Many years later, after the Republic of South Africa successfully gained independence from the United Kingdom, the South African government at that time, as the natural successor of the Transvaal Republic, demanded the gold from MacDonald Ventures. All sorts of information have escaped. Including those originally held by the Government of the Transvaal Republic. According to many, it is also missing. (Some unconscionable older historians claim that after the end of the Boer War, the MacDonald consortium secretly took in a number of members of the former Transvaal government and took a lot of deposit notes from them.) Occupy. Of course, this unconscionable truth is absolutely unreliable. So, how much money does the Transvaal have in McDonald Ventures, except for a little vote from the South African government. How much is beyond the above figures, of course, can only be said by McDonald Ventures. However, MacDonald Ventures is indeed a credible and reliable bank, and after the South African government passed the law to confirm the legal validity of their status as the successor of the Transvaal Republic, in addition to the 2.5 tons of gold in the hands of the Republic of South Africa, after self-examination, MacDonald Ventures also found another two tons of gold. Over the years, the interest on this gold has been a large amount, but MacDonald Ventures still admits it very honestly. Of course, the South African government on the other side also showed its trust in McDonald Venture Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, and continued to store the gold in the account of McDonald Bank, storing it in the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank. And that interest, entrusted to McDonald Ventures to buy U.S. Treasury bonds......

According to some unconscionable elderly historians, the MacDonald's transport submarines carried out more than a dozen transport missions during the Boer War. These transport submarines carried more than 300 tons of cargo, if only 4.5 tons of gold...... Of course, this claim is unfounded, as the vast majority of these transport tasks have nothing to do with gold. Any claim that MacDonald Ventures has received dozens or even hundreds of tons of gold from South Africa is irresponsible and absolutely false. Although in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, the gold in the hands of the McDonald Venture Bank alone accounted for nearly one-third of the total amount of gold in the entire Fed vault, far exceeding the gold reserves in the hands of most governments. So much so that people at that time even compiled such a ranking of the world's gold reserves:

No. 1 in the world in terms of gold reserves: United States (excluding MacDonald Ventures)

No. 2 in the world in terms of gold reserves: McDonald Ventures (excluding McDonald Ventures Manhattan Branch)

No. 3 in the world's gold reserves: McDonald Ventures Manhattan Branch

……

Of course, although MacDonald Ventures has a lot of gold, it can be guaranteed that every piece of gold in it is legal, as long as it takes a few months or years to study it, you can find out the source, absolutely nothing to do with what Transvaal gold, and what World War II gold, Nazi dead Jewish gold.

……

The siege of Johannesburg has been going on for a month, but the progress made by the British is pitiful, and in the past month, after hard fighting, hundreds of thousands of shells of various kinds have been fired, of which the shells of the 11-inch cannon alone are as high as hundreds, and the huge cannon has been beaten to the point that the barrel has to be replaced, and the infantry has paid more than 30,000 casualties, and the result? The British had just gone less than a hundred meters towards their goal!

"It's a bottomless pit! It's a meat grinder! Lord Roberts sighed as he looked at the battlefield not far away from his artillery hole, through his telescope. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and according to the agreement between the two sides, there would be an hour-long truce to accommodate the wounded on the battlefield and to recover the remains of the war dead. Otherwise, those wounded are thrown on the position, and there is absolutely only one way to die. And now that the weather is getting hotter, those corpses may also bring serious disease problems. Therefore, when the British army first appeared near Johannesburg, the Boer envoys came to negotiate under a white flag and agreed to a truce between the two sides from 4 to 5 o'clock in the afternoon every day. During this time, the Boers would collect the wounded or dead British who had been left behind in the Boer positions and send them to a designated place for the British to receive. Even Lord Roberts had to admit that these hateful rebels were very gentlemanly in this matter.

But that's all there is to their gentlemanly demeanor. Others, whether they are fighting methods or anything else, are so obscene that they can't be more obscene. Not to mention their overt and covert bunkers, minefields, and powerful 11-inch guns, the constant harassment of the rear supply lines by the Boer forces alone gave Lord Roberts a headache.

