Palaw, Burma 0330 January 2, 1943
Another flare went up. The landscape was bathed in the soft light again. Half a dozen machine guns started to fire again. Their assistant gunners had enough time to change barrels while the ammunition bearers had run back to the universal carriers for more crates of bullets. Riflemen started to fire again. Their heads stayed low and tight to the earthern works as incoming bullets slammed into the thick walls, wasting their energy harmlessly near the Rhodesian volunteers.
Two miles behind the front lines, a full regiment of eighteen pounders began to fire. Observers had spotted the Japanese counter-attack a minute or two before the flares went up and even as the first flare was being replaced, the batteries began to fire. It was not the fire of a pre-determined barrage with a spotting round and then a correction and another spotting round. No, it was an urgent and slightly inaccurate barrage against known positions fired by tired gunners who did not want to fight hand to hand or over open sights. Twenty two shells burst close enough to where they were needed. They were all slightly short as the charging Japanese were moving at a fast walk instead of a slow jog. The second salvo seconds behind the first caught the supply clerks, mule drivers, cooks and mechanics out in the open. The company of well trained infantrymen who were stiffening this attack from the south had already started to hit the ground for cover before the first shells struck. The impromptu infantry hit the ground with steel splinters stuck into them by the third salvo.
Gunners scrambled to open up breeches, clear the barrels and slam home more shells even as the chaos of a night time fight increased near the trenches and listening posts. Shells landed in the beaten zone as another regiment of 25 pounders began to intervene in this, the fourth Japanese charge of the night. The first charge had been broken in the trench line in desperate hand to hand fighting. The second and third charges never made it to grenade range. This charge was illogical, it was different, and it was frenzied as men who should have known that they were incapable of taking the redoubt kept on trying to move forward. Knee mortars were beginning to drop shells directly into machine gun nests and fox holes while the 2 inch mortars sought to break up any obvious clumps of motivated attackers.
An hour later, silence except for the screams and sobs of the wounded could be heard. The last wave had crested on freshly strung wire. Clerks and cooks had thrown themselves onto the wire and then their compatriots used them as planks to walk over the obstacles. The lucky ones died quickly while the unlucky had to wait for a mercy stroke.
The brigade box held on the Burmese coast.