Episode 58 Dense Killing Array

The steel torrent of the Blue 1st Division was majestic, but ......

After "advancing" seven or eight miles, the radio in Rommel's command car sounded again:

"Monkey calls elephant, monkey calls elephant......"

"Elephant received, please speak."

"Three hundred meters ahead, on the road, a large group of peasants was found ......"

“……”

There were also two to three hundred peasants this time, and the reason for blocking the road was the same as in the previous village. He was also shouting and standing in the middle of the road, and in the fields of one or two hundred meters on both sides, anyway, he didn't let the tank cars pass.

……

Just when the Blue First Division was blocked by the villagers and couldn't get through, a sidecar motorcycle of the Red Sixth Division sneakily drove out of the village on the side of the road, drove onto the road, and fled westward in a puff of smoke.

An officer on the motorcycle sidecar looked back, wiped the cold sweat from his head, and shouted loudly to his companions:

"They're coming so fast! It took us three hundred Ming Yang to stop them in a village in front of us for less than half an hour? Damn, those villagers don't do anything with money! ”

Another officer on a motorcycle, wearing goggles, also looked back and shook his head helplessly.

The officer in the sidecar said loudly again:

"It only took us two hundred oceans to stop this village, and in this case, we can stop them for five minutes at most! …… Hey, I'll tell you......"

He patted his companion and pointed to the side of the road, motioning for him to stop. The officer driving pulled over the motorcycle, and the officer said:

"I said, we have to go back, we have to see how they got here. It's not so quick to find the local government! ”

So, the two of them rode their motorcycles again and sneaked back to the vicinity of the village. They hid their motorcycles in the farmland beside the road, and then got into the fields, bent their waists, and under the cover of the small crops, they touched the side of the leading tank company of the 1st Blue Division.

That's the approximate location. Those villagers who are taking money to block the road should be on the road.

But there didn't seem to be much noise in the vicinity, only the sound of engines spinning around.

The two peeked out of the crops, and were surprised to find that the road, which had been crowded with villagers just a moment ago, was now empty, leaving only a straight and wide asphalt road leading into the distance......

In the middle of the highway and in the fields on both sides, countless tanks and armored vehicles were parked, and their engines were roaring.

On the turret of a tank in the middle of the road in the front row, a commander with a headset waved his hand back majestically and shouted:

"Tanks - Forward !!"

……

Suddenly, the sound of the engine in the four fields rose by dozens of decibels, and hundreds of steel giants rushed straight over with green smoke.

The two officers of the Red Sixth Division were so frightened that they quickly lowered their heads and buried themselves in the crops and did not dare to move, for fear of being discovered.

A Lightning-3 tank roared and rushed a meter or two behind them in one fell swoop. The two Red Army officers howled loudly in fright as they watched the two black-pressed tracks turn over the dirt and head over their heads, and shouted desperately as they crawled forward:

"Don't open it, don't open it, hey, hey, it's dead!! Crushed to death!! …… Ah, my own brother, my own brother...... We are from the Red Sixth Division, we are from the Red Sixth Division...... Don't it, don't ......."

The commander on the turret looked at the endless fields ahead, recalling the brilliant breakthrough of the morning, and could not suppress the excitement in his chest, and kept patting the top of the turret and shouting:

"Hurry up! Hurry up! Don't stop! Drive all the way to Nanjing! Wowha......"

Tanks "Boom" drove overhead.

The two Red Army officers hugged each other stubbornly, and only then did they let go, their faces were as white as paper, and they looked at the two deep track marks on the muddy ground on both sides of them in shock, and then touched their bodies to confirm that the parts were in good condition, and then they spit out a mouthful of gasoline exhaust spit, hugged each other and laughed wildly.

"Crunch...... Rumble!!! ”

The two of them were just about to stand up, when a muffled noise came from ahead, and they shrank back into the crops in fright.

A commander held on to the turret, turned his head, noticed a cloud of fireworks gradually moving away behind him, and immediately knocked on the top of the turret and shouted:

"Stop!"

Several tanks around stopped there, and several captains jumped down, and after running more than ten meters, they were bewildered around a stall of things that had been rolled into discus, and there was still a blazing fire and black smoke.

"What is this?"

"And fire."

"It looks like a sidecar."

"How can there be a sidebike here?"

……

The long panzer division finally passed in its entirety. The two of them got up from the fields in embarrassment and looked at the scene in front of them.