Although Lord Roberts had placed many forts along the railway line, there were always many holes to exploit along such a long railway line. Some time ago, several supply trains were blown up in succession, and the garrison of several thousand people was wiped out. In this series of battles, the Boer army, armed with horses and military trucks, displayed an astonishing level of mobility and attack power - they were able to carry 3-inch or even 5-inch guns in trucks! No matter how much manpower and material resources Lord Roberts has, he can't make the whole railway resistant to 3-inch or even 5-inch guns. Last time, for example, the Boers didn't even officially rush to the railway, but just put a few 3-inch guns a few hundred meters away from the railway, and then destroyed a column full of supplies by shelling. Those damn rebels don't know what kind of burn they used. Burn. bombs, which actually melted all the steel.

As a result, Lord Roberts had to ask for help from home again, asking for more troops to protect the railway line, more horses, and ...... In short, Lord Roberts felt that those in the domestic budget department were now afraid that they were ready to duel him. However, this time, the country did not mobilize another 100,000 troops for him according to his request, but only sent them a small army of only one or two thousand men.

This is a small unit like no other, and the weapons they are equipped with don't look much different, nothing more than some large-caliber mortars or something, but the boxes for their shells are painted yellow and black, and they are closely guarded. Unless they received a written order from Lord Roberts, the men of the other units could not even glance at the boxes. Because the boxes were yellow and black, they looked like bumblebees, so the unit got the nickname "Wasp Troop". In addition to this, the composition of this force is also very strange, it is staffed by a large number of technical officers in addition to the commanders, many of whom are specialists from a number of British universities and research institutes. In fact, every soldier in this small unit has a high school degree, and all of them above the company commander graduated from a regular university majoring in chemistry. Such a level of education was simply unimaginable at the time.

However, the purpose of this force is really not known to many people except Lord Roberts. This unit was the first chemical warfare unit established by the British. Lord Roberts was told that he could no longer expect a larger reinforcement, and that he must now rely on this force to take Johannesburg.

Suspicious, Roberts ordered an attack on Johannesburg using chemical bombs. However, the commander of that unit said that the weather had not been good in recent times, and the wind was a little stronger, so it was not suitable to use these weapons, so it was necessary to wait for the weather to improve before launching an attack.

So there was a very strange situation on the battlefield - the British no longer attacked, and the Boers on the defending side tried to counterattack, but after another loss, they shrank in the shell of the turtle and could not come out. The original battle became that everyone shouted to each other through loudspeakers, and kept shouting that it was four o'clock in the afternoon, and then everyone came out of the anti-artillery hole to let off the wind for an hour. In the meantime, some of the British and the Boers actually started talking. The spring was windy, and it took more than ten days to wait for a good weather, and as a result, the chemical attack was never carried out, until some people in the British and Boer armies were familiar with each other, and finally it developed to the point that both sides took advantage of the truce to play football on the battlefield.

But this brief period of peace soon passed. By early November, the weather had finally changed. Weather experts have made predictions: in the next few days, the wind will be less than level 2, which is basically in line with the conditions for the use of chemical weapons. So Lord Roberts gave the order to use this weapon.

Before dawn, the attacking troops entered the offensive positions. During this period of the offensive, the British army dug trenches to a distance of no more than thirty meters from the Boer defensive positions, and both sides could even fight each other when engaged. Pomegranate. Bullets were thrown directly from the trenches on this side into the trenches on the other side.

The soldiers preparing to attack were ordered to wear a kind of gas mask that looked like a pig's head mask. This was the first time it had been given to ordinary soldiers, and before departure, each unit spent nearly an hour training on how to use gas masks.

By six o'clock in the morning, the Wasp unit's 7-inch heavy mortars began to fire the first round of double light at the Boers opposite. Gas shells, the first gas war in the history of mankind officially began. R1058