[b]Hattieville, British Belize[/b]
[i]August, 1955[/i]

	The Mexican troops had taken two days to march the fifty kilometers up the east-west highway in Belize’s central corridor. The terrain was remarkably flat, almost textbook so, allowing Captain Lopez to spread the company out in even platoon wedge formations. The four platoons evenly split around the road, an ancient-looking paved throughfare with no frills beside a drainage ditch. It reminded the commander of a Napoleonic line battle: they were to march up the corridor in a straight line until they received contact with the British. Other companies in the battalion were methodically clearing sections of the road around Sibun Forest. Though they spaced themselves out, occasional radio communications yielded no significant news.

	By the time the paratroopers marched carefully into Hattieville, a small village less than twenty kilometers from the capital, the only British they had seen were still the captured platoon in tow guarded by a detail from headquarters company. Lopez’s troops were ordered to halt in the town and set up a perimeter around it in the same sugarcane fields that they had snuck through at Belmopan. Villagers peered at the soldiers, saying nothing as they walked through the streets to investigate potential defensive positions. A general air of complacency had settled upon the company after their engagement with the British: they weren’t known for guerrilla tactics, so the lack of initial contact probably meant that there was nobody here either.

	That assumption proved correct as the platoons settled into a ring around the village within an hour and Captain Lopez set up his command post in another farmer’s barn. The British prisoners were herded into an empty cattle pen with a waist-high fence. Not enough to stop an escape, but by now where was there to escape to for them? The commander sighed as Lieutenant Mun͂oz and First Sergeant Kan gathered around his map. “Based on the plan,” said Lopez, “we’re ahead of schedule. We didn’t have to fight through La Democracia or Churchyard. Or here, apparently.”

	From a sleeve on his map case, he withdrew a blue poker chip with his company “A/2” written on it in marker. He placed it down on Hattieville, the chip almost completely covering the small town’s footprint on the map’s 1:50,000 scale. A handful of other poker chips, each for the battalion’s four companies and headquarters element, were placed on nearby towns. The battalion headquarters was set up at Belmopan with another company in the guard south to Santa Marta. One was screening the Sibun Forest directly to Lopez’s south while the fourth patrolled the Belize River.

	“The problem,” he explained as he placed down red poker chips on Belize City and its suburbs, “is that the main effort of the armored brigade has not pushed down yet… at least according to the timetable.”

	“Do we have communication with battalion headquarters,” asked First Sergeant Kan, arms crossed as he studiously examined the map.

	“Reyes is working on it,” Mun͂oz replied. He gestured to the metallic antenna pieces that the radio operator was busy snapping together out of a green carrying case.

	“Once we get in touch with them we can figure out where the hell those guys are,” Lopez explained. With a pen, he pointed out multiple British companies templated in the towns to the west of Belize City. “Until then we’re vulnerable. That’s why we’re in a security position here. Until I get word from battalion, I don’t want to advance any further until we’re back on the timetable.”

	The company settled in for the day, repeating the waiting that they had experienced in Belmopan two days prior. They set up positions, rested a bit, and ate their canned rations at a leisurely pace. Non-commissioned officers whipped the paratroopers into improving their gun positions throughout the day, berating them for lacking camouflage, for not digging foxholes deep enough, or for taking off their uncomfortable steel helmets while they sat. “The Brits could be here at any minute!” they shouted to the grumbling soldiers. An engineer squad that had been attached to them for the operation milled about as they surveyed the town to prepare defenses.

	Lopez had found some time to himself to finally sit for the first time that day, perching on a wooden crate in a barn that had been emptied of its animals. His boots and socks lay on the floor as he touched up the sore spots on his feet with a special medicated ointment. His wife scoured the markets in Puebla for the latest pharmaceutical treatments, even if most of them were bunk. He kept telling her that real medicine from an actual drugstore was fine, and that her protests of expense were mitigated by his officer’s salary. Regardless, the foot ointment seemed to work for him: he rarely developed blisters on the march.

	Satisfied with his footcare, the commander put his socks and boots back on and stood up again. Dusk was approaching, the orange sun beginning to set below the jungle canopy beyond the town’s fields. Beautiful, but unnerving.

