Battlefield China

Chapter 10 Operation Sandman

Lieutenant Colonel Grant Johnson looked at the map one more time as his company commanders filtered into the meeting tent. The air was hot and stifling outside; the sun had broken through some of the morning clouds that had been shielding them from its bright rays. He lifted his coffee mug to his mouth, imbibing the warm liquid. “I don’t care how warm it is outside — coffee is supposed to be hot,” he thought.

Caffeine now on board, Johnson determined this was as good a time as any to get started. He cleared his throat to get their attention. “At ease. Take your seats. We have a lot to go over before the start of this next offensive.”

He turned the map board around to show them what he had been studying and to give the captains and senior NCOs a reference point to refer to while he spoke.

“The commanders from on high have decided that now is the time for us to launch our summer offensive. Some of our infantry units have pushed a handful of kilometers ahead of us and secured a crossing of the Songhua River nearly forty kilometers east of Harbin. Our objective is not Harbin — that’s going to be handled by the infantry. We’ve been tasked with going after the enemy armor force further to the south, between the cities of Harbin and Changchun.” He used his pointer a few times as he spoke to show their position in relation to where the enemy units were located.

“Right now, intelligence has the PLA 4th Armored Brigade here, roughly ten kilometers south of Harbin. They appear to be in a holding pattern, waiting to see where best to be deployed. Forty kilometers to the south, and just north of Changchun, is the PLA 8th Armored Brigade, along with the 68th Mechanized Infantry Brigade. What concerns us most, however, is the 46th Motorized Infantry Division, which is sixty-eight kilometers to the west of Changchun. If we make a move toward either of those armor brigades, that division could start heading our way.”

Captain Jason Diss raised his hand, and Lieutenant Colonel Johnson nodded to allow him to speak. “It sounds like we can handle the armor, but what kind of infantry support do we have to deal with the mechanized infantry we’re bound to run into?”

The others perked their heads up, interested to hear the answer.

“We have the 162nd Infantry Regiment that will be moving along with us,” Johnson answered. “They’re part of the Oregon National Guard. In addition to the guard unit, we’ll have the 3-16 AR with us. This’ll be a full 2nd Brigade Combat Team move, gentlemen—1BCT is being held in reserve in case we need them, and 3BCT will be to our right. This is going to be a tough fight, but I’m sure we’ll be able to handle it.”

He paused. “Now, our objective is simple. We’re to press the enemy until we obtain a breakthrough, and then drive fast and hard to the outskirts of Changchun. However, we are not going to pursue the enemy into the city. We aren’t going to do anything with the city except go around it. Once our infantry forces have caught up, they will encircle the city and deal with whatever enemy units are left.

“Then the Brigade CO wants us to head west. Our next waypoint is a city by the name of Shuangliao. Once there, we’ll rally up with the rest of the brigade, figure out what forces we have left, and collect up on our supplies before making our next push.

“If there are no further questions, then I want you guys to stick around and study the map a bit more. Make sure you plot down the various navigational waypoints and note all the call signs we’ll be using. As most of you know from our previous conversations and briefings, comms is about to get all sorts of screwed up in the next few days.”

Captain Diss and his first sergeant, Bo Adams, looked over the map and the rough distances they’d be traveling. It was a lot of ground to cover and most likely would result in a lot of enemy engagements. They were one brigade, going up against several PLA brigades. Besides this obvious challenge, it looked like it would be difficult to stay properly supplied — the farther out they went, the farther their supplies would have to stretch.

“Air cover is going to be an issue,” First Sergeant Adams stated.

“Right, but it doesn’t look like the enemy has a lot of air assets in the area to harass us with either,” Diss countered.

After spending twenty minutes looking everything over and marking up their own maps, the two of them headed back to their company area to get the rest of the guys ready.

“What’s the main priority you have for me, Sir?” asked First Sergeant Bo Adams as the two of them walked toward their bivouac site.

First Sergeant Bo Adams was new to the company. Diss’s last first sergeant had died in the Battle of Kursk, so he had been without one for a few weeks. Captain Diss had already decided that Bo was a decent enough guy. He hailed from the backwoods of Mississippi and was no stranger to roughing it. He’d hold things together in the company, and that was all Diss wanted.

