"Boom!" The destructive shells continued to crash into the ground, the air waves were surging, and the red light rushed into the sky. A large area of earth-colored figures running in the no-man's land instantly flew flesh and blood, and stumps were scattered all over the sky; Countless soldiers were pierced through their bodies by the whirling shrapnel, screaming and throwing themselves to the ground, and the large amount of blood gushing out like a fountain was undoubtedly the rain of death set off in the ranks of the British army!

The earthquake trembled, and the cannon roared. The British officers and soldiers, who had seen the great changes, instinctively crouched on the rough sandy ground, and their minds were confused; It wasn't until the roaring waves of blazing air swept through the air, burning their backs to the ground that they understood what was happening in their ranks. The artillery of the Germans was not wiped out at all as the officers had promised, but still maintained its extremely strong power, while they, the ordinary infantrymen, had to use their flesh and blood to face the blow of the steel rain in their hands!

"Attack! Let's go! Amid the thunderous artillery fire, the roars of a group of British officers rang out. Only then did the British soldier who was lying on the ground remember his mission, and then he got up from the ground in horror and continued to march briskly towards the German defensive position. Although they already vaguely felt in their hearts that they had embarked on a road of no return, now they could only go all the way to the dark: in order to prepare for this attack, the British Army had been planning for a long time, and in this case, it was obviously impossible to stop the attack after an unexpected bombardment. If you really want to go to the battlefield, how can you not have the consciousness of being cannon fodder?

At the urging of the British officers, the yellow khaki crowd braved the fire of meteorites. Keep moving on the battlefield. Almost every explosion is accompanied by broken flesh and blood, and heart-rending screams. Hundreds of bloody corpses were soon left on the battlefield. Faced with this situation. The British artillery in the rear again let out a thunderous roar in an attempt to support the attacking troops at the front; However, they soon discovered that no matter how much their artillery fired, the German artillery fire almost never weakened!

The shells roared and bombarded, setting off a deafening blast of death. After heavy casualties, a stretch of barbed wire was finally visible to the British soldiers; What lifted their spirits was the barbed wire, which was originally nearly two meters high. It has been blown open by its own artillery fire, and he is completely able to cut them one by one without using iron tongs, but directly jump over. The cheering shouts of the officers also sounded at the right time. Inspire your soldiers to charge straight into the opponent's defensive trenches. Before you knew it, the British soldiers were beginning to converge towards the gaps. In the German trench more than 700 meters away, a stout and stocky Maxim heavy machine gun had been erected, and 250 rounds of canvas bullets were delivered in place; The German machine gunner stared at the crosshairs. It's like the dark muzzle of a gun. Calm, dangerous, and murderous.

"Woo-ra!" The sound of heavy machine-gun fire tearing through the linen suddenly resounded through the station. In the continuous delivery of bullet chains by the bombardier, the MG-07 heavy machine gun, which has excellent performance, spits out a series of steel barrages that spin wildly. A British soldier who jumped over a gap in the barbed wire had just shown a hint of joy, and several bewitching blood flowers suddenly burst out on his chest; The sharp pain in his heart caused him to fall to the ground in hysterical screams, and after a few convulsions, he did not move. The British soldiers who charged forward around them were also swept down in large numbers, like fallen wheat under a harvester. Compared with the previous artillery bombardment, the casualty rate of British soldiers under the rapid slaughter of these automatic weapons has increased by several times!

Bullets whistled and artillery fire roared and exploded. The waves of British soldiers followed one after the other. Desperately charging towards the German positions in front; The German officers and soldiers standing in the trenches were also merciless, and the barrage of heavy machine guns and rifles was like a rainstorm. Towards the earthy yellow tide that bent and galloped. Broken limbs, bloody holes like beehives, blurred wriggling stomach and intestines, and red and white splatters of viscous brains...... Under the stormy blows of German automatic fire, the vicinity of the barbed wire fence in front of the trench became a blood-red purgatory in just a few tens of minutes. A large number of corpses were scattered on the battlefield, and the density of the earth seemed to be covered with a wall of bricks: the gaps in the barbed wire were mountains of corpses, more than a meter high, forming a barrier made of corpses. Even the soil beneath it was a terrible dark red stained with blood; The miserable situation of those dead robes made the surviving British soldiers tremble in their legs!

