' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (62 page)

“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 1
st
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 54
th
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.

A second ordnance run was initially intended to deliver the CBUs to the still plentiful targets between the hill and the line of burning jellied kerosene, but the aviators switched to guns instead, strafing the Chinese infantry who had now reached the company of guardsmen, walking the rounds in as close as they dared, so close that empty 20mm cannon cases fell among attackers and defenders alike.

The
third ordnance run was carried out by just two of Smackdown flight. They had all taken hits from ground fire but Zero Three waved off with an engine shut-down, turning back towards Albatross trailing smoke. CBUs had been dropped north of the fire line on the third run and now the 250lb retard bombs were delivered to the wooded hillside. There were still plenty of enemy down there, the enemy having swept over the right flank platoon in a killing frenzy of rising and falling bayonets, the morning sun reflecting off the steel. The F-14s last strafing run had broken the back of the attack on the remainder of 1 Company. Three of its IFVs were now burning but the rest of the battalion had come up, and the shell fire from warships off the coast was being added to that of the artillery and mortars.

The Tomcats
, now with empty weapons stations, had remained until they had expended all of their cannon ammunition, and turned back to HMAAS Albatross.

Nikki’s taxiing exceeded the speed restrictions posted on the airbase and she did not shut down, opening the canopy and remaining strapped in as a hot rearm and refuelling took place. The infantry attack was losing steam and the last of the enemy aviators was floating down under canvas, but apparently the Chinese tanks were coming out to play. The battle still had a ways to go.

Reloading the Vulcan 20mm rotary cannon was the last task completed, and the ground marshal at first waved her forward, but abruptly ordered a halt
on receipt of some message on his headset. With engines back at idle and the brakes set, the ground crew placed the ladder beside her aircraft and the crew of Zero Three, accompanied by the flight surgeon appeared.

Nikki was kind of testy as she watched ‘her’ Cat taxi away without her. Whatever was going on here had better
have a damn good explanation. She rounded on the Flight Surgeon.

“Sir?”

“Not everyone in that aircraft is qualified to be there, Commander.”

“What?” she turned to look suspiciously at Johnson.

The flight surgeon smiled, which was something he had not managed to do for a while.

“
Congratulations, your last toxicology test shows you to be one sober, pregnant, aviator.”

The fighting ended at last on the battlefield south of Pudding Mountain, but beyond it a tank battle raged. The Australian 1
st
and 2
nd
Armoured Regiments, 1 Royal Tank Regiment and the Kings Royal Hussars were outnumbered on the ground but not outmatched. To the chagrin of the Aussies equipped with recently delivered M1A1s, the aging Aussie Leopard 1’s rifled 105mm gun outranged them, and what was even worse the bloody pommy Challenger and Chieftain 120mm rifled guns were the kings of the battlefield.

With the A-10s now refueled and rearmed at Jervis after providing CAS over the infantry fight, they began fulfilling their original purpose by killing tanks too.

The Pearce Wing pounded Pudding Mountain’s wooded slopes, and other likely places a few thousand of the enemy could be waiting in ambush. Dropping high explosive and incendiaries until the woods burned.

As the killing of machines by machines grew more distant, the infantry gazed in shocked awe at that which had occurred closer to home
, and far less impersonal. Not all the enemy infantry had perished, several thousand were surrendering and many more were wounded, but ten thousand lay dead.

Baz Cotter
was one of those numbed by the noise of bugles, the masses of bayonets, and the hatred behind them.  The slope before them was thick with the enemy dead and the crest held three and sometimes four deep.

His bergen sat behind the shallow shell scrape he had managed to dig with an entrenching tool now bloodied at its edges, and hair adhered to that. The bergen was open, its content spilling out from where spare ammunition, grenades and a special forces version of the Claymore had been retrieved hurriedly. The SF mine had been smaller and lighter than standard, and acquired by illegal means, the rare item being won in a card game weeks before. As for the unpoliced berg
an, well that would have earned him a few dozen push-ups at the top of Church Hill, the steep road with false summits that leads to the Sennybridge training area at Brecon, Powys.

Dopey came over and sat down heavily next to him,
handing ID tags over.

