James Rosone - Battlefield Russia

Sergeant Lei spotted one of the other sergeants he had taken a liking to and ran up to him. “What happened, Yin?” Lei asked.

His friend looked dazed at first, unsure who had asked him the question. Then he slowly recognized his friend and fellow sergeant. “I think it was an American bomb or missile. They didn’t hit us directly, but the explosion was close. Oh God, I still have wounded soldiers in there. We need to get them help,” he replied, suddenly remembering the rest of the reality around him.

Before Lei could send his own men in to help, a group of medical soldiers ran past them into the bunker room, and their captain walked up to them both. “Sergeant Lei, get your men into your bunker room and prepare to repel the Americans,” he ordered. “We’ll handle Sergeant Yin’s men.” The captain had a concerned look on his face that betrayed his true feelings. He looked scared, like the rest of them.

“Yes, Sir!” shouted Lei, who then barked orders to his squad to man their positions.

Racing into their own bunker room, he saw the three soldiers he’d left on duty, looking out the gun slits with pairs of binoculars. When the rest of the squad ran in, they turned and excitedly explained what they were seeing, pointing at dozens upon dozens of enemy warships that had not been there even a few hours ago.

Grabbing one of the binoculars, Lei saw what looked like mini-aircraft carriers, with too many small craft to count circling around them in a holding pattern. Then he spotted several destroyers and cruisers, which were using their five-inch guns to fire directly on their positions. Hearing the roar of a jet engine, Lei looked up and saw an American war plane swoop in and release a pair of objects from under its wings. The payload struck the fortified positions near the Suao Lighthouse on the opposite side of the naval base and harbor. That had been one of their key strongpoints to keep the Americans from being able to capture and use the former Republic of China naval base, piers, and docking cranes.

Lei could smell the air, charged with burnt dirt, metal, cordite, and sulfur, wafting in through the gun slits. The atmosphere around them was already filled with the odor of battle and high explosives, a smell that would only grow thicker throughout the day. His nose also detected the putrid smell of burnt flesh, feces, and urine from those who had been killed and had lost the will to hold their bowels during their demise. Snapping out of the apocalyptic scene unfolding before them, Lei knew he had to get his men ready to defend their position.

“We need to get the guns ready at once!” he shouted. “Assistant gunners, make sure you have the extra barrels ready to swap out when the time comes. Also, make sure you have enough water nearby to help keep the barrels cool. They are going to heat up quickly, and we need to make sure we don’t melt them. Where’s my ammo runners?”

“Here, sergeant!” the trio shouted as they ran up to him and stood at attention, waiting for his next set of orders.

“Get the ammo cart and grab four more boxes of ammo for the Hua Qing. I want two extra boxes next to each of the guns! Understood?”

“Yes, Sir,” they replied and ran out to grab the extra ammo.

Taking a moment to survey his position, Lei felt confident about their chances. His bunker room was six meters wide and ten meters in length, with ten meters of rock between them and the next bunker room. To their front, the gun slits looked like sideways Vs, opening the aperture of the gun slit further away from the opening; this provided the gunners with as much protection as possible from the outside and gave them exceptional fields of fire and the ability to raise or lower the angle of their fire, depending on where the enemy was.

It also had a wall that divided the room in half, to help ensure that a single rocket, missile, or cannon round wouldn’t kill everyone in the bunker with one lucky hit. Inside the bunker, they had two of the coveted Hua Qing miniguns. The guns were electrically run six-barrel killing machines. Sergeant Lei had been told that they were a knockoff version of a similar gun system the Americans used. Because of the incredible rate of fire, each of these weapons had a five-hundred-pound wooden crate/ammo box sitting next to it, which were self-designed by the PLA soldiers who would be manning and using them in the bunker complexes.

Each of these boxes of ammo had fifty 100-round belts attached to them, giving the gunner 5,000 rounds before they needed to swap out ammo boxes. Outside of the bunker complex, this little idea of stringing that many belts of ammo together would never work, but for their purposes, it was brilliant. The commander of their bunker complex had considered the idea important enough to share with the rest of the island defenses, which definitely said something.

They also had two W-85 heavy machine guns, which fired 12.7×108mm rounds, similar to the American M2 .50-caliber machine gun. Between these four killing machines, Sergeant Lei was confident his twelve-man squad would be able to prevent the Americans from successfully landing at the portion of the coast they were designated to protect. He just hoped the other areas would be equally protected.

Lei’s biggest concern, since they hadn’t practiced for it in any of their training drills due to the cost of ammunition, was making sure they would be able get rid of the sheer volume of spent shell casings these four machine guns were going to create. The bunker had two slits in the floor next to the outer wall, which had been cut in the rock on each side of the bunker for this purpose. The goal of these fixed positions was to be able to fight in them for a long time. Knowing that, the engineers designed a way to get rid of the brass casings as quickly as possible, so they wouldn’t clutter the floor up and make it nearly impossible to walk. Each of the guns had a trash can next to them and a flat metal shovel. One of the ammo carriers would also man the shovel and trash can. When the cans got full or there was a lull in the shooting, they would lug the trash can to the slit in the wall and dump the spent casings down it. The casings would then land outside the bunker and gather below to be picked up at a later date, assuming, of course, that they successfully repelled the Americans.

One of the soldiers backed away from the wall and put his binoculars down. He looked nervously at Lei. “This looks like it’s it,” he said, “the big invasion you and the captain talked about. That looks like a lot of enemy soldiers.” He motioned to the small landing craft still circling around their mother ships. “Do you think we can stop all of them?” he asked.

Sergeant Lei walked up to the young private and put his hand on the man's shoulder. “We’ll stop them,” he said, trying to display as much confidence as humanly possible. “You need to stay focused on doing your part. Don’t worry about what the others are saying or doing, just concentrate on your piece of the puzzle, and we’ll get through this. Besides, you’re the lucky soldier that gets to use the minigun.” His mouth curled up in a sarcastic half smile.

Unlike a lot of the PLA sergeants, Lei felt he could accomplish more with honey than vinegar. Maybe it was his small country villager attitude, but he seldom yelled at his soldiers unless they needed it. His squad, and a lot of the other members of his company, had taken an immediate liking to him. Not only was he a hero and good luck charm, but he was also a nice guy to be around.

“They’re heading to the shore now!” shouted one of the soldiers excitedly as they watched the smaller amphibious assault vehicles and troop landing ships begin to head toward the shore. Several of the destroyers fired smoke rounds into the village and port area just in front of the shoreline in an attempt to obscure their view of the landing.