Volume 1: The Rise of Elanhill Chapter 0062: Battle for the Gap
"Hurry up! Hurry up!" An officer, his face covered in sweat, pulled a rope and shouted with all his might, "Don't get left behind! We have to enter the position with the infantry! Hurry!"
Behind him, two soldiers were pushing the two wheels of the wood, and the heavy Maxim machine gun was slowly moving forward between the two infantry formations. Behind them, soldiers carrying bullets were trying to push the machine gun forward, and everyone was working hard.
"Is it really that useful to carry such a bulky thing during an attack?" An Elanhill grenadier, with his rifle resting on his shoulder and a long bayonet standing on his head, passed by the machine gun and asked his comrades beside him in a low voice.
The comrade was so nervous that he didn't even look at him. He stared at the densely packed enemy troops standing at the gap in the city wall in the distance, and kept muttering to himself: "Do your own thing! Do your own thing..."
This is what the instructors repeatedly emphasized during training. As long as you stick to the technical movements in training when you are nervous, you can defeat the enemy and win the war. Winning is the hope of survival.
As a small person whose name is destined not to be recorded in history, his long-cherished wish is actually very simple, to live, to live bravely for himself and his family.
"Yo... Boom!" A shell hit the gap in the city wall, leaving behind a pile of broken limbs. The densely packed defense formation immediately became chaotic, and it took a long time to control it.
"Hurry up and fire! Keep firing! Defeat those idiots!" The front-line soldiers who were getting closer and closer to the enemy kept praying in their hearts, praying that they would not have to face the densely packed enemy when facing the enemy's defense line.
"Stand still!" Commands came one after another, and all the troops finally stopped outside the range of the enemy's arrows. For a while, no one spoke, and no new orders came. The entire battlefield seemed very quiet.
"Ready to fire!" Without making everyone wait too long, a command came, and the soldiers in the first row subconsciously leveled their rifles and began pulling the bolts to load bullets into their weapons.
"Fire!" The battalion commander stood in the middle of his three square formations and shouted a firm order. Following this order, a burst of gunfire made .
The bullets rammed into the dense crowd, leaving holes in the bodies of the Alante soldiers that continued to spurt blood. Dozens of brave Alante soldiers fell to the ground, and the surrounding soldiers were stunned by the strange scene before their eyes.
They had shieldmen and archers, waiting for the enemy's arrows to fly over, waiting for their own arrows to kill the enemy. However, what they waited for was not the arrows that covered the sky, but some kind of "hidden weapon" that was almost invisible.
"Bang!" Another burst of gunfire. The Mauser rifle can fire five bullets at a very fast speed. Although it is not as clean and neat as a semi-automatic rifle, it allows soldiers to fully aim and fire.
Once again, someone fell down, and the Alante soldiers finally realized that the enemy they were facing was not one they could face with courage. No matter how the superiors tried to restrain them, these soldiers began to retreat, and some soldiers began to subconsciously look for cover to protect themselves.
Seeing his soldiers being compressed back, Franky realized that the situation was not good. In addition to those annoying cannons, the enemy also had a kind of hand cannon used by soldiers! Facing the cannon, Franky still felt that he had the strength to fight, but facing this kind of hand cannon, he felt that the war was no longer what he was familiar with.
"Hold on! Hold on !" He walked around the ranks holding a long sword, comforting the panicked soldiers. He personally checked the craters created by the artillery at the gaps, and personally pushed the bodies of the dead soldiers into the craters that were still steaming.
As a commander, Franky has done his best. He personally led the officers to hold the gap, encouraging every soldier and making them believe that they can repel the enemy.
In the open space outside the city, the five bullets in the gun chamber had been used up, and all the Elanhill grenadiers began to load new ammunition. There was still a faint white mist in front of them, which was the residue of gunpowder.
Although it seems that Ailan Hill has begun to use smokeless gunpowder to produce ammunition, due to technical reasons, this smokeless gunpowder is actually not perfect. Improvement work is still in full swing, and the front-line troops are still using this not-so-advanced gunpowder.
Fortunately, even with this kind of gunpowder, the weapons in the hands of the grenadiers of Ireland Hill are much more powerful than those in the hands of the enemies they face.
"Damn it! Learned your lesson!" Seeing that the enemy he was facing actually learned something and retreated to the back of the reverse slope, the battalion commander frowned, not knowing what to do.
