Chapter 7: Chapter 7
The first major North American battle of World War III took place in British Columbia when the southward moving Chinese army met the piecemeal, ragtag, WestHem forces near the town of Terrace. Though there had been fighting on North American soil prior to Terrace, any military action that had taken place up to this point could not, in all fairness, be termed a battle. A rout would be a more accurate description. The Battle of Terrace was accorded with a name not for its glory, for it too was little better than a complete rout, but because it was the first time that a force in strength was able to engage the Chinese in anything more than a symbolic manner. Terrace, and its important bridgehead on the Skeena River, fell to the Chinese after less than eleven hours of desperate fighting, but this was ten hours more than any previous engagement had ever consumed. The WestHem forces, which had taken significant casualties in the battle, fell back bloodied and beaten to their next defensive position and began to ready themselves for another try the next day.
That was the beginning of the pattern that would develop over the next year. Throughout the spring and summer of 2013 the Chinese advanced steadily southward through Canada. They moved through the river valleys and lowlands, winding their spearhead this way and that, splitting into two or three spearheads when necessary, but steadily occupying the cities and towns between the ocean to the west and the Canadian Rockies to the east. At each mountain pass they left in their rear they would station a few battalions of reinforced infantry to guard against a flank attack from the other side. Mountain passes were easy to guard since they typically had only one road leading through them and were surrounded by impassable terrain. As the Chinese armies moved forward day by day, week by week, the WestHem forces tried to slow them down long enough for their own industries and armed forces to gear up for a counter-attack. This fighting withdrawal was nothing so organized as a trading space for time campaign such as the Soviets utilized in World War II. If the WestHem armor and infantry could keep the enemy from advancing more than twenty kilometers a day, if they could hold onto a bridgehead long enough to evacuate their own forces across it, if they lost less than a thousand tanks or less than ten thousand soldiers, then it was a considered a good day.
The Chinese enjoyed almost total air superiority both over the battlefield and for hundreds of kilometers beyond it. American-designed, Chinese-crewed AWACS aircraft would circle in overlapping coverage patterns a hundred miles behind the lines. Swarms of MiGs, F-15s, and F-14s were constantly aloft, just waiting for an attempt by WestHem to penetrate their airspace. Any WestHem pilot flying into Chinese territory was engaging in a sortie that was just one step above a suicide mission. Any airfield that WestHem air forces tried to set up was ruthlessly bombed until nothing but chunks of asphalt runway and the remains of burned out planes were left. Chinese attack aircraft would ceaselessly bomb the infantry troops at night, hitting them with cluster munitions and napalm. They would hit supply columns and convoys as they tried to move north to reinforce their beleaguered comrades. They would bomb bridges, both highway and railroad using crude, free-fall iron bombs that nevertheless hit with amazing accuracy. They would attack underground fuel storage depots with anti-runway bombs, burning up the precious petroleum needed to wage the war.
On the battlefield itself, the WestHem soldiers were having a very tough go. Chinese attack helicopters would sweep the battlefield in huge numbers, both before a battle and during it, blasting any armor or troops that were exposed to view. Chinese artillery would pound the WestHem infantry positions day and night using proximity-fused rounds that exploded ten meters above the ground, showering deadly fragments below. But it was the WestHem tank crews that were having the toughest go during these early battles.
Though the majority of the WestHem tanks were the M1-A4s, which were far superior to those the Chinese were using in terms of speed, maneuverability, gun accuracy, and armor, they were also hopelessly outnumbered. The WestHem tactic was the American tactic. The Americans had always been able to rely upon the greater range of their main guns to destroy enemy tanks before they even got close enough to fire back. It was a tactic that had worked well in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 when the enemy to friendly ratio had been closer to even and when the air superiority had been on the other foot. But in Canada the Chinese easily countered this advantage with sheer numbers. Each WestHem tank platoon stationed in the battle area, those that had survived the air attacks anyway, would find itself facing an entire battalion of fast moving Chinese tanks that would suddenly burst from cover and rush at them. The WestHem guns would roar in response, sending high-explosive rounds into their attackers and they would score hits, exploding the front ranks as they advanced. But it could never be enough. The loaders simply could not put fresh rounds in fast enough and the gunners could not acquire targets and shoot fast enough to stop them. If they did not disengage and pull back quickly, their positions would be overwhelmed and they would then be destroyed at close range by point-blank shots from the Chinese tanks.
Things appeared quite hopeless during these early days of the North American invasion. It seemed impossible to slow the Chinese enough to prevent them from reaching the central valley of California before American industry could produce enough armor and the WestHem armed forces could train enough soldiers to put up more than token resistance. Had the powers-that-be within the military command structure continued to blindly await more tanks, airplanes, and attack helicopters to use as counter-weapons, the war might very well have ended as the Asian Powers had planned. As it turned out however, the WestHems came up with an alternative. It was a device that could quickly, effectively destroy an onrushing tank from great range but that could easily be carried by a small team of soldiers in the field. It was a device that could be produced in large numbers, could be shipped by aircraft or train to the battle area, and that even the most moronic foot soldier could be trained to use with deadly accuracy. It was the device most responsible for the meat-grinder that eventually developed in the Pacific Northwest: the AT-9 anti-tank missile.
The AT-9 consisted of a shoulder-fired launcher with both an optical and an infrared sight that could direct a targeting laser onto an enemy tank or APC from more than five miles away, day or night, through clear, hazy, or smoky conditions. The launcher was only four feet in length, nine inches in diameter, and weighed less than twenty pounds, significantly less than a squad automatic weapon. The warheads were rocket-powered, laser-guided, shaped high-explosive charges with a range of nearly four miles and the ability to steer back and forth in flight as their target, and the targeting laser resting on it by the gunner, moved. Each warhead weighed only twenty pounds. This meant that the typical platoon of infantry designated as an anti-tank platoon could carry more than a hundred warheads and ten launchers to a piece of high ground overlooking the avenue of attack and wreck havoc on the Chinese armor when it broke from cover. When the AT-9s began to appear on the battlefield in large numbers, the rate of advance of the Chinese slowed dramatically, sometimes to less than three kilometers per day. Their commanders were forced to throw more of their tanks into each attack, taking frightful losses, in exchange for each one of those kilometers.
