Chapter 62

  "What? You know where the enemy is gathering?" Upon hearing this, Commander Lian and the others all turned to me with surprised and delighted expressions.

  "Where is it?" Scar asked most directly.

  "Just over there..." I pointed to the woods in the mountain pass on our right and said, "The enemy's gathering place is actually right under our feet. It's just that the woods are very dense, our high ground has a protruding ridge, and the enemy always uses artillery fire to cover themselves before each charge, so we didn't discover it..."

  "Damn it!" Knife Scar spat out a mouthful of saliva, coarsely cursing: "No wonder the devils come to our front every time they arrive, turns out they gather in front of us first!"

  "Second Lieutenant Long, how come you know everything?" Liang Lianbing asked in surprise.

  "Huh? This..." I was taken aback by his words.

  Actually, it was all told to me by the old man. I remember him holding a cup of tea in one hand and gazing into the distance with a thoughtful expression... In fact, he couldn't gaze at anything else, as both his eyeballs were made of glass. He muttered to himself: "Those 316a troops are so cunning! We never thought their assembly point was right under our feet in the forest, every time they charged forward, it was always right in front of us, one wave after another, not giving us a moment's rest..."

  I think the old man was talking about now, the enemy army in front of us is also the 316a division. The enemy's charge against us is one after another, and the time interval in between is roughly the enemy's assembly time. So I boldly speculate that the forest over there is the enemy's assembly place.

  But of course I couldn't tell this to the warriors, or they would think I was crazy.

  Fortunately, I quickly turned my head and replied: "Just now when I was fighting the devils in the back, I saw it clearly from above! When the devils retreated, they all rushed towards that forest, went in and didn't come out..."

  "Ah!" The warrior was suddenly enlightened when I said that.

  I couldn't help but feel a little impressed by my own ability to lie, but this is just a small matter. If I didn't have this ability to lie, then I wouldn't be able to navigate between multiple girlfriends in modern times, would I?

  "Come on! What are you waiting for?" Dāo Bā (Knife Scar) was now getting impatient and hastily said: "We'll report to our superiors and request artillery support!"

  Lian Chang slightly poked his head out to look in the direction of the woods, then immediately withdrew and said: "The devils are very cunning, this piece of woodland is on the reverse slope of our army's high ground, long-range artillery fire may not be able to reach!"

  "What's to be done?" Liang Lianbing asked.

  "With mortars!" Scar said.

  "Right! Use mortars!" The company commander nodded and said: "You continue to pay attention to the enemy's movements, I'll go report to the higher-ups!"

  "Yes!" We responded in unison and set up our guns on the trench.

  But after more than ten minutes, Lian Chong ran back, shouting in a low voice as he ran: "Prepare for battle, prepare for battle..."

  "Commander... how are we going to fight?" I asked as the leader of this row.

  Lian Chang summoned three platoon leaders with a wave of his hand, and squatted in the trench saying: "The regiment commander has given an order to concentrate all the mortars in the regiment to bombard the enemy's gathering place, give those devils a good beating! There are incendiary shells as well as fragmentation shells. After the forest is set on fire, it's very likely that the devils will run out. The order is for us to get ready for battle, and we'll take them down one by one when they come out!"

  "Good!" As soon as we heard that there was such a good thing, we were immediately full of energy, and each of us commanded our own troops to prepare their weapons and ammunition.

  I was also busy loading bullets into my magazine, the last battle had emptied all of them and I hadn't even had time to reload yet!

  "Ugh..." I had just finished loading the third clip when a series of cannon shells came whizzing in from behind our position.

  The artillery comrades have started taking action? This can't help but make me sweat, how come there was no notification at all, many soldiers are not even ready yet!

  This seems to be a characteristic of our army's combat in this era, the coordination between infantry and tanks, infantry and artillery is too poor, sometimes even leading to disputes and mutual blame between infantry and artillery...

  I once heard an old man talk about such a thing, when a team on the front line discovered an enemy plane in the sky... No need to say more, with one order, high-altitude machine guns and whatnot were set up and fired wildly at the sky, but that plane in the sky was always like this, looking very close but actually far away. The infantry's various machine guns had a range of only about 1-2 kilometers, and they couldn't hit the plane at all, instead scaring it away.

  At this time, the artillery called to scold: "What are you doing? What are you shooting at? We've been tracking that plane with radar for a long time, and the anti-aircraft position is ready. Just wait for it to fly closer and shoot it down. You guys... fired a string of bullets and scared it away..."

