What's worse is that a third of these people don't have guns, and the only weapons they have in their bodies are a big knife and two grenades!

Looking at these frightened farmers at a loss, Battalion Commander Zeng was almost speechless for a moment.

Either way, the battle had to be fought. In line with the idea that having something is better than nothing, Battalion Commander Zeng organized these people into a temporary reserve team to be used for mobile reinforcement.

In the early morning, the mist cleared, and when the sun had just risen over the ridge to the east, the mortars of the devils below were the first to break the last silence on Xiaobei Mountain.

As puffs of smoke rose from below, shells were pushed high into the air by the fierce gunpowder gases, and then finally pulled back to the ground by gravity.

Mortars were invented in the brutal trench warfare of World War I, and because of its extremely strong ability to kill targets hidden in trenches, they quickly became popular all over the world. Due to its high trajectory, it can almost smash cannonballs from the top of your head into the bunker where you are hiding.

After a short but heavy artillery bombardment, the Japanese quickly discharged a small squad of troops and began to attack head-on from the Xiaobeishan position.

Because of their national character, the Japanese are very stubborn about war, and they are stubborn about using an infantry drill code during the Russo-Japanese War to death, but this does not mean that they are stupid.

Although the Japanese stubbornly prepared artillery fire before the attack, which seemed meaningless to the Chinese, they did not bomb indiscriminately on the two-kilometer Xiaobeishan position, but only went through the formalities.

But if it were the Chinese army, it would definitely send a small force to feint first to find out the enemy's defense center, and then organize artillery to launch a precise artillery attack.

The Xiaobeishan position was built on a long ridgeline, and the Japanese knew very well that if the entire position were to be ploughed with artillery fire, it would be impossible for a mountain artillery squadron to prepare for fire for half an hour.

After a pointless brief fire preparation, the Japanese soon sent their vanguard forces and began to test the defenders' firepower and defensive center of gravity.

Seeing this scene, Battalion Commander Zeng shook his head helplessly.

He knew very well the tricks of the devils, and if he opened fire fiercely, he would inevitably encounter even more ferocious artillery suppression. But if you don't fight back hard enough, the devils of this squad are likely to become a deadly knife in no time.

He knew very well that with his weak defensive strength, if he let a squad of devils break through the position directly, he might not be able to withstand it in a white-knuckle battle alone.

After thinking about it, Battalion Commander Zeng still decided to fight back fiercely, he couldn't let the devils attack his position in the first wave of assault, otherwise his people would probably be driven away.

"Pass my command, and a company will immediately assemble in the middle of the position!"

Not long after the order was given, more than a hundred veterans quickly gathered from the long position.

"Brothers, listen to my command, and put the little devil in a while and then fight!"

The cat walked to the middle of the company's position, and the battalion commander Zeng put two grenades in front of him and unscrewed the back cover.

These soldiers in the independent battalion are all leftovers from the waves and sands during this time, not to mention that they are all elites, at least they are all veterans who have seen blood on the battlefield.

In the national army, recruits and veterans are two kinds of people, the former is cannon fodder who can be sent to death at any time, and the latter is an unusually precious seed, the only fighting force that officers trust.

Not far from the bottom of the mountain, after the Japanese squad entered the sight of the defenders, they quickly dispersed into four small combat groups of more than a dozen people in detachments, and cautiously touched the mountain with their guns.

The leader of the devil squad held his southern pistol, carefully hiding behind a group of soldiers, and kept giving orders.

The devil soldiers gasped one by one, trying to keep their bodies as low as possible. As attacking forwards, they are also under tremendous psychological pressure.

Da Da Da ...... Bang bang!

Suddenly, the Czech machine gun was the first to break the silence of the early morning, taking the lives of several devils and announcing the beginning of the battle.

At a distance of fifty or sixty meters, the devils of the most advanced detachment of the Japanese army were able to withstand almost the entire company of small arms fire in an instant, and more than half of them were killed in just a few seconds.

"The target is directly ahead of the ridge, Wutai! Five! ”

When encountered, the leader of the devil squad jumped behind a thigh-thick tree like a monkey, pulled out his command knife and shouted.

Several devil machine gunners reflexively fell to the ground, and the crooked sub-machine guns immediately burst over.

As soon as the Japanese machine guns opened fire, the fire of the defenders on the hill was immediately suppressed, and the casualties began to gradually increase.

Due to the lack of heavy machine guns and the lack of ammunition, the only three Czechs of the defenders on Xiaobei Hill could hardly suppress the fire of the Japanese crooked machine guns.

Seeing that the Japanese troops began to attack upwards again under the cover of machine guns, Battalion Commander Zeng officially put the center in his hand at his feet and took two grenades that had been unscrewed on the back cover.

"Brethren! Grenade to me! ”

In an instant, nearly seventy or eighty grenades were thrown out in a dense manner, directly blasting the charging Japanese troops and howling wolves.

In the dense smoke and dust, the little devil retreated in embarrassment after dropping more than thirty corpses.

