Chapter 22: The first exchange with the British

In the next few days, there was talk of this public judgment meeting in Xinan City. They can be seen in the footsteps of the teams that went to the townships and stretched farther afield, as far east as Mirs Bay, and as far south as the Kowloon Peninsula. Just when everyone was in full swing and working hard to build a new home, an unexpected event caused the first major crisis of the time-traveler in the new time and space.

After Zhang Pan's team went through the "Hengshui Wai Incident," they strengthened their personnel and firepower, because the Kowloon Peninsula they were going to face the British across Victoria Bay, and the management committee was afraid that their encounter with the British would lead to a conflict, so they specially assigned a heavy machine gun team to them, and the number was increased to 35, and they were equipped with automatic rifles, so that even if they encountered about 100 British troops, they would not suffer losses.

After subduing the villages of Pat Heung, Pat Heung, Tai Tong and San Tin, the team began to climb over Tai Mo Shan and Lion Rock and advance towards Kowloon City. I set off at 6 o'clock in the morning, and when I came down from the Lion Rock, it was already 10 o'clock in the morning, and today I was going to Anchangwei, which belonged to the famous Tsim Sha Tsui area in the original time and space. This time, Ma Angelica personally led the team, and he was going to the opposite side of Hong Kong Island to observe the British up close. The weather was still a little cool in the early morning, and as he walked, the guide introduced him to the situation in the area.

At this time, the Kowloon area could not find any traces of the original time and space, and there was not even a decent road, so the team could only march in a column on the path in the fields. The sun had risen high, and a wide village appeared in front of it, with the enclosed houses in the center of the village a head higher than the bungalows scattered around it, and the tall trees were interspersed between the houses, and a flock of ducks swam in the small river in front of the village. Seeing that today's destination is about to arrive, everyone feels a sense of relief. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire from the village, which spread far and wide in the silence. "Prepare for battle!" Ma Angelica shouted, took off the Type 81-1 automatic rifle on his back, and then took the lead in running in the direction of the village.

The gunshots continued to sound intermittently, interspersed with screams. Ma Angelica rushed into the village from the path, turned a corner, and saw a lobster soldier standing on the avenue in the middle of the village with a gun on guard, and the typical dress of red clothes and white pants made Ma Angelica immediately understand his identity. The two sides saw each other almost at the same time, but the red uniforms of the lobster soldiers were too eye-catching, and Zhang Pan's camouflage uniform confused the British sentry, and before the British sentry could take aim, Ma Angelica's gun had already gone off. A 7.62mm bullet hit him in the center of the eyebrow, and then a bowl-sized hole was cut in the back of his head, causing him to fall straight back to the ground without warning. The sound of other British soldiers firing covered Ma Angelica's movements, and he quickly ran to the sentry's side, dragging the dead body to the corner. Turning back to signal the soldiers behind him to slow down, Ma Angelica leaned against the wall and carefully looked at the source of the gunshot. A five-meter-wide stone road led to the enclosure in the center of the village, and there was a drying area at the entrance of the enclosure, along which about 50 to 60 British soldiers were shooting at a group of villagers armed with hoes and bamboo guns with muskets in their hands. The British soldiers wore their trademark red uniforms, and the guys in their hands were old-fashioned flintlock muskets, and it took half a minute to fire. The villagers with cold weapons could not resist the fire of muskets, and retreated to the enclosure one after another, and there were seventeen or eighteen villagers covered in blood lying along the way, not knowing whether they were dead or alive, and after all the villagers had retreated into the gate, the thick wooden gate "slammed" shut.

Seeing the villagers fleeing, the British soldiers ceased fire one after another and began to check the "results". A sergeant in his thirties, with a thick beard that made it difficult to see his appearance, grinned and stepped on the thigh of a villager lying on the ground with his right foot, the villager was shot in the thigh, and every time the sergeant stepped hard, a stream of blood gushed out of the wound, listening to the screams of the villagers, the surrounding British soldiers laughed. Ma Angelica, who happened to see this scene, was on fire in his heart, and when he raised the muzzle of the gun, the automatic rifle in his hand roared.

The British soldiers, who were still in the hunting mentality, were blinded by the sudden blow, they did not expect that there would be an enemy behind them, and the two British soldiers standing guard in the rear bore the brunt of the sieve. The bullet passed through the body and brought down five or six more British soldiers. The remaining British soldiers reacted quickly, looking for concealment and then returning fire at Madanggui. Ma Angelica emptied the magazine with a shuttle, and immediately dodged to the corner of the house, and the bullets fired back by the British army hit the adobe wall, causing dust to splash. The smoke from the burning of black powder also affected the British army's vision, so much so that many soldiers did not see the attacking enemy at all.

Ma Angelica gave an order to Zhang Pan who was following him while changing the magazine: "Divide into two teams and outflank them from the left and right!" ”

"Understood!" After receiving the order, Zhang Pan and the two sergeants who were squad leaders each led a squad to detour from the alley to the flank of the British, and Ma Angelica changed the bullets and said to the remaining dozen or so soldiers: "Go to a few people across the street, form crossfire on both sides to attract the attention of the British, and the machine gun team will find a way to go up to the roof and suppress the fire!" ”

Except for a few unlucky ones who had already seen God and were incapacitated, the rest of the British soldiers hid in low walls, corners, behind trees, etc., and their long-term military training taught them how to hide on the battlefield. A voice was giving orders in English in a loud voice, and most of the traversers understood, and the British officers also typed the idea of copying two breads. Ma Angelica used the walkie-talkie to inform the other two teams of the situation, and after a while, the sound of firefighting was heard on the left and right. While the British soldiers were loading their bullets, the only sergeant in the squad ran to the opposite side of the road with four soldiers under the cover of smoke, and pointed his gun at the British soldiers behind the wall.

