The arrival of the Chinese forces had certainly changed the entire complexion of the battle here. Without this intervention, the 23rd of January would have likely been a victory romp to clear and hold the final objectives. Now it was something quite more. US forces assigned here had were limited, and no more were in theater, unless they came from the Baghdad area of operations. Yet General Bergman did have a little good news to end his briefing.
“SOUTHCOM has been informed that the Saudis are going to commit two more brigades to our operations here, the King Fah’ad Armored Brigade, and the 11th Mechanized Brigade. They are moving to Kuwait now, and should be coming up behind the Old Breed tomorrow morning. In that event, I will most likely commit those troops here, west of Basrah. Saudi’s can smell oil ten miles away, so we’ll let them sniff out those fields north of the river. When they get there, I want leathernecks standing on the bridges. Understood?”
The guttural cheer in the room said it was.
On the night of the 22nd, the Iraqi retreat from their disastrous stand in the Tuba Oil Fields sent most of the Andan Republican Guard Division into As Zubayr. A city of 370,000 people, it was so named because the famous companion of the Prophet Muhammed, Zubayr ibn al Awwam, was buried there, commander of the Radushin Army in the 7th Century. If he could have been there now, he might have wept to see the chaos and disorder of that retreat.
There would be a brief stand on the outskirts of the city, but the weight of the 1st USMC Division, now backed by two arriving Saudi brigades, was simply too much to stop. The retreat continued through the city, sparing the residents a devastating fight there as the Andan Division withdrew across the cultivated land outside Basrah. Some elements tried to cover the Basrah International Airport, but most took up positions along the Basrah Canal, that ran behind the airport southeast into the Saddah Marshes.
General Ayad was fortunate to have that division still at 60% strength after the retreat, and the men were disciplined enough to try and pull themselves together, particularly when he sent down good news—the Chinese had arrived. The leading elements of the 149th Motor Rifle Division had reached the Shatt al Arab, and Chinese Type-99 tanks were now near the As Sinbad Bridge, their long barrels looking strangely out of place near the Sinbad amusement Park.
This was one of the three bridges General Bergman had designated for capture, but it had not been possible to reach that area that night. The closest US unit was the Recon Squadron of 3rd BCT, Armored Cav, and it was about 12 kilometers to the southwest, approaching the Basrah airport. The Qarmat Ali was the water barrier the Marine General had planned to cross, and now it would be strongly defended by at least a full brigade of the 149th Division. That put the Nahr Umr Oil Fields out of easy reach, and it would not soon be added to the list of five fields the Coalition forces had already “liberated.”
That night the US had moved several battalions of the 82nd Airborne by helicopter to set up a blocking position at Al Qurna and Al Madinah on the Euphrates River to the north. That was just above the West Qurna Oil Field where the fighting was still going on in those pre-dawn hours. 2nd/325th Battalion of the Falcon Brigade landed in the heavily cultivated fields south of the Tigris, and the men moved up through the town of Ash Shahin towards the main bridge. The main segment of Al Qurna was on the north side of the river, and as the American paratroopers approached, they sent staff and HQ personnel of the 10th Armored Brigade into a hasty retreat across the bridge.
When the Paras came up to the bridge itself, they could see a lot of movement on the other side of the river. It was the Chendu Special Forces Brigade, a three battalion formation known as the “Leopards” that had spearheaded the road march south from Al Amara. So the US battalion set up defensive positions, informed Brigade of what they saw, and waited. They could still hear the sound of the big guns on the Abrams tanks where both Armored BCT’s were still fighting the Iraqi 10th Armored Brigade in the oil fields.
The only other bridge over the Euphrates was at Al Madinah about 15 kilometers west of Al Qurna, and as both bridges were blocked, the Iraqi forces in the oil fields now had nowhere to go. Their only recourse would be to withdraw towards the Shatt al Arab, which now carried the waters of both the Tigris and Euphrates after they met at Al Qurna. The other choice would be to fight and die there in that macabre landscape.
As the most Iraqis did not yet know the Chinese had arrived, they opted to head east for the Shatt. That basically ceded the valuable West Qurna Fields to the US, the greatest prize of the battle, with 15 billion barrels in reserves. The Big Red 1 had gotten there first, and if the Chinese wanted it back, they were now going to have to organize a cross river assault to get there.
To that end, units of the Iraqi 27th Motor Rifle Brigade had held out in Madinah just long enough for Chinese troops to arrive and find the bridge there still in friendly hands. They immediately sent the 8th Battalion of their 37th MR Division across, with a company of tanks. They were soon just a city block from the US forces, where the paratroops had been joined by two companies of the 1/18 Battalion of the Vanguard Brigade, 1st Infantry.
All that morning, more and more Chinese battalions arrived, covering all the ground north of the Euphrates between Al Madinah and Al Qurna. Others took a secondary road east of the Shatt al Arab, moving south. That line would put them between any enemy and the vast Majnoon Oil Field, making sure that would be kept from American hands.
As all these troops began to deploy, nobody fired any artillery on either side to indicate hostile intent. It was now a proverbial “Mexican Standoff,” but some decision had to be made about the battalions of the 82nd that had lifted in to the area just south of Al Qurna. As the Iraqis retreated from the oil fields, many went that way hoping to get to that bridge, and so now those paratroopers were cut off, and well behind the US main line, which was about 12 kilometers to the southwest. It was therefore decided to cede the bridge at Al Qurna, and strongpoint along a shorter line between the Euphrates in the northwest and the Shatt al Arab in the southeast.
2nd Armored BCT got that gig, with the 1st Armored BCT on their right, watching the Shatt al Arab to the south. So the Chinese got their bridgeheads over the rivers at Al Madinah and Al Qurna, but with those heavy US brigades in the front of them, they were not going any further. Both sides were now squaring off as night fell on the 23rd of January, and back in Washington and Beijing, men were leaning over map tables and reading the latest situation reports as the political leadership on both sides struggled to determine what to do next. The war against the Iraqis in the south was all but over. The question now was whether they wanted a war there against the Chinese.
Part IX
The Gauntlet
“When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honor scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.”
Chapter 25
Admiral Arun Sing, Chief of the Naval Staff in the Indian Navy, had a problem, and it was growing more urgent by the minute. India could not fail to notice the major sortie now underway by the Chinese naval forces that had been operating from Karachi. In spite of the fact that Pakistan was a hostile foe, India had been reluctant to join the war, and for obvious reasons. Yet its geographic position, jutting deep into the ocean that was named after that vast subcontinent, was conspiring to draw India into the conflict. When the fighting was far to the southwest, or off near the Red Sea, the pressure was minimal, but when it centered on Sri Lanka for a time, the hatbands were thick around the map table watching that conflict closely.