The year 4603 of the Yanhuang calendar, 1905 AD. On March 20th, a distant snowfield, the forest and snow fields on the mountain, compared with the Guannai, the winter in the Northeast has the color of the north, and most places in the Northeast, the Northeast has entered the spring at this time, the early spring of the Northeast is not necessarily the same as the Guannai, bright sunshine, tender branches, under the intersection of cold and warm airflow, the originally clear sky may suddenly fall snow, suddenly freezing rain.

Under the action of the sun, the thick ice in the river began to melt, and when the huge ice blocks collided together, the rumbling sound echoed in the river.

In the early morning, the weather was shrouded in a veil-like mist, and against the background of the mist and golden trees, everything in the sky and earth seemed quiet and serene, and several fighters in the rear of the battle line released hydrogen balloons, and at the same time measured the wind speed and direction with streamers, everything was the same as before.

The silent front was still as before, and the flames of war could not be ignited in the muddy trenches, and the people of the two [***] were carrying out an activity while enjoying the warm sunshine when the morning came.

Some were eating, some were going out of the fortifications to get a few breaths of fresh air. For those soldiers who said that they did not take the Chinese army in their eyes at all, in their eyes, the Chinese army seemed to be the same Qing army eleven years ago, and even in their opinion, if it were not for the request from Tokyo, perhaps they would have conquered the defense line of the Chinese army by now.

When the mist cleared, the soldiers who were suffering in the muddy trenches talked and laughed, and the occasional cry of pain from the soldiers whose feet were soaked reminded them that this was a battlefield, so they would take this opportunity to sit on the edge of the trench, take off their boots, and dry their feet! They could not even imagine that those Chinese could stay in the trenches for a long time, because they had never seen Chinese dry their feet.

At this moment, the "buzz" of airplanes sounded in the air, and several planes flew from the northwest. One of the soldiers, who took off his boots and basked his feet there, pointed to the air and shouted, "Chinese plane!" ”

Then, the other soldiers who were laughing looked into the air, and when the planes came over them, they did not shoot into the air, but looked at the planes with curiosity and envy.

"When will Ben have his own plane!"

In this war, I learned too many things, just like in Lushun, facing the machine guns of the Russians, listening to the continuous sound of machine guns, they didn't even know what it was, but within a few months, they had more machine guns than the Russians, as many as more than 100 machine guns, French and British, as long as they could buy machine guns, they all bought them.

However, when the planes of the Chinese army swept over their heads, they tried to buy them from China, but after they failed to buy back two from the United States, no one could fly them, fortunately the planes were not machine guns, and the planes could not kill people, at least they all thought so, and just as they imagined, the planes flying over their heads circled in an arc far away and flew away.

"Oops! I really don't know what the Chinese are doing with this kind of waste! ”

"A lot of money! People are stupid! ”

Looking at the distant planes, the soldiers on the edge of the trenches couldn't help but laugh at those Chinese, in their eyes, this is just the usual nerve warfare of the Chinese army, they want to use the plane to tell others, look, you can run on the ground, swim in the sea, we can fly in the sky, but what is the use of flying in the sky?

As a result, the position returned to a relaxed atmosphere. And this batch of aircraft was a reconnaissance aircraft sent by the 1st Guards Corps.

After the scout on the plane finished the flight, he went to the commander of the corps, Xiao Xinren, to make a report.

"The army's position is very long, there are only two trenches, most of the artillery is in front, mainly between the first and second trenches, most of them are in the bottom depression area, the trenches are very weak, and the depth is estimated to be no more than one meter......

After putting down the report, Xiao Xinren read another weather report, then walked to the map, looked at it carefully, and then said:

"Everything is ready, only the east wind is missing!".

After speaking, Xiao Xinren sneered, what does this time mean, this will be the first time that a new weapon has been put on the battlefield.

In the afternoon it rained with icy sleet, and the snow melted with water, and after a night, the snow melted and became frozen again.

In the low trenches of the army, there was cold mud everywhere. The soldiers who sat in the trench with their guns in their arms were shining, and the wet guns in their hands were shining with a dark light. The sky shone with sparse starlight.

A short, sturdy officer stood for a moment at the door of a bunker where an officer lived, his [***] fingers slipping on the buttons of his coat, hurriedly unbuttoning his military coat, shaking off the drops of water from his collar, and quickly wiping his boots on the rotten hay, before pushing the door open and stooping into the bunker.

