"Military Region Commander, the staff has been informed of your return and is ready to brief you. Would you like to hear the briefing?"
The staff major on the other end of the line was a clever, smooth-talking Nanjing graduate. General Luo Shuren declined the offer, then asked for his chief of staff. For a moment, Luo listened to the faint pandemonium of the staff, then the familiar, calm and collected voice of his chief of staff, Nie Zhen.
"Nie, scratch the formal briefing. I'm about to have dinner in my office. Could you come over and give me a quick update while I eat?" Although the general understood the value of ceremony and personal control, at the moment, the staff was nearly swamped with running a full-scale blitzkrieg involving a quarter-million Chinese combatants, and a break in their work would cost lives on the battlefield.
"Sure thing, boss."
Luo hung up the phone and absent-mindedly placed a piece of braised pork belly into his mouth, his accumulated thoughts overriding any pleasant tastes from what was normally his favorite dish.
He thought of his son, Peng-peng to himself and Yangwei, Colonel Luo Qipeng to his peers, Brigade Commander to his subordinates. His son was the newly appointed commander of a maneuver brigade in the Second Mechanized Corps, a youngish PLA colonel. Qipeng was the type of officer over whom the ladies in Beijing swooned--tall, handsome, yet gentlemanly and devoted, of undeniable Red nobility, yet humble and not at all corrupt. Shuren was terribly proud of his son, and although Qipeng was in his middle thirties, Shuren always thought of his as "the boy," or "my boy."
Qipeng was his only child. Shuren had gone to extremes to ensure there was no favortism, that Qipeng earned his own way. He could never be certain, of course, and no doubt the name had its effect--doubly so now that the old families were back in style again. But Shuren was determined not to behave like the patriarchs of so many political families, bashing down doors for their children. He was Luo Qipeng, after all, and the traditions of the Luo clan demanded that he make his own way in the world.
They had been Chinese nobility, if only of the second order, with estates not far from Shijiazhuang. Before the founding of New China, of course. Han service gentry, with traces of Manchu and Mongol nobility in their veins. At the triumphant end of the eighteenth century, a Luo had led a column under Fu Kangan at Lhasa and Kathmandu, where he had earned himself the hereditary title of Marquis. Then his child had lost an arm to the English in the first Opium War of 1841, but later had his revenge when his artillery batteries sank two gunboats at Tianjin in the second. In the long dark night for China that followed, one Luo, the shame of the family, served with Zuo Baogui in Gorguryo, only to be condemned for cowardice after the debacle at Seonghwan. But his son, Shuren's grandfather, avenged the family honor by personally routing the Qing forces at Wuchang, ending the cause of so much Chinese decreptitude. He later died at his post in the Sihang Warehouse, surrounded by dozens of Japanese bodies. His brother stood firm with his regiment in Changsha in 1939, and later led that regiment to repulse an entire Japanese division at the same city in 1941. The Luos had been there, always to serve China, whether as hypoxic garrison commanders in Tibet or as reformers in the officer corps and on their estates. Luos had become opium-addled to the point of death and struggled to rationalize modern capitalism. While some did their best to gamble away the family fortunes, others had counted Lu Xun and Mao Dun among their friends. It was a family full of all the contradictions of China, unified by a single name and the habits of wearing army uniforms.
After the Revolution, it had almost come to an end. Luo's father, Luo Xilin, had joined the Eight Route Army as an engineer captain, eager to build a new and better China. But the Revolution had not been so enthusiastic about the Luos. The gentry, progressive or regressive, were all oppressors of the workers and peasants. Making the situation worse, Luos appeared on both sides in the Civil War, with two cousins and Xilin's uncle serving under Chiang, while Xilin fought against the KMT as a military specialist and adviser to an illiterate division commander of more bravery than skill. Then Xilin had been allowed his own command in the Korean War, although his young wife, son, and mother remained hostages of the careful Maoists. Xilin fought like a savage, from the Yellow River to the Pearl River, from the Yalu to the Imjin. Not for Mao. And not for the Communist Party, although he was eventually admitted as a member. But for China.
Luo Shuren's father had looked sixty when he was in his early forties. The fighting had ruined his health, and only his strength of will kept him going through the first war and the second. He had entered Seoul as an infantry division commander, with fewer than two thousand able-bodied men left from the savage encirclement of the American Eighth Army. Korea left him a uniform full of medals over a chest full of scars; he joined the staff college. Then the Cultural Revolution came; the medals were stripped away and new scars were added. He died in a military sanatorium at Beidaihe in 1985. Shortly before his time came, his son had come in his dress uniform to visit him, with his own medals from Vietnam pinned up and his own three-year-old boy in tow. In the quiet of the of a general's sickroom, the old man had looked his son in the eyes and said, "I outlived that bastard. And China will outlive them all. Remember that. Your uniform is the uniform of China."