Captain Diss thought about Adams’s question for a minute. “I think the most important thing, Top, is making sure our supply lines are keeping up with us, and that they know where we are. We’re going to burn through a lot of ammo, and we can’t be running out,” he asserted. “Next, stay on top of casualties…we’re bound to take `em. Focus on the ones that can make it, and mark the ones that can’t. Either we’ll come back for them, or Mortuary Affairs will get to them at some point.”

“Copy that, Captain. I’ll make sure we stay on top of those issues. If I need anything else, you want me to go through you or the XO?” he asked.

“Go through me unless I tell you to go through the XO. If things get hairy, that could happen, but let’s not start out that way,” Diss replied.

First Sergeant Adams nodded and walked off to get his own vehicle and troopers situated.

Captain Diss took a few minutes with his platoon leaders and made sure they knew the big picture of what was happening, as well as how and why. When they broke up a few minutes later, they soberly headed back to their platoons to get their own men ready. Tomorrow was going to be a busy day for them all.

The following morning, Captain Diss stood next to the right side of his tank, Warhorse, admiring the sunrise. He thought about the juxtaposition between the beauty before him and the death and destruction that was about to be unleashed.

A voice suddenly intruded in on his thoughts. “Are we good to go, Captain?” inquired his gunner, Sergeant Jesus Cortez. Cortez had been a driver on one of his other tanks four months ago. After continued attrition, he’d been promoted to gunner and taken over for Staff Sergeant Dakota Winters when Winters had taken command of his own tank.

Diss smiled, his way of offering an olive branch to the newbie. “Yup,” he answered.

Cortez nodded and, without any further hesitation, climbed up the side of the tank and through the hatch. Diss followed suit.

Despite the fact that he was working with a new gunner, Captain Diss and his team functioned like a well-oiled machine as they followed their training to complete the necessary checks before the coming battle. Before long, all crewmembers of Warhorse had reported ready, and Diss had moved on to checking on the rest of the company.

Everyone called in Redcon One and acknowledged the standard order to begin in a wedge formation, with Blue Platoon in the middle. Diss noticed that the young and previously overly zealous Lieutenant Spade was much more subdued this time around; more than likely, the Battle of Kursk had eroded some of his enthusiasm for combat. Word from the guys was that he had turned into a good combat commander after all.

“If losses stay high, he’ll have his own company to command soon enough,” thought Captain Diss.

“Roger, Mustangs, begin your movement,” said Captain Diss, changing his focus back to what was in front of them.

The platoon of tanks gathered into formation and began their journey. Near the small village of Xindianzhen, they expected to find multiple pontoon bridges that had been set up by the engineers to cross the Songhua River, a formidable body of water and one of China’s longest rivers.

As anticipated, when they reached the banks, the engineers guided the tanks across, one at a time. Each tank slowly crossed the first part of the pontoon, sinking into the water until it settled and then rose again as it moved its way across the bridge. With four bridges set up, Diss was able to get one full platoon across at a time.

It took them nearly twenty minutes to get his company to the other side. Once that was completed, they all moved forward half a kilometer and took up a defensive position while they waited for the rest of their battalion to catch up. In the meantime, refuelers drove by and continued to top off their tanks and the other vehicles as they showed up. An hour after Captain Diss’s unit had set up their defensive position, they got word that their battalion had fully crossed, and the other tanks were in the process of topping off their own fuel tanks before they moved forward.

Captain Diss reviewed his map while they waited. They had probably close to a hundred kilometers of terrain to cross before they would start to run into any PLA forces. Their last intelligence report was from a small reconnaissance unit screening for the larger brigade of tanks nearby. It was as if someone above them was moving the chess pieces on the board in anticipation of a much larger battle.

“I suppose that’s what the men with the stars on their collars do,” Diss mused.

The radio in their CVC chirped with the voice of the battalion commander. “All Mustang elements, move out. Begin moving in diamond formation.”

Diss depressed his own talk button, adding, “You heard the man. It’s time to earn our pay. I want everyone on the move, heads on a swivel. You see a target, call it out ASAP.”

Warhorse lurched forward as they took up their position in the formation. Sergeant Cortez, his gunner, searched the horizon for potential targets. Diss reached up and popped his commander’s hatch open, lifting it up on the spring and locking it in place. He then used his hands to pull himself up so he could stand in the hatch with a much better view of the terrain they were heading into.

