In the infantry anti-artillery hole on the periphery of Shanghai Wusong Fort, Song Baicheng had no reserve of officers at this moment, and hid in the anti-artillery hole like ordinary soldiers, and the rumbling sound of cannon in his ears made his heartbeat unable to calm down.

Since the beginning of the morning, the large-scale artillery bombardment on both sides has lasted for six or seven hours, and during these six or seven hours, the soldiers of the Sixth Infantry Division of the Seventh Army can only stay in the anti-artillery holes, passively bearing the heavy shelling of the British and French forces.

This kind of large-scale artillery bombardment is not very lethal for soldiers, unless the enemy's shells, well, and large-caliber grenades hit the top of the anti-artillery holes, it is possible to penetrate the top of the anti-artillery holes and cause casualties among the soldiers.

Whether it is the coastal defense artillery unit of the Navy or the field artillery unit of the Army, these artillery units are very dangerous when fighting, and often if an enemy large-caliber howitzer accurately hits them, often a gun crew has to be reimbursed.

But Song Baicheng's casualties are not large, but this feeling of passive bombing is very bad, a long time is easy to make the morale of the troops drop significantly, not to mention that although the casualty rate of their own infantry is smaller, but there will always be a few casualties, not long ago Song Baicheng next to an anti-artillery hole was hit by a grenade of at least 32 pounds, the huge grenade directly smashed through the top of the anti-artillery hole, and then exploded inside the anti-artillery hole, more than 30 soldiers and a second lieutenant officer hiding inside were not spared, All of them were hit, and half of the soldiers were killed on the spot, and the rest were all seriously wounded, howling and being carried out of the trenches by the medics.

Such small but sustained casualties, along with the loud sound of the shelling, was a great torture for the officers and men of the army!

Song Baicheng is at this moment. I can't wait for the foreigners on the opposite side to attack earlier, whether it is victory or defeat, it is better to finish the battle one day earlier than to hide here every day.

Song Baicheng's idea did not fall short, because at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the infantry units of the British and French coalition forces, which had not moved all this time, finally began to act. I saw that they sent a thousand men to advance quickly in columns, and just by looking at their uniforms, we knew that these soldiers should be French soldiers.

As soon as the British and French infantry on the opposite side moved, the Seventh Army of the Chinese Army was all nervous, Bing Qusong had once again climbed the observation platform to watch the battle, and the commander of the 17th Infantry Regiment of the Sixth Division also urgently issued a hit, so that the whole army was ready to leave the anti-artillery hole and enter the trench to face the battle.

The Anglo-French troops on the opposite side advanced quickly in a straight column, and the strength was not much. There are only more than a thousand people.

Just by looking at this force, you know that this is a tentative attack!

Through the observation port of the anti-artillery hole, Song Baicheng estimated the distance of the enemy army in front, 1,500 meters, 1,000 meters, it should be about the same!

At this time, Song Baicheng had already heard a rapid drum beat from the rear, which was a signal for the regiment headquarters to order the infantry companies on the front line to leave the anti-artillery holes and quickly enter the trench to prepare for battle.

He was the company commander of the 4th Company of the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment. Although Lieutenant Song Baicheng had just graduated from the military academy for less than a year, he had not participated in any large-scale actual combat. But as an officer, the first time he heard the order, he shouted: "Quick, enter the predetermined position!" ”

"Quick!" He urged his men to leave the fortifications, and he himself bent into the trenches, and then ran forward, and after a while he stopped at an observation port, and cautiously poked his head out to observe the British and French soldiers in front of him.

At this time, the soldiers of the British and French forces were only about 800 meters away from their trenches. The formation had become several columns, but the distance between the soldiers was very large, not as crowded as in the traditional line formation, but several meters between the soldiers and the soldiers.

In front of and behind these British and French soldiers, and even above their heads, there were constant shell explosions. Most of them are grenades, there are also a lot of grenades, and as for solid shells, although there are some, there are not many of them.

However, although these shells could cause casualties to the British and French forces after they fell, they did not see the expected situation of people turning on their backs, and often after a 12-pound grenade landed and exploded, it could only kill and injure one or two people, and the situation of grenade bombs was similar, most of them could only cause two or three casualties.

This situation is not only watched by Song Baicheng, but also by Bing Qusong and others in the rear: "Their formation is too scattered, the distance between the soldiers is at least three meters, and the coverage area after the explosion of the artillery is limited, so it cannot cause effective damage at all!" ”

Skirmisher? Are they trying to use the line infantry as skirmishers?

Skirmishers are not an uncommon thing, there will be this type of troops in the armies of all countries, these skirmishers will not form a dense formation like the line infantry, their formation is very loose, the interval between soldiers and soldiers is very wide, the early skirmishers are soldiers with mini rifles, and later soldiers with rear-loading rifled rifles one after another, but the so-called skirmishers have not been the main force in the frontal battlefield, and there are no such arms in the Chinese army.

But the current situation is that the formation of these foreigners on the opposite side is really a little strange, their guns are very obvious Mini rifles, not rear-loading rifles, and the formation that enters the battlefield is not scattered at first, but a sub-column, and then slowly becomes a multi-column column, and at the same time the distance between soldiers and soldiers becomes extremely large.

Regardless of what kind of formation these coalition forces came up with, the casualties of this formation when it was shelled were greatly reduced.

