Alan will never forget today's scene in his life. When the outline of Stone Bridge Heights was shown in the telescope, he was surprised to find that this group of Prussian soldiers were... digging holes!
Yes, Alan's eyes were not blurred, nor were the eyes of the officers around him, nor were the lenses of high-powered military telescopes. On the stone bridge plateau with the highest altitude of only nine meters, what was flying was not mud.
Countless busy figures crouched, working with engineering shovels like high-speed rotating windmills. Each shovel brought out a lot of dark soil. Look at the soil being thrown in the air, and then look at those with their buttocks raised. Alan seemed to feel that the busy figure was not a human being, but a group of prairie dogs working crazily.
"Oh, God! Are the Prussians crazy? They occupied the high ground first and didn't hurry up to arrange a shooting formation. Why did they have time to dig holes? Are they going to hide in mouse holes to avoid our rain of bullets?"
The more Alan thought about it, the more ridiculous he felt. He carefully filtered through all the drills taught by the military academy in his mind, and found that except for the occurrence of this kind of civil warfare in urban defense battles, there really was no precedent in field battles.
The Austro-Prussian War was in an era when individual weapons were transitioning from front-loading to rear-loading. At that time, more than 90% of military experts still stubbornly adhered to traditional combat methods, and all military schools still taught front-loading. Combat drills in the age of guns.
In the era of muzzleloaders, fixed bullets had not yet appeared, and gunpowder and projectiles were not integrated. If a soldier wanted to fire a musket, he must first load the gunpowder, then compact it with a purge bar, then add the projectile and press it with a purge bar. In fact, shooting can only be carried out after two pass operations.
This is not the end yet. After the shooting is completed, the barrel of the gun must be cleaned again with a purge. If the gun is fired continuously without cleaning, the probability of the gun exploding will increase exponentially.
In other words, a soldier who strictly abides by discipline must use the gun three times in the process of firing a musket. It is under this backward loading method that soldiers can only choose to stand in battle and choose to line up to be shot.
You want to shoot while lying down? How do you load gunpowder and projectiles while lying down? How can you play with that long rod while lying on the ground? That's simply not realistic.
In countless film and television works in his previous life, Xiao Letian has seen war scenes of queuing to be shot more than once, especially the period when Napoleon I dominated Europe. Groups of red-coated soldiers lined up in long military formations, beating the drums. Under the command of the drum beat, they marched towards the enemy.
When the enemy's and ours' military formations were one or two hundred meters apart, the commander waved his saber and shouted "Shoot!" The soldiers on both sides began to hold their guns, and they started to pull the triggers without aiming at the human-shaped target on the opposite side. .
The sound of gunfire was as dense as muffled thunder, the bullets poured out like heavy rain, and the white smoke billowed like clouds.
In this cruel queuing to kill war, personal bravery and military quality are almost irrelevant. Everyone is betting on their lives, and the commander is betting on the overall psychological quality of his soldiers to see who collapses first.
Human beings are human beings after all. Although animal nature exists, there are not many left after thousands of years of social order. There are not many people who can watch the heads of their comrades around them being smashed and remain indifferent, and there will be no one. Face the solid shells rolling over at high speed without feeling timid.
Maybe the next second you will be covered in the brains of your comrades around you, and maybe the next minute you will be hit by a bullet in the chest, so you will go to see God early.
There will always be a limit to the persistence of both the enemy and ourselves. When one side really cannot bear the huge casualties and the formation loosens, or even deserters appear, a classic battle of queuing to kill is coming to an end.
This kind of war situation lasted for more than two hundred years. This long period of time made everyone feel that this war pattern was natural, and human beings' inherent thinking was not easy to change.
"It's ridiculous, it's really ridiculous. They are indeed a group of cowards from the East. They don't even have the courage to fight openly and dig trenches? Do you really think you are guarding a town?"
"Abandoning the formation that the infantry relies on for survival, do you still want to block our Austrian army with this loose and disorderly shooting position? Don't forget that I have more soldiers than you. If I rush forward and fight with bayonets, I can kill you one by one... "
Viscount Alan put down his binoculars contemptuously, raised his white sheepskin gloves and pointed at the high ground with flying soil in front of him. He shouted, "Brave soldiers, the enemy is too cowardly to shoot at us. They only know how to hide in pits and fire." Cold guns, these enemies who are weaker than women are not worth our time..."
"Pass my order, the whole army charges, and put our military boots firmly in their faces. Long live the king! Long live Austria!"
"Long live!" The soldiers under his command burst into joy. This is how human beings are. It is always fun to beat up a drowned dog. The troops of the two battalions on the high ground have not been arrayed yet, and the number is much smaller than here, isn't it? What is Reservoir Dogs?
Alan's first regiment was enough to number more than 1,200 people. When they launched the charge, they saw that the entire land was covered by a crowd of people, their sharp bayonets pointing diagonally at the sky and rolling forward like a forest.
