' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (55 page)

“Anyone got any buckshee water?” a voice asked from one
of 3 Platoon, A Company’s trenches, the occupant wisely not sticking his head up to make the enquiry. The Chinese had some very good snipers out there somewhere.

“Sorry mate.” A voice answered.

“Nope.”

“I’m in a tropical paradise praying for rain, how sad is that?” said the
parched enquirer.

“A guy in C Company got shot in the arse last night while doing a rain dance on the edge of his trench.” another said conversationally, somewhere
over in 2 Section.

“It wasn’t a rain
dance; it was just the Dance of the Flaming Arseholes with different words he made up.” A Welsh voice said from the platoon’s gun pit, and it sang a few lines.

“The
tosser got what he asked for then.” someone else offered up harshly. “That was bloody awful.”
“It took his balls off, I heard?”
“Well that’s just nature’s way of ensuring that come World War 4 the gene pool will be rid of wankers doing the wrong pagan themed dance at inappropriate moments, isn’t it like?” offered the gentleman from Llanfairfechan in final judgement. There was little sympathy for the would-be Shaman from C Company but a lot of sniggers.

“A guy in
the Assault Pioneer Platoon made a piss still.” another trench added. “He’s selling it for twenty fags.”

“The still or the end product?”

There was a moment’s silence.

“I didn’t think to ask.”

“Well you should’ve.” said the gun pit. “It’s likely to leave a bad taste if you were wrong, boyo.”

“How do you make a piss
-still anyway?”

“A long trouser leg and loads of soil. The soil filters it.”

“Anyone got a spare pair?”

“Nah.”

“Well” called gun pit. “There’s a guy on the wire who don’t need his no more.”

‘Really?”

“He’s only a five foot Cantonese Commando like, so you’d have to filter it through twice.”

The crack of a high velocity round brought a second of silence
from the men as they listened to the sound of someone’s helmet bouncing away down the slope to the waterway behind them.

“You okay?” gun pit asked. “You didn’t stick yer head up for a look did you?”

“Aye.” the, now, sheepish voice replied.

“Well there’s a silly
sod of an Englishman for you, isn’t it!”

“I made a start on the piss
-still though...”

In his hide, the sniper wondered what
all the laughter was about.

Jim Popham wore a dead man’s camouflage trousers but his jump boots still bore a little colour here and there. He left the two riflemen who had accompanied him in cover as he himself crawled through the rubble, staying low and slow so as to avoid raising any dust. He did not go all the way to the forward O.P though, staying in cover to call out softly.

The O.P near the north west of the island doubled as a listening post at night and had heard noises coming across the water all
through the previous night following a mass attack that had forced the Legionnaires across the channel to give more ground. 2 REP’s perimeter was shrinking as attrition began to bite.

Jim had come out to listen when it had first been called in around midnight
.

“It sounds like dem guys is doin’ stone masonry over there, sir.” Sergeant Tony Beckett had told him at the time.

‘Over There’ was a bricks and mortar factory on Cebu’s shore, with wharfs along its western side. The south side which faced them was just sun-bleached brickwork.  It was the closest point to one of the few spots on Mactan’s northern shore that was not locked in by concrete docks or sea walls.

Beckett had rejoined what had remained of the battalion in the UK during the formation of 111
th
. The President had delayed Beckett’s return to Germany after the delivery of Colonel General Serge Alontov and the disc that became known as
‘Church’
until the final battle had been decided. Beckett had been with 4 Company in the old Coldstream/82
nd
lash up, and the President’s action had probably kept the young man alive, although Tony was having guilt trips. All his squad had been amongst the dead on Vormundberg’s muddy hillside.

“Sergeant Beckett?” Jim now called out.

“Just listen qui
et like, sir.” Beckett’s voice answered.

Listening was the problem though as the marines had fought their across the mountains and were now
noisily stopped by another obstacle, a solidly built former US Officers Club that had been built by the same engineer who constructed the first airbase on Mactan, back in the late ‘40s. Funny how these things can bite you in the ass a generation or two later.

The
former officers club the US Marines were loudly attacking was now an exclusive restaurant and hotel, or rather it had been until it became the residence of the commanding general of the garrison, and fortified accordingly. It had an amazing view out across the city, Mactan, the Cebu Straits and to Bohol, and the tenure upon Mactan’s airfield by the stricken USS
Constellation’s
air wing had been curtailed by artillery observers on its terraced garden. Visiting aircraft now made pallet drops of water and medical supplies without landing.

The single road from Toledo had proved a serious impediment to the US Marines who had lost men and vehicles to mining that had dropped stretched of the road down the steep hillsides and ravines into the valleys below, and those sections required bridging by the engineers before they could continue with the advance.

Jem Stanford of the US Marines and Snowy Hills had already surmised that the Chinese were probably looking to force the bridges, retake the island fortress and pull up the drawbridge behind them, as in blowing the bridges. They would then tough it out until the Chinese fleet and their 3
rd
Army’s 3 Corps secured the Spratly Islands and came to the rescue.

The US’s own naval units had withdrawn beyond the range of land based aircraft to lick their wounds and repair the damaged vessels. The Tañon Strait was now blocked to anything drawing more in draft than a tramp coaster as the USS
Constellation
had gone down with her bows toward Cebu and her stern pointing at the Negros coast, blocking the deep water channel.

The US Marines held Toledo and most of the mountain road now, aided by the fact that the
PLA’s 86
th
Mechanised and those reinforcement from neighbouring islands were in and around  Cebu and Mandaue.

Serious damage had been both given and received by the resistance forces and their regular troops from the Green Berets and 3 Para at Carcar. The residents evacuated the town before two companies
of Type 98 main battle tanks from the PLA 70
th
Mechanised Brigade that was garrisoning Negros had arrived. With diminished stocks of all types of ammunition, and in particular anti-tank weapons, Major Brooks had planned to try the old fashioned tactic of Molotov cocktails from the rooftops onto the armour passing through Carcar’s narrow streets. but the Chinese infantry burned the town that first night, and had motored through the charred ruins with machine guns blazing at dawn the next day. There was nothing that the small force could do except withdraw back into the hills with those who had survived.

“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 111
th
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 82
nd
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 3
rd
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 111
th
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.