[GZG] RE: [GZG Fiction] Rosado Beachhead

Rosado Beachhead

New Guardian Times, Rosado Beachhead, September 6th, 2196.

Beach landings are scheduled, they rival events like interstellar
anniversary festivals for the degree of detail put into the timetable,
the hours spent coordinating the timing, the months of preparation.
Without these efforts the chaos of a landing would degenerate into a
gridlocked catastrophe. Without the scheduling the disembarkation of
troops and the flow on to the beach would not mesh with anything near
the precision needed to minimise the loss of life. 

For any student of history, there is a basic recipe that is followed.
Some of the elements, usually from the lead forces, are designated the
task of assaulting and breaking through near shore enemy defences
quickly, pushing inland, and attacking obvious enemy strong points. As a
supplement, the plan typically calls for supporting units to drop inland
and attack gun positions from behind, hopefully simultaneously with the
first waves hitting the beach. 

>From the accounts of the action on previous enormous beachheads, it
sounds like it is quite a terrifying rush to be amongst an invasion of
such proportions when it is in full bloom. Maddeningly, last-minute
alterations to the arrangements meant I didn't arrive on this beachhead,
at Rosado, until the morning after the landing, after the first wave of
assault troops had hit the shore. 

What I found when I did eventually get there was an enormous landing
going as best as it could, but way off schedule. There were whole
strings of units that simply could not get past the beach. They were
pinned down by a wall of alien fire descending from the bluffs above the
beach. The troops couldn't penetrate beyond the brink of the water's
edge. The first waves had been stuck on the beach for hours, instead of
minutes, and only then got out by walking up behind tanks and APCs. The
vehicles filled with men and gear acted as a protective wall for the
strings of troops behind them. There was only so many times this routine
could be repeated however, before the beach was cut up so badly that
they could not continue. Grav vehicles would have had less impact on the
unstable sands, but they were working inland and couldn't be called back
for fear of exposing the whole force to enfilading attacks by the Krak
flowing from Rosado. 

I didn't even get off the barge for three hours. While it made a lovely
target it did at least present some cover from the constant rattle of
fire so I was fairly happy to sit in place. Finally the first crack in
the beach defences was accomplished by rounds of wet-navy gunfire. It
was a wonderful if awesome sound to hear them fire. The barge's
commander let me have a look through his scope and the sight was
amazing. The sharp edged angular bulk of a wet-navy cruiser pulled into
grounding depths firing point blank at the shore batteries, which
weren't going down without responding. It was as if two giants were
having a spitting contest. In the end our giant won. Once we got
official reports that the Krak's biggest emplacements were destroyed
notification we were on the move followed close behind. 

As the heaviest fire dwindled the ramp came down on our barge and we
splashed into the surf and onto the beach. As far as the eye could see
officers were organizing their troops and pushing them up the beach. The
Lieutenant in charge of the unit I was with quite matter of factly said
the only way out was just to keep going. It was costly at first, but
ultimately it was the only way. Pinned down on the beach in dug outs the
troops are out of action and of little use. Worse still they hold up all
behind them, and nothing is gained. 

This seemed to do the trick as the troops rose out of their hiding holes
and went through, accomplishing their landing. We lost a couple of
bodies, but the losses were astonishingly light given it was concluded
with every advantage on the enemy's side and every disadvantage on ours.
In the light of retrospection, we all acknowledge the feat as a miracle.

By the time we got off the beach the fiercest edge of the fighting had
moved a couple of kilometres inland. Just as we also prepared to move
off onto the coastal plain word came down to circle the remaining
machine-gun nests and take them from the rear. That done all that
remained on the beach was some occasional sniping, from some long range
vantage point far inland, and artillery fire. That and a gigantic and
pitiful slick of wreckage for five kilometres or more along the
shoreline. 

My eyes were drawn involuntarily to the path we had followed up from the
water's edge. They retraced our steps from the flooded foxholes urgently
excavated among the foam tongues of the breakers, up over the sand and
small, jumbled rocks that formed the bulk of the head of the beach. 

Sliding out further I could pick out the submerged hulks of dead tanks,
overturned landing craft, burned trucks and shattered grav sleds; the
pervasive scatter of pitifully lonesome personal belongings that were
strewn haphazardly across these bitter sands. Most overwhelming though
were the rows of bodies lying along the beach, some in body bags, but
most just under blankets or tarpaulins or sheets of cam netting, the
toes of their boats sticking out all in a line as if on some crazy
parade. Still other bodies lay uncollected, sprawling grotesquely in the
sand or laying half hidden, half exposed in the grass edging the dunes. 

Over all this death though was an increasing veneer of purposeful life.
Weary, but nevertheless intense men and women getting the site
organized, getting the vital supplies and the reinforcements moving more
over from the ships standing offshore. 

With the main landing over it now seemed to me a pure miracle that the
beach had been taken at all. Looking at the debris littering the beach
made clear the odds our troops had faced. Getting ashore had been as
likely as giving the great Centurian prize fighter Russ Manning a
whipping. There had been more enemy troops than we had in all our
assaults combined. Moreover, they were dug into positions they had been
working on for years; crossfire from all these sites, plus the many
hidden gun nests, covering every square centimetre of the beach. A
network of covered trenches meaning no alien had to expose themselves
moving from place to place. On one flank was a 30m bluff typical of the
cliffs of that part of the Binzert coast. On top of which was a great
reinforced gun emplacement, opening to the rear in the typical Krak
design, which made it very difficult for our wet-naval fire to crack
them. With this set-up they could enfilade the beach for the entire 10km
stretch of open sand.

The exits from the beach, the natural swales, had each been sown with
mines, barbed-wire entanglements, covered ditches, and flanking machine
gun nests. All in an effort to turn them into funnel-like traps. In the
one route most easily used by tracked and wheeled vehicles a deep
v-shaped ditch had been cut. This could not be crossed by ground contact
transports or foot until filled, though grav and GEV found it no
obstacle at all. This is probably why the entire beach was not cut up in
the same way. Along the flat right on the low-tide mark was a jumble of
concrete blocks and giant metal caltrops. While these were easily
blasted by our naval gunfire or by explosives set by service bots, or
engineers once they were ashore, the rubble and sharp edged metal
fragments left behind were an obstruction, though of much smaller scale,
in their own right. The Krak had tried laying some underwater barriers,
but our clearance bots had neutralised most of those in the hours
preceding the commencement of the invasion. 

And despite all this we still made it ashore, we still took the beach
and have made it onto the plain. Not least in part to the tireless
actions of the medical corp. They have attended the wounded as best they
humanly could under the circumstances. With troops falling dead even as
they stepped out of the landing craft, it was an enormous undertaking.
Not one of the men I spoke to however, admitted to being deterred
however, they are all keen to see it through, so fight we shall. Until
victory.

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