Be advised...Frozen Chosin...I repeat Frozen Chosin...

Company Landing Team Charlie...Western Desert Of Ethiopia on an Advise & Assist Mission.

It wasn't suppose to happen here and it wasn't suppose to happen now. 

How did the fucking Chinese move a reinforced motorized brigade from Djibouti to Northern Ethiopia without being seen?  How did intel miss this and why is this my fucking problem.

Capt Johansen could only wonder.  A bad day was about to get much much worse.

26th MEU hovering in the Gulf Of Eden on the Northern Tip Of Somalia.

Well ain't this perfect Colonel McNeil thought.  They decide to roll out this distributed MEU concept along with Company Landing Teams and now he has forces spread from here to yonder running all kinds of missions.

Charlie Company was in Ethiopia.  Alpha was running raids into Somalia to kill pirates ... how they flared up again was anyone's guess, and finally he had his aviation element flying support missions for the Saudis who for some unknown reason could put the Houthis down.

Now out of the blue he gets word that the Chinese are making a move against his boys in Ethiopia so he's got to somehow bring back people that are thousands of miles away from each other, reassemble the Expeditionary Strike Group and then hope ESG skipper can have his boys shovel coal fast enough so that they could stop bad shit from happening. 

Flank speed wouldn't be good enough.  Warp speed might be necessary if things get stupid.

Charlie Company catches a glimpse of the charging rhino...

Sgt Johnson called out...Hey skipper you might want to take a look see at this...these bastards are moving with speed and they're headed right for us.

Capt Johansen looked at the view screen provided by his UAV operator.  What he saw chilled him.  Chinese 8x8 were zooming across the desert.  Could this be a land version of a sail by?  Could this be what they considered a demonstration of force?

He ordered Johnson to keep eyes on and then radioed to the MEU that they needed to get coverage fast.  The base at Djibouti should be able to provide support.  The fiction that it was a small base had long disappeared.  The USAF had moved a fighter squadron in and USAF Special Ops was running all kinds of missions too.  That's one of the reasons why the USMC had to leave.  The base was enlarged but still crowded.  With the Chinese just down the street they wanted to keep things tight.

One thing they did have that could help short of shots being fired were predator drones.  If  the Colonel was on his game and if he could wrangle up support then they could get a better indication of what was going on.

99th Tactical Recon Wing, Djibouti...

Major Williams was pissed.  His unit was being tasked beyond belief.  If he was running missions for SOCOM, then it was the CIA, if not the CIA then it was for State, if not for State then the Army...now the Marines want priority just cause they saw a few Chinese?

Fucking Jarheads.

Fucking Prima Donnas.  Its not always about them.

But he did get the order from his higher up, an Air Force General so I guess he must know something he doesn't.  A continuous orbit over one of the many missions being run in Africa?  This shit is getting out of hand.  He'll do it but just barely.  Doesn't anyone realize that UAVs are aircraft?  They need maintenance!  The operators need rest.  We might have almost a thousand of them but to do what they're being asked to do means they need twice that many!

In the end Major Williams decided 'fuck it' ... they made the call.  If they lose another bird due to maintenance then its on them.  He made a note in the log, hoped it would protect his career if one actually did crash and dialed up the mission.

26th MEU...

After a talk with his operations office McNeil was not happy.  It was determined that unless his boys in Northern Ethiopia were actually being harassed then combat operations in support of the Saudis should continue.  Additionally he couldn't even recover his ground combat element because they had inserted by air and now those assets had been diverted to help the Saudis in their latest round of getting curb stomped by the Houthis.

The best he could do is get surveillance from the Air Force in the form of Predator UAVs.  He needed to get eyes on the situation.  His stomach was doing flips and his instincts told him something very bad was coming.  He just couldn't put his finger on Chinese intent.

Charlie Company feels the ground shake from the charging beast...

Johansen was still watching the feed.  He noticed that the Chinese stopped about 10km away from his position.  Maybe it wouldn't be bad.  That 8x8 wheeled artillery did not make him feel any better.  The ATVs that he was using might be big fun back at Lejeune but out here he felt extremely exposed.  UAV coverage was suppose to be on its way but things were starting to look iffy.  Maybe a run for the hills is in order he thought.  Maybe discretion is the best form of valor.  The firepower arrayed against him was beyond awesome.  It was devastating.  Additionally they stopped just short so they must have eyes on him too.  Johansen guessed that they must have a high flying UAV somewhere above him but he was in no position to do anything about it.

No worries though.

It was nothing but a train and assist right?  No peer vs peer combat.  This ain't the Pacific so why would they fight here right?

Just as that thought registered in his brain he felt the first incoming round of 152mm artillery fire.

Chinese Motorized Brigade....We do this for CHINA!

Colonel Bence had warned his men to be prepared for a big fight.  They would engage an American unit made up of their vaunted Marines and they will utterly defeat them.  If they didn't then they would not return home.  Primitive thinking?  No.  Chinese thinking.  Defeat was intolerable.  It wasn't some Japanese notion of an honorable death, it was the reality of the new China.  Only success is tolerable, failure isn't.

Having said that he was taking no chances.  Capt Chang had the coordinates of the American Marine unit.  He could have been ordered to target them, they did after all have excellent visibility on them, but this was for show as much as it was a tactical problem to be solved.

Humiliation and destruction was called for.

With that being said Capt Chang was ordered to pulverize the entire grid square the Marines occupied.

The dogs would not die fast.  No.  This would be a slow painful death and would be as much a lesson to the American people as it was to their Marines.

China was the new super power.  American weakness and decadence would finally reap the fruits of what they have sown for so many years.  Yes today they would learn that lesson.

Charlie Company feels the pain...

Cougar 6 to any unit.  I repeat Cougar 6 to any unit.  I am declaring Frozen Chosin.  Repeat Frozen Chosin.

Frozen Chosin was the established code name for a Marine unit in extreme trouble of being decimated or overrun.  It was a play to heroic work done by Marine so many years ago on a much different battlefield.

Johansen never thought one second that he would actually make this call on this deployment but here he was.  Any thought of escape by their light utility vehicles was out of the question.  From what he could see the Chinese had the entire area bracketed.  All they could do is dig hasty fighting positions and somehow hope to come out the other side.

He heard his NCOs and SNCOs barking orders but it was probably already too late.  The hand of fate and Mr Murphy were running things now.

Had he lost his chance to influence the battle by hesitating to leave when the Chinese first showed up on his screen?

The scream of pain, the mist of blood and hearing a grown man call for his mommy made him know that he had....