either side.

The enemy, probably special forces, had no doubt been disconcerted to find the troops Leopards with the CP but once C Troop had moved out the enemy had moved in. It was an unsettling feeling to know the killers had been so close.

The ASLAVs led the way now, taking them to an RV to reorganise with whatever remained of the battle group.

After a few hundred yards they came to the small North Head Drive Bridge which was wired for demolition and guarded by a section of sappers. The combat engineers were all dead and their bodies dumped in the water. The wiring from the demolition charges had been cut and the cables removed. Also missing was the engineers Unimog. The 105mm Howitzer battery lay beyond the bridge but it had been destroyed by naval gunfire before firing a shot.

Gunfire from further upriver turned out to be their own tanks of A Troop, less Four One Bravo, and the depth platoon of A Company 1
st
/19
th
Royal New South Wales Regiment. They had caught the special forces in the process of doing to the Princes Highway Bridge what they had already accomplished at the North Head Drive Bridge.

An ASLAV reconnaissance vehicle was burning on the southern bridge approach, having been destroyed by a shoulder launched weapon.