In the year after the suppressions in Beijing, Luo had found himself on an inspectorate tour that took him through Shijiazhuang. Hard drinking had become par for the course in the officer corps by then, and the officers with whom he was traveling were a particularly hard-drinking bunch. One morning while they snored into their hangovers, he had taken the staff car out to the farms where once his family estates had counted thousands of souls.
The great house was long gone, burned by the Japanese during the Second World War. The new farm buildings were nondescript barns, shacks and sheds of tin and cinder block. Shuren parked the car and walked into the newly harvested fields. From a low hill he could see the chronicle of his blood stretching brown and yellow and green over tens of gently rolling hectares. And he wept, taking off his hat. Not for the loss of land, nor because he wasn't called a marquis, even though in intimate moments he affectionately called Yangwei his marquess. Rather, he wept for China, without understanding himself. With blurred vision, he stared off into the distance where the fields met the vast, empty sky, caught up in its timelessness, suspecting that good men had always wept for China, that there was no choice, ever.
A knock at the door interrupted his state of reverie. Nie Zhen stepped in, an aura of urgency accompanying his precise steps. He watched the region commander eat, reckoning Shuren's mood by his mannerisms. The old man's table manners were normally very precise, but now he absentmindedly shoveled up chunks of pork and rice, simply fueling his body as though it were just another piece of military machinery. Shuren had come back from his visits to the forward army commanders with a tick of anxiety. Nie, however, remained unsure how much of it was genuine worry and how much of it was because he needed to personally accomplish an overwhelming number of tasks despite the support staff.
The modern battlefield was so complex it could break any commander who thought too much about it. Overall, the situation appeared extraordinarily favorable, especially in the west, in Tengfei's sector, but there were also potentially enormous difficulties, more of them each hour.
Ma Shiwen's army was having a difficult time. The 63rd Mechanized Group Army, originally designated to break through the other Korean-American army group west of Hyesan and roar down to the Sea of Japan, was so behind schedule that the attack plan might have to be changed midway through its execution--a monumental task in a peacetime exercise, to say nothing of an actual war. The North Korean remnants which were supposed to draw the majority of American firepower during the initial hours of the assault crossing had not even been able to accomplish that painful but easy task well enough.
Other difficulties, such as the speed with which units on both sides were essentially vaporized, and the tempo of movement, strained the troop control system at all command levels to the breaking point. While the other staff officers were surprised when updated mission objectives went out to units who were already far past them or already dead, Nie was strangely unruffled. It was only on a visceral level, somewhere deep in his gut, that he found the scale, speed, and ferocity of modern mechanized combat unnerving.
The region commander put down his chopsticks, a signal to start the briefing. Nie walked to the map.
"Tengfei's doing splendidly," Nie said, tapping the point at the deepening red arrows south of Anju. "The Koreans were too thin, the Americans too slow."
"Tengfei tells me that Hong's division is in a bad way," Shuren interjected. "Half of the division's combat power is either gone or so disorganized it's unusable." But the tone of genuine worry wasn't there yet. Shuren ate another piece of red-braised pork.
"Too much frontage," Nie said, "but we expected that. Hong has a thankless task, and the sacrifice appears to have paid off. His attacks fixed the western half of the American grouping." Nie traced his finger further south. "Overall, the 54th Group Army is ahead of schedule. Tengfei's got one forward detachment heading for the bridges at Sunchon, and another's turned east, running loose in the Korean rear. He's ready to introduce an independent tank regiment to coordinate with air assaults in seizing crossings over the Imjin River. Ping's division is up, and his lead regiments should be in contact in a few hours." Nie paused, coughed, continued. "The situation may not be clean enough for a peacetime exercise, but the key units are making it to their appointed places. Oh, and Mai has a plan for Kusong."
"I know," Shuren said, his voice temporarily dropping to a whisper. He shook his head, wearing a frankly baffled look. "Xiao Nie, I still think that entire affair..." then he shrugged, switching his mind back to concerns within his area of decision. "Tengfei's crisis is coming tonight. The Americans are going to hit him. I'm surprised they haven't already. If they just wait another two hours, Ping's 127th Division will have completed its march and passed into commitment. At that point, the Americans could punch all the way up the Supjung Reservoir and they'd only be caught in a trap by follow-on forces." Shuren plucked out a stray slice of carrot from the braised pork. "But the 127th must break out. Tengfei's extremely vulnerable as long as he's muddling through the commitment of a fresh division--it's a difficult function even in a peacetime exercise."
