The year 4600 of the Yanhuang calendar, 1902. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

In September, although it is summer in Siberia at this time, and its symbolic forests and snow fields are not visible, compared with the summer in the interior, the summer in Siberia seems short and obviously different from the mainland, for example, its early morning seems a little cold, although it is in summer, but it makes people feel like late spring, in fact, the summer in Siberia is ending.

Summer is coming to an end, and soon after a short autumn, the Siberian winter will arrive, when a bitter cold will once again envelop the land.

In the early morning, the sky and the earth were shrouded in a layer of soft gauzy mist, and against the background of the mist and golden sunlight and the green trees, everything between the sky and the earth seemed quiet and serene, and in the rear of the long battle line, several warriors released hydrogen balloons, and at the same time measured the speed and direction of the wind with streamers, everything was the same as before.

In the muddy trenches, millions of Chinese and Russian soldiers, when the morning came, were enjoying the warm sunshine while carrying out an activity.

Some were eating, some were going out of the fortifications to get a few breaths of fresh air. For those Russian soldiers, at one time they did not take the Chinese army in their eyes at all, in their eyes, the Chinese army was not worth mentioning, at least once they thought so. But now, after months of fierce fighting, when nearly 600,000 Far Eastern troops are encircled, and the encirclement is gradually shrinking towards the north, no Russian soldier will despise those Chinese.

Now, for the Russian soldiers caught in the encirclement, they are enduring all kinds of ordeals. It was an unprecedented ordeal - a long siege. They were subjected to mental and physical torture that they had never experienced before. Although they had plenty of food, each of them knew very well that with the end of summer and the approach of winter, their end was also coming, after the arrival of winter.

But on the other hand, they don't seem to be so nervous as now. Russia has formed a new corps - the Siberian Army Group, which is a huge corps, and now they are attacking the Chinese lines to rescue the Far Eastern Army, and as long as they can hold on, the encirclement will always be broken!

Even a few days ago, a battalion of Cossack cavalry, like adventurers hundreds of years ago, bypassed Lake Baikal and crossed the primeval forests of the north to reach the encirclement. Good news for them - the Chinese defense line is retreating, and they will retake Irkutsk before the onset of winter!

It's all going to end!

Good news. To the relief of the Russian soldiers struggling in the encirclement, victory seemed to be within reach, and even their general, Kuropatkin, was now relieved that if they could break the siege and join the Siberian Corps, the Far Eastern Army would also be the hero of the war.

When the mist cleared, the Russian soldiers who were suffering in the muddy trenches talked and laughed, and occasionally the screams of pain from the soldiers whose feet were soaked were soaked, and despite the diseases brought by the trenches, it was under the protection of the trenches that they could block the attacks of the Chinese again and again.

At this time, in the bright sun, these Russian soldiers, who call the trenches their home, will take off their worn-out boots and dry their feet, trench feet! Compared to the enemy's shells, to some extent, trench foot, perhaps the most lethal weapon, they could not even imagine that those Chinese could stay in the trenches for a long time, because they had never seen the Chinese dry their feet, it seemed that trench feet only "favored" the Russians.

While the Russians were enjoying the sun with their soldiers barefoot, the "buzz" of an airship was heard in the air, and an airship flew in from the southwest. There was a Russian soldier who took off his boots and basked his feet there, pointing at the air and shouting.

"Chinese airship!"

Then, the other Russian soldiers, who were laughing, looked into the air, and when the airship came over them, they did not shoot into the air, but looked at the airship with extremely complicated eyes - it was obviously a reconnaissance airship.

"When will Russia have its own airship!"

In this war, the Russians learned too much, just like in the Far East, facing the machine guns of the Chinese, listening to the continuous sound of machine guns, they didn't even know what it was, but in a few months, they bought as many as hundreds of machine guns, French, British, as long as they could buy machine guns, they bought.

However, when the Chinese army's airships were not available to them, in addition to China, although such as Britain, Germany and France have airships, but their airship performance is far from comparable to the Chinese, even now, seven months after the outbreak of the war, there are still only Chinese airships in the sky.

Perhaps, God has given the sky to the Chinese!

Looking at the airship in the air, the Russian soldiers on the ground thought so, and just as they imagined, the lone airship flew over their heads, circled in an arc far away, and flew away.

"Hey, God knows if it's going to bring ...... bombing"

Looking at the airship in the distance, the Russian soldiers on the edge of the trench couldn't help but worry about their fate, and the habit of war made them very clear that after routine aerial reconnaissance, shelling and bombardment could come, and where would they shell at that time? Bomb what? That's not up to them, but everyone knows it - airships bring death!

There can be no doubt about this!

Thus, the atmosphere of the position became solemn again in this perception of death, and the awareness of death made it clear to each of them that a new battle would soon begin. Unbeknownst to these Russian soldiers, after the reconnaissance flight completed by the reconnaissance airship, a detailed reconnaissance report was made to the corps commander, and in addition to the report, there were a large number of reconnaissance photographs.

"The positions of the Russian army are stretched for a long time. There are three or four trenches in each. Most of the artillery was front-loaded. It is mainly located between the first and second trenches, most of which are in the bottom depression, and the trenches are extremely deep, and their depth is estimated to be more than two meters......"

