16. Fortress VS Fortress (24)
Charlemagne's infantry charge was hell for themselves and a nightmare for the Wehrmacht.
Unlike Charlemagne's infantry, the pressure on the Defence Force was mainly mental. You must know that in the first hour of the offensive battle, Charlemagne committed a full 66,000 men. The defenders in the front-line fortifications were only about one-third of the opponent's strength, and the artillerymen, who were most effective at suppressing the charge of the infantry group, were too busy slaughtering Charlemagne's comrades to spare their hands for a while. Otherwise, don't talk about what is in front of you, even if the enemy army is doubled, they will not pay attention to it.
Since they are counting on the artillery brothers, all they can rely on is the weapons in their hands, the skills they have honed repeatedly, the comrades around them, and their own will.
"1500 rounds!Change the barrel!!"
The non-commissioned officer of Renard 1st class roared, his hoarse voice shrill and thin, and it was simply not worth mentioning in the roaring battlefield. Corporal Ernst, the observer next to him, also did not hear what the machine gun team leader was saying. But the long-term cooperation allowed his body to act before it could react. The moment Renard opened the locker and the barrel popped out to the right, the corporal wearing asbestos gloves immediately pulled out the reddish barrel and sent the replacement barrel into the cooling sheath. When he put the snorting red iron bar in his hand into the firefighting sandbox next to him to cool down. The general-purpose machine gun had been reloaded and was playing the song of death again.
From stopping to firing again, the whole process was only 5 seconds, which is a good result enough to be praised by the boss on a normal day, but at this moment, 5 seconds is as long as a century for this machine gun team. During this time, the wall of people in blue uniforms in front of him advanced at least 10 yards.
"Hell, did Charlemagne's soldiers grow out of the ground?!Where did they get so many madmen who are not afraid of death!!
Private Emir, the loader, pulled a chain of bullets from the magazine, swearing and swearing, and behind him, the empty magazines were piled up as high as his head, and to the right of the machine gun, the empty shells were also piled up to the height of the machine gun.
Although the behavior of the senior soldier was suspected of violating military discipline, at this time, no one bothered to accuse him. In a sense, this talkative loader also gave his comrades a sense of relaxation.
When there is a large group of people rushing towards you in front of you, these people are shouting in a language you don't understand, they are not afraid of death, they are not afraid of fear, and they are even willing to exchange thousands of corpses for a distance from you, and they are thousands and thousands of them are close to you with never-ending strafing. You kill a hundred, and they let two hundred rush up, you kill two hundred, and then four hundred come up - in the face of such adversity, you are angry and helpless in the face of this group of opponents who kill like demons. What is a Württemberg loader with many words? Not to mention that he is not wrong.
- Maniac.
The evaluation of Charlemagne by the front-line soldiers is this one, and as for the praise of "warrior" in the mouth of Lieutenant General Kemp, I still ask the lieutenant general to go to the trench himself to face the "warrior" in his mouth and then talk about his feelings. Perhaps this will make the commander with too many literary cells in his head correct some misconceptions, and no longer call the guy who faces the cross-covering of light and heavy machine guns, rapid-fire guns, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers and can march in unison like going to the theater or marching on the parade ground as a "warrior".
"Are Charlemagne's soldiers all monsters?!"
Sergeant Renard 1st Class left these words in his diary, and as a person personally involved in this bloody battle, he went on to write:
"The enemy seemed determined to break through our army on the march, and we were all shocked to see them come like this, which had never been done before, and I am afraid we will not see it again. Charlemagne's soldiers in red pants were everywhere, rushing in thousands. The officers rushed to the front, dressed in crisp uniforms, with a large number of medals pinned to their chests, and I noticed that one of them was still holding a fine cane—at that moment, I thought that these guys were really a bunch of staffs, and they thought that we were all blind bats, and that we couldn't even hit such a conspicuous target, so we came here for a walk? All we had to do was reload our bullets and reload them when we ran out. Charlemagne's soldiers were shot in hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, and on several occasions I couldn't bear to shoot, but I quickly abandoned this ill-fashioned idea. If I hesitate, the Charlemagnes will rush and kill us all. ”
The prediction of the non-commissioned officer of the first class was accurate, and when the battle was fought to this extent, even the most gentlemanly officer had no idea of accepting prisoners of war. After enduring a series of failures, frustration, and humiliation, they had had enough, and Charlemagne had only one thought left in his head, kill the ghost animals, kill the ghost animals, kill them all. As soon as they have the opportunity to rush into the trenches, they must send all the cowards, cowards, butchers, and murderers hiding in the trenches to hell. From now on, the Elves can only be heard in hell.