Ten minutes had passed since the battle, but apart from the first heavy blow, no enemy had been fired. Lieutenant Winters of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Infantry Brigade, a British officer who led the team this time, was both frightened and angry. The sudden and fierce attack of the enemy caught Mr. Lieutenant, twenty-two, by surprise, and he had been serving in the colony since graduating from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Even the rebel natives in the Indian riots did not have such firepower, let alone the Chinese who still carried the old muskets of centuries ago. Could it be Europeans? Using a Norden aircraft gun? In Winters' mind, the only thing that could shoot continuously was this big and bulky guy. (Because he was standing in front of him, he didn't see Ma Angelica shooting, and the people who saw him couldn't speak.) After the exchange of fire, only the British opened fire, which made him judge that the enemy was not numerous, so he immediately made the decision to divide his troops and surround him. Then the sound of gunfire from both sides broke his wishful thinking, and made Mr. Lieutenant, who had never fought in adversity, a little panicked. I don't know the enemy's strength, I don't know the enemy's firepower configuration, and I don't even know who the enemy is, how can this battle be fought?

Lieutenant Winters hid behind a low wall, looking up from time to time, and just as he was thinking, he suddenly saw several figures jumping down the road, and his first thought was that the enemy was about to flee. After thinking about it again, I felt that it was wrong, it should be a trick to lure the enemy, and it was to use the houses in the village to fight street battles, so that the British army could not give full play to the advantage of troops. Lieutenant Winters, who thought he had seen through the enemy's tricks, made the first almost fatal mistake of his life, "Drummer, beat the drum!" ”

Summoned by the rapid sound of drums, the British soldiers ran out of their hideouts and quickly formed a formation under the command of the sergeant. The enemy's failure to take the opportunity to open fire strengthened Winters's confidence, and the two detachments that had been outflanked also retreated at this time, with three or four men reduced to a halt. When the team was assembled, he made a simple mobilization. "Gentlemen, rat-like enemies will only hide in the shadows and use vile sneak attacks against us, thinking that they will frighten us. But I will say that they are dreaming, and the valiant British Army will not be intimidated by these tricks, and we will only advance against enemy fire. Gentlemen, grab your rifles, put on your bayonets, and get those rats out of the sewers. God bless my king! ”

"God bless my king!" The soldiers replied neatly, and their morale was like a rainbow.

Winters called a few sergeants to his side and began to give him a face-to-face lecture, "One platoon goes to the front, the second platoon is broken, and the wounded go to the middle." We retreated to the outside of the village first, there were not many enemies, we did not fight with them in street battles, lured them out of the village, and destroyed them in the field. ”

Two minutes later, the British troops lined up in a neat line, followed the rhythm of the drums, and began to retreat along the stone road to the outside of the village, a rice flag was waved in the wind, and the "March of the Grenadiers" played by the piccolo was impassioned. Ma Angelica was confused by the tactics of the British army, could it be that these soldiers of the 19th century were going to use the legendary "line up to shoot" tactic? Looking at the approaching British troops, the red figures were like moving targets, and Ma Angelica gave an order through the walkie-talkie: "Attention, wait until my order is closer before fighting!" Half a minute later, when the British in the first row were only thirty meters away and could already see their faces, he shouted, "Fire!" ”

The Type 67 general-purpose machine gun on the roof shouted happily, and a flaming whip swept towards the British soldiers in a dense formation, and the sound of bullets passing through the flesh came and went, and the British soldiers in the back row only saw the flesh and blood of their comrades in the front row, and they quickly followed in their footsteps. The sound of gunfire and screams formed a chorus as the best armies of the mid-nineteenth century saw the way of warfare in the mid-twentieth century, with automatic firearms harvesting lives at speeds they could never have imagined.

It only took a minute for the general-purpose machine gun to finish a chain of bullets, and Zhang Pan also ordered a ceasefire at the same time. Through the smoke of gunpowder, the stone road in front of him has become a Shura hell, with corpses strewn all over the field, and blood flowing and drifting. No one was still standing, all kinds of horrific corpses, all kinds of stumps and broken arms were everywhere. Some have no half of their heads, and some have only half of their bodies left, and broken hands and feet can be regarded as "minor injuries". Heart-rending screams are endless, and the word that comes up the most is "mygod". A British soldier with his bowels already flowing out looked up at the sky and cried out "mama...... Mama ......", blood kept pouring out of his mouth, and with a gunshot, someone helped him end his pain. There was a choking smell of blood in the air, but everyone was used to it, and Ma Angelica let out a sigh of relief, "Cease fire, search forward, try to find a few live mouths!" ”

At this time, an arm stretched out from the pile of corpses, holding a white handkerchief and shaking it vigorously, and someone shouted in a non-standard Cantonese dialect: "Don't make any more fire, my land surrenders!" ”