In the charging crowd, all the officers were shouting and cheering, and all the soldiers were shouting long live. It was this hoarse roar that quickly put everyone in an excited fighting mood.
"Charge, charge, everyone speed up the charge... The enemy only has two battalions, only half of our strength. They are no match for us at all..."
"Kill, kill, kill, don't let an enemy escape. The cowardly cowards don't dare to stand up and face our soldiers. With just one charge, we can send them to hell..."
"Long live the King! For Austria...charge!"
At this time, it was as if a slight earthquake had occurred in the entire highland. Even Xiao Letian at the highest point felt the shaking of the earth, and the scenery in the field of view of the telescope was shaking.
"My dear, the Europeans are really tall and powerful. A concentrated charge of just over a thousand people can make such a big noise. When the Japanese Ashigaru team of three thousand people launched an attack, there was no earthquake, right? Sure enough, it's so delicious. Growing up eating beef is different from growing up eating pickles..."
Xiao Letian smiled slightly at the corner of his mouth. In his eyes, this crowd was like a swarm of hungry locusts. In front of them was a dark green, and behind this crowd was a messy black mess, covered in military boots. Wherever it passes, not a blade of grass will grow.
"Brothers! These Austrians want to decide the outcome! They really treat us as their faces..." At this point, the evil smile on Xiao Letian's face suddenly disappeared, replaced by a forest. cold.
"The enemy approaches 150 meters away from the position before taking action. Today I will teach them a lesson and let them know that war is not what they imagined..."
"Yes!" Xiao Hexin and Sima Yun raised their hands in salute, and then trotted to the front line with their company and platoon commanders.
Viscount Alan never put down the telescope in his hand. When he first launched the charge, he never doubted his orders and the combat effectiveness of the soldiers. However, as the charging crowd got closer and closer to the high ground, a strange feeling surged in his heart. A hint of uneasiness.
"What's going on? We have already launched a charge, why haven't the civil engineering works on the highlands stopped yet? Are they blind or deaf?"
No wonder Viscount Alan was surprised. In the face of such a large-scale charge, the soldiers on the high ground did not put down their engineering shovels. The long trenches were still growing slowly but surely.
"Damn it, do these Chinese people have a conspiracy? No, the inferior peoples will play tricks on themselves. Didn't those French expeditionary forces tell them when they came back? When the squadron fought, they even used feces and women's menstrual blood to fight, and even encouraged monks and Taoist priests to fight. Curse the enemy..."
"Hahaha, my guess is absolutely correct. These Chinese people must be hiding in the ditch to curse us. They must be hoping that the gods and Buddhas they believe in will help them defeat the enemy... Hahaha!"
Just as he was laughing wildly, the charging crowd had already reached the edge of the defense line more than 150 meters from south to north. From this distance, both the enemy and us could see very clearly.
Before Viscount Alan could finish laughing, blazing red gunfire began to bloom in the graveyard-like pits on the edge of the highland. The more than 200 sharpshooters on alert at the outermost perimeter finally received the order to fire. Two hundred Spencer instantly pulled out a long match rope on the battlefield, and bullets rained down on his face.
The famous Spencer gun in the American Civil War could be loaded with seven bullets at a time. In this era, it was already the single-person weapon with the highest rate of fire. Two hundred sharpshooters concentrated their fire and fired, as if the god of death had raised a sickle invisibly. With one wave, the Austrian troops on the front level were sent to hell.
"Ah... what is this! How could there be such intensive firepower..." Before the officer could finish his roar, a bullet penetrated his throat and cut off his trachea.
"Damn, this is impossible. Without thousands of people firing in unison, how could there be such a dense rain of bullets... But where are the enemies who are shooting? Where are our enemies?" Countless soldiers looked at the tombs in front of them in horror. In a single soldier pit, he couldn't figure out where the rain of bullets coming from came from.
However, whether they wanted to understand it or not, the charge was already close to a hundred meters away at this time, and they had to rush over no matter how heavy the casualties were.
"Accelerate, accelerate again... rush through the danger zone..." In the roar, no one noticed that on the grass in front of them, there were dozens of tongues of fire rushing towards them. After those tongues of fire penetrated under their feet, Explosions shot into the sky.
Boom, boom, boom... Nobel's latest high-explosive model exploded in the charging crowd, with flames rising into the sky, smoke and dust everywhere, and large chunks of soil mixed with broken limbs and broken arms falling down like rain.
"Spencer has finished shooting, ready to change guns..." The moment the explosion occurred, the sound of bolt pulling came from all the foxholes. This is Prussia's latest secret weapon, and it is also the most famous German weapon in the history of human firearms. The sound made by Mauser.
"Brothers... let's test the guns... send them back to their hometown with full firepower..." Amidst a long roar on the battlefield, two hundred Mauser guns opened fire at the same time. The gunshots were fired in succession, and a hail of bullets shot into the explosion. in the smoke and dust.
...