Reconnaissance from the air once again proved that the positions of the Russian army are extremely strong, and war is the best teacher, which is a universal truth for the army of any country. After putting down the report, while the staff officers were perfecting the information on several offensive points on the map, he looked at another weather report, then walked to the map, looked at it carefully for a while, and then said:

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

After speaking, Shang Dequan sneered, what does it mean this time, this will be the last battle!

More precisely. It was the last battle of the Russian Far Eastern Army, and the marshal did not give him much time. Nikolai, who also led the "Siberian Army", consisting of 520,000 troops? Grand Duke Nikolayevich also did not give him time, as soon as the Siberian corps broke through the defensive line, then everything would be catastrophic for the Northeast Army.

Towards noon, dark clouds obscured the sun, and in the afternoon a cool rain fell, and in the evening the temperature dropped again, a typical Siberian summer night - cold without a hint of heat. After a few hours of heavy rain, the Russian trenches were full of cold mud, and the Russian soldiers were all sitting in the trenches with their guns in their hands, their wet guns shining with dark light, and the sky was shining with sparse starlight.

A sturdy officer stood for a moment at the door of a bunker where an officer lived, hurriedly unbuttoned his military uniform, shook off the water droplets from his clothes, and quickly wiped his boots on the rotten hay before pushing open the door 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!"

Ivanov replied, then took off his clothes and hung his military coat and rain-soaked military cap on nails by the door.

"The terrain where the Chinese build trenches is higher than here, we have not yet learned to build trenches, you look here, we actually chose to build trenches in depressions, trenches only dig more than one meter, and groundwater will come out, and in some places, they can't even dig a meter, but the Chinese's trenches can dig two meters deep!"

The deeper the trenches are dug, the stronger the defenses will be, this is the experience that this war has taught them, trenches can block the vast majority of shrapnel, trenches can resist most bullets, trenches...... In short, the trenches are the closest companions of the soldiers besides rifles, and if they have enough machine guns and barbed wire, they even believe that they can hold it until the end of the earth, of course the trenches must be deep enough, and the barbed wire must be complex enough. And all this is not what they can have, at least not now.

"The Chinese are good at defense, and even better at attacking."

Mannerheim gave Ivan the most direct answer, the same trench, the Russians can hold for a week, but the Chinese can hold a month, or even longer, in front of the Chinese, the Russians are like students, they must learn how to dig trenches, how to attack trenches.

"The Chinese are then able to defend, you say that the little Grand Duke Nicholas, will he be able to break through the Chinese defense line and reoccupy Irkutsk?"

Ivanov did not look up either, and said softly.

"Little Grand Duke Nikolai is not comparable to that fool of Kuropatkin, he is a very good military general, I heard that the reason why he attacks so slowly is not because the Chinese are good at defense, but because he is testing the Chinese's defense line and looking for the Chinese's weaknesses!"

"Hey, I really don't know when the siege will be lifted......"

Mannerheim sighed. As the commander of the 52nd Dragoon Regiment, now his cavalry units have been turned into infantry, guarding the trenches like infantry.

"I think it will be before winter, after all, if winter hasn't solved the problem......

Then everything will be over, and in the bitter cold of winter, they will have only one way to go, either freeze to death or surrender.

"Winter ......"

Mannerheim gasped, eyes fixed on the bunker.

"Will we be able to keep it until winter? Now my biggest fear is whether Chinese will attack the Grand Duke before they attack, after all, Chinese also know very well that if they can't solve us, they will have to deal with the Grand Duke attacking at the same time as us......"

The conversation between the two seemed a little helpless, in their opinion, perhaps the best option now was for the Grand Duke to attack immediately, and they also launched a breakthrough here, in this case, maybe there was still salvation, but ...... This is just wishful thinking, after all, the Grand Duke is still far from here, and their commander-in-chief is bent on holding on and not crashing into the barbed wire of the Chinese.

While the two of them were talking, between the barbed wire fences that the Russian army regarded as the place of death, hundreds of close-in trenches were constantly extending to the left and right, and in the trenches, the soldiers pushing steel carts pushed heavy gas cylinders up the close-mortar trenches more than 200 meters away from the front line of the Russian army, and the cylinders were pointed at the position of the Russian army at 45 degrees.

After several months of stalemate on the front, especially after paying a heavy price for each attack, the Northeast Army is trying to end this campaign in a new way, so as to completely devote its forces to another battlefield, and because of this, in the past period of time, there have been no large-scale fierce battles, at most small-scale tentative attacks. However, today is different from usual, and it seems that the battlefield that has been silent for several days is about to end its last silence today.

"Hurry, hurry!"

Under the urging of the officers, the soldiers accelerated their work.

"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 want to die! Tap the action! ”

A small accident did not stop the continuation of the whole operation, thousands of sappers worked hard to put tens of thousands of compressed gas cylinders, these cylinders were loaded on the train from Dalian in the past half a month, and then transported to the bottom of Baikal by train, and then transported to the front line by horse-drawn carriages and trucks.

Even now, who are responsible for arranging these "shells", they do not know what they are installing, they only follow the order, send the cylinders to a place at a distance of 100 meters and at most 200 meters from the front line of the Russian army, and then turn on the electric detonation fuse. 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.) )