by James Rosone
Private Lei clutched his rifle as he shuffled towards the front of the landing craft. As he neared the exit, an enemy machine gun fired directly into their craft, cutting down row after row of soldiers in front of him. Without thinking, Lei hurled himself over the metal edge of the landing craft, plopping into waist-deep water. Dozens of other soldiers did the same, trying to escape the certain death that would have met them if they had stood still.
“Get to the beach! Grab cover!” Private Lei heard himself yelling to the soldiers around him.
He clutched his rifle firmly in his hands and trudged through the water to get to the beach. The soldiers around him rallied to him and followed his lead. Within a minute, he had broken free of the water that was slowing him down and he ran up the pebbled beach.
Lei charged at the closest enemy position he could see. He had spotted a cement machine gun bunker, pitted with scars and missing chunks of cement from the hundreds of bullets and artillery fragments that had already hit it. The position was roughly 200 meters inland from the beach, and the gun position continued to rake the beach with relentless fire, cutting down the invading soldiers like a scythe. It had to be taken out or they would all die on this beach.
Yelling at the top of his lungs, Private Lei charged the gun position, waving with his right arm for everyone to follow him forward. In that instant, anyone who was still alive around him lurched to their feet and yelled at the top of their lungs with him, rushing forward towards the enemy position.
As Lei neared the bunker, he fired his entire magazine into the gun slit, desperate to kill the occupants before they killed him or his remaining friends. Just as he made it to within ten meters of the bunker, Private Lei saw several soldiers running out of a back entrance. He stopped momentarily, raising his weapon and firing into the backs of the retreating soldiers, killing them instantly as he emptied his thirty-round magazine. His fellow soldiers began ran past him and overran the bunker. A couple of soldiers threw some grenades into it to ensure no one else was in there.
The fight for Juguang Island lasted another hour before the entire island had been completely overrun. Not a single defender surrendered, inflicting horrific losses on the militia forces that had assaulted this small plot of land. However, with the capture of Juguang, the PLA and the militia forces could now shift their focus towards their primary objective, the island of Formosa.
Battle of the Hill
Island of Formosa
West Coast Expressway, Hill 137
Sergeant Lin yawned as he stretched his arms and shoulders. His body felt sore from the physical work of turning this hilltop and ridge area into the stronghold it had become. After stretching his aching muscles, he bent down and picked up his body armor, sliding it on over his head. Lin tightened up the vest a bit, making sure it fit nice and snug against his body.
It was 0600 hours and time to get the day started. With a lot of help from the engineers, his unit had turned Hill 137 into a formidable fortress. They had also built a series of bunkers over the past ten days to help ride out any potential enemy bombardments the mainlanders might try to throw at them.
Lin shrugged. “I really hope the politicians are able to sort things out,” he thought. “We need more time to prepare if we’re really going to go to war.”
While outwardly, he would never show any emotion except strength and resolve in front of his soldiers and officers, inwardly, he was just as nervous and uncertain about the future as everyone else.
Sergeant Lin pulled a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes out of one of the pockets on his body armor. He slapped the pack a couple of times against his hand, pulled a cigarette out and lit it. Lin held it to his lips and took a long pull, lifting his head slightly to face the sky and then slowly releasing the smoke. The nicotine began to calm his nerves.
“I just hope my family will be Ok if war does break out,” he thought.
He looked over to the mess tent and saw the line was starting to form.
“I better get some food,” he realized. “Today is going to be another long day of work while we put all the finishing touches on our fortifications.”
As the line steadily moved along, Lin was given his breakfast, and he found a seat near several of the junior sergeants. Lin had just taken his first bite when the first siren blared. Everyone paused mid-bite as the wailing sound pierced the morning air. The noise echoed and grew in volume, spreading across the nearby cities and destroying the solemn silence of the morning.
Lin jumped to his feet and shouted, “Everyone to the bunkers, now!”
The soldiers immediately grabbed the weapons that had been sitting on the ground next to their chairs, leaving their breakfasts where they were. They all raced to the underground bunkers that had essentially just been completed the day before. The engineers had just finished placing a couple feet of dirt on the roofs, and they had all spent the better part of the previous day moving crates of additional ammunition and other supplies into the bunkers before turning in for bed.
While the soldiers rushed into the bunkers, a couple of men chose to remain in the reinforced machine gun positions to spot for possible enemy ships. These men would alert the others to leave the bunker and man their battle stations when the time came.
In less than three minutes, the rest of the 200 soldiers stationed on Hill 137 had reached the four designated bunkers. Each bunker could hold around 50 men and acted as the supply depot for the portion of the defensive line and fortress it was near.
The soldiers in the bunker with Sergeant Lin looked to him with scared looks on their faces, almost pleading for him to tell them that this was just some sort of drill and not the real thing. Lin, for his part, tried to look strong and stoic. Inwardly, he was both excited and scared. He had spent his whole life in the army up to this point training for this very scenario.
Just as he was about to say something to try and calm everyone’s nerves, the first missile landed on their little hill. The bunker shook violently. Everyone looked up at the ceiling, unsure if it would hold. The ground shook again, violently, then again and again. The thunderous booms of explosions filled the air.
