A Mighty Endeavor (72 page)

The deafening roar of the fighting was supplemented by high-pitched metal squeals and the growl of an engine. A Japanese Chi-ha tank approached. Its green and orange-red paint seemed to blend in with the smoke and explosions around it. The tank fired its short-barrelled 57mm gun at the positions in front of it; the hull machine gun sprayed the area in general.

This was what tanks are supposed to do.
Mongkut knew that. They brought their gun up to close range so that they could combine a heavy shell with pinpoint accuracy. That helped the infantry cover the open ground and chew a hole through the defenses. He didn’t see where the first two or three shells went. He did see the one that exploded in the pit used by one of his Lewis guns. He saw something circling up through the air. For a moment, he thought it was part of the stricken Lewis gun. It landed not far from him. He saw it was a foot, still inside its regulation Thai Army boot.

The Chi-ha lurched and started to move towards the entrenchments. Mongkut saw brilliant flashes as rifle and machine gun rounds bounced off its armor. The tank seemed to ignore them. An explosion on the front of the tank seemed to push it backwards. One of the battalion’s 75mm infantry guns had waited for just the right moment to hit the tank from just the right angle. The Chi-ha stopped dead; burning furiously from the devastating shell hit that had torn its front open. Mongkut felt bitterly ashamed of what he had thought about the artillerymen just a few seconds earlier.

The Japanese infantry were still coming; still moving towards Mongkut and his men. He aimed again. This time, his bullet struck his target squarely in the chest. He could even see the little puff of dust from the front of the man’s jacket and the spray of blood behind him as it left his body. Incredibly, the man was still coming. Mongkut worked the bolt on his rifle and fired again. This time his target went down.

There was hardly any time or space left. A Japanese officer came straight at him, swinging his sword back in preparation for a deadly blow. Mongkut fired his rifle. He hit the Japanese officer in the shoulder for all the good that seemed to do. Then, he blocked the swing of the sword. The katana sheered deep into the wooden furniture of his rifle; he felt the shock as the blade bit home. Having blocked the swing, he thrust with his bayonet. Mongkut saw his victim run right onto the point. His arm was flung back. The katana flew through the air, and his hat was hurled high above his head. Mongkut saw a flash out of the comer of his eye. He had much more important things to worry about. The officer had doubled up around the point, fouling the bayonet and dragging it down. By then, Mongkut had another round in the chamber. The recoil as he fired it pulled the bayonet clear of the officer’s body.

The trench line was a primeval bloodbath. Japanese leaped into rifle pits and trenches. The fight was a brutal match of men in blood-splattered green or khaki gouging, clubbing and tearing at each other. One Japanese soldier had Corporal Pon down and was pounding at his face with his fist. Mongkut grabbed the Japanese by the neck and pulled him backwards, dragging him off the corporal. Another figure in jungle green swung at the Japanese with a meat cleaver and ripped open the man’s chest. Even through the dirt and blood, Mongkut recognized the battalion cook. There was no time to ask questions. The Japanese were everywhere. Every man was needed. The meat cleaver was designed for this kind of butchery.

Mongkut moved along the trench line, stabbing and battering anything not dark green. In this confined area, his rifle was useless. He had drawn his entrenching tool. Its weight and carefully sharpened edges provided a much better weapon. It crushed heads or sunk deep into chests. He swung blow after blow. It was now literally dripping with blood and things that Mongkut dared not name. By then, he had lost track of time and space. He didn’t know where he was or how long the fight in the trenches had been going on. All he knew was whether there was a khaki-clad target in front of him or whether it was time to go and find another one. He wasn’t even aware that his men had formed up behind him and were methodically sweeping their sector of the trenches clear.

Headquarters, 5th Motorized Infantry Division, Ban Dan Ky, French Indochina

General Nakamura took another long look at the map in his command tent.
It wasn’t supposed to be happening like this. Japanese willpower and fighting spirit always carried all before it.
The map was starting to show otherwise.

It wasn’t that the casualties had been much heavier than he had expected. The ground in front of the Thai positions was carpeted with Japanese dead, but the soldiers were expendable. They could be replaced by conscripts for the cost of a postage stamp. It was that the Thais hadn’t fled when the assault had reached their positions. This hadn’t happened before. A few bombs from some aircraft, a few rounds of artillery and a determined charge supported by a light tank or two would send the Chinese Army reeling backwards.

This time, his men were locked in battle in the defense lines against an enemy that would not give up. Several times, in several places, his infantry had broken through the defenses, only to find a Thai officer had grabbed a few men and assembled a blocking force. Cooks, clerks, truck drivers, messengers, anybody who could hold a weapon, had been thrown into the battle. That small group of men would hold back the breakthrough until a reserve force could arrive on the scene and drive his men back into the bloody swirling chaos of the trench-fighting.

“Sir, we need to commit the 21st Brigade right away.”

Major General Masao Watanabe, commander of the 21st Brigade, could envisage what was happening in the maelstrom that was engulfing Ridge 70 without being told the details. The whole of 9th Brigade was committed to the battle there. He doubted very much if anything was left of the 11th Regiment. That unit had spearheaded the assault and it had probably been cut to pieces. The survivors had probably made it to the Thai lines and died there, but they would have disabled the defenses long enough for 41st Regiment to get across no-man’s land with far less loss. It was probably 41st Regiment that was engaged in the bloody battle of attrition taking place up there now. Watanabe believed that if he could bring both the regiments of his 21st Brigade in a coordinated blow at the same sector of the line, they could smash right through.

“One more good, hard push will do it.”

