[FH] Breaking News - Chronicle of Operation Colossus 6-of-6

Closing thrusts in the east

While we were drawing back to the line in the west the forces in the
east were still trying desperately to stave off the final collapse of
the resistance in Ojika Jima, Tsuru and Yokaichi. South of the
settlements a combined New Israeli-Dutch relief force gathered for a
final breakthrough attempt. On the morning of the 22nd, General Levin
initiated an attack with all the precise planning and timing he is
renowned for. He sent the first of his two divisions north to the high
ground above Tsuru and the second to block the corridor the Krak's were
progressing down from Yokaichi. At the same time, a paratrooper force
was landed amongst the artillery. Their raid was a suicidal one, but it
ensured the destruction of the Krak guns and prevented them from
engaging the Dutch armour now moving on Yokaichi. Combined forces of
armour, paratroopers, infantry, artillery and engineers attacked the
alien salients from the front flanks and rear, effectively cutting them
off. The fighting was intense and awkward, as it sprawled across large
patches of fine sands and minefields. The worst of it lasted 31 hours.

While the relief force had successfully cut off and destroyed the Krak
forces outside Yokaichi they had failed to actually reach any of the
embattled settlements. The bulk of the alien units in those places
remained intact, though they were greatly reduced in number. Many had
been run forward to plug gaps the human assaults had opened.  There were
still sufficient numbers however to prevent the human units from
reaching the settlement walls. Recognising that their last hope lay with
direct assaults General Levin moved forward and personally lead the
attack on the forces circling Tsuru. He was immediately engaged in heavy
combat that stretched into the night. At 01:00 on the 23rd January the
Generals death was reported to the local HQ (now in Landon). At this
point Field Marshal Neve Steijns became the ranking officer in charge of
the assault. She continued directing the action, as best she could from
Landon, through the early hours of the morning. At 08:13 she received
news that the division attacking Tsuru had broken, the city's resistance
had collapsed and that the city had fallen to the Krak. At this point
she lost her nerve. She panicked and ordered all units in the area to
retreat back behind the local sections of the Margaritifer line. This
order effectively meant the defeat of the human forces in the Isthmus
and the end of the campaign.

It is probably a mark of how close the fight had been and how depleted
the alien forces were that the human retreat was not exploited by the
Krak command. There were a few forays, to pursue and destroy small
numbers of retreating human units, but largely the Krak forces
concentrated on pacifying the settlements and strengthening their own
side of the conflict zone. This is not to say the human losses weren't
staggering. Over the course of the last three weeks the Krak had fought
one of the largest and most heavily equipped human armies in history to
a standstill, leaving numerous points in the Isthmus dotted with
hundreds of burning or abandoned human vehicles. And all this from an
orbital landing.

By the 24th January the utter exhaustion that affected both sides was
undeniable and fighting drew to a close. We will never know for sure
exactly how many were wounded or died in this first xeno-campaign on
Mars. The estimates that are available suggest that 1,077, 847 human
combatants were killed, wounded or declared missing. The Krak are likely
to have lost as many as 300,000 dead and another 450,000 wounded. The
ESU alone lost over 50% of all their tanks located in the Sol system
during Operation Colossus. The days between the 3rd and 24th of January
2194 must surely be some of the bloodiest in human history.

Return to Nirgal

I had expected to stay with my tank crew for at least a few more days
after the unofficial ceasefire, thinking fighting may well erupt again.
However, it was not long into my lay over in Pikalevo that I began
feeling poorly. It started with mild, blotchy discolouration around a
small but deep cut I had received helping to rescue some wounded on the
withdrawal from the Huon Plains. I had caught myself on a ragged piece
of armour plate and while it was painful I had thought little of it
amongst the suffering of the burned and mutilated we were helping. The
doctors later told me that even if I had fussed over it, it's unlikely
we could have done anything to prevent what happened later. After the
blotches came a mild fever and nausea, which I rather shamefacedly put
down to a curry Todd had shouted me from a local street vendor. It
wasn't until my temperature soared and I went into convulsions that the
seriousness of my condition became apparent. Again I must thank the boys
from my tank. They physically carried me to the local hospital through
the press in the streets. I was diagnosed with Mars Fever; one among
thousands over the next few weeks. The same bacteria that had been such
a boon in terraforming were deadly if they penetrated an open wound.
Thanks largely to a lack of open conflict (until this latest action), a
wide spread vaccination program (and genetic engineering for some
multi-generation Martian families) few cases of Mars Fever had been seen
in over twenty years. It was back now though and with a vengeance. It
was particularly prevalent amongst those who had been given only low
grade vaccination shots (such as the imbedded media, who were not
expected to be in harms way to the same degree as a combatant) and those
who had also had little time to acclimate before coming under the stress
of the combat zone. I was informed I had the milder of the two variants.
The type A strain was so virulent that the patient's only chance of
survival was to return to the cutting edge medical facilities on Earth!
  (safely
 ensconced in decompression chambers) as quickly as possible. I asked if
that made sense for Martian born victims, wouldn't the increased gravity
present its own problems? I was politely informed that Martians don't
get type A. I wondered if Kra'Vak did. I then discovered that while type
B was not nearly as deadly as type A, it could still be fairly
incapacitating and I would be stuck on Mars for a long while to come. Me
and thousands of others by the sounds; that did little to comfort me. 