Captain Diss tried not to dwell on the losses they had taken up to this point or the wasted opportunities of the past. They had finally been given permission to do what tankers do best, go kill other tanks and murder unguarded infantry. He nearly let out a sadistic laugh.

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning,” he thought with a smirk, remembering one of the lines from his favorite movie, Apocalypse Now.

His tank rumbled down the side of a two-lane road that was lined with trees, providing a semblance of cover. While he wanted his tanks to change into a single-file formation and use the trees for cover, he had a sick feeling that this ideally covered road was probably laced with tank-mines and other nasty surprises.

“No, we’ll stick to the more open ground, where we can clearly see what we’re driving into,” he resolved.

Lifting his binoculars to his eyes, he scanned the horizon several kilometers to their front, looking for anything out of the ordinary but spotting nothing. The only thing they had seen in the last thirty minutes was a lot of little kids and old men and women, standing outside their homes or near a road, just watching them drive by. Some waved and smiled at them; others stared daggers, aware that they were the enemy invading their homeland.

Nearly two hours had gone by since they’d crossed the pontoon bridge, and they were just now approaching their first major village, Bin'anzhen. It was a small village of maybe 15,000 people and sat at the crossroads of several major road junctions. Luckily for them, an advance party of military police had arrived ahead of them; MPs were staggered at different turns, bridges and roads to guide them through the village and back into the open fields that would lead them toward the enemy.

By then it was roughly 0900 hours. Their armored chariots rolled down one small road after another as they made their way out of the village. Many of the village inhabitants came out to see them, often lining the roads. Like earlier, some smiled and waved innocently enough. Others stared on in awe, and some oozed hatred at the sight of so many huge American battle tanks. These people had clearly never seen a tank up close, and the size, the creaking noises and the shaking of the ground beneath them gave testament to the awesome power these armored behemoths could project. In Diss’s mind, there really wasn’t anything close to being as impressive as the sight of several hundred main battle tanks rolling through your city in the middle of the morning. Still, Captain Diss made sure Sergeant Cortez was sitting in the gunner’s hatch with his hand on the crew-served weapon, ready in case they needed to use it.

Their next objective was the much larger city of Binzhouzhen, roughly sixty kilometers to the west. With the rest of his company now out of the small city, they resumed their diamond formation and again picked up speed. Despite the faster pace, everyone was on edge, maintaining a high level of vigilance as they moved through more and more farms and possible ambush points.

A squeak over the radio in Diss’s CVC helmet let him know someone was trying to break through on their coms. “Mustang Six, this is Darkhorse Six. How copy?” asked the voice, faint and a little garbled but still understandable. It must be their reconnaissance unit.

“Darkhorse Six, this is Mustang Six. I can’t hear you the best, but go ahead with your message,” replied Captain Diss. He shared a nervous glance with his gunner.

“We’re one kilometer from Binzhouzhen City. We’ve spotted multiple sapper units and missile teams set up on the northeast side of the city. We’re going to hit them with artillery. Recommend your unit advance on the city from the southeast side. Darkhorse Three spotted two T-08 IFVs near the edge of the city. Two kilometers to the southeast of the city, Darkhorse Three also spotted twelve Type 96 tanks, hull down with camouflage on top. How copy?”

Diss thought over his options. Missiles and sapper units awaited on the northern side of the city, and heavy armor on the southern side. He had to think a moment before he determined the best course of action.

“Well, we’re here to destroy tanks,” Diss finally decided. Knowing where the enemy tanks were would made it a lot easier to attack them. Plus, the last thing they wanted to do was run into was a swarm of antitank missiles and rockets that would force them to have to dismount their infantry.

He hit the reply button. “Darkhorse Six, this is Mustang Six. Good copy on the information. Mustang element will go after the T-96s on the southeastern side of the city. Proceed with artillery strike on missile and sapper units to the north. Out.”

Captain Diss switched over to the company net. “Attention all Mustangs, FRAGO follows: we’ve been given a heads-up by our recon guys on an enemy tank formation, approximately two kilometers to the southeast of our next waypoint. We’re going to change formation to a left-facing echelon formation. We’re looking for Type 96 tanks, hull down with camouflage on their turrets. If you spot one, identify it, pass it to the rest of the company, and engage it. Good hunting, Mustangs!”

