[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

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.