	A sharp burst of automatic gunfire shocked the commander, nearly making him drop the helmet that he had been adjusting the leather straps on. From throughout the town, people started shouting. Personnel at the command post buckled up their helmets and ran off into the dimly lit streets as more people started yelling. First Sergeant Kan emerged from a nearby building, infuriated: “I swear to god I will kill a motherfucker if they just accidentally discharged!”

	Another burst of gunfire made it clear that it wasn’t a careless private falling asleep on his weapon. Rifle fire followed it, paced gunshots ringing out in the still summer air. Reyes’s radio burst to life, crackling with a report from a platoon leader: “Contact! Five hundred meters, bearing north! Tracked vehicles!”

	The gunfire picked up as Captain Lopez looked back to his First Sergeant. He commanded him to stay at the command post with the XO while he took off in a sprint towards the sound of the fighting. He ran through the dirt roads of Hattieville, ducking between farmhouses and jumping over its small wooden fences. He emerged at the edge of a field when he heard the snapping of bullets whizzing over his head. The commander swore and dove to the ground, hitting with a hard thud that knocked the wind out of him.

Fifty meters to his front, a Mexican soldier racked the charging handle on a steaming water-jacketed machine gun and let off another burst. It had been oriented almost directly upwards in a technique called plunging fire. Derived from the Great War, where machine guns were hidden in protected bunkers, plunging fire pointed he guns skyward and used them almost like indirect weapons. The hope here was that they could graze a greater area of the enemy position without frontally engaging armor.

	“Sir!” called out someone. Captain Lopez rolled to his side to get a better look: the platoon sergeant was crouched behind a horse-drawn wagon with his carbine in hand. “Get over here, sir!”

	Lopez crawled clumsily towards the cart. It had been many years since he had learned the basics of low crawling but the fundamentals were the same: stay low to the ground and don’t get up for any reason. He dragged himself across the dirty ground, smearing his uniform with mud and grass until he felt like he could get up into a kneel by the platoon sergeant. “Contact?” he asked redundantly. The platoon sergeant affirmed that they were taking fire.

	“I heard tracked vehicles!” yelled Lopez over another round of gunfire. “Tanks?”

	“Not tanks!” replied the platoon sergeant, to Lopez’s relief. “They’re personnel carriers! Take a look!”

	The sergeant opened up a satchel on his hip and handed Lopez a pair of binoculars. He cautioned the commander to wait until the gunfire had gone over his head, holding down on his sleeve until he pushed him up. Lopez brought the field glasses to his eyes and hastily focused them on the black silhouettes in the distance. Two squat, boxy metal vehicles on treads slowly crawled along the road with a single machine gun belching fire. The outlines of British soldiers in their Tommy helmets were clearly visible over the lip of the armor. Lopez sat back down and handed the binoculars off.

	“Personnel carriers,” he agreed with a sigh of relief. They looked like simple Bren carriers, supporting infantry vehicles that were armored only with thin steel armor. “Where is your weapons squad?”

	“They have to move the projector,” the platoon sergeant laid out calmly. It had been positioned along the most likely enemy approach - to the west. The sergeant had seen action before and knew how to handle it. He had spent the first few minutes of the engagement calming down his overexcited lieutenant and how had to handle the commander’s questions. “I sent a team off to go get it! But they gotta come in closer first, they’re out of range. Four hundred meters and closing.”

	“What’s the range on the grenade projector?”

	“Three hundred!”

	Lopez turned around to see a soldier with an awkwardly large tripod shuffling from behind a wooden house to their covered position. He laid down the heavy tripod into the ground and kicked it into the dirt, where its legs firmly made contact with the soil. “I’m sorry, sir!” he told the commander. “This is the only spot where we can move it easily! You and big sarge gotta move!”

	“There’s a berm over there we can rush to,” the platoon sergeant said to his commander, again taking a fistful of fabric on the officer’s sleeve. He pointed to a pile of dirt that some farmer had left in his yard, complete with a shovel stuck spade-first into the soil. Lopez agreed and, after another exchange of gunfire, the pair rushed forward to the mound. They both hit the ground on their backs and rolled to see a pair of paratroopers rushing forward to the tripod with a device that looked like a potbelly stove.