"Tengfei has already reported local counterattacks from the east against the flank of the 162nd Division."
"Great. I'll be delighted, as will Tengfei, if the Koreans and Americans continue with their tactical counterattacks. Let them piecemeal their combat power away. As long as they feel they're achieving little successes, it may blind them to the bigger picture." Shuren dropped his chopsticks onto the tray with a slight clatter. He stared up at the map with eyes focused like binoculars. "If I were the American corps commander," he said, "I wouldn't strike with anything less than a division reinforced with a brigade--or preferably two whole divisions." He picked up his chopsticks again. "Local counterattacks are ultimately indecisive. It will take a powerful blow to stop Tengfei now." Shuren scanned the known enemy positions. "If that blow doesn't arrive tonight, the Americans are fools, or amateurs." Shuren stared past the map for a moment. "Perhaps, Xiao Nie, we've overestimated the Americans all these years." Then his facial expression relaxed, a familiar signal to Nie to continue the briefing.
"In the extreme south of Korea, the 33rd Marine Army is approximately six hours behind schedule," Nie said. "The problem appears to be primarily terrain-associated. The Koreans have made very effective use of mines and obstacles along tactical directions that were already constricted. We've had to employ air assaults in a leapfrog fashion to break defensive positions from behind. The situation is basically under control, but we definitely overestimated our rate of advance in the south. Perhaps our ultimate advantage there has been the experiences culled from Uzbekistan in proper employment of helicopter-borne infantry."
"And the enemy forces there?"
"Tenacious. Very determined local resistance. It makes sense, as they're essentially fighting for the homeland. Their greatest weakness is insufficient firepower. The lack of roads across the DMZ restricts their relocation of forces and supplies south even worse than the amphibious supply chain hinders us. We're moving forward, they're attempting to move backwards. Also, Pan Huajian and the rest of military intelligence further confirm that the Koreans there have logistics problems."
"Similar to our own?"
"Remarkably so. Every one of our formations in contact is screaming for more tank main gun ammo, drone rockets, and artillery rounds. The rate of consumption seems almost impossible--ranging from three to six times what we projected, and probably just as bad for them. It appears we've even won several engagements via ramming. When both sides were out of ammo, it appears the defenders' nerves always ran out first."
"Our transport?"
Nie's back slumped almost imperceptibly, a reluctant shifting of the spine under an uncomfortable load. "We must find ways to reduce it's vulnerability," he answered. "Our major lines of communication have been hit repeatedly, and to serious effect, by enemy airpower. The organization of traffic is extremely difficult, and it's especially bad at the Yalu crossing sites."
Shuren stopped chewing. He looked troubled. "How bad?"
"Quantitatively? Acceptable thus far. Put over a longer period, our hauling capability could be... painfully weakened."
"Painfully?" Shuren repeated, smiling despite the grim news. "That's a rather theatrical expression on your lips, Xiao Nie."
Nie reddened. This war had surpassed the careful vocabulary of the General Staff Academy in its expressive demands. Raw numbers might have aided his effort at communications, but the battlefield reporting was uneven, and Nie could not trust all of it. Trained to report empirical data with unerring precision, he found himself struggling to report impressions, tonalities, and elusive feelings that insisted on their own importance now.
"Enemy airpower," Nie resumed, "has shown more resiliency than anticipated. While we did achieve several impressive initial success, the forces confronting the Japanese to the south appear to have bogged down, and the outcome of the air battle remains to be decided. If we achieve decisive air superiority within 48 hours from now, our capability to supply the ground offensive will remain at least barely adequate. Should the enemy intensify its deep strikes however on our support infrastructure, we will experience sustainment problems within three days." Nie sighed. "The chief of the rear services is going mad. He has the ammo and the fuel, as well as enough vehicles to move them in bulk. But linking them all up and getting things to the right time at the right place is proving almost impossible. Realistically, General Luo, if the first day is like this, while we're still on the plan..."
"And we'll continue to adhere to the plan," Shuren said firmly. "The tactical units and the formations can fight with what they have. The one thing we can't sacrifice, the one thing that is more precious than anything else, is time. This is the hour when plans come into their own."
Shuren sat erectly, but his voice became intimate and direct. "I couldn't change the plan now, no matter how badly I might want to. Oh, we can adjust details. But there's no time for, no possibility of anything greater." His eyes shone out of the darkness. "The speed of the thing, Xiao Nie. It makes Hitler's blitzkrieg look like a man in a wheelchair." Shuren paused for a sip of tea, but Nie knew from the intensity in Shuren's face that the old man didn't really taste it.