The 2 i/c of his section, L/Cpl Roger Goldsmith, and the ‘old man’ of the platoon, Pte ‘Juanita’ Thomas, Spider Webbers replacement, and the only non ex C (Royal Berks) member of the section. Baz remembered running across a bridge in Germany with Pte Thomas, but it seemed a hundred years ago now.

“I never asked,” Dopey said to Baz “but why was his nickname ‘Juanita’?”

“He only had one tooth, one eater.” Baz replied. “He kept his false teeth in his pocket for safe keeping when we were out on the beer. Scared away all the crumpet too…silly old bastard.” He added both sadly and affectionately.

They sat for a while in silence before Dopey voiced an opinion.

“Thank fuck for Claymores.”

“And A-10’s.”

“And the matelots on HMS
Whateveritscalled
, which was bunging over shells like there was no tomorrow.”

“This incline
, too.”

“And training, don’t forget the training.”

Major Llewellyn and Oz took it in turns to play medic, tending
to each other’s wounds. The ex-coal miner had a deep wound in the fleshy part of the thigh that neither man had a dressing big enough for so the OC took Captain Regitt’s as he had no further use for it.

They had lost 1 Platoon and half of 2 and 3. Guardsman Stevenson, the company clerk, and Sgt Chamberlain were the only survivors of company headquarters, along with OZ and the OC.

Lt Col Innes-Wyse was joined by Pat Reed, the CO looking rather ashen at having lost the best part of half of the battalion. Pat knew how that felt and after a few minutes helping him dust himself off, figuratively speaking, he went over to where what remained of the men he had commanded in Germany, were doing the same.

On arrival there he found OZ propping himself
up by leaning against one of the Warriors, geeing on the crew to find more ammunition for the 30mm. All the IFVs had expended their entire stock of HE before also going through APSE, armour piercing special effects, the special effects being white phosphorous.

“Company Sarn’t Major Osgood?”

“Yes sir?”

“You are making the place look untidy, so be a good Coldstreamer and lie to attention on a stretcher somewhere until a proper medic deals with those wounds.”

It was saddening for Pat to see how few remained now, but he spoke to those familiar faces that could still answer and went to see for himself those who no longer could. Bill and Big Stef, their faces camouflaged more thoroughly than the riflemens, looked as though they were merely sleeping.  He said a silent prayer for them all and moved on to the job he was paid for, running the brigade.

The Irish and Welsh Guards were also reorganising, but the 1
st
Guards Mechanised Brigade was no longer going to be spearheading the division, the Scots Guards and both battalions of the Grenadier Guards were passing through them to resume the advance to contact with whatever else the PLA’s 3
rd
Army’s 1
st
Corps had in store.

The ANZACs had also taken losses, although no one yet realised their commander was among the New Zealanders dead.

The ANZACs would not permit the British 8 Infantry Brigade to liberate the last occupied piece of Australia, not while they could still muster a single rifle section.

F
rom the ANZAC ranks, four New Zealand and three Australian infantry companies had been overrun; the remainder sent the wounded to the rear, recharged their magazines, replaced the smoke and fragmentation grenades and wiped the gore off their bayonets before stepping off again, shaking out into spearhead formation once more.  

“Target IFV.”

Che Tran peered through the sight, using the IR facility despite bright sunshine.

“Another cold one.” The Chinese fighting vehicle was yet another vehicle out of gas and abandoned in the streets of Port Kembla. The crews of these fighting vehicles had doubtless joined the ranks of the infantry for the last suicidal attack on the allies. Thousands had died in order for the PRC’s leadership to save face, to show the rest of the world it was still to be feared and respected. The prisoners the allies were now taking tended to be rear echelon types, but the Australian tanks and infantry moved tactically despite the evidence before their eyes.

SASR were carrying out a heliborne assault of 3
rd
Army’s 1
st
Corps HQ, fast roping onto the roof of the Woolongong City Council building, but they found only pen pushers and bean counters, all of whom were happy to surrender.

The Chinese armour that had attacked was
now burning to the south of them and naval gunfire had malleted the last of the enemy artillery.

“Boss…skinny sailors at twelve o’clock!”

C Troop had arrived at a vast barbed wire enclosure where both Reg Hollis and Admiral Putchev came out to meet them, making the liberation of the town complete.