Chapter Seventy-Two: Melbourne Winter (Part II)

A few hours later, the town of Broadford, on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, ushered in the dawn of a new day amid smoke and tremors. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

The once deafening shouts of killing, gunfire and explosions gradually faded away, and only the raging fire still reflected half of the sky.

The already dilapidated town of Broadford is now completely razed to the ground by cannon fodder. The Stars and Stripes representing the U.S. military and the Blue Flag of the Southern Cross representing the Australian Commonwealth quietly landed in the smoke and flames. In its place, the Japanese sun flag was eye-catching......

The few Allied POWs were loaded onto trucks with their heads drooped and dejected, while the victorious Japanese began to clean up the battlefield. A young Japanese soldier kicks away the scattered stumps and severed arms, bypasses the burning wreckage of enemy cars and artillery, and searches around for surviving enemy troops and recoverable trophies with bayonets in his rifle. He was surrounded by a devastated neighborhood. Not to mention that there is not a single complete building in sight, even the soil here has been turned over dozens of times by various shells, and the huge craters left on the ground are particularly shocking.

- Due to the recent receipt of a large number of field guns, tanks, machine guns and ammunition from the "homeland", the Australian Japanese army, which had been suffering from a lack of long-range firepower and difficulties in the supply of ammunition, was finally able to rain bullets on the enemy this time, and everything that stood in the way was smashed and flattened!

In general, cleaning the battlefield is a very troublesome thing, especially in this kind of place baptized by shells, there is hardly a single intact corpse to be seen, there is not much equipment that is still intact, there are stumps and broken arms everywhere, scrap copper and rotten iron everywhere, and there is hardly anything of value to be found. If there are undead enemies hiding in the pile of corpses or in the wreckage, there are also various dangers such as being shot cold...... I saw that he noticed the gold ring on the hand of the corpse of an Australian officer not far away, and he couldn't help but be greedy, and was about to go up to touch the corpse, but his feet slipped and he was about to fall into a crater.

Fortunately, just when he almost fell and ate, he was pulled by a strong arm. The soldier looked back gratefully and saw that it was an officer wearing a steel helmet and a pistol at his waist, wearing a military coat with no markings, and at first glance it was unknown what rank.

“…… Be careful next time and be aware of your surroundings when walking. The officer reprimanded, then turned and walked away.

“…… Yes, thank you, sir! The young Japanese soldier hurriedly saluted, unaware that he had just passed by a general.

At the same time, a group of land-attack bombers with the insignia of the Rising Japanese Army on their wings whizzed over their heads and flew south of Melbourne.

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Ten minutes later, the new commander of the 152nd Division, Lieutenant General Masanobu Tsuji, who was covered in dust and mud, returned to his headquarters with a relaxed mood after inspecting the battlefield in Broadford Town. On the map table in the tent of the headquarters, the staff officers had already marked the progress of the troops.

Judging from the map, four thick arrows have launched a centripetal attack on the Allied forces in Melbourne from four directions, southeast, north, and west.

On the northern front, the 152nd Division, which he commanded, had just captured the town of Broadford, about fifty kilometers from the centre of Melbourne.

On the Eastern Front, the commander-in-chief of the Australian Japanese army, General Yamashita Fumi, personally commanded five divisions, and a few hours earlier conquered the transportation town of Rex Enkrens, which was sandwiched between the mountains and the sea, and successfully poured into the plains east of Melbourne, from where the Allies could no longer defend until the city of Melbourne.

On the Western Front, the 2nd Marine Division, originally stationed in Perth, together with the 5th Tank Brigade and a Task Force Brigade, was still slowly advancing along the coast road in southeastern Australia.

On the southern front, the advance fleet of the Japanese Navy had also gone around to the southernmost part of the Australian continent and successfully broke into the Bass Strait, blocking the last sea route connecting Melbourne with the outside world, and cutting off the communication between Melbourne and Tasmania.

In this impermeable encirclement, the Allies only had 35,000 American troops, 5,000 New Zealand troops and finally 80,000 Australian soldiers, at most 200 aircraft, plus the few old warships left in the Australian Federation, and all of them were crippled and extremely exhausted - it was obvious that under the Japanese army from all sides of the sea and land attack, the more than 100,000 Allied troops trapped in Melbourne now had completely become a turtle in the urn, and it seemed that they were about to be destroyed.

- In this offensive against Melbourne, the Japanese offensive tactics were unusually simple and crude, that is, they bombarded with overwhelming long-range artillery fire, and then let the infantry attack under the cover of tanks. If the attack is thwarted, the infantry is withdrawn and the next wave of artillery bombardment continues...... It is equivalent to replacing the cavalry with tanks in the classic trilogy of "artillery bombardment-cavalry assault-infantry occupation" in the era of Napoleon's wars.

At the same time, the Japanese army also constantly sent planes to bomb the rear of the Allied front, destroy bridges and roads, and interfere with the movement and reinforcement of Allied reserves.