  I said to the artillery brother, the enemy has flown over our heads, can we not fight? You've set up your pockets and waited for the enemy to drill in, won't they say a word to us first?

  From this matter, it can be seen that in this era, the artillery and infantry of our army often have their own plans, without considering coordination with other branches or resource sharing. However, this is not surprising, whether it's artillery or infantry, most are on the battlefield for the first time, who knows what multi-branch coordination is!

  It's like this time, the artillery only needs a phone call to make an appointment for a time, but they didn't say anything, and they were ready to fire immediately, which scared us.

  I hastily pressed the magazine into the receiver and raised the gun, then only a loud rumbling sound was heard, and the shell exploded in the not-too-distant forest.

  Mortars are good at this point, the trajectory is very curved, and can easily hit targets on the other side of the mountain. Moreover, whether it's a 60mm or 82mm mortar (we call 60mm mortars "six-zero" cannons and 82mm ones "eight-two" cannons), their range is all around four to five thousand meters, and our main force regiment or brigade is only one kilometer away from us, concentrated firepower can reach us.

  The first dozen or so shots were obviously killing bullets... Although I don't have any military knowledge, I still know that incendiary bombs are on fire. After this bombardment, we didn't see anyone running out of the forest, nor did we hear any screams!

  Was I wrong? I couldn't help but ask myself, but soon thought - this must be the devils playing their patience game again. Not long ago, weren't they silent under my gun?

  I was right, because when the second round of shells exploded in the forest and burst into flames, I heard someone inside let out a mournful cry. Even if you are the enemy's trump card unit 316a Division, you can't bear the pain of being burned by fierce fire! What surprised me is that no one has come out of the woods yet.

  The third row of shells was incendiary, and all that could be heard was a chaotic "boom boom" sound. Wherever the shells passed, more than a dozen fires broke out in the forest. The enemy couldn't bear it anymore, and at the same time, they realized that our army wasn't just probing with artillery, but knew they were inside and intended to burn them alive. First, several enemy soldiers who were on fire ran out from inside, shouting and screaming wildly...

  It's unclear whether it was due to extreme hatred for the enemy or something else, but at this moment, the soldiers were surprisingly in tacit agreement not to fire a shot, and instead watched with bated breath as the enemy troops howled, ran, rolled around, and jumped wildly before finally collapsing to the ground in agony, unable to move again.

  We've all had the experience of being scalded by fire, so we know that the feeling of being slowly burned to death is unbearable. If it were in the past, I definitely wouldn't be able to bear this scene, at least I would use my rifle to help them end their suffering. But now, looking at the enemy's situation, I actually feel a sense of relief and satisfaction...

  This is perhaps the cruelest aspect of war, where we originally had no grudges or grievances against the enemy, and hadn't even seen their faces before, yet due to the gradual escalation of the war, we ended up hating each other to the bone!

  Then, before long, a large number of fully camouflaged enemy troops suddenly rushed out of the woods and ran towards the rear. But no matter how fast they ran, they couldn't outrun our bullets...

  It wasn't even necessary to give the order, and I and the soldiers cocked the triggers of our guns, machine guns and submachine guns pouring out bursts of "da-da" sounds as we fired sheet after sheet of bullets at the enemy.

  The forest is about 700-800 meters away from us, which is already beyond the range of an AK-47. However, being out of range only means it lacks accuracy. With dozens of AK-47s firing in one direction, the hail of bullets can still be lethal at over a thousand meters away.

  Then, the enemy army fell down row by row under our hail of bullets. Those who ran out were shot down one after another. Some of them even fired at us with their guns when they rushed out... but this was obviously not a threat to us hiding in the trenches.

  Unlike other warriors who rely on a hail of bullets to kill the enemy, the enemy's distance was just within the range of this SVD sniper rifle in my hand, so I felt a sense of pleasure with each bullet eliminating an enemy. However, this battle soon made me feel dull and tasteless, because I found that those enemies were just targets, moving and bleeding targets... To the point where later on, the bullets I fired were only to ensure that no enemy could escape from our hail of bullets.

  "Boom!" At this time, the sky transmitted a more dense artillery shell whistling sound, soon there was a burst of shells exploding on our position.

  This is the enemy's artillery fire to cover their friendly forces' retreat. I have to admit that this is a good tactic, using artillery to push us back into the trenches would allow their troops to safely withdraw. However, these artillery came a bit too late, as the soldiers had already become frenzied and didn't care about the artillery at all, still firing their guns at the enemy with burst after burst of bullets...