Battlefield Pacific

by James Rosone

  “There’s more of them coming!” another one of his sergeants yelled as even more of enemy paratroopers burst through the jungle in front of them.

  “My God, that’s a lot of Chinese soldiers,” he thought as he saw yet another wave charging forward with their guns ablaze.

  One of the five Marines that had charged forward with him jumped into the blown-out fighting position that had the M240 in it. He leveled the gun at the storming soldiers and opened fire. In seconds, he raked nearly a hundred rounds across the charging horde, wiping out the attacking force. As Long moved toward the Marine to help him keep the gun going, an RPG flew out of the jungle, blowing up right in front of the machine gunner. His body was ripped in half from the explosion, and the force of the blast knocked Long to the ground with a hard thud.

  Captain Long struggled to catch his breath after having the air punched out of him from the fall. He felt a strong pair of hands grab the back of his IBA and pull him hard backward, toward the rest of his men. While he was being dragged, Long saw several enemy soldiers charging after him. He took aim with his M4 and fired as quickly as his rifle would let him, gunning them all down. Then he crawled behind a tree and took aim at the enemy soldiers, who were still trying to press home the attack.

  “We need to fall back, Sir. We can’t hold this position,” said one of his sergeants.

  “Someone, get on the radio and tell Fourth Platoon to double-time it to our position now! Also, see if you can raise battalion and find out if we can get some fire support from the gun battery or the mortar platoon!” Long screamed to be heard over the relentless sounds of men and machine.

  Minutes after placing the call, another twenty-six Marines rushed forward to join them against a cluster of now fallen over trees and other odds and ends they were using for protection. The added firepower appeared to be enough to cause the enemy to pull back, and the two sides settled into still firing at each other without actively trying to overrun each other.

  *******

  Palayan, Philippines

  Fort Mag

  Sergeant Gerald Phillips arrived at Fort Mag on one of the many CH-53 Super Stallions that had been delivering supplies to the base just prior to dark. His squadron of Super Cobras was going to rebase on Fort Mag so they would be closer to the actual fight, rather than having to waste fuel flying from the amphibious assault ships to support the ground pounders. The infantry was in near-constant contact and desperately needed the gunships.

  When he arrived at the base, the first thing he noticed was how shot up the place was. There were several downed helicopters near the edge of the runway, along with numerous other enemy vehicles. A fair number of dead bodies were still strewn around the area, which further added to the macabre scene before him.

  “Sergeant Phillips, get the tools and other equipment set up over near that section of the taxiway!” shouted his lieutenant.

  Just then, a pair of Cobras settled onto the taxiway, shutting down their engines. Trudging toward the helicopters and the area where their platoon leader wanted them to set up as their repair section, Phillips saw the pilots climbing out of the helicopter.

  “Sergeant!” exclaimed the pilot, waving him over. “I think my tail boom took a few hits on our last attack run. Can you guys check it over and make sure nothing major was hit while we get some food? We have to get back into the air as quickly as we can.”

  Phillips nodded. “We’ll get right on it and have you guys airborne in no time,” he said. The other pilot joined the first, and the two headed off toward one of the tents that had been set up as a field kitchen.

  While Sergeant Phillips moved closer to the helicopter with his tool case, he saw one of the POL guys moving a small tanker near the helicopter as another guy hooked the fuel hose up to the helicopter to refuel. While that was happening, a couple of the munition guys reloaded the rocket pods, and another guy worked on reloading the nose gun. It was a true team effort as the various support personnel crawled over the helicopter, getting it fueled, rearmed and mechanically checked over while the pilots took a few minutes to get some food and water and take a bio break before they flew back into harm’s way.

  As the sun began to set, the air operations wound down, giving the mechanics the time they needed to fix a lot of the battle damage to the gunships: repairing bullet holes, fixing hydraulic hoses, and replacing electrical wiring and sensors. Come morning, those helicopters would be busy. In addition to the repairs the maintenance squad was responsible for, Sergeant Phillips also had to make sure his guys had dug a few fighting positions nearby. If the enemy managed to overrun the perimeter, then they might need to repel an attack on the airfield from these very same positions.

