As if to confirm Lieutenant Colonel Ronald's words, a sharp whistling sound suddenly sounded in the sky, and it was getting faster and faster, getting closer and closer. "Shelling, concealment!" Some of the experienced veterans cried out, instinctively lying on their stomachs, but immediately got up again, unable to do so in the water. The recruits who reacted quickly drank seawater with the veterans, and the slow ones stood there stupidly at a loss. "Boom-" A cannonball landed on the crowd, stirring up a twenty-foot-high column of water, and two unlucky fellows nearby immediately collapsed in a pool of blood, their bodies pierced into a sieve by shrapnel, and they couldn't survive.

"Quick, rush to the shore!" Ronald shouted to the rookies who were still in a daze, "Stay in the water as a target?" "The veteran did not need a reminder from the officer and had already rushed to the shore. The whistling sounded again, this time not one, but at least two, but the pace of the soldiers did not stop, and the number of casualties on the casualty list increased again. Thousands of people gathered here, and not a single shell missed. A shell happened to land on a dinghy, which happened to be loaded with ammunition, and the detonated gunpowder formed a brilliant firework. Using the dinghy as a dot, the fireworks created a no-man's land with a radius of fifty feet, and most of the infantry pushing the boats were thirty feet into the air and then scattered and landed within a radius of one hundred feet.

"Leave those dinghys alone, rush to shore!" When the British soldier turned out to be the target of the massacre, Ronald was about to go crazy, and he grabbed Hunt by the collar. "Why don't you open fire? Why? Our people are going to die. Hunter argued while struggling: "I didn't find the Chinese artillery positions, how can I fight back?" ”

"Then I don't care, what should the Navy do?" Ronald was already a little unable to think normally, "If you can't let our army be beaten!" At this time, a third round of shells fell, bringing up a few more unlucky ghosts.

"You let go!" Hunter shook off Ronald's hand, looked back and saw that the gunners were still waiting for his order, and he also felt that he couldn't just be beaten like this, so he yelled at the gunners: "Fire!" Fire! ”

The gunslinger asked, "Sir?" What is the goal? ”

"I don't know!" Hunter was already furious, "Shoot wherever you think it's suspicious!" At the same time, he secretly wondered in his heart: why is the Chinese shelling so fast, is it possible that the artillery also uses three shots?

The guns on the Cool began to roar, and columns of smoke rose from the beach in front of it, sweeping away patches of grass and woods, but this did not stop the fourth round of shells from falling. Each shelling caused at least five or six casualties, and although such casualties were quite bearable for a unit of more than 1,000 people, the heavy casualties were too demoralizing without even seeing the enemy.

After the seventh shelling, the infantry at the front finally landed on the beach. Some veteran sergeant majors began to assemble soldiers in preparation for the formation of a defensive line to cover the landing of follow-up troops. A corporal climbed a sand dune and built a pergola to find the Chinese artillery position, when suddenly a crisp gunfire came, a gun hole appeared on his forehead, and then he fell like a piece of rotten wood. All the army soldiers who stepped on the beach immediately made close contact with the sand, and no one dared to stand on a high place anymore for fear of becoming the next target.

"What should I do?" Sergeant Buck of the 3rd Battalion of the King's Royal Rifle asked his comrade lying beside him, Sergeant Hill, who stood up his backpack in front of him, and said, "I don't know, I'd better wait for the officer to give the order!" But before that, we're lying here and not going anywhere. Looking at the corpse of his comrade with a broken brain, he sighed, "Unfortunate Wood, he borrowed a shilling ninepence from me before he left, and he doesn't have to pay it back now." ”

The scene on the beach was seen by the two lieutenant colonels, and Ronald asked the navy to provide more accurate artillery cover, while the navy's gunners could only judge the direction of the big to according to the sound, and swept the vegetation on the shore over and over again. Gradually, more soldiers landed on the beach, and some officers tried to rally their troops, but as soon as they stood up, bullets came one after another, and no one wanted to be a bird after the third lieutenant went to God. Hill saw an officer lying on his stomach not far from him, and slowly crawled over. It was a second lieutenant who had just come out of the military academy, his immature face pale with fear, his hands holding the cross hanging from his chest, and his mouth was full of muttering, "I want to go home!" I want to go home! ”

Ciel nudged his shoulder, "Sir, please give the order!" ”

"I'm going home!"

"Sir, we need your orders!" Hill isn't giving up yet.

"I'm going home!"

"Damn it!" Hill crawled back disappointed, and Wood, who saw everything, patted his comrade on the shoulder as a sign of comfort. At this time, a soldier next to him took out a sapper shovel and dug in the ground, Hill thought it was strange and asked, "Man, what are you going to do?" ”

"Dig trenches, of course!" The soldier replied as he buried his head in the work.

Hill pouted and dug trenches in the sand? The shock of the shell explosion would have buried the people inside. Looking around, there are not a few people who have the same idea as this soldier.

