Axis of Evil

Chapter Thirty-One: The War in the Outback

Government House

Canberra, Australia

1^st June 1941

The red arrows crept along the coast of Australia, advancing on Darwin. They’d taken longer than anyone had expected to reach the outskirts of the city. Sir Thomas Albert Blamey had taken the opportunity of moving two more infantry battalions into the city, providing it with a powerful defensive force. Nearly eighty thousand trained men, backed up by some units of the city’s militia, would make a stand for their home. The advice from the British SAS had turned Darwin into a death trap – for the Japanese.

Prime Minister Menzies shook his head, knowing just how ghastly the casualties were going to be, on both sides. The Japanese, whatever else one could say about them, were brave; none had surrendered. The only prisoners had been picked up by the Bushmen, the SAS patrols operating in the Japanese rear; all starving and dehydrated.

“You would think that they’d know when to give up,” Colonel Philip Hawkinson said. In theory, the Japanese had landed around 100’000 men on Australia; in practice, most of them were far from combat effective. The division that had landed at Cape York was trying to march down to Cairns, but it was shedding men like flowers. By the time they hit the defence lines north of Cairns, they would not be in any state to punch their way through it.

“A pity we can’t poison the entire sea,” General Blamey had muttered, when it became clear that the only thing saving the entire Japanese force from dying from thirst was their impromptu desalination efforts.

“Bite your tongue,” Hawkinson had said wryly. “Clever bastards, aren’t they?”

Menzies scowled and brought himself back to the present. The icons for the four armoured divisions Australia had formed at great expense and effort were where they had been for the last two weeks; five miles south of Darwin. After the hammering the RAF had handed out to the Japanese air force, the Japanese seemed oddly reluctant to commit more aircraft to probing Australia. Darwin itself still got a bombing raid – and they had tried to airdrop supplies to the soldiers – but the back of the Japanese air force had been broken.

A shame that the army doesn’t see it that way, Menzies thought grimly. With a cold-blooded determination that no western army would have condoned for a moment, with an ignorance of logistics worthy of the worst of the armchair generals, the Japanese army hadn’t surrendered, even when the submarines cut their supply lines. The Japanese had only what they’d put ashore in the first wave… and still they came on.

“Bastards,” Menzies muttered, squeezing his coffee cup. He’d seen the records from the first time this war had been fought, and knew what the Japanese would do to his people. He’d evacuated Darwin en masse, just to avoid giving the Japanese new slaves, but if they somehow broke through the lines…

He shuddered. In the first time the war had been fought, Australia had never been invaded at all. Instead, the Japanese would wreck far more havoc on the world… and clear the path for American hegemony. Perhaps it would be better for Australia, after going through the experience, to be part of a new British Commonwealth, in the long term, but in the short term…?

“Perhaps,” Menzies said to himself, and headed down towards the meeting room.

“The Japanese will reach the outer defence line sometime today,” Hawkinson said. “I believe that it is time to activate the defence plan.”

Menzies lifted an eyebrow. “Is it time to launch the attack?” He asked. “Don’t you want to bleed them first?”

Hawkinson shrugged. “It depends,” he said. “If we move into their rear areas, we could break the back of their force without destroying much of Darwin in the process. If we wait for them to get really involved with Darwin, we risk their managing to take the city, which means that we will have to dig them out now.”

“I thought that the plan was to crush them in the city,” Menzies said. “What’s changed?”

“We planned a tactical withdrawal from Darwin,” Hawkinson reminded him. “The bastards took so long that we had time to move more troops in, which makes an organised retreat difficult, to say the least.”

Menzies considered. In the end, there was only one possible choice. “I authorise the operation,” he said. “Sweep them off my country.”

Nr Darwin

Australia

1^st June 1941

The heat hadn’t stopped the Imperial Japanese Army, despite some of the soldiers collapsing from heat exhaustion. Private Fumihiko had wanted to collapse, but the blows and kicks of the sergeants had forced the platoon onwards to Darwin.

“Once we get to the city, we’ll see if they are blonde all over,” Sergeant Hitoshi said cheerfully. His fist made contact with a drooping private. “Move, onwards!”