  When the twilight of the new day peeled away the darkness of the evening, Phillips’ crew had just finished repairing the Cobra they were responsible for. The crew of mechanics was just picking up their tools when the sound of incoming rockets and artillery fire rang out in the distance. Rounds landed at various positions around the base, shaking the ground violently and shattering the morning's serenity. Looking in the direction of where the pilots had been sacked out, Sergeant Phillips saw them grab their helmets and run quickly to get into their helicopters and get airborne before a lucky round landed near their gunships, disabling or destroying them.

  Phillips jumped into one of the fighting positions they had just prepared a few hours ago and made sure his squad was readying themselves to deal with whatever happened next. One of the helicopters got airborne and headed off in one direction, while the second helicopter continued to climb and gain altitude. As the second helicopter banked to the north, it was suddenly hit by one of the many rockets flying toward the Marine positions. The gunship exploded from the large-caliber rocket, crumpling the frame of the helicopter as it fell to the ground below in a fiery mess.

  “Holy cow, that was close!” thought Phillips. He hoped this artillery barrage would end soon.

  Looking toward the other end of the airfield, he saw the 105mm Howitzers clearly fire back at the enemy. It was now incumbent on them to provide the counterbattery fire that would hopefully silence the enemy’s guns. The dueling artillery fire went on for a handful of minutes before the enemy fire finally subsided. Then the Howitzers went back to firing in support of the ground forces, and so did the mortar platoon that was set up with them.

  The next forty minutes was pure chaos. Light and heavy machine guns were firing all over the place. Wounded Marines were dragged back to the hospital tents near the artillery battery, while occasionally a medical helicopter would swoop in with its brightly painted red cross on the side to quickly load up the wounded and ferry them back to the higher-level trauma center on the amphibious assault ships offshore.

  “Sergeant! Do you hear the sound of tanks?” asked one of the soldiers in the next foxhole.

  “We don’t have any tanks with us yet, do we…?” he thought in horror.

  “Yeah, I hear it. I don’t think it’s friendly though. If we have to fall back, guys, we’ll fall back to the artillery batteries’ position, OK?” Phillips shouted.

  The other Marines in his squad just nodded as they continued to point their weapons into the forest and trees around them, waiting to see if a horde of enemy tanks or soldiers would suddenly appear out of nowhere. Suddenly, half of the air operation building, which was acting as their brigade headquarters, exploded. They saw an enemy tank charge right at the building, but then a missile streaked in from one of the attack helicopters they had been working on the night before, blowing the tank apart like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. The enemy tank had been destroyed, but not before it caused the damage it had sought to inflict on the Americans.

  Then, to their front, an armored personnel carrier came barreling out of the woods and headed straight toward them. In the turret, Phillips spotted a soldier in the turret manning a machine gun, firing at his men. Sergeant Phillips raised his M4 to his shoulder and took aim at the soldier who was spitting out death
and destruction. He gently squeezed the trigger, sending a three-round burst at the soldier, who clutched at his chest and fell inside the vehicle. The machine gun had been silenced.

  The vehicle suddenly hit one of the tank mines Phillips had seen some of the engineers placing around the perimeter the night before. The vehicle stopped moving and started to billow smoke. Half a dozen enemy soldiers emerged from the back of the vehicle and fanned out, shooting back at the Americans. Then, maybe a platoon's worth of enemy soldiers emerged from the woods and added to the volume of fire toward the Marines defending the airfield.

  “Sergeant, what do you want us to do? It looks like the enemy is going to overrun the airfield!” shouted one of the soldiers in Phillips’ squad.

  Looking around, Sergeant Phillips saw his ten Marines were quickly being cut off from being able to fall back to the other side of the airfield near the gun battery. Their best bet now was to do their best to hold their current positions and hope the other Marines around them were going to do the same and the enemy would run out of steam.