But the Chinese, with their unbreakable supply line and their staggering numerical advantage in all manner of war materials, continued southward regardless of the high losses. Though slowed, they could not be stopped, not completely, and day by day they drew closer and closer to the US border. It was during this portion of the war that bombs began to fall on American cities for the first time in history as the Chinese sent waves of strategic bombers after the factories that were producing war material and after the transportation network that delivered them. Aircraft factories in Seattle were hit. Automobile factories in Detroit, which were now producing armor, were hit. Bridges, rail yards, fuel storage facilities, and anything else even remotely of military value that was located anywhere in range of the Chinese planes was a potential target. Civil defense became not just a quaint concept that was taught in school and listed in the front of the telephone book, but an actual life or death concern. The production of anti-air defense weapons, something that the American armed forces were woefully short on, became a major priority.
On September 2, 2013, the Chinese battled their way through heavy defenses and swarms of AT-9 missiles and took the city of Vancouver, British Columbia. Two days later, despite nearly fanatical resistance by the WestHem forces, they crossed the northern border at Bellingham, Washington, and invaded the continental United States. Once in the state of Washington, the terrain in which to operate was both wider and flatter, with much more maneuverable real estate between the Cascades and the ocean. This made for a much larger scale to the battles and the advancement of the Chinese was slowed even further becoming more costly both in terms of tanks and soldiers. Subsequently, the WestHem troops, those still alive since the beginning, were now battle-hardened veterans with firm chains of command. They had learned from their year of retreat and were much more effective in impeding each new attack and limiting its effectiveness. They had learned just when and how to best blunt the onrushing tanks and they had learned just when they needed to pull back to safer positions. For the first time the WestHem command began to feel that they just might be able to stop the Chinese and keep the majority of the United States in their own hands.
But, though they were taking heavy losses, the Chinese pushed onward, moving further and further south. Hundreds of their armored vehicles were blown to pieces each day. Thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of their soldiers were killed in each new attack. But they maintained air superiority over the battlefield and, perhaps more importantly, they maintained the momentum. Their supply of manpower and equipment seemed unlimited. Fresh troops, fuel, vehicles, and supplies continued to come across the Bering Sea and down the coast to reinforce them. Seattle fell and then Tacoma and then Olympia, some of the citizens of these cities fleeing ahead of the fighting, many others choosing to stay under Chinese occupation.
As the Chinese began to approach the Oregon border, WestHem began to entrench troops along the south bank of the Columbia River, which formed that border. They stopped reinforcing their holding forces at the front as heavily as they had been and instead installed tank divisions and infantry divisions on ever piece of ground overlooking the wide river along a two hundred mile length of it. They stockpiled heavy artillery weapons and rocket launchers behind this. They wired every bridge that crossed the river with explosives. And they waited, knowing that the mighty Columbia would present a formidable obstacle.
The Battle of Portland officially began on January 12, 2014 with the retreat of the holding forces from the area north of Vancouver, Washington, a suburb of Portland. For forty-eight hours they streamed across every available bridge, a constant line of tanks, APC's, half-tracks, and trucks overfilled with bloodied WestHem soldiers. The Chinese forces, counting on capturing the Columbia bridgeheads intact, did not bomb the bridges to prevent this retreat but they did ceaselessly harass the columns themselves from the air, strafing them with planes and helicopters. When artillery shells began to fall on the south side of the river, indicating that the push for Portland and the lands south of the river was imminent, the WestHem forces detonated the bridges, sending them crashing into the water. This regretfully trapped thousands of their own men and machines on the wrong side but did insure that the enemy would not have an easy crossing.
For the next two days the Chinese artillery pounded the entrenched WestHem forces day and night, hour after hour. They unleashed thousands of tons of bombs and hundreds of thousands of gallons of napalm onto the hillsides. And then, on January 17, they attempted a river crossing in four places around the Portland area, using massed amphibious tanks and APC's supported by conventional tanks dug in on the Washington side of the river. Ignoring the support armor the WestHems concentrated their fire on the amphibious units, sending a wall of steel and explosives at them. The slow-moving armored vehicles that had been so effective in securing previous bridgeheads were slaughtered, most before they even reached the middle of their journey. Tanks and APC's, lumbering along in the choppy, icy waters exploded and sank to the bottom in such numbers that navigation of the river would be impossible on that stretch for long after the fighting stopped. If any Chinese armor did make it to the other side, tanks dug in on the opposite bank quickly and efficiently dispatched them. After three furious hours the Chinese were forced to abandon their attempt. For the first time in the war, an Asian Powers' advance had been successfully halted in place.
For the next three weeks the Chinese tried again and again to breach the Columbia. Each time they hurled more armor into the river and each time that armor was annihilated by a fury of AT-9 missiles and anti-tank rounds. After losing more than eight thousand vehicles and more than a hundred thousand men, the Chinese were forced to abandon their drive to the south. Portland, though blasted, bombed, devoid of power, water, and most of its citizens, would remain in WestHem hands.
The Chinese high command would be forced to quickly develop a new order of battle for seizing the American oil fields. Determined not to lose the initiative, they left a large force dug in along the Columbia to prevent a reverse crossing by the WestHem forces and they then shifted the bulk of their army back northward to Seattle to prepare to open a new front.
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