The yellow light of the small kerosene lamp shone on the faces of the visitors. An officer in an open shirt, he rose from the bed, touched the messy hair that was beginning to turn gray with one hand, and yawned.

"Has the rain stopped?"

"Stop,"

Keiji Matsushita replied, then took off his clothes and hung his military coat and rain-soaked military hat on a nail by the door.

"It's warm here. There are many people, and there is a lot of gas. ”

"We just started the fire not long ago. What's bad is that the water is bubbling straight out of the ground. If we don't take the initiative to attack, we won't wait for the Chinese to come, and the rain will drive us out of the trenches......"

Keiji Matsushita rubbed his hands, bent down, and squatted next to the small stove.

"The local power of the Chinese [***] people to build trenches is higher than here, we have not learned to repair trenches until now, you look here, we actually chose to build trenches in depressions, the trenches were dug less than one meter, and groundwater came out, while the Chinese trenches can dig two meters deep!"

"The Chinese are good at defense, and we are good at attacking."

"But now the base camp has tied our hands to death!"

When Keiji Matsushita mentioned the order not to attack for the time being, he was angry.

"Didn't the Chinese stop attacking in Mukden too?"

"They want to control the scale of the war because of the problem of strength! But what about us? ”

"At that time, because we did not have shells, the current battlefield situation, you are not unclear, we, Chinese, Russians, mixed in Manchuria, they are surrounding the Third Army in Mukden, and we are surrounding their troops in Dalian, even in Mukden, we also form a semi-encirclement of them."

Keiji Matsushita didn't look up either, and said softly.

"Do you mean, we're just going to consume it? The Chinese have killed a lot of us! ”

"Wait," Kiyoji Koizumi, who had slightly bald hair, sighed.

"Tokyo wants a diplomatic solution!"

"Baga! A bunch of shameless politicians! ”

Keiji Matsushita lifted himself up with his elbows propped up.

"Diplomatic settlement, will our blood be shed in vain?"

He gasped for breath and his eyes were fixed on the bunker.

"Sooner or later, the empire will definitely be destroyed in the hands of these politicians, Koizumi-kun, maybe we should take the initiative to attack the Chinese army! What do you think? ”

"There are not enough shells, one of our wings now has only two thousand shells, and it is simply impossible to tear through the defense line of the Chinese army, you have already seen it, their barbed wire is denser than that of Lushun, and the Fifth Division lost a wing in Dalian, and they have not been able to overcome their barbed wire!"

"But we have someone!"

"After a year of fighting, the manpower has been exhausted, and the Chinese army has a steady stream of soldiers, they have 450 million people, and we only have tens of millions!"

The two talked to each other depressedly, and there was a hint of weakness in their anger. While they were talking, between the barbed wire fences that the army regarded as dead, hundreds of close-up trenches were constantly extending to the left and right, and in the trenches, the soldiers pushing carts pushed heavy gas cylinders up the close-for-mortar trenches more than 300 meters away from the front line of the Japanese army, and one by one the one-man high cylinders pointed at the position of the Japanese army at 45 degrees.

On the one hand, the main force of more than 200,000 troops north of Mukden was faced with the dilemma of insufficient ammunition and was unable to attack, on the other hand, the guards were looking for a suitable direction of attack in order to catch the other side by surprise, and it was also a heartache to hit them.

It is precisely this subtle stability that makes the two armies face each other, but outside of Mukden and Dalian, there is no fierce battle, at most it is a small-scale tentative attack. But today is different from usual, and it seems that the battlefield that has been silent for several days is about to end the last silence today: "Hurry up, hurry up!" ”

At the urging of the officers, the soldiers increased their speed.

"Boom!"

The clash of cylinders sounded in the trench, and both officers and soldiers were startled, and the sergeant on the side immediately rushed forward to slap the careless soldier.

"You fucking want to die, don't you! Tap the action! ”

Thousands of engineers worked hard to put nearly 10,000 cylinders, all of which were loaded onto trains from Huainan in the past week, transported to the riverside and transported to Wuhan by steamer, and then transported by train to the bottom of the pass, and then transported to the front line by horse-drawn carriages, trucks, and even wooden boats.

Even now, who are in charge of arranging these "shells," they do not know what they are installing, and they only follow the order to send the cylinders to a place 200 meters away from the front line of the Japanese army, and detonate the fuse according to the electric load.

As dawn approaches, it seems that today will be the same as yesterday, and it will be the beginning of another peaceful day.

(To be continued)