  “Everyone, listen up! We are dug in here,” said Phillips. “We’re going to stay put and make sure the enemy doesn’t take our little section of the airfield. Is that understood? I want everyone to stay put. Conserve your ammo and only shoot when you’re confident you’ll hit something. We can do this, Marines!”

  *******

  Chief Petty Officer Brian Conway, call sign “Punisher,” sat on the roof of the air operations building at Fort Mag, wondering if this tour of duty was ever going to end. He had hit his six-month mark three months ago, with no end in sight. Then again, he hadn’t heard of a single Special Forces unit that had rotated home for any amount of dwell time.

  “Well, I’m not getting shot to get some time off,” he thought.

  Conway had been a part of SEAL Team Three since he’d joined the Navy and completed BUD/S training twelve years ago. After surviving the world’s most brutal training program, he specialized as a sniper. Having served multiple tours in both Iraq and, more recently, Afghanistan, he had built up quite a record among the teams as an exceptional sniper. When the war in Asia had broken out, his team had found themselves heavily involved in the opening of the Second Korean War, and then later in the Russian Far East. With the change in strategy and direction for the Marine ground war, his team had been pulled from Russia and sent to Guam to support the Marines in the Philippines.

  He ran his hand across the flat black Stoner Rifle-25 semiautomatic sniper rifle he brought with him for this mission. Unless he was going to conducting long-range sniper operations, he preferred to use the SR-25 with its 20-round magazine. Conway had trained in the Philippines in the past—he’d even trained at Fort Mag before—so he knew he’d be faced with some dense foliage. That meant the majority of his shots would be under 500 meters. He was more concerned with being able to hit multiple targets in quick succession than he was about nailing an enemy soldier 2,000 meters away.

  Intruding into his personal thoughts, his partner said, “Punisher, you think those Chinese paratroopers are going to attack our base?” He spat a stream of tobacco juice over the edge of the building they were lying prone on.

  Punisher’s spotter, Petty Officer First Class Leeroy Miley, call sign “Leeroy Jenkins,” had the personality of a paranoid schizophrenic who would either charge into a situation without warning or hold back, depending on what mood he was in at that moment.

  “You can bet your paycheck they’re going to attack us. It’s a matter of when, not if,” Punisher told his country hillbilly of a partner. The two of them had worked together for close to three years. Conway loved Leeroy like a brother, but sometimes he was too brash to be a spotter. His true passion was being a breacher, the guy who blows the door of the building open and charges right in. That was why he had been given the call sign “Leeroy Jenkins,” after the infamous World of Warcraft MMO gamer who would relentlessly charge forward into battle without taking the time to know the enemy and make sure he didn’t just run to his glorious death.

  “From everything I’ve heard, those Chinese paratroopers are vicious fighters,” said Punisher. “They’ve led the invasion of every country China’s invaded since the beginning of this war. If they attack, you can bet it’ll be in force, and it’ll be a real battle. I mean, look around us, there’s what—maybe four companies’ worth of Marines and an artillery battery and some helicopters here? We’ve been surrounded by close to 4,000 enemy paratroopers, maybe more.”

  Leeroy’s face settled into a worried look as his paranoia took over. “You think we might not make it out of this one?” he asked.

  Just as Punisher was about to respond, the enemy rocket attack began. All around them, rockets were hitting buildings, the runway, the hangars, and everything possible except the building they were sitting on top of. They could hear the whizzing of shrapnel flying through the air as the base around them was being blown apart. Men dove for cover. Others screamed out for a corpsman, begging for someone to help them.

  “Scan the perimeter! They might rush us any moment,” Conway urged his spotter.

  What Leeroy saw as he searched beyond their own lines was horrifying. “Tanks! Holy crap, that’s a lot of tanks!” he shouted. Twelve T-99 main battle tanks, covered in reactive armor, brush and tree branches, charged toward their lines at full speed. Immediately behind the tanks was a line of armored personnel carriers and other armored vehicles, ready to push through whatever hole in the American lines the tanks managed to punch through.