Empty fields, empty roads. Two or three hundred meters away in the distance, the back of the military vehicle at the rear of the 1st Blue Division could be faintly seen.

In front of me, this stall of "discus" emitting black smoke and holding flames is the sidecar of the two of them.

……

"Huh? Very good," the commander of the 1st Blue Division said with satisfaction in the armored command car, looking at the retreating village on the side of the road outside the window, "This time, three villages have passed in succession, and there are no more peasants blocking the road. Looks like we're getting lucky. ”

"I don't believe in luck," Rommel threw out as he studied the map, "I only trust the tracks of our tanks." ”

……

Five kilometers to the west, a small off-road vehicle and several sidecar motorcycles of the Red Army were speeding as if they were trying their lives on the highway, and the sound of guns and artillery behind them was shocking. Overhead, a fighter jet kept strafing and rushing down, trying to take them out.

Every time the plane dived down, a motorcycle always stopped and drove into the fields by the roadside, and the soldiers got down and tied the red ribbon to the motorcycle, which means that it was destroyed. After a few dives of the plane, several motorcycles and a car were "destroyed", leaving only one sidecar still speeding away.

When the plane dived again, ten 20-mm anti-aircraft guns in front of the plane that had not yet been "blown up" opened fire at the same time, and 24 tongues of fire were pointed directly at the lone fighter. When the Blue Army fighter saw that it had flown over the Red Sixth Division, he knew that if he rushed down, the sound of the exercise referee announcing that he had been shot down would sound in his headphones. The pilot had no choice but to give up, pull up stupidly, turn around and fly back.

The sidecar galloped to the temporary division headquarters at the risk of hitting people, and came to a halt with a "ga-" and a scout jumped down and shouted:

"Master! The 1st Blue Division is 5 kilometers east of us! …… The reconnaissance battalion suddenly encountered a large number of enemy tanks, and after a short exchange of fire, all of them were killed! Radio is also destroyed! I was the only one who escaped and came back......"

"Poof!"

Huang Shuliang was drinking water, and a mouthful of water squirted out.

"How is that possible!"

He threw himself at the map, pointed to it and shouted:

"An hour ago, they were still a dozen kilometres east of us, and there were three villages in between, each of which could hold them back for at least a few hours, and I was expecting to be able to drag them until dark! After dark, we don't have those things on our heads! Now ......"

He knocked on the steel helmet on his head:

"Why did they just drive all the way here? Those villages cost us thousands of oceans, and those villagers ***...... Why do you spend so much money and don't do anything? …… We promised them two hours and one more piece of Mingyang per person, and another piece of five per person for three hours! They don't want that five, do they? ”

The staff officer next to him said anxiously:

"Master, five kilometers is fifteen minutes for the enemy! Master, make a decision now! ”

Uncle Huang glanced at the sky, rolled his eyes, waved his hand, and shouted:

"Order, all retreat into Xinmengzhuang! Generally, don't worry about throwing the baggage on the road, pull all the artillery into the Zhuangzi, and camouflage! Fast! Sappers planted mines at the intersection of Zhuangqian Road! Dig a trench at the entrance of the village! ”

Several staff officers were stunned:

"Master, do you want to ......?"

Huang Shuliang gritted his teeth:

"Use this settlement to hold on, as long as we hold on until dark, we can do it fairly! …… After dark, their planes are useless, and their tanks are probably of little use! I'll tell you, the tank thing has a very narrow field of vision, and when it's dark and loud, they can't hear where we are, we can hear them from afar......"

Within 10 minutes, 10 anti-aircraft guns, 62 light mortars, 22 heavy mortars, 45 anti-tank guns, 10 light infantry guns, 2 heavy infantry guns, 15 light howitzers, and 6 heavy howitzers were all pushed into this large Zhuangzi of several square kilometers. Originally, the artillery of the Red Sixth Division was still twice as large, but after nearly a morning of bombardment, only half of them remained. In particular, those heavy artillery with large targets suffered even more losses.

In addition to these artillery, 60 anti-tank guns, 325 light machine guns, and 86 heavy machine guns were also moved into Zhuangzi, and like artillery, they were hastily concealed. Under air strikes, the losses of light weapons were much lower than those of heavy weapons, and basically 70 to 80 percent were judged to be in good condition.