Because the shells of these years, especially grenades and grenade shotguns, are limited by the influence of contemporary technology, it is not easy for them to explode on time, and the charge of black powder, coupled with the processing technology of the shell, leads to a small number of fragments after the grenade explosion, and the killing range is relatively limited.

Such a grenade falling in a dense crowd can naturally be knocked down by a single shell, but if it is placed in a skirmish formation in such an open terrain, the damage it can cause will drop rapidly.

The lethality of a single shell is reduced, and at the same time, the rate of fire of artillery in this year is really a little poor, if you can shoot two or three rounds a minute, it is already a burst of rapid fire, and under normal combat, a twelve-pound front-loading bronze gun is good to shoot one shot a minute.

To dramatically increase the rate of fire. It has to be a rear-loading gun to make this possible.

Although the effect of the shelling was not as good as expected, the artillery of the Chinese army did not stop the shelling, but continued to shell.

However, just as Song Baicheng and the others entered the trench, waiting for the enemy to rush up while observing the effect of their own artillery bombardment, there was a dense whistling sound in the sky, although Song Baicheng did not have much actual combat experience. But in the past few days, I have seen a lot of shelling, and as soon as I heard this sound, I knew that the Anglo-French troops on the opposite side were shelling.

And when he saw the black dots in the sky flying towards his position, he shouted: "Shelling, concealment!" ”

As he shouted, he retracted his body, and then the whole person crouched down, and in the corner of the trench, before he could finish the job, there were several deafening cannon sounds in his ears.

This is the sound of a grenade exploding at least thirty-two pounds or more. This is a grenade fired from their large-caliber naval guns!

After the explosion of the huge grenade, although the charge inside was still black powder, the charge was as powerful as it was over, and the power of the explosion was enough to blow a small crater out of the ground.

At this time, Song Baicheng did not know that on this section of trench, not only did grenades fall and explode, but also a large number of grenade bombs exploded in mid-air, although most of the grenade bombs did not hit the target. Exploded in front and behind the trench, but there were also a few grenades that exploded above the trench. In the trench, there is no need to have a top shield like an anti-artillery hole, which can effectively resist the killing of grenades or grenade fragments, so that whenever a grenade explodes over the trench, it can always kill and injure a large number of Chinese soldiers in the trench below.

"It's not good, they're not going to attack, they're trying to lure the snake out of the hole and shell us!" Zhu Jianjia, who was observing from behind, had already reached a distance of nearly 800 meters. But a big turn was the rapidly retreating Anglo-French troops, and now the Anglo-French forces launched a heavy artillery attack on the 17th Infantry Regiment in the trenches, and this shelling hit not only grenades, but also grenades, so it is very obvious. They used those thousands of men as a temptation, but after luring the Chinese army to leave the anti-artillery hole and enter the trench, they used a large number of naval guns and field artillery to fire grenades and grenades intensively, and then killed and injured a large number of Chinese army soldiers.

Seeing this scene, Bing Qusong took a deep breath and slammed the table in front of him with his clenched fist: "Let the 17th Regiment quickly retreat to the anti-artillery hole!" ”

Now the 17th Infantry Regiment can be said to be completely exposed to the enemy's grenade fire, and the visual inspection of the British and French artillery involved in the shelling now exceeds 50, a considerable part of which are British and French naval guns and mortar guns of the ground forces, and the power of these large-caliber guns is very huge.

I'm afraid the losses of the 17th Infantry Regiment will be quite small!

In fact, there was no need for Bing Qusong to order, the officers of the 17th Infantry Regiment commanding the operation in front saw the Anglo-French soldiers on the opposite side retreating on their own initiative, and they had already ordered the troops to withdraw from the trench and return to the anti-artillery hole, but this burst of shelling still brought heavy casualties to the 17th Infantry Regiment.

An hour later, looking at the report handed over by the combat staff officer, Bing Qusong's face was a little unpleasant, the shelling just now that lasted less than five minutes brought more than 300 casualties to the 17th Infantry Regiment, you must know that in the artillery battle of today's First World War, the entire army of the Seventh Army hiding in the anti-artillery hole did not suffer 300 casualties.

"Instruct all officers on the front line that it is strictly forbidden for the enemy to go out of battle without entering within 500 meters, and to be cautious before entering within 300 meters!"

Obviously, which one of them was careless just now, and he didn't expect that the other party would use the infantry as bait, and then attract his own soldiers to leave the anti-artillery hole, and then kill and injure his own soldiers with intensive artillery fire.

What made Bing Qusong a little depressed was that although his side also shelled the British and French soldiers as bait, the density of the shelling was obviously not the intensive shelling carefully planned by the British and French forces, and the other party's soldiers were too far apart, resulting in a greatly reduced artillery killing effect, and that burst of shelling killed and injured dozens of people at most, but their own losses were as high as 300 people.

When Bing Qusong was heartbroken by the death and injury of his soldiers, in the British and French coalition army, Gro asked Ergin with a puzzled face: "Earl, although the attack just now has achieved certain results, the casualties of our army are not small, and we have not conquered the enemy's position, is it still meaningful to do this?" ”

Count Ergin smiled, and took a sip of red wine from the crystal cup before saying: "The purpose of this tactic is not to kill and injure hundreds of enemy troops, but to seize the enemy's position!" ”

Gro didn't know: "By what?" ”

Ergin took another sip of wine before he said, "An Aesop Fable!" ”

Glollio thought for a moment, and soon realized: "The wolf is coming? (To be continued......)