"Have pity on the commander without a good plan. Maintain the momentum now, the momentum of the plan. Don't let up. If the enemy has a plan, don't allow him time to begin its implementation. Make him react until his efforts grow so eccentric that he loses all unity in his conceptions. Ram your plan down his throat." Shuren settled back into his chair, smiling with sudden gentleness. "But I'm lecturing, and to you, of all people, my dear friend. Continue your briefing."
"Military Region Commander," Nie began. There was an uneasy stilted formality in his voice as he searched for the right tone. He had been caught off guard by the piercing phrase "dear friend". "I understand that your last stop was at Ma Shiwen's forward command post. Shall I nonetheless review the staff's view of the 63rd Group Army's situation?"
Shuren's face tensed into a frown. "Shiwen! You know, he's down there shouting at his staff at the top of his lungs. I don't really understand how it works myself. Most commanders only degrade the performance of their subordinates when they shout and shout. But Shiwen barks, and things happen--it's amazing. But I'm worried. A crisis over in Tengfei's sector could be locally contained. It is, in effect, built into the plan. But Shiwen has to come through. We must break through the American lines and advance down the eastern coast--trying to attack Seoul from the Pyongyang-Imjin axis will be impossible, given the heavy enemy defenses in that direction." Shuren finished the last of his pork and rice, and plucked up pieces of a hard-boiled quail egg hidden in the sauce. "We must break through in the center. I've given him permission to commit his second-echelon divisions tonight--we'll pile it on, if that's what it takes. Clearly, subletly doesn't work well with the Americans--such stubborn boys."
"I understand his crossing was tough." Nie made an empathetic expression.
Shuren shook his head grimly. "One of his divisions lost an entire regiment in twenty minutes--all that remained were stray vehicles and empty-handed commanders." Then his expression firmed up again. "But he got across. And--he turned the Americans from the south. He caught an entire American brigade from the rear, pinned them against their own minefields and barriers, and finished them. And, better yet, Shiwen's moving now. But the tempo isn't anything close to what we need--I don't sense a breakthrough situation. We have the Americans reeling back, but they've maintained a frustratingly good order; there's always another defensive position over the next hill. If Shiwen doesn't do better tonight and tomorrow morning, we may be forced to use the Second Mechanized Corps to create the breakthrough the plan calls for them to exploit. I don't like it."
"Extrapolating from our reported losses and expenditures, the correlation of forces and means is actually increasingly favorable in the 63rd Group Army's sector," Nie reported. From the staff's perspective, the Americans were hanging on by sheer determination and could not withstand another such day's attrition.
Shuren reached for a cigarette. Nie raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. Shuren never smoked in his presence, out of consideration for Nie's asthma. But, in a moment, Nie registered the action as a reflection of the old man's intense concern for the 63rd Group Army.
"In any case," Shuren said, puffing a glow onto the tip of the cigarette, "Shiwen has to push through them by noon tomorrow. We must present the enemy's operational headquarters with a situation of multiple crises and apparent collapse that prevents them from implementing a truly appropriate response. We need to fragment the enemy's alliance into a conflicting set of national concerns that leads each national commander to actions or inactions based upon his own parochial perspective. And we need to get onto South Korean soil as fast as we can, in order to prevent nuclear weapons from looking attractive."
"Huajian still reports no sign of enemy preparations for nuclearization," Nie said.
"Keep watching it, closely. Make sure he understands. Meanwhile, Shiwen has to keep on pressuring the Americans all night--if it means committing his last tank, so be it. I've never been comfortable with night operations. I have no doubt that our enemies can see us more clearly than we can see them, but it would be fatal to stop and allow them breathing room. We must rely on shock, speed, and, ultimately, if no alternative presents itself, simply grinding down the enemy at the point of decision." Shuren put out the cigarette. "But we must keep up and even accelerate the tempo of combat operations. Think about it--the Americans have been fighting all day. Now we'll make them fight all night, against fresh forces. And we'll keep hitting them throughout the morning. If their nerve doesn't run out, their ammunition will."
But Nie detected an undertone of doubt in Shuren's voice. The theater commander was normally a powerful presence, and it was odd, troubling, to hear even a slight wavering in the pitch.
"Shiwen... he has got to make the hole," Shuren said. "He must do it." Shuren's teeth were slightly parted, and he breathed through his mouth in the intensity of the moment. "And what about the decoy air assaults?"
"They've gone in," Nie said. "We had to go in with all light forces, though. The enemy air defense kept us from introducing tracked vehicles and the full range of air-mechanized support. But our troops are on the ground in Pyongyang and Gumi. The commander of the airborne division is already celebrating."