In addition, more than 9,000 of the 12,000 people followed and retreated into Zhuangzi. These were the soldiers who had neither killed nor wounded in the morning of indiscriminate bombardment. Their combat effectiveness is still intact, and they still maintain a sound structure and command system.

Huang Shuliang is very good at bribing the villagers to make trouble for the Blue Army, and now he is requisitioning the entire Zhuangzi, which is also very neat. As soon as he gave the order, the soldiers took over the entire Zhuangzi without saying a word, just like in the real war, and the villagers were only allowed to enter and not leave.

The sniper climbs to the tallest tree at the head of the village and observes the road in the distance to the east with a sniper scope.

The officers commanded like madness in Zhuangzi, pushing one artillery cannon and machine gun after another into the right position. Many houses directly demolished the gates and pulled the artillery in. The muzzle of the gun was pointed very insidiously at the outside from the small window.

In the barn, by the well, behind the wall, in the window of the small house on the second floor...... Machine guns, anti-tank guns, and "Molotov cocktails" were erected everywhere. The Molotov cocktail here is water in glass bottles. If you hit the tank directly and smash it so that the water flows on it, you can tell that the tank is burning.

Of course, the villagers didn't do it, and the villagers of Daming were not as easy to bully as the villagers of the Northern Qing Dynasty. But the gendarmes shouted "military exercises, requisition of villages, compensation for each family that cooperates", and soon the whole village cooperated. Many villagers even enthusiastically pulled the GIs to their homes, asking them to bring anti-tank guns and machine guns to their homes, and constantly introduced how good the terrain was and how to hide their homes......

This Zhuangzi is relatively large, four or five square kilometers in size, and there is a large pond on the north side, and there is no road. However, the south side is close to the road, and the east, west, and south sides are open.

However, more than 100 artillery pieces, nearly 200 machine guns, and 9,000 troops were deployed into it, and while this palm-sized Zhuangzi was overcrowded, it also became an out-and-out dense killing array. The exaggeration of the density of firepower is unprecedented.

Huang Shuliang was on the top of a small three-story building on the highest in the center of the village, looking east with a cannon mirror. The view here is very good, and you can see the Shanghai-Nanjing Highway at the entrance of the village thousands of kilometers away. You can also see the east and west sides of the highway thousands of miles away.

……

"Division," a staff officer said with anxiety as he looked at the planes hovering overhead, "and nearly 10,000 of us are shrunk in the palm-sized Zhuangzi, and the enemy certainly does not dare to rashly attack inside, but if they bombard them with planes or heavy artillery, wouldn't this mean that we are lying on the chopping block ourselves?" ”

Huang Shuliang held the grass stick in his mouth again, leaned on the gun mirror without looking back, and said with a sneer:

"Don't forget, we're in a settlement, and we're holding hundreds of villagers together with us...... Moreover, we are now the Qing captives who have invaded the Ming Dynasty, and the other side is the Ming army that has come to meet them. The people in this Zhuangzi are all Ming people, and it is impossible for their Ming army to ignore the lives of so many people and bombard them with planes and heavy artillery. This trick, doesn't Qingyu often do this? Now let's do the same...... This exercise, how real. ”

"That'...... Master, what if they don't think about it so much, they just bang up? It's a drill, it's not going to die, and they're hell-bent on winning. ”

Huang Shuliang said "um":

"So, we're going to have to bet, bet that Rommel will follow the rules. …… Don't worry, they Germans don't understand anything else, but they understand the rules. ”

At this time, a voice came from the radio headset next to him:

"Big dog, big dog, I'm a frog...... Foxes have appeared, foxes have appeared, 1000 meters, 1000 meters......"

"It's coming!"

Huang Shuliang immediately turned the gun scope and aimed at the road in the east in the distance.

At the far end of the road, the silhouettes of several gray tanks appeared. Immediately afterwards, tanks also appeared in the fields on both sides of the road.

……

The first few planes on Zhuangzi "buzzed" around, flying low from time to time and rushing down, but neither dropped bombs nor strafed.

When the Red Sixth Division was on the road, it was constantly bombed and strafed, but after they withdrew into the residential area, the Blue planes became very restrained, only circling and observing, and did not attack the villages.

In Huang Shuliang's view, this is a good sign, which shows that the Blues understand the rules. In other words, if they want to attack themselves, they must rely only on infantry and light weapons to break through this "dense killing array".