The idea was so strong that Charlemagne's adrenaline-filled mind forgot not only tactics and tasks, but also the search for cover.
From the no-man's land to the Wehrmacht position, you have to pass through several layers of barbed wire, and there are various types of anti-infantry mines in between, from jumping mines to broadswords, and if anyone is "lucky" to trigger these dangerous toys, it is guaranteed to make Charlemagne's death show off in 18 ways. Coupled with the light and heavy fire blockade, it is extremely difficult to break through even if there is a chariot to open the way, not to mention that the Wang army only has the flesh and blood of thousands of soldiers in its hands.
When Charlemagne's soldiers were barricaded outside the barbed wire fence or crowded into a blown gap, they were immediately under the watchful eye of the Wehrmacht machine gunners. Often, in the blink of an eye, the warriors who were still singing the Battle Song of the Rhine Legion became dead or seriously wounded, and the gap was quickly closed by corpses or those who were becoming corpses. But the remaining officers and men continued to advance, stepping over the bodies or bodies of their comrades, and continuing on until they were knocked over by a bullet, which became a signpost for the advance of their followers.
"I curse Charlemagne's generals and marshals! Do they know what they have done, how cold-blooded and stupid it must be to let so many lives fall in vain under my guns!"
At the end of the diary, Sergeant 1st Class Renard writes that even though the words were left after the battle, the tip of the pen was filled with too much emotion and broke the paper.
In such high-intensity battles, the survival time of an infantry battalion is measured in minutes. Even the bravest Corsican infantry battalion was wiped out after holding out for 40 minutes. The battalion lost 91 per cent of its personnel participating in the offensive - 29 officers and 682 enlisted men. The officers who left the trenches were either dead or maimed, and many of the soldiers did not even have a complete corpse. So what did such huge casualties come into? At best, it was nothing more than a few yards of advance of the front, which was 75 kilometers deep compared to the shallowest point of the Siegfried Line, which was not worth mentioning.
As the minutes ticked by, after a ballistic path leading to the crater was laid out with the corpse, Charlemagne's soldiers immediately shouted and poured into the crater between the second and third barbed wire, although from time to time bullets and grenades flew in along the curved trajectory, but because they could not be directly aimed, the damage they could do was quite limited, and after a while, the gunfire gradually subsided. Charlemagne's soldiers hurried to use their portable tools to build sandbags to add an insurance to their lives, and for a while, except for the artillerymen who were still performing, and the roar of the cannons continued to resound across the land, the battlefield gradually fell silent.
The sun was high in the sky, the sun was scorching the earth, and the officers and men on both sides were hurrying to replenish fresh water and ammunition, which was as dangerous as a year for Charlemagne's wounded, who were still lying in no man's land. The Wehrmacht was furious by Charlemagne's furious pig suddenness, and some of Charlemagne's wounded soldiers who were still alive fired cold shots at the Wehrmacht's position, and the originally cool-headed soldiers also became manic. Witnessing Charlemagne's frenzied attack, the constant cold guns coming from no man's land, and especially the "resistance" of Charlemagne's wounded soldiers, it was intolerable to the defense forces who were convinced that their side would win a great victory. The snipers and part of the machine-gun crew immediately took action to let the Charlemagneites know who had the final say here.
Snipers, precision marksmen, and machine guns shoot at all moving targets in their field of vision, and they no longer have the slightest mercy for the wounded. As soon as he found a Charlemagne lying on the ground, even one finger moved, he would immediately send a precise but not immediately lethal shot, making him wail like a pig waiting to be slaughtered, or he would not dare to move freely. And Charlemagne's response to this was swearing and more cold shots.
In the midst of such brutal killings, flashes of humanity still flash from time to time. Pierre Forcher, a lieutenant medic of the 113th Infantry Regiment of the Royal Army, was wounded in both legs by a sniper while searching for the wounded in no man's land – the red-eyed officers and men on both sides had no longer heeded the taboo not to shoot at the medics – the lieutenant managed to crawl under the third line of barbed wire to rescue a major who had been shot unconscious, and while dragging the wounded man back, the sniper shot the medic several times in both legs and shoulders. The self-sacrificing medic eventually dragged the wounded officer into a crater and died. The rescued officer later succumbed to his injuries and took his last breath 30 minutes later. The cold-bloodedness of the Wehrmacht Snipers completely angered the Charlemagnees, prompting them to behave even more violently in the subsequent attacks, and the Medic's near-contemptuous bravery annoyed the Wehrmacht, which they would later respond with more escalating actions. But now, at noon on the 7th of the month of Muyue, there was not even a trace of majesty, and the warring parties had to temporarily restrain their anger and spend this painful and torturous lunch break together.