Although this tactic was simple, it was difficult for the Allies to deal effectively with it – taking advantage of the confusion caused by the bombing of Tokyo and the collapse of the old Japanese Empire, the Allies in Melbourne had launched a massive counteroffensive a few months earlier, albeit with heavy losses under the city of Canberra. However, the Allies still expanded their control area to about 100,000 square kilometers (equivalent to one Zhejiang province) and recovered almost half of Victoria.

-- Being able to repel the Japanese army and recover a large area of land is naturally gratifying for the Allied forces, but in the absence of any new force to add to it, but to withdraw some of its troops and divert them to other battlefields, the sudden expansion of the Allied-controlled area in Australia means a sudden lengthening of the forward front and a sharp decline in the density of troops. It is equivalent to changing from a clenched fist to an outstretched palm, and the ability to resist blows is naturally greatly weakened. Not to mention the fact that as the front moved forward, the Allies had to leave the fortifications they had built for two years, exposing them to the unobstructed wilderness...... As a result, before the Australian allies who failed in the counteroffensive had time to rebuild a defensive line, the Japanese army, which had successfully recovered blood, turned around and killed with great vigour.

On the other hand, although the strength of the Japanese army in Australia has not increased much, the logistics have been greatly enriched, and all kinds of artillery, machine guns, ammunition, tanks, trucks, planes, and grain are being transported to Sydney, Brisbane and other ports controlled by the Japanese army like a flowing water. The Japanese soldiers on the front line have been eating canned "Yamato boiled" beef every day for a while, and they are about to vomit.

This is even more evident in the actual engagement, where the 152nd Division under the command of Lieutenant General Masanobu Tsuji used more than 200 heavy artillery pieces in the outpost of the attack on Broadford Town last night, and fired at least 500 shells per piece of artillery, a luxury that had never been imagined in the past...... On the Eastern and Western Fronts, where there were more attacking troops, the Japanese army invested much more long-range firepower than on the Northern Front.

In the face of such a saturated bombardment that was overwhelming and the sky was falling apart, the Allied forces, which were severely diluted and had no time to build permanent fortifications, were naturally defeated. In addition, the Japanese army still has sea and air supremacy on the battlefield, and the onslaught all the way is naturally devastating and invincible.

However, this easy situation of sweeping thousands of troops is also coming to an end: as the commander of the northern front, Masanobu Tsuji knows very well that although the town of Broadford under his feet is only fifty kilometers away from the city of Melbourne, it is not easy to complete this road - unlike a loosely guarded and poorly fortified outpost like Broadford Town, as long as it advances a few steps further, the attacking Japanese army will run headlong into the "American and British ghost animals" that have been painstakingly operating for several years, defending the core position of the city of Melbourne. That's when you really test yourself, the Japanese soldiers.

In the repeated tug-of-war of the past few years, at the cost of countless corpses, the Allied forces have gradually built a tight defense line of more than 200 kilometers in the suburbs of Melbourne, relying on hills and rivers, including minefields, barbed wire, anti-tank trenches, reinforced concrete bunkers and underground tunnels extending in all directions, equipped with countless machine guns and artillery. It is like the trenches of the Western Front in World War I, and it is like the fortifications of Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War.

Previously, General Yamashita and Marshal MacArthur had been fighting around this line of defense for two years, and all kinds of tricks were devastated, but the Japanese army had never been able to break through this line and enter the city of Melbourne. And if we attack head-on regardless of it, I am afraid that the loss of troops will be too large to bear.

Therefore, when the fragile fat and marshmallows on the periphery have been digested, the Japanese army will once again gnaw on this familiar hard bone.

And even now, Masanobu Tsuji couldn't think of any clever plan that could be easily won—the Japanese and Allied forces had been fighting on this battlefield for too long, and they knew too much about the land and their respective enemies, and they were just laughing at the little tricks.

“…… In the end, can you only use your strength to break through the skill, relying on artillery fire and human lives to fight? After studying the map again, Masanobu Tsuji shook his head helplessly, and then called a staff officer on duty, "...... Where are the imitation German missiles that the Soviets helped now? ”

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ps: The world is really lively these days, Germany and France take turns to carry out terrorist attacks every day, steal news headlines, and cut throat bombs and shootings in turn. Even Japan is not willing to be lonely and explodes a murderer. As for the terrorist attack at Somalia's international airport, which killed 12 people, it has not been noticed at all.

Then the US Democratic Party held one of the most failed conventions since World War II, cheering for Hillary Clinton and blowing up the scandal from beginning to end, and there were people carrying coffins to protest to Hillary. The pro-Clinton spokesperson are all illegal immigrants, gays, blacks, and people with disabilities, and seem to be dominated by abnormal human beings. The funniest thing is that President O'Blackie's wife, Michelle, gives Hillary Clinton a platform, and then a kid says Michelle is the best first lady he's ever met — the problem is he's only seven years old......

Taiwan is also engaged in a major ideological purge, and some critics have scolded President President Ma for eight years for being fine, and Xiao Cai has been blocked in less than a month.