Diss turned his attention to his crew next. “Cortez, when the shooting starts, I’m going to need you to identify and shoot. I’ll do my best to help when I can, but I’ve also got the rest of the company to manage, so you’re essentially going to have to run the gun for us, OK?” he asked.

“Roger that, Sir. I got it. Winters told me exactly what to expect and what to do. I can handle it,” he replied in a reassuring voice.

Diss took a minute to say a few words to his driver and loader, making sure they felt some love as well, then he switched over to talk with his platoon leaders. He wanted to make sure their platoons were falling in line with the new formation. They were less than four kilometers from making contact.

Less than twenty seconds later, the ground around their tank started to rattle. Then they heard the unmistakable crump, crump, crump of artillery rounds landing nearby. Loud pings and clangs rattled their ears as shrapnel bounced off their armor.

“Tanks to our left!” shouted Cortez. He turned the turret to line up with the target he had found.

Diss looked through his commander’s sight extension, trying to see what Cortez had found. “There you are,” he muttered under his breath as he watched the laser designator light up the turret.

“Tank, 3,100 meters to our nine o’clock. Sabot!” Cortez shouted in an excited voice.

“Sabot ready,” replied Specialist Trey Mann, the loader. He pulled up on the arming handle. They’d already been riding with a sabot round in the chamber.

“All Mustang elements, Type 96 tank identified to my nine o’clock. Identify your targets and fire at will!” shouted Captain Diss. Then he took a deep breath — they were about to go into battle with the People’s Liberation Army for the first time.

Finished with his company address, Diss shouted, "Fire!"

"On the way!" Sergeant Cortez yelled. The enemy tank had just crossed the 3,000-meter mark, the extent of their effective firing range, so he dutifully depressed the firing button.

BOOM!

The cannon fired, recoiling back inside the turret. The vehicle rocked slightly but kept right on charging toward the enemy.

Looking through his commander’s sight, Captain Diss watched their round slam right into the turret of the enemy tank, causing an epic explosion. Pulling the zoom out a bit on his sight, he saw round after round of his other tankers slam into the exposed turrets of the enemy tanks. Nearly every one of them scored a direct hit.

The three enemy tanks that had survived their first volley fired back. However, they were near the extent of their limited range, and all the rounds that came toward Diss and his soldiers either sailed past his tanks or bounced harmlessly off their superior armor.

Specialist Mann slammed another sabot round into the breach of the cannon and pulled up on the arming handle. “Up!” he yelled.

Delta Company’s tanks continued to rumble through the farm fields to the southeast of the city as they closed in on the enemy positions. “Missiles incoming!” shouted Cortez as their vehicle ran over a rough patch of land, jostling them around a bit.

“Black Six, this is Red Four. We’re spotting swarms of Red Arrow-12 AT missiles heading toward us from the city to our right flank,” explained Lieutenant Spade. “How do you want us to respond?”

“Crap, that’s the last thing we needed right now — antitank missiles,” Captain Diss murmured.

“All Mustangs, Red Four is reporting antitank missiles swarming us from the city on our right flank. I want everyone to activate your missile countermeasure devices and Trophy systems. Some of these missiles are going to get through the MCD, so let’s hope these Trophy systems are as good as the Israelis say they are. In the meantime, I want everyone to shift our movement further southwest into the enemy lines to give us some more distance from that city,” Captain Diss ordered.

Crump, crump, crump. Boom!

More explosions vibrated the ground beneath them, this time moving them so much that the company of tanks nearly veered directly into each other.

“ZBDs to our front! 2,200 meters!” shouted Sergeant Cortez. They were less than a thousand meters from the first line of enemy tanks they had wiped out earlier; now they were pressing into the second and third layer of enemy vehicles.

“Loader, HEAT!” shouted Diss. He zeroed in on the newest threat to his command.

Specialist Mann grabbed a round from a different stash this time, slamming it into the opening as fast as possible. “Up!” he yelled.

“HEAT ready!” shouted Cortez.

“Fire!” Diss shouted. Then he immediately began to look for other targets nearby.

“On the way!” Cortez exclaimed. The cannon fired again, and the cabin of the tank was filling with fumes.

“Incoming missile!” Diss shouted seconds after they had fired. He quickly reached over and flipped on the MCD and Trophy system.