After a week in the wards at Pikalevo I was deemed well enough to travel
and shipped back to Nirgal. The boys had wished me well the day before,
they had been posted to one of the security points up on Vinogradov. As
I was no longer critical a bed on the CASEVAC VTOLs wasn't wasted on me
and I was jolted back across the Martian countryside in a converted
'Surveyor' ATV. My condition combined with the rough ride to give me
terrible motion sickness. I missed Jose's driving dreadfully.

My return to Nirgal was a little less splendid or mobile than my arrival
a few weeks before. My impression of the city was that it was emptier
and a lot more downcast. There were still uniformed people on the
streets, but they were fewer in number and often had casts, bandages or
crutches. It took another fortnight before I was released from hospital,
under strict instructions to return as an out patient every other day.
The plump proprietor of Margery's Bizarre welcomed me back and promptly
began fussing over me as if I had lost an arm and leg in some heroic
assault rather than suffer from low-grade Martian blood poisoning. Maybe
she had an inkling of just how long I would be in residence.

After a few more days of building my strength I set about compiling my
notes and writing up this saga. It was cathartic to have it out in text
not just in my head. It also served to stave off a potential drowning in
the copious supply of chicken and lentil soup that was being forced upon
me. 

I had originally intended to use my time in Nirgal to interview a range
of veterans and to chase up accounts of the action around the other
hotspots on the Isthmus. The anticipated objective of the exercise was
to try and coalesce the desperate parts into a single coherent
narrative. Alas my condition wasn't going to indulge me and I tired
quickly every time I ventured out. I did wile away a few days in the
library, plaza coffee shops and on the University lawns, chatting at
length with a lively mix of characters. Having heard what they had to
say I felt quite unequal to the task of capturing their version of the
heady weeks we had just survived. Accordingly, I have left it to others
to report on the fall of Severns, Shevchenko and the various naval
battles that took place far to the north of the melees I witnessed.
While I was unprepared for a full accounting I will recount a little of
what I learned, to highlight the fact that while I am deeply attached to
those I travelled with, the actions of others far removed were no less
heroic.

Severns falls

The Krak forces centred on Severns had consisted of eleven brigades. The
first four were mostly infantry and were permanently stationed along the
northern, suburban walls. Three of the remaining seven brigades were
mechanized and were largely restricted to the crater floor. Another
armoured brigade was allocated to the southern rim, which was not as
built up as the north; and the remaining armoured brigades were
stationed around the edges of the settlement, generally harassing the
walls and raiding specific sites as needed. A final drop-troop brigade
was summoned as needed and could be reliably found in the thick of the
urban fighting.

The Krak initially made contact with the settlement in the evening of
the 3rd of January. They slowly overwhelmed it the following three
weeks. The city's port was the last area to fall and that was abandoned
to the aliens on the 22nd. As was the case in the south of the Isthmus,
some of the heaviest fighting in Severns occurred late in the campaign.
On the morning of January 19, human forces (mainly Anglian and Euri)
shelled the city and made thrusts into central Severns, reoccupying
Government House. The RNACAF also made limited attacks on Krak airfields
in the area. Despite the spirited nature of the actions the air and
artillery strikes caused little real damage. Krak units from the
outlying brigades were scrambled to attack the human forces in the west
and along the southern wall. By the evening the Krak infantry had
secured all the northern gates to the city and the mechanized brigades
had encircled the human fighters in the southern suburbs.

On January 20th, the Krak counter attack began in earnest. The
drop-troop brigade completed the southern encirclement in the area
called "Ammo Hill" (the site of a particularly bloody skirmish). The
infantry brigades attacked the fortified positions around Government
House, recapturing it close to daybreak on the 21st. They then advanced
through the merchant warehouse district down towards the port. Having
torched much of the southern sector of Severns (and thereby dispatching
the fighters trapped there) the mechanised brigade moved along the broad
avenues in the southeast of the city to link up with the drop-troops. By
the evening, the mechanised brigades controlled much of the open ground
in and around Severns' main docks.

