The 3rd Lancer Division was assembled in Krasno, and the 3rd Regiment was in the eastern part of the small city, which was less than ten kilometers from the front line. Now that all the transport vehicles have been handed in, Rakovsky and his family will have to walk on two legs. The whole company was concentrated in a large open field, and a major gave a pre-war mobilization speech.

His voice was loud and loud, but Rakovsky couldn't quite understand what he was saying, he spoke German. Anyway, I know one meaning, and there is going to be a war soon.

The atmosphere of the whole company suddenly became tense.

The company, in the moonless night, walked to the assault position five kilometers away. In the night sky, red and green flares are not rising, and the rumbling of artillery has been going on since yesterday afternoon. Thunderous noises continued to come from the north, and from time to time there were bursts of fire from the enemy's forward positions.

From May 1, the Austro-Hungarian artillery on the front line began to test fire at the positions of the Russian troops, and the shelling was not intense, but continuous. The artillery headquarters marked the number of important positions of the enemy on the map. It was only later that I heard that the Austro-Hungarian army had a total of more than 1,300 artillery pieces on the front, and an average of one artillery piece would be allocated to every 70 meters of assault zone.

Below the hillside behind the assault position, strange-looking armored vehicles were quietly parked, and from the hillside, they looked like a long row of neatly stacked large iron boxes, with a small round box mounted on the head of a small-caliber infantry gun or machine gun.

According to the commander, it was the armored brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, and the "tanks" with tracks like tractors were below, and the armored vehicles with six wheels were the same as the tractors. Rakovsky could not see any difference between them, as if the tanks were equipped with infantry guns, while box-like armored cars generally had only two machine guns.

"What's the use of this?" No one knows, anyway, each soldier is required to carry a bundle of firewood and grass behind him, and according to the order, he charges behind these armored vehicles, throwing the firewood and grass on his back when he encounters the enemy's trenches or large pits, paving the way for these "tin cans".

"What a nuisance!" Many complained, but had to do so.

Rakovsky probably counted that there were about 200 of these "tin boxes" behind the hillside, lined up in a long triangular formation, one in front and two in the back. From a distance, the row at the back is much denser than the front, and it is indeed a lot denser.

In the artillery positions behind these "iron cars", the artillery that carried out routine test fire and harassing shelling continued to fire shells slowly. In those artillery positions, more artillery quietly raised their heads, their muzzles pointed at their intended targets, boxes of shells piled up behind the gun emplacements, waiting for new orders to come from farther rear.

On May 2, 1915, at 4 o'clock in the morning, the continuous shelling that had been going on since yesterday afternoon gradually stopped, and the whole position fell into silence.

This calm did not last long, at 5 o'clock in the morning, three red flares suddenly rose from the southern horizon, and the red streamer looked very striking and strange in mid-air.

The sky suddenly lit up, and thousands of artillery pieces suddenly roared like a tsunami, and one after another firelight swept across the sky and flew towards the Russian positions in the north. Immediately after, a mass of fire rose on the enemy's position, the explosions were continuous, the earth trembled, and the firelight reflected red in the air, and it seemed that the whole thing was burning.

The German-Austrian counterattack on all fronts in Galicia officially began.

The Austro-Hungarian army concentrated 12 150-mm heavy artillery regiments, 32 105-mm field artillery regiments, and a huge artillery group composed of the artillery units of each division and regiment in Bohemia and Galicia, with a total of 1,362 guns of various types. The Russian army on the Eastern Front has never experienced such ferocious firepower, the shallow trenches built by the Russian army that do not meet the standards of the Western Front have been razed to the ground in patches, the mine throwers have become the death of the Russian infantry in the trenches, and the super heavy artillery of the Austrian army has turned the strong support points of the Russian army into powder one by one.

Dense shells landed on the opposite position, destroying the qiē they encountered, and the rising black smoke quickly converged into a cloud, shrouding the Russian position in a black fog, and only the fire after the explosion of the shells could penetrate the black fog.

The earth jumped sharply, the rolling heat spread to the ground in all directions, and the whistling shells seemed to fly towards the Russian positions with a grim smile, and the Russian artillery positions that had been discovered by aerial reconnaissance in advance were destroyed one by one under heavy fire.

Amid the roar of artillery, countless infantry rushed out from the starting positions of the Austrian army, wielding engineer shovels while the Russian army was suppressed by artillery on the front line. There was a clanging sound, and the soldiers, ignoring their concealment, rushed forward to fill in the craters. The dense explosion of shells drowned out the sounds of the busy crowd, and the black fog kicked up obscured the view of the Russians on the position.

The heavy shelling continued, and began to stretch forward.

The roar of motors sounded from the forward positions, a wave of dust rose on the ground, and a long line of tanks and armored vehicles rolled over the low hillside and began to advance towards the Russian positions. The tanks in front kicked up a cloud of yellow dust, obscuring the chariots behind them and the infantry that followed them, and nothing could be seen in the blur.

These armored fighting vehicles crossed the open field in front of the Russian position, braving the enemy's bullets without any scruples, and the steel chain rails lightly crushed or tore the barbed wire fences in front of the enemy's position, and soon broke into the front line of the Russian position.

The tanks crossed the Russian trenches without hesitation and continued to advance, firing at the resisting Russians with synchronous machine guns or small-caliber guns.

The wheeled armored vehicles could not get past the trenches, but could only move along the edge of the trenches, and the armored machine-gun towers rotated, sweeping strings of bullets at the Russians who were rising from the positions.

The infantry who followed behind the wagons threw their bundles of firewood and straw into the trenches, which were quickly filled in, and the armoured chariots pressed the firewood and grass over the trenches, and groups of infantry appeared behind the chariots, constantly pulling the rifle triggers and firing a round of bullets forward.

The Russians quickly collapsed in the face of the impenetrable "steel monsters", and the Russian soldiers jumped out of the trench screaming and ran backwards in spite of the bullets, only to be knocked to the ground by the rain of bullets fired from tanks or armored vehicles.

Rakovsky got up from the ground and hid behind the chariot with his rifle in his hand and advanced to the enemy's position, the sound of gunfire and all sorts of shouts from his comrades. Whether anyone was injured or killed was no longer a matter of concern. He found the back of the armored vehicles to be a good place to hide from bullets, only occasionally leaning out and shooting out.

A Russian soldier jumped out of the trench in front, the tank with a loud roar pressed over the trench overhead, and the machine guns and large and small shells kept burrowing into the trench, causing the Russians inside to break their nerves, discard their weapons and howl like beasts, and crawl to the back to escape.

With his head on the butt of his rifle, Rakovsky aimed at the back of a Russian who was desperately fleeing, and pulled the trigger with his index finger. A shot rang out, the butt of the gun slammed into his shoulder, and the Russian threw himself forward. The first killing didn't feel anything special, the black smoke coming from behind the armored bodies and the smoke from the battlefield choked people's throats, Rakovsky turned the muzzle of the gun sideways, swallowed his saliva fiercely, and continued to walk forward after the car.

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