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Onime No Kyo -> RE: Vignette AAR - AW1Steve and Onime (A) vs Mundy [No Mundy, please] (8/31/2016 5:03:23 AM)
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12/29
The pre-war residents of the sleepy seaside village of Banda Aseh could not have imagined its transformation in their wildest dreams. In its current state, their town presented a picture of nothing so much as an armed, international gypsy camp.
Certainly the town was no stranger to military men. Even before the war there was a permanent post of the Dutch colonial army troops, topping out at several hundred men, and even some guns. But most of the men were either local or had at least “acclimated”, all spoke the same language, and could be fairly reliably counted on to adhere to the same code of behavior.
The men and equipment that flooded the town after the war started were as different as different can be.
The first additions were other Dutch colonial forces from the Palembang area. They were haggard and defeated, tattered and bruised from their interminable slog over miles of jungle roads. Their morale was at rock bottom. They had seen one of the most heavily defended towns in the colonies be taken by a horde of Japanese, and they knew that the Dutch colonial army had nothing, absolutely nothing, that could stop such a Juggernaut.
But then, in dribs and drabs, the “international gypsies” began to arrive.
In the first batch were two divisions of Indians and their British officers. These units were being rebuilt from those that were destroyed in Malaya, and were well understrength when they arrived. Most of the soldiers who made them up had not yet fought against the Japanese, but most were poor provincial boys, away from the village for the first time, completely unprepared for war. As the units continued to be rebuilt, the men marched, paraded, drilled, practiced shooting and did other things that soldiers do to get ready for battle. They also dug trenches. Many long trenches. Around the town and in the surrounding hills. Among the trenches they put pillboxes and covered them with tree trunks and camouflaged them with greenery.
With them came Indian engineers, with bulldozers and concrete mixers. Besides pouring concrete pillboxes, they also expanded the little grass landing strip in the river valley. They added more and more feet of runway, covered it with things like a metal mesh, dug shelters for aircraft on the sides of the runways and built metal hangars.
They also began to work on improving the harbor. New, large jetties were built, then a seawall had been created, then the harbor was dredged.
Then came more Indians, and more British and Australian engineers, and Indian anti aircraft gunners who had set up their small, vertically-pointed guns all over the town and hills, British anti-tank units that set up on the hills, artillery units that dug their positions on the reverse side of the hills, and the British armored brigade, whose hundreds of vehicles made a terrible noise. There were now several dozen big guns defending the shore and entrance to the harbor.
Then came the British navy, with its cruisers, destroyers and huge, proud battleships. They had left after their battle with the Japanese, however. While the Japanese had not sunk any of them, they did damage all, and the sight of the smoking, listing and torn hulls the morning after the battle, was not encouraging.
The bombardment that came several days later was even less so. The huge Japanese ships had stood about a mile off shore and sent shell after shell at Banda Aseh and the village of Sabang on the island at the entrance to the harbor. The coast guns tried to respond, but could only reach the smaller ships that came closer to shore. They hit some of them, but they could not stop the terrific bombardment.
Eventually, the Japanese left, and left behind destruction, fear and hatred. The airfield and most of the planes on it was in shambles. The port, shorefront warehouses, shore batteries, and the adjoining roads and structures were either burned or heavily damaged.
But terrible as the bombardment had been, neither a landing, nor an enemy column over the road from Medan ever came.
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