Chapter 203 The Second Battle of Taizi Temple
Chapter 203 The Second Battle of Taizisi
The soldiers all knew the reason why Commander Lin was forbidden to charge. Seeing that Bo Zai, with gauze wrapped around his arm and still looking unsatisfied, they held back their laughter and charged with their guns in hand.
The warriors who followed Lin Bozai and lived carefree were all talking and laughing calmly in the face of the hail of bullets. "Commander, we will do the bayonet stabbing for you. Just stay back. Mm - it feels so good to see the knife hit the flesh."
Hearing Lin Bozai jumping up and down and cursing behind them, the soldiers burst into laughter.
Bo Zai's soldiers have been trained, so there is really no need for him to take the lead.
The bravest soldiers of the Huai Army here don't care about life or death and will fight if they are not convinced. However, the atmosphere among the defending bandits over there is solemn and tense.
If the enemy rushed into the gap and broke into the city, morale would immediately plummet.
Ma Zhan'ao personally commanded and organized a suicide squad, keeping an eye on the speed of the Huai Army and preparing for a counterattack.
The soldiers on Bo Zai's side seemed to be sloppy in their attitude, charging in a scattered line with their backs bent.
Lin Bozai's men all charged bravely, but when you really counted them, their death rate in each battle was not higher than that of other troops.
The more you fear death on the battlefield, the easier it is to die. A force with strong morale will overwhelm the enemy and end the battle quickly. A force that cuts more slowly than a knife will suffer smaller overall losses.
Moreover, the Huai Army Camp Military Academy was always open. Shao Quanzhong had already finished talking about the limited things he knew.
The troops are constantly expanding, with more and more new middle and lower-level officers. The Military Academy has already produced the second, third, and fourth classes...
Shao Quanzhong was very busy. As the principal, he only gave a lecture when classes started, and would give a lecture when he had time. Most of the time, senior generals served as teachers.
When the new officers were soldiers, they had already been trained to use the new tactics. The classes were just to supplement the theory, and they learned much faster than the first period. After they learned, they naturally influenced the new soldiers. In this regard, the Huai Army had formed a virtuous circle.
Shao Quanzhong's own theoretical quality was very average, so the officers he trained were also average, just above the average level of officers after World War I.
Ahem, of course their strategic and tactical awareness is a level higher than that of the current old officers.
But the soldiers of the Huai Army were the best. Although Shao Quanzhong was not a theoretically literate officer, he had seen what good soldiers trained by the masters of the New Army were like, although that master later turned against him...
I don't understand much theory, but I know what kind of soldiers are good.
After more than four years of mentoring, the Huai Army soldiers have become increasingly close to the perfect image in Shao Quanzhong's mind - the perfect image of the New Army soldiers in the early 1920s.
You can't ask Shao Quanzhong to bring out the best soldiers, he has never seen one. And first of all, you need a group of the best officers...
In theory, Lin Bozai's soldiers would be at a disadvantage if they charged along the mountain path towards the fortress controlling the pass.
The battle area was narrow, and only one reinforced company of about 200 people could charge forward, and they had to withstand the rapid fire of the enemy behind the 500-meter line.
Seeing that the Huai Army had rushed into the 500-meter effective rifle range, two thousand bandits with quick-firing guns emerged from the three fortresses. Before they could open fire, they suddenly realized that the target was gone.
Well, the bandits knew their own rapid-fire line, and the Huai Army certainly knew it better. When they charged to within 500 steps of the fortress, they suddenly lay down collectively.
The enemy who appeared was looking for the enemy, when suddenly a loud noise of Williams rapid-fire cannon was heard from the opposite side. The camp was covered with sand and rocks, and the bandits who appeared were hit by the cannon one after another.
If a one-pound iron ball hits a person, it will immediately break tendons and bones.
The sixteen rapid-fire cannons of the two hidden companies of the Huai Army suddenly unleashed their power, and the bandits suffered a great loss.
This was not the end. The bandits were surprised to find that a battalion of Huai Army soldiers suddenly appeared 300 meters away from their camp, and more than a thousand quick guns fired.