	With efforted grunts, the soldiers fitted the projector to the tripod behind the wagon. One of them dropped a rucksack to the ground that spilled out what looked like a dozen grenades on a cloth belt. The grenade projector had never been used in combat before, being a novel design brought about by the Mexican Army. It fed projectiles not dissimilar to their rifle grenades through a breech on the left side like a belt-fed machine gun. The operator depressed a trigger and cranked a handle on the right side to fire, reminding Lopez of old gatling guns from the 19th century.

	With some effort to move the machine’s unlubricated mount, the gun crew adjusted the grenade projector as high as it would go: they could shoot out from behind the covered position and drop explosives down onto the enemy with the aid of a spotter. The gun’s tripod-man quickly withdrew a similar set of binoculars as Lopez’s platoon sergeant and poked his head up above the edge of cover. The British personnel carriers continued to approach: their doctrine was focused on dismounting infantry at the operational range of their own weapons, or around three hundred meters.

The enemy infantry were, in theory, protected against long range attacks until they could begin their fight. From his position, Lopez observed that the Mexican machine gun fire was not effective. What rounds did find their target often bounced off the armor of the carrier after losing a considerable amount of velocity over the distance. But the grenade projector was dialed in and sighted: the spotter raised his hand up in a “wait” signal. For a precious few moments, he held it there, then dropped it with the force of an axe chop. The grenade projector’s gunner squeezed the trigger and cranked the handle three times, feeling the force of three grenades burst out of the barrel.

	The grenades spent seconds in the air, flying in a high arc over the heads of the Mexican firing line until they landed in a dispersed group just short of one of the British gun carriers. “Adjust fire! Add fifty!” screamed the spotter. The projector’s crew cranked another lever on the tripod mount and slowly inched the gun’s bore higher into the air.

	“Ready!” the ammunition handler yelled. The spotter gave the signal again and another three grenades were cranked off. Each belt of ammunition held twenty, with every man in the projector team carrying a belt except for the ammo bearer, who had two. Eighty grenades to launch.

	These projectiles were much more accurate, finishing their arc’s dive directly to the side of one personnel carrier. With a ferocious whipping motion, the track became broken and the carrier outran itself. What remained of the track’s length raced out behind the carrier and unspooled itself flat into the field. The vehicle stopped in its tracks as the British soldiers raced to jump over the sides of its hull and rush forward. Now the Mexican riflemen could engage more freely, firing at the British as they bounded forward. The machine gun in the platoon’s line continued to rake the area, now having been brought down to waist-level fire.

	The enemy’s fire became much more intense as it became clear that the two Bren carriers were not the only enemy forces. Another platoon’s worth of figures emerged from the horizon, racing through the fields in an effort to flank the Mexican line. One of Lopez’s other platoons caught them, beginning an attack by fire through the crops to discourage their approach. Some of the British soldiers were hit by this incoming fire but continued nonetheless. In the distance, shrill whistled blasted. Two blasts: keep going.

	The gunfire picked up, all parties engaging each other in rapid firefights. Bullets landed dangerously close to the Mexican defensive positions, some even finding their marks on exposed men. Medics from the command post emerged from behind the buildings with stretchers, sprinting through the fields to find the source of screaming wounded men. The smell of acrid gunpowder filled the air and gunfire rendered any attempt at communicating further than face-to-face impossible. The grenade projector finished off its first belt of ammunition and sat, barrel steaming, as the gunner handed his assistant another belt.

	With the force of a truck, First Sergeant Kan emerged from the smoky air and slammed himself into the dirt berm where the commander was posted. “Sir!” he called out. “I’ve been looking for you. Casualties are coming to the collection point, XO is in charge back at the CP! What’s it looking like?”

	“A lot of shooting,” Lopez answered simply. “We’re too pinned down to look!”

	The explosions continued as the British advanced, slowly but surely. They were up against a company, pressing into a platoon to exploit its weak point. Captain Lopez rolled over from where he was watching the projector team launch another burst of grenades into the British line and told First Sergeant Kan: “Pull second platoon off the rear guard! Collapse third in to fill the circle and bring second’s weapons up front! And get weapons platoon, I want the AT rifles on those Bren carriers!”

	Kan acknowledged the order and pushed off from the ground, racing back into the town. A bullet nipped at his heel and sprayed dirt into the air as he almost tripped in front of it. The commander endured the onslaught with the platoon sergeant for a few minutes before he made the decision to find the platoon leader. He asked the sergeant where his lieutenant was, and the answer was on the line.