Boom .......

As soon as the tentative attack of the Japanese army was repulsed, mortars and grenadiers immediately exploded in the middle of the Xiaobeishan position. This time, the devil showed no mercy to his subordinates, and within a few minutes, a full 200 shells of various kinds repeatedly ravaged the position of less than 200 meters guarded by the first company.

After the heavy shelling, the devils of the three squads, under the cover of at least three Type 92 heavy machine guns, howled and went straight to the Xiaobeishan position.

Although Battalion Commander Zeng repelled the tentative attack of the devils, they reluctantly exposed the Achilles' heel of their lack of troops.

The Japanese army saw very clearly just now that only a section of less than 200 meters was being fired back at the entire Xiaobeishan position, which was much lower than the Japanese army's expectations.

And this also made it clear to the Japanese troops under the mountain that the Chinese army on the mountain was too small.

When he saw that the Japanese army had put three squads of troops at once and launched an attack at the same time on the frontal attack with a width of nearly 500 meters, Battalion Commander Zeng knew that he was probably more than lucky today.

Soon, under the double suppression of the grenadier heavy machine guns, the few light machine guns on Xiaobeishan were all dumbfounded.

When the only 300 or so grenades in the battalion were almost consumed, the Japanese attack was completely unstoppable.

The devil's light and heavy machine guns weaved a dense net of fire, knocking out any soldiers of the independent battalion who dared to show their heads and return fire to the ground. In just ten minutes, the independent battalion lost more than half of its fighters, and all of them were veterans.

Seeing that the situation was irreparable, Battalion Commander Zeng gritted his teeth, turned around and called a few veterans and ran to the anticline behind the position, shouting to the supplementary company as the last reserve:

"Brothers, the devil is dying, if you have an egg to rush down with me to kill the devil, each person will be rewarded with five silver dollars after the war......!"

Under the encouragement of Battalion Commander Zeng and more than a dozen veterans, more than 100 recruits of the reserve team instantly howled through the position full of gunpowder smoke and rushed down the mountain as if they had been beaten with chicken blood.

Seeing more than a hundred Chinese in tattered clothes who suddenly rushed down, the attacking Japanese troops were taken aback. Within a few breaths, the two sides collided.

For a moment, the sound of bayonets entering flesh, the sound of bones being chopped off, gunshots, wails resounded throughout the hillside.

However, in less than five minutes, the reserve team, which was still full of morale just now, was quickly stabbed to death by more than half of the devils.

In the face of the terrifying exchange ratio, the blood and courage in the brains of the surviving recruits disappeared in an instant. They looked at the corpses all over the ground and were scared, terrified.

They screamed and threw away their weapons, and ran up the positions in spite of some of them, trying to return to the positions where the friendly forces were stationed and seek refuge.

However, when they ran to the position, they saw the trenches that had long been empty and hundreds of corpses that had been abandoned.

At the moment when they rushed down, the surviving soldiers of the independent battalion of the 70th Division on Xiaobei Mountain, under the leadership of Battalion Commander Zeng, resolutely withdrew ....... That's right, it's withdrawn!

In the end, under the pursuit of the Japanese army, the reserve of more than 100 people who were put into the counterattack was finally wiped out, and the final casualties they caused to the Japanese army were only a pitiful dozen people.

The only role they once had was to buy the remnants of the Separate Battalion a few precious minutes to withdraw from the battle, and that was .......

The reality was so brutal that the time between the recruitment of the new recruits and the time they were formed as a pile of cold corpses was less than forty-eight hours.

They don't even have time to understand the unspoken rules of the army, and they become another group of lonely ghosts who are destined to be forgotten.

Perhaps in the minds of these dead newcomers, Commander Zeng is shameful and hateful. They were pulled to this ruthless battlefield by the passionate slogans of those officers, the white light ocean, and even the ropes, and then they were abandoned for the first time.

They may really want to fight the devil to the end, but in the end it can only be their own childish and ridiculous idea.

In the eyes of veterans, their combat effectiveness is almost negligible, and their only role is to rush to the front and become a destined expendable in one battle after another.

The Xiaobeishan position was lost, and the flank of the 70th Division was almost open.

Although Battalion Commander Zeng stabilized the remaining more than 100 remnants of the soldiers on the low Yujia Slope and held them on the spot, he knew very well in his heart that his own people were all killed on the low and bare Yujia Slope, and he would definitely not be able to stop any of the Japanese army's next attacks.

Moreover, after the Japanese occupied Xiaobeishan, they would soon be able to condescendingly shell Yujiapo and even Dingjiawa behind it. Based on this alone, Shi Ziyu will definitely not be able to spare himself.

has been with the other party for five or six years, and Camp Commander Zeng really knows Shi Ziyu's temper too well.

The reason why he took people to stay here instead of going back to the division headquarters to report the news in person was that he was afraid that the angry Shi Ziyu would collapse himself directly on the spot.

…… To be continued.

(End of chapter)