Nakamura looked at the maps. He could see the same thing that Watanabe could. The Thai defenses on the ridge were bending under the ferocity of the Japanese assault, yet not yielding enough to allow the breakthrough he needed. On those grounds alone, hurling 21st Brigade into the battle on the ridge was a road to victory.

Yet, there were things worrying him about this battle. They didn’t end with the lack of any reserves. Most of the Thai artillery had stopped pounding the crossing areas and moved to supporting the infantry defenses. They still had heavy artillery that was concentrating on the Japanese batteries. Nakamura had heard the shells and seen the blast; they were 150mm guns at least. The Thais also had control of the air over the battlefield. Their aircraft were arriving in relays. As soon as one group had finished bombing and strafing, they would withdraw and another group take over. Their fighters had driven off the Japanese defenses and it would still be hours before reinforcements arrived.

There was another reason Nakamura hesitated to release 21st Brigade. The Thai position along Ridge 70 was anchored on the Mekong at one end and on a mass of high ground at the other. Much of the galling artillery fire slowly destroying the Japanese batteries was coming from that high ground. That implied more Thai troops up there. Nakamura had elected to ignore those hills when he launched his assault. The hills didn’t go anywhere; if he’d taken them, they’d simply expose a further stretch of the Mekong. He would have sacrificed much of his division simply to widen his hold on the river bank, leaving no reserves to exploit the crossing. To get anywhere, he had to take Ridge 70. But the Thais could use those hills to launch an attack on his right flank. If he committed 21st Brigade to the assault on Ridge 70 and that happened, they would roll up his entire division.

That was a prospect he could not accept.

Nakamura was in an agony of indecision. His only chance of breaking through was to throw 21st Brigade at the ridgeline; doing so left him wide open to the flanking attack he feared. Holding 21 st Brigade against that flanking attack would mean that the chance of a breakthrough on the ridge was seriously in doubt. His thought train was stopped in its tracks by a dreadful screaming wail. Nakamura knew what it was from the films he had seen of the fighting in Poland and France. There were dive bombers overhead. They were already in their near-vertical dives on his headquarters. Their engines and sirens howled as they dropped on their target. One thing the films had never made clear was just how devastating the sound of the dive bombers was to
those about to
be on
the receiving
end of
their
attack.

Vought V93SA Corsair, Over The Mekong River

“They’re down there.”

Wing Commander Fuen’s gunner/radio operator shouted the words through the speaking tube to his pilot. The snarl of the engine and the whistle of the wind through the struts and wires separating the wings of the biplane made communication between the crewmembers difficult. Fuen hadn’t thought of that when he had evolved the air-ground coordination now winning this war.

Fuen wasn’t quite sure what was down there; only that it was important in the eyes of the forward observer sitting on Hill 223. That was the key to the whole system. The ground observer was the final word on what targets should be attacked. The pilots did as they were told. That was why a Wing Commander was taking orders from a Flying Officer. That had been one of the hardest battles Fuen had fought, making pilots understand that for ground support to be effective, it had to be controlled from the ground.

Fuen speculated quickly on why the forward air controller had selected this particular target. The man was perfectly placed; if Fuen had designed this battlefield, he would have put Hill 223 exactly where it was. It commanded the stretch of the Mekong that was suitable for crossing and a wide swathe of the country to the north. Probably he had seen people going to and fro to mark a headquarters, or an artillery battery making practice on the Thai positions. Whatever the target was, it wouldn’t be that much longer.

It was time. He flipped his sirens on, then pulled the stick back and rolled in the classic wing-over into a vertical dive that was already becoming the trademark of the dive bomber. Behind him, each of the aircraft in his flight followed suit. They formed a long chain aimed at the target below. As it grew larger, Fuen saw that it wasn’t an artillery battery, even though nearly all the missions flown this day had been aimed at taking out the Japanese artillery. This one was just a collection of tents and vehicles.

A headquarters? Perhaps even THE headquarters?
Fuen had high hopes. The Japanese had been spoiled by China. Only now were they learning what it was like to fight under a sky dominated by hostile aircraft. They concealed their headquarters and other vital targets well against observation from ground but were careless about being seen from above.
Every army shouldfight at least one battle under hostile air attack.

The target was swelling fast. Fuen selected the largest group of tents. His bombsight was centered perfectly on them. A gentle press on the bomb release sent his six 50-kilogram bombs into the complex. By the time they hit, he was already hauling back on the control column, pulling out of the wild dive. He was skimming the jungle when he did so, moving fast from the pyre of smoke that marked the target.

There had been a loud bang during the dive; he thought his aircraft had been hit by gunfire. One of the wing struts had broken. The fabric around it was torn and flapping.
Not so good Still, we have to overfly the target on our way back to Nakhorn Phanom.
His flight around him, Fuen led the way back to the target. The four V93s swept over the base; their four forward-mounted machine guns raked the area. Fuen saw the great rising sun flag and another he couldn’t recognize still standing.
That has to change.
His machine guns riddled the flags and chopped down the pole they flew from. As they roared over the toppling pole, his rear gunner added another long burst to the mayhem below.

An hour later he was standing with a maintenance sergeant, looking at the damaged wing. The wing strut had broken up further and the fabric was a mess. “Must have caught a bullet.”

“Possibly. There might be another explanation.” The Sergeant spoke carefully, but damage like this was becoming more common each day. He believed his Wing Commander had to know that. “I think the structure of the wing failed first and that broke the wing strut. Not the other way around. The strain of all these dive bombing attacks is more than they were designed for.”

Fuen nodded. The V93 had never actually been designed as a dive bomber. They would have to serve that way though, until the promised American dive bombers arrived. “You may well be right. Fix it, Sergeant. The Army still needs us.”