	Lopez kneeled down behind the berm until there was a lull in the speed of the gunfire and rushed into the crops. He clutched his carbine in front of him as he almost fell into the uneven planted rows of sugarcane that had been ripped to shreds by bullets flying through the plants. In the shade of the bush, he stumbled through piles of spent brass and emptied magazines, searching for the lieutenant on the line. Crouched low, Captain Lopez headed towards a machine gunner who was sawing through the engagement with his barrel red from heat. With a sucking noise coming from his boot, Lopez looked down and saw a pool of blood dragged off towards the town. Bloodied bandages and medical waste littered the scene. He continued forward.

	Lopez’s lieutenant lay in the prone with a rifle squad, shouting furiously on the radio with Reyes back at the command point. He was directing fires, relaying locations of the enemy, and requesting support. He paused as he saw his commander treading carefully towards the line as a British round whipped by uncomfortably close. “Sir, we’re hitting them with all we’ve got. Where’s our support?”

	“On the way, son, just keep it up.”

	The second platoon arrived a few minutes later, rushing in to reinforce the position and plus up the defense. The sergeants directed their squads to fill in gaps, replace the wounded, and increase fire on where they thought the enemy could be. With this rush of personnel and weapons, the balance tilted. The British, now two hundred meters away, were stalled. In an attack, the common wisdom was that the attacker needed three-to-one odds on the defender. A company with additional mechanized assets pushed against a platoon could break through and penetrate the enemy lines, but not two platoons. The British had already suffered losses, both in personnel and equipment.

	One short blast and a long blast of the whistle sounded. The British had been stuck, pinned down by the intense Mexican fire for an uncomfortable amount of time. The British commander had realized that, without momentum, they would be massacred. One by one, squad by squad, the British infantry covered their retreat and fell back. They rushed, bounding through the fields and disappearing back into the crops as they fell to a covered position. Captain Lopez’s company kept up the fire, shooting them in the back as they rushed off to the safety of distance. Through the crucible of rifle fire, the grenade projector, and the plunging fire of the Mexican machine guns, the British withdrew into the darkness.

	As the British fell back, Captain Lopez stood up cautiously. The sounds and smells of battle were still harsh on his senses. He turned to his platoon leader and shook his head. "It's like the Great War all over again," he stated mournfully. The platoon leader frowned and stared at his boots. He had lost men. Captain Lopez knew that feeling all too well, and reached his hand out to the young officer's shoulder in a wordless moment of comfort. He left without continuing the conversation.

	The Mexicans remained at arms for the next hour, scanning the night at full security in anticipation of a counterattack. But that counterattack never came, and Lopez slowly released the paratroopers back to their regular security posture. Second platoon was split up between first and forth at the north and east quadrants of the line, while third platoon kept up the back half of security. The wounded, of which there were fourteen, were taken back to the casualty collection point. Two men were killed in the skirmish. Captain Lopez, after sufficiently reorganizing the defensive line, finally trudged back to his command post as his watch struck midnight.

	First Sergeant Kan and Lieutenant Mun͂oz were hard at work. Kan was tallying supplies, ammunition, and medical equipment used up and lost. He had both the supply sergeant and head medic at his beck and call to report on distributing the company’s supplies. Mun͂oz, meanwhile, was talking rapidly to his counterparts at battalion to report information and request resupply. Back at Belmopan, the battalion was receiving resupply by glider flights from Mexico proper. They would need to truck the supplies forward to deal with A Company’s engagement.

	Lopez relieved Mun͂oz of his radio duty, telling the young lieutenant to go get some rest. The details of the resupply had been coordinated and motions were underway at Belmopan to load up and head out in the morning. The commander got onto the radio, specifically requesting an audience with the battalion commander from the adjutant.

	“Sir,” Captain Lopez reported tiredly. “I’m sure you’ve heard the reports. We’re dug in for the night. What is your guidance for tomorrow?”

	The battalion commander paused. “Hold fast, Captain. [i]2/a Brigada Blindada[/i] has begun their motor march. The Brits aren’t going to bother you anymore. Keep in contact: we’ll let you know when to march to Belize City.”