Arndeker himself had brought down his fourteenth enemy aircraft and the thirteenth of this conflict. On being scrambled before dawn he had led his entire squadron, numbering just seven aircraft, against a Red Air Force regiment heading for the main highways from Antwerp. For the first time in two weeks they had taken to the air fully loaded with ordnance, courtesy of the newly arrived convoy from the States. Being able to carry more than just one AMRAAM per sortie had been a joy to the NATO pilots and an unwelcome shock to the red fliers who had become accustomed to their opponents increasingly limited offensive capabilities.
His F-16s had broken up the formations of strike aircraft before their escorts had intervened and from there on in it had become a fur ball. Arndeker’s wingman, a young woman from Idaho, had been on her second mission had mid-aired with a Mig-29. The two aircraft had exploded, the wreckage locked together in an obscene embrace as they’d fallen towards the German countryside. Arndeker had watched until they disappeared into low cloud but no parachutes had appeared.
His last AIM-9L had been a clear miss, defeated by a combination of his intended victims ECM suite and some damn fine flying. He’d lost contact with the rest of the squadron and was almost entirely defensive, loosing off snap shots at fleeting targets of opportunity until a Mig-29 had unwisely shown him its rear end, flying straight and level for just a little too long and offering a minimum deflection shot. He had put a long burst of cannon into it, watching the shells explode in a line from the tip of its port wing to the wing root. The wing had folded up, sending the aircraft into a spin. Just before entering the low cloud that had swallowed his wingman an object shot clear of the crippled aircraft before blossoming into a parachute. Finally with his HUD warning him of a fuel state approaching critical and a pair of Mig-31s, also shy of air-air ordnance but hard on his tail, he’d dived for the ground somewhere north of Duisburg, losing them in the ground clutter.
Everyone there had similar tales to tell, but not in the tones of bravado, rather in a matter-of-fact manner that sounded almost bored.
All the aircrew in the orchard, with the exception of the Swedish flier, were showing the signs of fatigue, a weariness that ran as deep as the bones and permeated the nerves. It was the result of flying ever more sorties each day as losses reduced the numbers of men and women available to fly the missions. It was also through watching that band of colleagues who had been the core of the squadron, thin out or disappear altogether, leaving the survivors to wonder when it would be they who failed to come back.
By unspoken agreement the talk of combat and lost friends petered out, turning instead to peacetime flying, famous gaffs, non-fatal yet spectacular screw-ups and the like. For a time at least the war was pushed aside, replaced by the laughter the recounting of these tales and anecdotes caused.
The fuel truck returned, its own bowser now refilled and the small international tea party finished up the lukewarm beverage and the sandwiches that were curling up at the edges.
Arndeker was the last in line and the other aircraft had already departed by the time the fuel truck had given him enough to get back to his own field. He was alone in the orchard and the warmth of the other flier’s spirits had departed this place. There was eeriness about it now and he was eager to be gone. Fifteen minutes later he was airborne again and heading home at treetop height to avoid trouble.
Australia’s immensely long coastline had but eighty thousand full time and reserve personnel of the Australian Defence Force to guard it against invasion at the outbreak of war, but this had swollen to two hundred thousand men and women under arms. In addition they welcomed others to the task.
Japanese, Taiwanese and Singaporean personnel wore a French design behind their cap badges, a fleur-de-lis, signifying volunteers from Chinese occupied counties. These were in main service personnel who had escaped in order to fight on when their own countries surrendered to the People’s Republic of China. There was even a Moro commando brigade in training near Brisbane, its instructors were Australian SAS as a deal of suspicion existed between the available US instructors and the Muslim’s from Mindanao in the Philippines.
Two divisions of the US 2nd Army, plus air and sea assets, had arrived from evacuated South Korea and a further division from the USA, 5th Mechanised. Along with major units of the US Pacific Fleet this went a good way to having a credible defence force to face off the invasion force that was heading their way.
3rd Marine Expeditionary Force and the majority of the former USFJ army and air force units relocated to New Zealand from Japan.
There were no force relocations from Taiwan. All US units that had fought on the island had perished along with the Taiwanese armed forces on that last terrible day.
A very small component from the British Army was also present in Australia, albeit accidentally despite the current British Defence Minister’s attempts to spin it as largess.
Four British Mk2E Challenger main battle tanks of the 1RTR, Royal Tank Regiment, were sat in hull down positions on the high ground above the Princes Highway and Kembla Grange Racecourse, the temporary ‘home’ of the 5th Mechanised Division, to which the troop of British tanks, an infantry platoon of 3rd Battalion Royal Green Jackets and support troops were attached.
The division had the daunting task of defending a stretch of coastline from the port of Kembla, situated forty miles south of Sydney, to Bateman’s Bay, ninety miles to the south, and west as far as the northern edge of the city limits of Canberra, in all a mere seven hundred and twenty square miles.
Officially the British troops were part of the divisional reserve and therefore had no pre-prepared forward fighting positions.
Having been at Fort Hood on exercise ‘Commanche Lance’ at the outbreak of war the small British contingent known as unofficially as ‘The Queen Elizabeth’s Combat Team’ had embedded with their hosts, the 52nd Infantry, for a return to Europe via Atlantic convoy’s with 5th (US) Mechanised Division but the division had been turned around on reaching the docks in Texas and entrained again to be sent west as reinforcements for Australia.
‘Heck’, Captain Hector Sinclair Obediah Wantage-Ferdoux, RTR, Lt Tony McMarn, RGJ and Captain Danny King, their US liaison, walked together across the dusty and uneven hilltops west side of Ian McLennan Park, a bike scrambling and off-road dirt track area beside a football ground and small covered spectators stand, the home of the South Coast United Soccer Club.
In appearance the hill was spookily similar to that of an ancient Briton hill fort of the stone age, the camouflaged twenty first century armoured fighting vehicles whose barrels poked outwards at its crest somewhat at odds with that. However, as the Brits had dug in they had found nothing to excite viewers of the Discovery Channels ‘Ancient Aliens’ but plenty of evidence of landfill. The terraced sides engineered for stability rather than defence.