Sergeant Lin looked at the faces of his men, most of whom were casting glances at the ceiling between each violent shake of the earth. Where before he had seen fear in their eyes, he now saw anger and a determined resolve to do their jobs and defend their country. At that moment, he felt immensely proud of his soldiers. Their training was now starting to replace the fear and trepidation they had once felt with grit and a force of will.
The bombardment lasted for nearly three hours, though the intensity ebbed and flowed. At times, they thought it had ended when five minutes would go by and they heard nothing, but then a few more rockets or missiles would land nearby and remind them that the mainlanders had not forgotten about them.
Suddenly, the field phone sitting near Sergeant Lin rang. He looked at it in surprise, almost having forgotten that it was there. Then he remembered that he needed to pick it up.
“This is Sergeant Lin,” he said formally, unsure of who was calling them.
“This is Corporal Cho in Bunker Three. Bunker Four is reporting enemy landing craft in sight and said they are going to engage them with their anti-ship missiles.”
Lin thought for a moment. “The mainlanders must have skipped Kinmen Island altogether if they are landing here so quickly,” he realized.
He acknowledged the soldier’s message and hung up. Everyone in the bunker was now staring at him, waiting to learn what had just transpired. Lin smiled and stood, which made everyone else stand as well.
“Bunker Four is starting to engage communist landing craft. The mainlanders will be here shortly. I want everyone to man their battle stations and prepare to repel this dastardly invasion of our homeland. Remember, our families and country are depending on us to hold our ground. Let’s go show them what we’re made of!” he shouted.
Sergeant Lin led the way out of the bunker, through the network of t
renches to their fighting positions. His company had two heavy machine gun positions and two antitank bunkers to defend, with one of the antitank bunkers also acting as the command center. Just behind their position were a couple of trucks, which had several anti-ship missiles on them. A couple of soldiers in two of his bunkers had laser designators, which would help guide the missiles to their intended targets.
As he arrived in the command bunker, he saw the captain there, along with the couple of radio operators that would help to coordinate the defense of the hill. The command bunker would essentially direct the various bunkers’ fields of fire, depending on where the heaviest concentration of enemy soldiers was.
One of the soldiers in the bunker was using the laser designators to paint one of the large Yuting III-class land ship tanks that could carry multiple amphibious assault crafts and hovercraft ashore. The ship was still several miles off the coast, but clearly taking up position to begin disgorging their troops. While the soldier was lasing the target, an anti-ship missile flew over their bunker and raced out to sea, skimming just above the water at nearly Mach speed. It took only a few seconds for the missile to travel the distance and plow into the rear of the LST, just above the waterline.
For a brief moment, nothing seemed to happen as the missile’s semi-armor-piercing tip punctured the hull of the LST and plowed deeper inside. Then the warhead exploded, sending flame and shrapnel out the hole it had just punched through. The LST shook violently from the explosion and listed heavily to the side, with the rear of the ship filling up quickly with water. Only two ZBD2000 amphibious armored fighting vehicles made it out of the ship before its entire rear half slipped beneath the waves.
Any sense of victory was blunted when the smoke began to clear in the ocean before them, and they saw dozens of LSTs of all sizes had moved into position, along with a number of smaller patrol boats and corvettes.
The soldier who had lased the first LST and sunk it quickly moved his targeting laser to the next ship and began the process all over again. He would continue to work with the missile trucks, guiding anti-ship missiles into the LSTs until either they ran out of missiles or the trucks themselves were destroyed.
While the ocean was now starting to fill up with ZBD2000s and hovercrafts heading towards the shore, the antitank bunkers fired their guided missiles at the armored vehicles quickly approaching. Each of these vehicles typically carried eight soldiers, so taking them out at sea would save them a lot of trouble.
Sergeant Lin called over to one of the antitank bunkers. “Hey, we need to focus on those hovercrafts! Just one of them can carry as many as two hundred soldiers. If we don’t take them out, it won’t be long before a few thousand soldiers arrive on the beach. We can focus on the ZBDs when they make landfall.”
Lin knew they had armor support units being held in reserve; their captain would call upon them once the enemy tanks landed. The infantry, though, could cause them all kinds of problems if they established a foothold.
Just as the soldiers were responding to the changing orders, Lin’s bunker shook violently from an explosion. One of the patrol boats had darted in closer to the shore and had fired a round from its turret at them, and it had nearly succeeded in landing the round right through the gun slits in the bunker. There was no time to dwell on the near-death they had all just experienced; everyone shook off the effects of the explosion and went back to the business of repelling the invasion.
It didn’t take long before the first wave of amphibious vehicles made it to the shore and began to speed up the beach, trying to rush up the highway and reach the base of their little fortress on Hill 137. Fortunately for Lin and his men, as the vehicles moved up the beach, the series of mines that the engineers had planted began to explode, ripping the ZBDs and light tanks apart with no effort.
Lin looked to his right. A hovercraft glided right up on the beach, dropping its front ramp. In seconds, dozens upon dozens of soldiers rushed forward, firing their weapons in the direction of his men. As quickly as the hovercraft had arrived and unloaded its human cargo, it moved back to sea to pick up another load to bring to the beach.