The bandits who showed up suffered a great loss. The Huai Army in this battalion were all lying down and shooting. Their aim was very accurate, and bandits who showed up were shot in the head. The bandits were so scared that they hid behind the camp one after another.
Where did this battalion of soldiers come from?
Ahem, if you, Ma Zhan'ao, can build three fortresses overnight, so can Lin Bozi. He was strictly forbidden to charge in person, and he was in a position to redeem himself, so he had no choice but to start thinking.
Facts have proved that Lin Bozai, a graduate of the first class of the Huai Army Military Academy and one of the instructors of the following classes, is a smart person, but he just doesn't like to use his brains.
His engineers dug a trench 300 meters away from the fortress overnight and camouflaged it.
A battalion of soldiers had been hiding in there for more than three hours since two or three o'clock in the morning, just waiting for this sudden attack.
The brave Lin Bozi stopped charging and started to use strategies and study military tactics. Isn’t that scary?
A large number of the bandits and quick-shooters in the camp were killed, and the rest hid themselves and dared not show their heads. The Huai Army soldiers who lay down calmly stood up again, moved forward quickly, and replenished the trenches.
The soldiers in this company who were charging were actually bait. They entered the trenches just as a coincidence because something more terrifying was coming.
As the enemy's quick-shooters were suppressed, sixteen Gatling manual machine guns were pushed into the trenches 300 meters away from the camp. If it weren't for the fact that these things were too big and difficult to hide, they would have entered the trenches at night.
Now the enemies in the camp dared not show up at all.
When Ma Zhan'ao's generals saw that the Huai Army had pushed the front line to a dangerous distance, they scolded and shot at the bandits who had retreated back to the camp.
Surrounding them were their comrades who had suffered broken bones and tendons from rapid-fire cannons. The bandits were terrified, but the makeshift camp had no firing holes, so they just popped their heads out, fired a few shots, and then quickly hid back.
Some people simply don't show their heads, but hold the gun with both hands and shoot blindly at the opposite side by pulling the trigger. This is called "African-style shooting."
Ma Zhan'ao's quickshooters had not received formal training. Their muzzle-loading rifles were designed to fire three rounds per minute, but they were lucky if they could only fire one or two rounds per minute. Moreover, their accuracy was far inferior to that of the Huai Army, which was fed with bullets.
The shooting was inaccurate to begin with, and the shots were fired in haste, with even one-third of them being blind shots, while the opponents were all lying in the trenches. The effect was really bad.
The enemy's homemade artillery began to attack the trenches. The bandits' gunners had no knowledge of geometry and were simply firing blindly. They were fine at attacking large areas of the enemy, but it was difficult for them to accurately hit a line of trenches.
A considerable amount of time had passed while we were luring the enemy, eliminating their quickshooters, and confronting the enemy camp in the trenches. The Huai Army's mortar company adjusted the amount of black powder and started firing shotgun shells.
Add a little black powder, and the shotgun shells will explode into the fortress.
Breaking into the camp is much easier than attacking the city wall. There is no need for precise extended shooting. Every time you release the gunpowder, your hands will shake, and you can randomly change the distance to shoot the shotgun.
Countless small iron balls were scattered in the camp, and the camp was bloody and in a mess.
The mortar battery continued its bombardment for three hours, and the exchange of fire between the trenches and the camp also lasted for three hours.
Only one cannonball happened to hit the trench, and it was a solid bullet, killing three Huai Army soldiers. There were already heavy casualties inside the camp.
Seeing that the time was almost right, Lin Bozai gave an order, and as the charge sounded, the soldiers jumped out of the trenches and began the real charge.
The morale in the camp was low, but they still organized a death squad to counterattack. Ma Zhan'ao personally supervised the battle, and it seemed that the two sides were about to engage in hand-to-hand combat in the open area in front of the camp.
"boom!"
There was a loud bang, and Ma Zhan'ao looked back and saw that the east wall of the camp behind him had been blown down.
Two battalions of Huai Army infantry rushed into the camp from the east, with a large banner hoisted, "Gansu Army Independent Mixed Brigade - Dong."
Where are they from?
(End of this chapter)