"Boom! Rumble! "In the anxious waiting of the British officers and men, artillery support from the rear finally rang out again; Hundreds of meters in front of the German position, the red light exploded, the earth collapsed, and the faintly visible figure on fire was thrown into the air like a cloud. The German defense, which had remained motionless, finally had some trouble in the trenches. Due to the fierce fighting at present, the German soldiers could no longer hide in underground artillery bunkers as before, and had to choose to carry them in the open trenches, which inevitably brought losses and casualties. After the defeat in the artillery battle a few days ago, the British artillery has learned enough lessons from it, and at present, their artillery has not been deployed to the position that can be easily countered by the German artillery, and this also gives the British infantry a trace of reason and confidence to continue advancing.

However, the British artillery's superior performance did not fundamentally change the situation on the battlefield. The German soldiers squatted in a strong trench at a depth of one man, and opened fire through the guò breastwall or firing holes, which cut off direct fire and artillery fire from the opposing side at a great distance. Most of the British shells exploded outside the trenches, and even if some of the shells were lucky enough to land in the trenches, the zigzag design of the German trenches limited the damage caused by the explosion to a very small extent, and the final damage was quite limited. The attacking British infantry, on the other hand, had little cover; In the process of charging in the open area, whether it is gunfire or artillery fire, they will cause extremely heavy casualties!

German Corporal Allen stood on a side of earth and rock, sticking out half of his head under the protection of his steel helmet to a depth of two meters in a defensive trench: in the constantly flying sand and gravel dust, his sharp eyes were only staring at the swaying earthy figures in the aiming scale. What he held tightly in his hand was a Madsen light machine gun mounted on a tripod, and the fire safety of the gun had long since been triggered. Since the expensive Maxim heavy machine gun was still difficult to distribute to the company, this flexible, lightweight, stable and reliable light machine gun was widely used as a firepower supplement for the grassroots infantry, and was widely entered into the German army's company-level units.

Although the effective range of this light machine gun is only 600 meters, and the single round of fire with 30 rounds is even more different from the canvas chain of a heavy machine gun, it is after all automatic fire, and its explosiveness is by no means comparable to that of ordinary rifles. When a British detachment of seven or eight men approached about 500 meters, Allen did not hesitate and immediately pulled the trigger on a selected target. In a brisk burst like fried beans, the bullets in the magazine were poured out in just a few seconds; The British troops in the distance fell two or three figures in a row, and the rest of them instantly fell to the ground and did not dare to move. The excellent accuracy of the Madsen machine gun allowed the German soldiers to have a gratifying harvest when firing continuously. Allen, who had reloaded with a new magazine, once again aimed at an earthy yellow target, and in the midst of a steady burst, another British soldier fell to the ground. As the battle continued fiercely, Allen vaguely hoped that the British offensive would last longer; Maybe in a few hours, a Red Eagle medal and the corresponding prize money will fall into his hands!

"Boom! Rumble! "Flames of light burst out, waves of air flew sideways, and clusters of orange-red flames with black smoke continued to explode on the German positions. Perhaps because of the shocking slaughter of the attacking infantry, the British artillery in the rear desperately opened fire on the front to support; However, to their great anxiety, the fire of the guns and bullets fired from the opponent's position did not seem to have diminished in the slightest, and the sound of various weapons firing was dense like a roaring engine. The wave of British soldiers' attacks seemed to have hit an invisible causeway, and the earthy yellow torrents rushing in the front rushed forward for a short time before breaking through the blood-red dazzling fireworks; Then he didn't enter the earth, and he didn't make the slightest movement.

In the British trenches in the rear, a large number of cannon fodder used as reserves also began to gather like a spring river. Perhaps out of Allied duty, or perhaps out of pure hatred of the Germans, Douglas, the commander of the British 1st Army, who commanded the offensive? Haig was already determined to break through the current German defenses. This "butcher" general, who has been known in history for his stubbornness and steadfastness, and his simple and rude command of operations, has never known what the life of a soldier is, and in his eyes there is nothing but victory.

"Victory in battle depends on morale and determination", this was the principle that Haig has always followed throughout his military career. It was his stubborn insistence on launching a fierce direct attack that caused the British to suffer 57,000 casualties on the first day of the historic Battle of the Somme, of which 20,000 were killed on the spot. Spanning an entire parallel universe, this tragedy is repeated near the Seine. Tens of thousands of British reserves went out into the no-man's land, dreaming that they could make a fortune in the battle, but what the British soldiers didn't know was that a door to hell had been opened for them ahead. (To be continued......)

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