Shuren nodded, slowly. "Good. I want the enemy to be looking very hard at those spots. I want him to panic, to become so obsessed by those assaults that he squanders his local reserves on both sides of the DMZ on their reduction. That way when the 33rd moves threatens Seoul from the south he will be forced to keep his strategic reserves south of the DMZ." Shuren looked at the map, then at Nie again. "I have never liked the idea of sacrificial operations, Xiao Nie. But if the Pyongyang and Gumi assaults do their jobs, we'll save far more, both in lives and in time, than we've lost." Shuren chuckled, bitterly and without humor. "It's a betrayal, of course. Sending in men who believe in the sacredness of their mission, who have no inkling that they're merely part of a deception op, most or all of whom will die wondering why the link-up force never arrived. I console myself that, if we move fast enough, we may get them out of there before they're all gone. But I don't even half believe it. I know I wouldn't sacrifice momentum to save those men." Then Shuren stood up, walked to the map and stared at the pale red dot over Gumi, now surrounded by a ring of blue. "But don't we all rationalize decisions that cause better men than ourselves to die? Really, it's a monstrous thing to be a commander." Then he sat down, and quietly said, "Odd that we should so love this work."
Nie sat down beside the old man and almost patted his forearm in condolence. He left his hand on the table. "The air assaults on the actual crossing sites will be triggered as soon as the 63rd Group Army reports a breakthrough. The enemy air defense remain a serious threat. But their missile consumption is very high, and the attrition rate between their air defense systems and our planes favors us. The in-flight losses incurred by our air assets ran just under seventeen percent today. They'll be lower tomorrow."
Shuren waved Nie's hand aside. "Radio electronic and cyber combat?"
"Impossible to tell the effects. Wang Hao's a busy man, though. The Ops Directorate insists he's jamming friendly nets, while Huajian complains that he's jamming too many enemy nets of intelligence value. Then the Ops team comes back and asks why more jamming and hacking operations aren't being conducted. The anti-fire-support mission appears highly successful, but we have no tool for really measuring victory in the cyberspace or the electromagnetic spectrum. After all is said and done, though, Huajian's a believer. The Second Bureau's position is that we have meaningfully impaired the enemy's ability to direct fire-support on the battlefield."
"Got it. I'm still waiting for the movement of the enemy's northern operational reserves to strike against Tengfei. As soon as that finishes, we hit their command and control, hard, to keep them from calling those troops back. Don't let Wang Hao mess that up." Shuren reached for another cigarette, then stopped. "What about air-battle management? Every single one of the army commanders was complaining about it. Of course, I realize they're bound to complain, but it looks like we have some genuine problems."
Nie sighed and stood up, walking towards the four dots on the wall map that marked friendly Chinese airbases. "Yeah, it is a bit off track. The air force is struggling to assess the damage we've inflicted, then retarget aircraft. Even with the wideband network, the command and control is overwhelmed. The air force reps are trying to put a good face on it, but I think there's a lot of guesswork going into their computer models. Overall, I don't think they're employing their available sorties efficiently."
"Of course, we're speaking of relative efficiency. The battlefield is on the edge of chaos--think of what it must be like for the infantryman out there in the dark, Xiao Nie, and keep urging on our aviators."
Shuren stood up and strode next to Nie. "So... what's your overall assessment of the troop control situation? From your own perspective, please."
"Better than I feared," Nie said. "We can communicate, although we're often forced to rely on nonprimary means. The confusion on the ground is intense. You know our antenna farm was hit earlier? We were at minimum bandwidth for over an hour. That didn't help the automated databases. But we're back up to ninety percent now."
"They'll hit the bunker again," Shuren said, "and again. You'll be able to measure their desperation by how often the walls shake around you."
Nie nodded. He felt tired, exhausted, yet there was so much waiting to be done. The smoke from Shuren's extinguished cigarette snaked into his lungs, and he unconsciously touched the pocket where he kept his inhaler.
"Overall," Shuren said, "we've had better than average luck. And while we all try to not to make plans that rely on luck, we should know it when it touches us." Shuren nodded at the map, having worked his way through the mental fog of war to a level of reasonable clarity. "The Central Military Commission is delighted with us." Shuren paused for a moment, mouth tightening with worry. "Yes, we've been lucky. But tonight will be our first big test. Tonight, and then tomorrow morning. If they piecemeal their counterattacks, and if Shiwen breaks through by noon, they won't stop us until we've got the entire Korean peninsula." Shuren smiled, looking at the Japanese islands. "And maybe not even then."