Once he ordered his soldiers to press forward, they would most likely face a counterattack from the enemy at close range: at a distance of about twenty meters, the combat effectiveness of his troops was not overwhelming, or in his opinion, he would rather choose to consume the opponent with bullets at a long distance.
Unfortunately, the situation on the battlefield changed rapidly, and he could not control it unilaterally. So he could only bite the bullet and issue the order to continue moving forward.
Of course, even if they were to attack the enemy's position, the soldiers of Elanhill were not without their own methods. They were not just weak soldiers who could only stand at a distance and shoot. They were powerful Elanhill grenadiers. After the order to attack was given, a hoarse voice cut through the sky: "Grenadiers! Grenades!"
The soldiers in the first row pulled out grenades from the canvas bags on their chests, unplugged the wooden plug behind the grenades, and pulled out the pull rope inside the wooden handle. They kept approaching the rubble, corpses, and steep slopes of rubble in front of them until they reached a distance they thought was appropriate.
"Grenade!" Among the more than fifty soldiers in the first row, half of them threw out their wooden-handled grenades. These grenades flew over the hillside and landed on the other side of the reverse slope.
No one saw what was happening behind the reverse slope. They just heard someone shouting over there, and they just saw some debris being blown up when the explosion occurred.
"Long live Ailan Hill!" The platoon leader in the front row drew his sword from his waist and was the first to step forward. Following him were the remaining twenty or so grenadiers who were already holding grenades in their hands. When they reached the top of the steep slope, these grenadiers threw the grenades they had prepared long ago into the dense crowd on the opposite side.
"Bow and arrows!" In the defensive phalanx that was blown to pieces by the first round of grenades, an officer with blood all over his face waved his sword and shouted at the top of his lungs. As he roared, a swarm of arrows like locusts rushed towards the Elanhill soldiers on the commanding heights.
"Puff!" The sound of arrows piercing the body came one after another. More than half of the twenty or so Irish Hill grenadiers who first rushed to the commanding heights were pierced with arrows and fell on the corpses of the Alante soldiers.
The few lucky ones who hadn't died had several arrows stuck in their bodies and they screamed and rolled down. The grenadiers in the second row seemed to be stimulated by the blood of their companions. They continued to move forward and threw the grenades they had prepared to the other side of the reverse slope.
"Boom!" There was another series of dense explosions. The defending soldiers of Alante seemed to have discovered that this reverse slope was a good place for them to hold on. They found that the other side did not seem to have any good way to take this high ground.
Even those deadly grenades could only blow up a few soldiers in the front row and could not threaten the archers in the back. After fighting for nearly two hours, the soldiers of Alante killed the enemy on the opposite side for the first time. With their morale boosted, they cheered like wild animals, as if they were the winners of this battle.
In fact, they have lost nearly 1,000 people, and the enemy they are facing has only less than 20 dead. But including General Franky, the soldiers of Alante need to vent, vent their anger that has been suppressed for a long time.
"Second row! Attack! For Ireland Hill!" The company commander standing on the side of the team saw that his proud subordinate, the platoon leader who was the first to reach the summit, was shot into a hedgehog by a feather arrow, and angrily gave the order to continue the attack.
Without any hesitation, the soldiers in the second row took a neat step forward, pulled out the grenades from their chests, and rushed to the commanding heights that were within reach. Then, as they were about to reach the commanding heights, they learned to be smart and dropped their grenades and lay down, not exposing their bodies to the enemy's crossbows.
Although their attack had some effect, it was still a very difficult process to fight for the commanding heights. The soldiers lay down and fired from the commanding heights. The Alante soldiers, who were also close at hand, counterattacked frantically regardless of casualties. Soon, the loss of the first battalion rose to 50 people.
"This is not a solution!" Feeling that his company would be exhausted at this gap, the company commander on the front line complained angrily while holding his sword, "Those cunning Alantes!"
"It doesn't matter! They've already gone up! As long as they go up... the battle is over." The battalion commander who came up from behind stared at the gap that had been difficult to attack for a long time, and said to his men with a sneer.
Soon, in the confused eyes of the Alante Empire soldiers, a square metal plate with a gap in the middle was slowly pushed to the commanding heights. The bows and arrows clanged against the metal shield, but they could do nothing to the Elanhill soldiers behind the metal shield.
The Elanhill soldier behind the shield saw the densely packed enemies in front of him through the narrow aiming gap, and then in the next second, he pulled the bolt of his gun expressionlessly: "Clang!"