“That missile’s gonna be close!” yelled Cortez. He grabbed desperately for something, anything, to brace for the impact.

Seconds later, the Trophy system activated, firing out its barrage of ball bearings at the incoming missile. BAM…the tank got peppered with shrapnel and pieces of the broken-up missile as its sheer velocity threw the remains of its shell into their armored hull.

“Wow, that Trophy system really works!” exclaimed Specialist Mann. He had the wide grin of a man who has been given a second chance at life.

Sergeant Cortez just shook his head, his face a little white from the near-death experience.

Captain Diss, unaware of his gunner’s ghostly appearance, said, “Take over, Cortez, I need to get back on the company net.” He looked at his video display of where his platoons were on the map.

“Red Four, this is Black Six,” Diss began. “Give me a status on that missile swarm that was headed your way.”

A couple of seconds went by before he heard a reply. “Black Six, this is Red Four. The MCD and Trophy system worked amazingly. I lost Red Three, but he was the only one to have taken a hit out of what had to be ten or more missiles fired at us.”

“Good copy, Black Six, out.”

Next, Captain Diss called out to his FIST team for help. “Black Eight, this is Black Six. I need two fire missions. How copy?”

“Black Six, this is Black Eight. Go for first fire mission.”

“Fire mission, fire mission. Grid NC 7642 5642. One round, ground burst HE. Tanks and ZBDs hull down. Stand by for second fire mission. How copy?”

“Black Six, this is Black Eight. Good copy on first fire mission. Go for second mission.”

“Fire mission, fire mission, Grid NC 3253 7642. Six rounds, ground burst HE. PLA missile teams hunkered down at the edge of Hatong Expressway. How copy?”

“Black Six, stand by on that last fire mission.” A few minutes went by before the FIST team came back on. “I’m getting a negative approval on that last mission. It’s in a heavily populated civilian center. Can you readjust fire mission over?”

“Stand by, Black Eight,” replied Diss angrily.

He changed channels to his company net. “Red Four, this is Black Six. I need you to contact Black Eight and relay the coordinates you saw that enemy missile swarm originate from. Apparently, the coordinates I gave them are in a heavily populated civilian area. Get them a better grid, and lay four to six rounds on top of them. 1–5 and 1–9 Cav are following right behind us, and I don’t want them getting ambushed by that group that hit you. How copy?”

A couple of beeps could be heard on the SINCGARS radio before it synced. “Copy that, Black Six. I’ll get them for you. Out,” came the reply.

BOOM!

Their cannon recoiled once more as Sergeant Cortez continued to call out targets and Specialist Mann kept loading the gun.

Captain Diss continued the work of managing his platoons until he was stopped by an incoming call. “Black Six, this is Mustang Six. How copy?” It was his battalion commander, breaking his train of thought.

“Good copy. Send,” he replied. His mind was racing a million miles a minute just trying to keep track of his platoons and the artillery mission he had just called in. They were quickly approaching the second enemy line of defense.

“Good job on finding a way around Binzhouzhen and the ski resort,” Lieutenant Colonel Johnson praised him. “God only knows what the PLA had waiting for us along the highway. I’m going to need you to continue to scout us a way either back on the Tonga Highway or the expressway — whichever road you think will get us to our objective without taking a ton of losses. How copy, Black Six?”

“Good copy, Sir. I don’t suppose it’s possible to get a couple of scout vehicles sent up to my position?” Captain Diss asked.

“That’s a negative. Scout units are further to our south and north, screening for us. This pocket of tanks and ZBDs your company engaged appear to be the only hostile units in our immediate area. Out.”

With his orders adjusted for the time being, Diss pulled up their navigation system and plotted in the new waypoints. Once they were entered, he sent them out to the rest of his platoons so they could sync their systems with his.

They were less than forty kilometers from the city of Harbin. As they got closer to the major population center, their battalion would again swing south to avoid civilians as they pressed southeast using the various Chinese highway and expressway systems. Then they’d race just northwest of Changchun, where they would again avoid the major city.

They stopped for several hours to refuel and rearm before pressing on again. Only this time, they broke west of the city until they came to the outskirts of Bayantalazhen. There they waited for the rest of the division to catch up before they started their next drive. That stretch would lead them around the Jinzhou-Fuxin Line, giving them a clear shot at Beijing.