Private Fumihiko ignored the sergeant as best as he could, trying to ignore the hail of shellfire up ahead. As the force grew closer and closer to Darwin, they were running into more and more opposition, ranging from men on bicycles with machine guns, to entire strongpoints. Those thrice-cursed aircraft kept sneaking in to drop a handful of bombs, even spraying burning fuel over unlucky platoons. Even Sergeant Hitoshi’s threats and kicks couldn’t stop the platoons – hell, the entire army – from throwing themselves to the ground as soon as they heard aircraft.

At least we got rid of the helicopters, he thought bitterly. The British had used their helicopters to attack the columns, but a brave private had used his mortar on the craft, teaching the British to keep their distance. The column was bleeding men left, right and centre… and there was no sign of any end to the march.

“Darwin ahead,” someone shouted. The men raised a ragged Banzai cheer. The roar of shellfire grew louder and Private Fumihiko realised that the ordeal was far from over.

General Masaharu Homma looked down on the Australian city and cursed. The Australians had been hard at work, digging trenches and building defences, and he could see some of their work. Rows of guns waited for his men, waited to send them into the outer darkness.

“We have to take the city,” he said, and his staff saluted smartly. Although he hadn’t told any of the enlisted men, who might have been upset, they’d lost contact with the other part of the pincer. Quickly, he issued orders for runners to circumvent the city, hopefully to meet up with the other half of his force, and then ordered a quick rest.

While the soldiers rested and prepared themselves as best as they could for the coming fight, Homma examined the defences. They’d been contrasted along First World War lines and he scowled; the ANZAC veterans had probably seen combat in France. The defences were powerful… and he didn’t have many field guns and only a handful of tanks. He was well equipped with mortars, with plenty of rounds, but he didn’t have enough main guns to knock out their defences.

“We’re going to have to take them on directly,” he said, passing his binoculars over the defence lines. The death toll was going to be horrendous. “Order the troops to stand by; we attack as soon as we hear back from Hirkada.”

A runner crashed through the bush and ran up to Homma, panting. “Sir, General Hirkada reports that he’s reached Darwin and is going to attack in twenty minutes…”

He broke off, panting. Homma waved a hand at the flask of water and considered. Perhaps a joint attack could succeed, backed up by the armour. They would conquer – or die trying.

“That’s Homma himself,” Philip Orozco said. The SAS officer was hidden in a tiny cave, dug underground, peering out through sensors the Japanese couldn’t even begin to imagine. “I wonder what he’s thinking.”

“He’s thinking Banzai, Banzai, Banzai; we can take those Aussie louts,” Samuel Broderick predicted. “Does he have any common sense at all?”

Orozco shrugged. The two officers were lying in the cramped cave, completely undetectable. If the Japanese had known that they were there, they could have dug them up, but they had no way of finding them, let alone digging down to reach them.

“I think they believe that faith conquers all,” he said, and chuckled. “They’re worse than the Jihadis; you have to kill them all to get them to break.”

“One should only use fanatics as cannon fodder,” Broderick said grimly. A mere handful of truly evil men in the Middle East had done that in the last years of the War on Terror, a war that would now never be fought. “Point them at the target and shoot.”

“Heads up,” Orozco said, as the sensors picked up the sounds of a whistle. The sensors continued to relay information; Japanese troops were forming up into lines. “I think the big show is about to start.”

“No kidding,” Broderick muttered. “Just look at them go.”

The crump-crump-crump of Japanese mortars erupted from the Japanese lines, pouring fire into the Australian defences. In return, bigger guns, kept out of Japanese range in the city itself, pounded back, using their heavier rate of fire to overwhelm the Japanese attempts at counter-battery fire. Handfuls of shooting near the front lines testified to the Japanese forces trying to move up under the cover of the shellfire, pounding away at the defenders.

General Sir Leslie James Morshead, commander of the Rats of Darwin, studied the advancing Japanese without concern. The Japanese were mainly infantry, unlike the Germans his duplicate had had to deal with, and they were unprepared for the sheer violence of modern war. The defence lines had been carefully designed and constructed as fast as the resources of an entire city could be deployed, turning equipment for digging drains into digging trenches.