  While the two of them watched the charging tanks, several antitank missiles streaked toward them from further behind the Marine lines, blowing several of the tanks apart with their shape charges. Seconds after the first four tanks were hit, another three more were blown up by the second wave of antitank missiles. However, before the Marines could get a third set of missiles off, the tanks charged right through their positions and continued to race forward, right toward the airfield.

  “I knew I should have brought the Barrett with me!” Conway chided himself. He realized the SR-25 had no real antimateriel stopping power like the heavier-caliber .50 of the Barrett.

  “Forget the tanks. Find me targets we can take out!” Punisher yelled. It was difficult for his spotter to hear him over the roar of diesel engines, explosions, and the rattle of machine-gun fire.

  Leeroy began searching for targets for them to engage to their front. Suddenly, he caught a glimpse of something moving on the opposite side of the runway. As the smoke from the earlier rocket attack cleared, he saw dozens of enemy soldiers charging toward the battery of 105mm Howitzers. The gunners were desperately trying to lower their barrels to be flush with the ground, while anyone with a rifle was doing their best to shoot at the attackers.

  “Turn around and stop those soldiers from overrunning our artillery battery!” Leeroy yelled.

  Conway turned to look behind him and saw what his spotter had found. “Crap! They’re going to overrun our artillery support!” he thought in horror.

  Instantly, he jumped up with his rifle and ran toward the other end of the building, flopping hard on the ground. He brought his rifle to bear and quickly identified targets. Letting his breath out slowly, he squeezed the trigger and watched as the head of a Chinese soldier exploded in a bright red mist. His body fell to the ground, tumbling from his recent forward momentum.

  He aimed for another soldier next to him and squeezed the trigger again, with the same result. In a matter of sixty seconds, he had shot sixteen enemy soldiers before they could overrun the gun battery. As more Chinese soldiers dove for cover, they continued to fire on the Marines manning the Howitzers, hitting many of them as they tried to hold their positions.

  Conway swapped out his magazine, slapping a fresh one in place, and went back to systematically wiping out the attacking force that had nearly overrun their only artillery support.

  “Switch back to the front of the building!” yelled his spotter. “Two armored personnel carr
iers just stopped less than a hundred meters in front of our building and are unloading their troops!”

  If he didn’t have a spotter with him, chances were Punisher would never see the guy that would ultimately kill him because he would be so focused on taking out the man on the other end of his sniper scope. Rolling over to his side and then quickly jumping back to his feet, Conway ran in a low crouched position to the opposite end of the roof and again got down and sighted in the next group of enemy soldiers.

  Nearly a dozen enemy soldiers exited one of the armored personnel carriers, or APCs, and ran for cover, firing at the Marines near them. Seconds later, the armored vehicle they had just exited blew up from an antitank rocket. The other APC managed to get nearly half of their soldiers out before it also exploded from a direct hit by an antitank rocket.

  Conway sighted in the first enemy soldier. The man appeared to be an officer, since he was yelling and then pointing at several Marines not far from them. Punisher gently squeezed the trigger, feeling the rifle kick slightly as the officer clutched at his chest, then collapsed next to the dead body of another one of his soldiers, who had just died from a bullet fired by another American nearby.

  It was a complete melee breaking out in front of Conway. Several waves of Chinese soldiers bum-rushed the Marine positions and began fighting in hand-to-hand combat in the foxholes. Conway did his best to snipe at as many of the enemy soldiers as he could, trying to give the defenders as much covering fire as possible.

  Suddenly, an explosion rocked Conway’s building. Part of the roof they had been shooting from collapsed, and they fell into the building. Hitting the floor below them hard, Punisher and Leeroy spotted the tank that must have imploded this half of the building. Around them were several bodies of the men who had been manning many of the radios, keeping the base connected with the outside world. Their radios were largely destroyed by the explosion.