It was not a one sided fight however. The Human forces remaining in
Severns still amounted to 4 brigades, one of them the elite armoured 3rd
IFed brigade. This brigade caught a sizeable Krak infantry force on the
main northern road to the port that had been moving to reinforce the
units in the docks. The alien force was destroyed. The 3rd IFed brigade
moved from there to capture the heliport. A detachment (equipped with
light FSE-made APCs and Mistral-5 GMS/Ps) covered the operation by
engaging Krak MBTs bottled up in the squares and plazas to the west of
the heliport. The professional lethality of this unit is legendary and
rightly so. In this case it proved paramount as they immobilized the
alien enemy.

On the 22nd the remnants of the human forces all drew back to the area
around the heliport and docks. The 3rd IFed covered the Anglian
engineers as they destroyed the bridges and canal walls around the
heliport. The Euri's were tasked with destroying as much of the
infrastructure in the dockyards as possible, which they did, but at a
terrible cost. Only a single boat load escaped the docks. In contrast,
the majority of the troops holding the heliport were evacuated, though a
core group of the IFed remained behind to stave off the Krak until the
VTOLs were clear. They then planned to withdraw through the sewers to
the open land south and seaward of Severns and harass the Krak from
within. Only careful attention to troop and supply movements over the
coming months will show how successful they were.

War in the air and sea

During the course of the three weeks of intense conflict, the Kraks
demonstrated the crucial importance of EW superiority in modern
conflict. Their control of the airwaves gave their troops the ability to
thwart and harass the human forces with increased ease and to grant
themselves EW superiority over all fronts. This superiority complemented
the strategic effect of their initial invasion by facilitating
widespread tactical operations. 

In contrast, the human EW never managed to mount an effective attack. A
number of airwave denials were attempted, but as might be expected the
Krak were little affected by our crude attempts. Compared to their
mastery of EW it was as if a modern rifleman was being set up by a
medieval yokel with a pitch fork. 

The war at sea was not as unrestrained as it might have been. Movements
of both Krak and human vessels were often more to harass supply lines
and intimidate rather than direct assaults. Even those that did feature
intense fighting often began as a land combat that was pushed out onto
the water. This is not to say there were no notable naval engagements
during the course of Operation Colossus. There were at least ten major
battles on the waters around the Isthmus. I have already related the
battles on the Kolyma More and Xonak Daryâ on the 11th of January.
Another particularly fierce battle was that of the 13th when Europian
and Anglian vessels, patrolling in the Binzert Channel, were attacked by
Krak air and grav forces. Five human ships were lost, causing heavy
casualties, another was nearly sunk and twelve more were damaged. The
humans acquitted themselves admirably however and the numbers of large
grav vehicles in the area were so depleted that Canelli was not
threatened again during the course of the campaign. Other notable naval
actions occurred around Ariza and Al Jamsah. Deserving of particular
note was the unleashing of six Euri frogmen in Ariza harbour (they were
from the Jiangxi Division on secondment from the Huoxing fleet). Three
of them were captured (and probably slaughtered), but not before they
had disabled every Krak supply vessel in port, contaminated the Krak
supplies, and immobilised three squadrons of Krak medium tanks that were
sitting atop the harbour wall. This did a lot to weaken the Krak hold on
the island and ultimately laid the way for the Euri's to retake it,
forcing the aliens to abandon their positions there and retreat back
onto the mainland. 

Final words

I do not know if any will enjoy this rather long winded account of what
I saw. As I said at the start it has been years since I had to put my
rusty skills to the test. I feel compelled to admit that in many ways I
do not care if it fails to capture the Earth bound readership. In my
long weeks of convalescence it has been quite a relief to use this
article as an excuse to pour my nightmares out. To turn them this way
and that; and simply to report what happened. I owe the boys that much.
As such I am completely unrepentant for the sometimes sentimental or
indulgent tone.

I am not one for sentimentalising the military. Reverence without
question is a dangerous attitude for a society to have towards its
military, as many a petty dictator has proved. In my years as a war and
frontier correspondent I saw atrocities which have underlined how
nationalistic zeal can go badly awry. I have not seen that here. It has
not all been plain sailing, far from it, people from different nations
will inevitably scrap. But ultimately, in this our truly darkest hour to
date as a species, I have seen much to give me hope. So this is for the
boys in my tank, and the many thousands of men and women like them who
saw action these past months on Mars. This is my acknowledgement, my
salute to their valour, courage, humour and humanity. They have honoured
us with their sacrifice and humbled us with their commitment. May they
live to sleep in warm beds and dream SAMless dreams.

<End transmission>