“It’s already starting to happen,” thought Sergeant Lin with dread. “The very thing I feared — the human wave of communist amphibious vehicle and hovercrafts will overrun us with more troops than we could ever possibly kill.”
One of the soldiers who had been manning a T74 machine gun died violently as his head exploded. He had been hit by a heavy-caliber bullet, leaving his machine gun silent at a critical moment.
Lin immediately rushed to the soldier and grabbed the machine gun, placing the butt of it firmly in his shoulder. He proceeded to let loose a controlled burst at a group of People’s Liberation Army soldiers who were charging one of the gun bunkers less than two hundred meters away from him.
He turned to one of the privates nearby and yelled, “Ammo! Keep me stocked with ammo!”
The private immediately grabbed one of the crates next to the dead soldier and pulled out several 100-round belts. He attached one of the belts to the current one Sergeant Lin was burning through, so he wouldn’t have to stop and reload.
Lin nodded to the private, which was the only thanks he had the time to give out. Then he pointed to the gun before making his next request. “Pour some water on the barrel. Keep pouring water on the barrel and keep the belts linked, OK?”
The young soldier nodded and grabbed one of the nearby water bottles, emptying it over the barrel of the gun, which was starting to steam and smoke from the heat of the constant use.
Sergeant Lin heard the captain yelling on the radio for artillery support and additional reinforcements.
“Good, he’s calling in the artillery. We just might be able to stop this first wave,” he thought.
Sergeant Lin spotted another hovercraft coming in quickly, almost directly in front of his machine gun, so he turned and aimed right for the landing ramps, waiting for them to drop so he could begin the process of mowing down the enemy soldiers that would emerge. The private next him had just linked another belt to the one he was currently using and poured another bottle of water over the barrel, since Lin had stopped shooting for a few seconds. They desperately needed to change the barrel, but there just wasn’t time. They needed to keep firing if they had any hope of survival.
Just as the hovercraft was moving onto the beach, an explosion hit the front of their bunker, knocking nearly everyone inside to the floor. Sergeant Lin smacked the ground hard. Something hit him, searing his left arm. He shook off the effects of the explosion and immediately climbed back to the machine gun. He didn’t even take a moment to look around the bunker to see if anyone else had been injured or killed.
He trained the machine gun back to the hovercraft just in time to see the front ramp drop. He immediately squeezed the trigger, pouring dozens of controlled bursts right into the nearly 200 PLA soldiers charging off the hovercraft. Lin just kept firing and firing until the barrel of his machine gun was glowing red and he ran out of ammo.
The sergeant turned to yell at the private to load more ammo and pour additional water on the barrel, only to see the private had bled out on the floor behind him from a shrapnel wound to his neck. Then he surveyed the rest of the bunker and realized he was the only one left alive.
Lin moved away from the machine gun as dozens of bullets peppered the face of his bunker. He grabbed the radio the captain had just been using and called to one of the other bunkers. “I need you to send a few soldiers over here. Everyone else at this bunker was killed, including the captain.”
The voice on the other end acknowledged his request. As Lin waited for additional soldiers to arrive, he grabbed a different radio and called for the quick-reaction force to be rushed forward, along with the tanks that were being held in reserve.
He heard a voice yelling over one of the other radio handsets, so he rushed over and grabbed the receiver. “This is Sergeant Lin, Bunker One, go ahead with your message,” he said in as cal
m a voice as he could muster. The incessant pounding of gunfire, explosions and men shouting was overwhelming. Just then, eight of his soldiers rushed into the bunker, pausing only long enough to survey the carnage of dead bodies on the floor.
“Change the barrels on the machine guns and get them operational!” he yelled at them before turning his attention back to the radio.
“Sergeant Lin, I was just talking to your captain. I was letting him know that nearly half of our artillery guns have been destroyed. We are just now shifting our fire to your sector. We are sending the first wave of six rounds right now. Please let us know if we need to adjust fire or just keep firing on the current positions,” the voice on the other end of the radio demanded.
“Yes, send the artillery,” Lin acknowledged. “I will radio back once I have seen them impact to let you know where to adjust fire,” he responded before placing the handset down on the crate near the other handsets and walking towards one of the gun slits.
His soldiers had gotten the two main machine guns working again and were already tearing into the PLA soldiers on the beach and the ones rushing across the highway to the base of their hill. Once the enemy soldiers made it to the base of the hill, it was up to the soldiers manning the various trenches and fighting positions to deal with them. The bunkers could really only focus on the beach and provide covering fire in support of each other’s positions.
Surveying the beach before him, Sergeant Lin grabbed his rifle and took careful aim at the soldiers trying to advance up the hill near one of their trench lines. His rifle barked with each carefully aimed shot. Each time, an enemy soldier collapsed.
He had fired off maybe five rounds when he heard the whistling sound of artillery coming in. Boom, boom, boom! Geysers of water, dirt, and sand sprouted into the air from the impacts of the 155mm high-explosive rounds. Dozens of PLA soldiers were thrown into the air from the concussions of the blasts. The six rounds had met their marks. Now Sergeant Lin had to ensure they kept coming.