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Just behind a bush of grass seven or eight hundred meters from the British on the beach, a platoon of the Liberation Army was reinforcing the trenches. Unlike the scrambled and aimless behavior of the British, the survivors worked in a more orderly manner with a clear purpose, which was to build a blocking position here to stop the British. The trench was more than 200 meters long and one meter deep, and was dug in a zigzag shape exactly according to modern standards, and two anti-artillery holes were dug in the anti-slope. Although there was no barbed wire in front of the trenches, the fighters buried a few "toys" in the ground, just waiting for the British to enjoy. Twenty meters behind the trench, there were two large pits with a diameter of seven or eight meters and a depth of one meter, and two mortars were erected at the bottom of the pits. The artillery team of three worked methodically, surprising the British with three rounds per minute. After about seventeen or eighteen rounds were fired, the observation post informed that there were not many British on the tidal flats and that the shelling could be stopped. The artillerymen, choked by the smoke of gunpowder, were happy, and the barrels needed to be cooled down.

This platoon is a rapid reaction force deployed nearby, and a total of six such units are deployed around Shenzhen Bay. Although the attack plan drawn up by the former enemy command was very "thorough", no one knows what kind of effect it can achieve. And even if the attack is successful, it is not known where the British will go ashore, so this kind of rapid reaction force is deployed along the coast to block it when the British land, so as to buy time for the follow-up troops.

The speed of the British turtle-like movement provided ample time for the Liberation Army, from the arrival of the troops to the deployment, the digging of the trenches to the completion of the artillery position, for nearly an hour the British did not have a single person on the beach, and after the Liberation Army completed the fortifications, the artillery began to ravage the poor people on the beach.

The cessation of the shelling gave the British a hard time to catch their breath, most of the Army troops landed on the beach, and Lieutenant Colonel Ronald returned to his own soldiers, of course, on the shore on a boat. "Get up! You cowards, look at what you look like. Pouting your ass and burying your head in the sand, are you ostriches? Ronald roared as he looked at the soldier lying on the beach.

"Sir, there's a gunman who is firing a cold gun." Hill felt the need to warn the lieutenant colonel, who was unclear, and pointed to the dead body lying in the middle of nowhere.

Ronald subconsciously bent his feet and tried to lie down, but the pride of the officer made him stop moving. In order to hide his movements, he quickly stepped forward and said "I want to go home!" The second lieutenant lifted up, grabbed him by the neck and shook him back and forth. Stand up for me! You bastard, go and gather your troops, or I'll take you to court-martial." As he spoke, he deliberately or unintentionally held the lieutenant in front of him.

The second lieutenant didn't seem to hear him at all, just repeating the phrase "I want to go home", so angry that the lieutenant colonel wanted to hit someone. Suppressing his anger, he let go of the second lieutenant, who was already a little deranged, and yelled at the soldiers who had been watching him: "Get up for me!" You scum, the tradition of the British Army is to dare to brave the enemy's fire, and your actions are simply a disgrace to the Army, do you want those pirates to see the joke? If anyone doesn't get up from the ground again, I'll kick him in the ass. As soon as he finished speaking, he took action, and Hill and Wood, who were nearby, became the props of Lieutenant Colonel Liwei, jumping up and down under the kick of Lieutenant Colonel.

A few hundred meters away in a bush, a sniper team of the Liberation Army, snipers and observers (who also provided firing elements for the artillery), watched the dramatic scene. Seeing the British officer chasing and kicking the soldier, the two laughed. "Why don't you kill that officer?" The observer asked, looking through the binoculars at the Englishman chasing him on the beach.

"Because he's a more valuable target. At least a school officer, maybe the commander of this army. Xia Xianshao, a former shooting athlete, a silver medalist at the National Games, the first sharpshooter of the Liberation Army, and an ace sniper of the reconnaissance team, replied.

The observer nodded in understanding. When the command was discussing tactics, the principles of sniping in battle were specifically discussed. As we all know, in the era of queuing up to shoot the party, the role of officers was very important, and even in the rules of engagement in Western countries, there was a clause that officers could not be shot. If the officers and non-commissioned officers are killed, the troops will lose control, which is the weapon of the weak side to defeat the strong side. The Americans in the War of Independence and the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War did this, and the Liberation Army was just a rehash of the old ways. Xia Xianshao killed three junior officers, and he fought the idea of disrupting the order of the British army and letting them fight back flawlessly. However, the "most valuable target" is not in this range for two reasons. First, the former enemy command clearly demanded that the senior officers of the British army should be grasped as hard as possible, which was also to prepare bargaining chips for future negotiations; Second, if the Supreme Commander had been killed, perhaps the British army would have collapsed before the encirclement was formed, which was inconsistent with the plan formulated by the superiors to "annihilate the British army by the sea". So for the time being, I want to save the life of the British officer.

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With great difficulty, Ronald managed to get the British Army scattered on the beach to gather a disgruntled infantry company, put the team in order, and he ordered a captain to lead the team to search for "Chinese hiding in the gutter, like rats, who only use cold guns, and completely do not abide by the rules of engagement." The line marched inland from the beach in a horizontal formation, and in order to search the largest area possible, the line was wide open, and the soldiers were all bent on their waists, and their guns were loaded with knives, and they advanced carefully and slowly, and no one dared to go too far for fear of becoming the next target.

All the way to the edge of the beach, the gunshots did not ring again, and the British couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief, those damn sneak attackers probably ran away! The spearhead carefully used their bayonets to pick through the grass, and the troops drilled into it in squads and continued to search in depth.

Just when Ronald was secretly rejoicing, two huge explosions were heard in the grass, and then a "crackling" sound was heard like firecrackers set off by Chinese during the New Year.