The ambush began sharply at 7:40 p.m

The heavy shells landed accurately on the road, and in a short time a long field of fire exploded, knocking the reinforcements of the Dutch troops on their backs, killing and wounding countless people.

The shelling was fierce and deadly, raining more than 2,000 shells in just three minutes, killing and wounding thousands of Dutch soldiers on the march.

For a time, the Dutch army was in chaos, and the survivors who had escaped with their lives fled into the dense forests on both sides in panic, and the screams and wails were endless.

The two battalions of 95-mm guns fired at all their might for three minutes, and then the shelling came to an abrupt end, and the main force pouring out of the rainforest on one side immediately cut off the road and quickly squeezed towards the center while the Dutch were in disarray.

The crisp sound of the platoon guns rang out continuously, and as soon as the battle began, it fell into a white heat.

On the encirclement road, which was more than 4 kilometers long, the main force of the 2nd Kalimantan Division cut off the enemy's escape route from end to end, approaching from both sides to the middle, and forcefully compressing the enemy's living space.

Compared to the collapse of the indigenous army, the resistance of the Royal Dutch Army and the White People's Army, which followed the rear into the encirclement, was much more fierce, and after only a few minutes of initial bombing, they organized a counterattack on the spot, raising their guns and exchanging fire.

You come and go, the dense bullets cut a net of fire in the night, the "crackling" sound is non-stop, and the battle is fierce.

At this time, night has come, and the view of the battlefield is not good.

The main force responsible for cutting off the rear encirclement stopped advancing after encountering a fierce counterattack by the Dutch army, and sent people into the jungle on both sides to blow up dozens of big trees, and soon formed a separation zone about 300 meters long after the towering trees collapsed, and the dense branches and foliage cut off the entire road.

A regiment of soldiers quickly occupied the barrier and repelled the Dutch counterattack with a dense rain of bullets, trapping them firmly inside.

The soldiers quickly lit more than a dozen bonfires, illuminating the unexpected night, completely eliminating the possibility of the besieged Dutch soldiers taking advantage of the night to break through.

Look at the situation

The first regiment is determined to hold on to the idea of waiting for reinforcements, waiting until dawn to deal with the enemy in the encirclement, and will not rashly attack.

There are more than 6,500 people in the second division of Kalimantan, and there are only more than 1,600 soldiers in a regiment, which is not advantageous compared to the number of enemies.

Therefore, after cutting off the road, a regiment of soldiers did not sit idle, and divided part of its forces to watch the Dutch soldiers in the encirclement, and the remaining soldiers assisted the engineer battalion in quickly building a civil fort on the road.

They dug deep trenches in the road, inserted thick logs more than two meters high, connected them with iron bolts, and then built a board wall about ten meters wide behind the log wall, filled with earth in the middle, to form a civil fortress about 60 meters wide, which was used to block the follow-up reinforcements of the Royal Netherlands Army that might come from Semuda.

All the materials were prepared in advance, so the construction of the fortress was very fast, and it took more than 4 hours to take shape.

At this time, it was midnight.

The enemy in the encirclement fell completely silent, except for the occasional crisp sound of gunfire, and the bonfires at both ends of the encirclement burned brightly, illuminating the nearby roads.

Soldiers on both sides of the enemy cowered in the darkness on either side, quietly waiting for the dawn.

The movement of the Queenslanders could not be concealed from the Dutch officers and soldiers in the encirclement, it was a night as usual, almost no one could sleep, they knew that after dawn they would be destroyed, how could they still be sleepy?

"Mr. Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, what shall we do?" The chubby Machen Kingdom nobleman Secardo was already panicking, and large drops of sweat flowed down his greasy round face.

"What's the panic...... Commander Henry will not sit idly by and watch us be surrounded and annihilated, judging from the strength of the Kunshan Lan people, as long as they resist stubbornly, they will not be able to swallow us in one bite, and they do not have such a good appetite. ”

"But...... They have cannons! ”

"It's really a big problem, and we can only grit our teeth and hold on or break through at night." Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt looked hesitant, and the reinforcements suffered heavy casualties due to a heavy artillery bombardment in the evening, and the troops might collapse if they did it again, completely losing the courage to continue the stubborn resistance.

Secardo rolled his eyes when he heard him say this, and directly ignored the option of sticking to it, obviously sitting still and waiting to die, as for breaking through at night, in what direction should he break through?

If you break through in the direction of the port, the fire that ignited in the evening is not lucky, and the gunfire in the direction of the port has completely stopped, which means that the defenders may be completely annihilated, and if you take 10,000 steps back, even if you break through, you will still be deeply encircled, and you may fall deeper and deeper.

In front of the harbor is the boundless sea, where can you escape?

If you break through in the direction of the rainforest on both sides, it is better to sit in place and wait for death.

Anyone who has lived in the tropical jungle for a long time knows that during the day it is better, but at night, the tropical jungle is a black hole that devours life, and it becomes extremely dangerous and terrifying.

In the tropical jungle at night, it is difficult to see the five fingers, it is difficult to distinguish the direction, the branches make it difficult to walk, and if the torch is lit, the poisonous snakes and poisonous insects with strong phototaxis come one after another......

It's an invitation to a feast of flesh and blood, come on...... Come bite me!

"Well, Secardo, how many more men do you have?"

"More than 2,000, two thousand three or four."

"How can you lose so much?"

"Mr. Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, our vanguard unit has suffered a key blow from the enemy's artillery fire, and we have lost seven or eight hundred people when the shells are smashed down and the face is covered, and the enemy has come up and attacked again, and our troops have suffered heavy casualties!"

Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt nodded with a gloomy face, now is not the time to reprimand Secardo, but to consider the next step, which is a life-threatening matter for all officers and soldiers in the encirclement.

He looked up at the dark night sky and the darker jungle on both sides, and his heart shuddered, and he dismissed any intention of breaking through to both sides.

A normal march can travel 5 kilometers in an hour, but there are no roads in the tropical jungle, you have to use a machete to open the way, you can walk 1.5 kilometers in an hour, thank God, go back in a big circle, even if the direction is right, the distance is more than 10 kilometers, plus it is the night time, the danger is doubled.

It would be difficult not to alarm the other side when the brigade marched, and if the Queenslanders quickly pushed the battle line under the city of Semuda, which would only take an hour or two, then the return distance would not be 10 kilometers, but multiplied by 2 and 3, otherwise they would still be in the encirclement.

How many people can come out in the end is still between the two theories.

Think about it

Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt finally made up his mind and prepared to flank the defenders in the direction of Saimuda, breaking the fortress wall built in the rear and escaping back.

"Shoot 3 red flares to inform Commander Henry of our determination to break out, and he knows what to do."

"Yes, sir."

The night sky exploded high above the body of the three red flares, which was so dazzling in the night that the defenders of the fortress of Saimuda quickly saw it and quickly reported the news.

According to the prior agreement, after seeing the signal, Colonel Henry, the "butcher", knew that the besieged troops were ready to resolutely break through at any cost, and made a deployment with a long sigh;

Led by him personally, the Royal Netherlands Army led two musket battalions plus 5,000 indigenous servants, and three artillery pieces set off at 5:00 a.m., ready to break the encirclement with the besieged troops inside and outside and save the trapped Dutch officers and soldiers.

Forget about the indigenous troops, there are still 1,700 white soldiers in the encirclement, which cannot be discarded in any way.

Otherwise, when the news came out, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands would not be able to bear the surging public opinion, let alone a mere colonel commander.

Royal Dutch Army soldiers can die on the battlefield, but they must not die without help.

The night was incomparably long for the officers and men on both sides.

5 a.m

The sky has just shown a glimmer of dawn, the night has not completely faded, through the faint morning light can already be vaguely seen the surrounding scenery, the vast jungle is still dark and dreary like a terrible green monster, the visibility is not high.

Division commander Liu Shan stood in the jungle with a cold expression, raised his hand and looked at the watch on his wrist, the hands had coincided with 5 o'clock, and he decisively gave an order; "The shelling begins, the offensive is launched."

Order

Four 60mm light guns were pushed into close range, and the trees hastily set up by the indigenous servants were directly fired, the bright cannon flames flickered, and the fierce explosion fire blew the trees into sawdust, and the native soldiers who were guarding behind the trees were shattered by the corpses of the explosion, and retreated in panic.

The light artillery opened the offensive channel, and the soldiers of the 3rd and 2nd regiments, who had been waiting for a long time, charged like tigers out of the gate, and for a time the gunfire was loud, and the fire and shouts of killing were intertwined, piercing the quiet night sky in the early morning.

The native servant army, which defended the encirclement in the direction of the port, was beaten back again and again, and soon lost its forward positions and fled to the rear, retreating more than a kilometer, leaving more than 3,000 soldiers to be compressed into less than two kilometers.

Under the pressure of a furious Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, the Native Servants were forced to launch a massive counterattack.

In this case, a surprising scene appeared.

The soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd Regiments of the Kalimantan Division, who had been rushing all the way, tacitly retreated, leaving an empty battlefield in the middle, and then thousands of indigenous captives were driven in, and after picking up cold weapons such as knives, guns, clubs, etc., they rushed to the opposite indigenous army on the opposite side.

When the two armies meet, there is no way to retreat.

The retreat of the native servant army will be killed by the Dutch battlefield law enforcement team, and the same will be true for the retreat of the native captive, and the soldiers of the Kalimantan division will not be relentless.

Cannon fodder to cannon fodder on the battlefield may be the sad song of the weak in this era.

"Bang Bang Bang ......"

After the dense platoon of guns of the indigenous servants, a large amount of blue-gray heavy gunpowder smoke rose up, and the indigenous captives with cold weapons in their hands fell down one after another as if they had been punched in the chest and cut leeks, and the indigenous captives behind were still holding weapons and roaring and rushing up.

Because behind them, the Queenslanders, who are more terrible than the devil, point their guns at the black holes, and defeat the enemy in front of them may escape death, turn around and return to ten deaths.

The two indigenous forces fought a bloody battle, and the native servant army clearly had the upper hand, and their firearms troops used three-stage fire, and the natives armed with cold weapons were generally unevenly gnawed, and they fell to death one after another.

Soon most of the indigenous captives were wiped out, and seeing the imminent victory but horrified to find that a group of thousands of indigenous captives rushed over, some of them with empty hands and no weapons.

After the 3rd group of 1,000 prisoners rushed up, the firearms unit under Secardo's command was already in disarray, after more than a dozen rounds of shooting, some soldiers repeated reloading led to explosions, some old-fashioned breech guns could not be fired, some soldiers put their guns indiscriminately, and some had begun to flee in fear, and the firing queue was completely chaotic.

Take this opportunity

The indigenous captives with cold weapons rushed in and slashed and killed, and for a time the sound of the blades clashing was endless, and the indigenous soldiers on both sides fought together, shouting a fierce battle, and the scene was extremely bloody.

At this time

The Queensland army in the rear released a fourth group of 1,000 prisoners, all of whom had no weapons and could only pick up weapons from the corpses to join the battle.

They were given the order that they could only move forward, not backward, otherwise there would be only a dead end.