“General, they’re advancing from both directions,” his radio burst out. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the radios – they allowed the High Command to interfere whenever they felt like it – but they were brilliant for commanding his forces. He’d wanted to lead from the front, but the British liaison officer had dissuaded him.

“Order the 4^th Infantry to prepare to move east,” he said, considering. His handful of tanks – very light tanks – couldn’t be committed to battle yet. “If they break through, we’ll plug the hole with them.”

“Yes, sir,” his aide said. Morshead smiled; the Japanese had three lines to break before they could reach the city… and then they would be chewed up in the streets.

The whistle blew and the men advanced, jumping forward to avoid the lines of mines quickly laid by Japanese sappers. Sergeant Hitoshi, to give him his due, led the charge, leaving the other sergeants to force the men forward. There wasn’t any reluctance; the men charged forward, intending to win the city for themselves.

“Banzai,” they shouted, and charged. Private Fumihiko ran with them, shooting madly at an Australian bunker, and then threw himself to the ground as a machine gun poked its nose out of the slit in the wall. A stream of bullets passed through the platoon, slaughtering some of the men like pigs.

“Forward,” Sergeant Hitoshi bellowed. The experienced officer had hit the ground at once. “Fire!”

Private Fumihiko watched with genuine admiration as Sergeant Hitoshi jumped up to the slit, pressing himself against the bunker. A knife came out and slashed at the sergeant, but he caught it, tossing a grenade inside the bunker. The explosion blew the machine gun away.

“Forward,” Sergeant Hitoshi bellowed again, and moved carefully around the bunker. Private Fumihiko and the remains of the platoon followed him, absorbing the remains of other platoons as they advanced. A hail of shellfire fell on the bunker they’d killed; enough to blast it out of the ground.

“Missed,” Sergeant Hitoshi shouted, and led the charge to the next position. A hail of shellfire poured down on their heads and Private Fumihiko had only minutes to realise that the Australians had pre-targeted their guns, before the shells exploded. By some miracle, both him and Sergeant Hitoshi had survived, but there was nothing more left of the platoon. The men he’d marched with through China and Indochina, through the Dutch East Indies, had been slaughtered in one catastrophic attack.

A haze descended upon his vision, it was broken by Sergeant Hitoshi shaking him violently. “Forward,” the sergeant bellowed, ignoring the fact that they were alone. The main focus of the battle had moved elsewhere. “Get up, you lazy…”

Private Fumihiko lifted his rifle and squeezed the trigger once. Sergeant Hitoshi’s head exploded before he realised that his death had come for him. His body toppled over backwards, leaving Private Fumihiko sitting in the battlefield, looking at nothing.

“They’re coming in the west,” someone shouted. “We need fire support, now!”

“Order the guns to open fire, pre-set coordinates,” Morshead ordered. He studied the map grimly, imagining the scene. The first eastern attack had been broken, at heavy cost to both sides, and the trenches were awash with blood. The Japanese had fallen back, but he was certain that they would be back.

“Firing,” his aide said. The sound of the guns echoed through the buildings. The hail of Japanese mortar fire seemed to have slowed down. “Sir, the Japanese are advancing with their tanks.”

Morshead glanced up at the display and cursed. The Japanese might not have realised, but they’d given the eastern defenders quite a beating. Tanks might just tip the balance… except he had tanks too.

“Send in the tanks,” he commanded. “They’re to advance at once.”

Sergeant Mike O’Neal grinned openly as he received his orders. The Scimitar tank – technically classed as an armoured recon vehicle – had been upgraded for fighting against infantry, while continuing to possess a light anti-tank capability. The Japanese would have nothing to counter it.

“Advance,” he said, as the data package unsealed itself. The tank moved out of the garage where it had been hidden from Japanese prying aircraft, before heading down towards the battlezone. He grinned though his VR helmet; the interfacing with the tank’s sensors, which were in turn linked into the battle management software, was pointing him in the exact direction he had to go.

“We have around seven Japanese light pieces of junk,” he said, confirming that the other two crewmen had heard. The five other tanks in the force spread out behind his vehicle, preparing their weapons. Encrypted data bursts flashed between them, designating targets from sensor data.

“I see them,” the driver said. “Advancing onwards.”

O’Neal smiled to himself as the Scimitar moved on, around the defences, and onto the battleground. Australians cheered as the tanks moved on, British flags displayed on their sides, and waved cheerfully.

“I confirm targets as Japanese Type-95 tanks, active on the battlefield,” O’Neal said, recording for future studied. “Main gun… locked?”

“Locked,” the gunner confirmed.

“Fire,” O’Neal ordered. “Blast them to hell!”

The Scimitar shuddered once as it fired an antitank shell at the leading Japanese tank, which exploded with a billow of fire. The other tanks fired as well, blasting through other tanks, even as their companions realised the danger for the first time.

“They’re firing back,” O’Neal said, and the Scimitar shuddered. The Japanese shell hadn’t even dented the armour. “They can’t touch us!”

“Shame about the mud,” the driver muttered, as the Japanese tried to flee. It was too late; a hail of fire destroyed the remaining Japanese tanks before they could escape. A streak of fire lanced out from the Japanese infantry and splattered against the armour. “What the hell was that?”

“Some kind of bazooka?” O’Neal guessed. The tank’s sensors were already working on it; he took direct control of the machine gun and fired madly at the Japanese troopers, who were cut down in seconds. “It didn’t hurt us.”

“Better warn the Fireflies,” the driver said. “That was too close.”

The Australian 1^st Armoured Division had been raised far quicker than it’s commanding officer, John Northcott, would have believed possible. The Japanese blockade was very determined around Australia, but one fact was clear; whenever the numerically-weak Royal Navy put together a convoy-escort force, the Japanese had no hope whatever of sinking her. Nearly a thousand Firefly tanks had been delivered from America, enough to rearm the Australians with proper tanks.

Major General Northcott peered down at the satellite map. The orbital reconnaissance wasn’t complete, according to the future personnel, but it was a dashed sight better than anything he’d seen in the Great War. The two Armoured Divisions, accompanied by lorry-loads of infantry, had finally been given the command to advance and wreck havoc in the Japanese rear. They’d been moving fast since then, along roads and across country they knew very well indeed, and the Japanese had no idea that they were coming.

They can probably see our dust trail, Northcott thought wryly. The convoy was raising enough dust to hide an entire… well, armoured division. He grinned; he didn’t know if he would ever be a Governor in this strange altered reality, but if he won the coming battle, then…

“Enemy ahead,” his radio buzzed. The handful of SAS men – one innovation from the future that he approved of – had been feeding him location details for the Japanese. It didn’t seem sporting, somehow; the Japanese didn’t stand a chance.

“All men,” he said, wishing that they’d had enough of the little radios to equip everyone with them. “Australia expects that each and every one of you will do their duty,” he said, and knew that it wasn’t enough. “The Japanese ahead are infesting our soil, infecting our land with their foul presence,” he said. “We are going to kill each and every one of them.”

The cheer, by rights, should have been heard in Tokyo. “Advance,” he bellowed, and his tank led the charge.

The runners he’d positioned in strategic locations hadn’t been able to get off a warning; the first that General Masaharu Homma knew about the Australian advance from the south was the sound of explosions ripping through the rear of the Japanese lines. As the sound mounted, and the desperate signals from the western prong grew as the jamming ended for a long moment, he knew that the battle was lost.

“Dig in,” he ordered, lifting his own pistol. An explosion sounded to the rear of his new rear and his spun around. Spearheaded by the tanks that had destroyed his tanks with no losses, Australian infantry were counterattacking, flushing Japanese soldiers from their foxholes and captured trenches with ease and skill. He cursed; the Japanese were caught in the open… and then the aircraft came back, bombing the Japanese positions with their deadly firebombs.

General Masaharu Homma had only seconds to know that the battle was lost… and then a FAE bomb swept him, his staff and their supplies into oblivion.