Chapter 108: Engine Shutdown
The tank company continued advancing, with John’s eyes glued tightly to the observation window.
The tank tracks emitted a metallic twisting groan as they crushed over shell craters, nine steel behemoths cutting through the thick gun smoke in wedge formation.
Suddenly, the third tank on the left erupted in blinding firelight, and the muzzle flashes of three Type 92 infantry guns appeared in the dark brown bushes.
“Ten o’clock direction!” John’s roar mixed with the sound of shells whistling through the air into the intercom.
He saw the lead tank’s turret sharply turn, but the gun smoke from its main gun was swallowed by the earth wave stirred up by a new volley of shells.
Shattered stones pelted the armor with crackling sounds, like countless fingernails scratching.
Cold sweat slid down his temple into his collar, and through the binoculars, he saw the silhouettes of the Japanese gun crew frantically reloading… those khaki uniforms blending almost seamlessly with the position.
The loader’s voice rang in his ears, along with the clear metallic clank of the shell being chambered.
“High-explosive round loaded!”
The loader’s slightly trembling voice came into his ears. Gunner Zhuang Xiaoman wiped the congealed blood mist from the observation window, the crosshairs of the sight locked tightly on the Type 92 infantry gun 300 yards away that was ejecting its shell casing.
At the instant the tank jolted in the shell crater, his right index finger pulled the trigger.
The 75mm high-explosive round instantly rushed out of the barrel. He could even see the moment it punched into the enemy gun shield, gears and flesh flying everywhere like a belated sacrifice for the civilians brutally killed by the Japanese blades.
But before Zhuang Xiaoman could smile, he saw three black shadows leap out from the shell crater through the periscope. Ragged uniforms bound with rows of explosives, they charged toward the lead Renault FT tank like demons crawling out of hell.
“Three o’clock direction!” John’s voice rang out at the same time.
But his warning was still too late; his hoarse shout was torn apart by the explosion.
The lead Renault FT tank hurriedly turned, its coaxial machine gun hastily mowing down two enemies in a burst, but the third Japanese soldier had already rolled under the tracks.
“Boom!”
An orange-red fireball rose into the air, the shockwave shattering the instrument panel glass on John’s tank.
John saw the burning wreckage of the Renault FT tank through the twisted metal gaps.
A tank crewman covered in flames pushed open the hatch and climbed out of the turret. Before he could jump down, Japanese machine gun fire swept over, quickly riddling that body with over a dozen bloody holes.
“Shit!”
John, who had witnessed it all, had just cursed when the second platoon’s platoon leader’s panicked, pitch-shifted voice came through the headset: “They’re coming from the ditch!”
Twenty meters away, five Japanese daredevils strapped with explosive packs were charging over their comrades’ corpses.
Logically, twenty meters should only take a few seconds for them to reach, but the terrain had been churned multiple times by the earlier artillery fire. The loose soil and pitted craters everywhere made advancing extremely difficult.
The lead scrawny Japanese soldier suddenly tripped in a dirt pit underfoot, the fuse of his explosive pack pulled loose as he fell. In the blinding flash, John saw the man’s final expression—baring yellow teeth in a grin.
“Madmen… the Japanese are all madmen!” John ranted wildly in English.
Even for him, a veteran of World War I, such a brutal scene was hard to stomach. The churning in his stomach gave him an urge to push open the hatch and jump out to vomit.
“What are you all doing? Are your eyes in your asses?”
At the same time, Wang Shouxin’s voice roared from behind.
He pointed at the distant tank and the several tank crew corpses scattered outside it, bellowing at the soldiers around him: “See that? It’s because of your negligence that we lost a tank and five brothers.
This is the first time, and I hope the last. If anything like this happens again, I won’t mind sending you to charge ahead of the tanks to block bullets for them!”
After suffering their first loss to the Japanese suicide attack, the tank crew grew frenzied too. The co-drivers began hosing down any suspicious targets on the position with coaxial machine guns.
They glared through the observation windows with bloodshot eyes, fingers clamped on the machine gun triggers, brass casings spewing from the ejection port like bursting seed pods.
Bullets tore through the humid air, plowing dense earth waves along the trench edges.
The tankers were like this; the infantry following behind the tanks were no less busy.
Machine gunner Old Cao was now struggling across the loose-soil-covered ground with a nearly twenty-pound BAR automatic rifle in his arms, cursing nonstop at the damn mongrel in his hands.
Yes, you read that right—Old Cao’s gun was a true mongrel.
Call it a rifle, and besides full-auto fire, it even had a bipod, and it was ridiculously heavy at twenty pounds.
Call it a machine gun, and with only a twenty-round magazine, its sustained fire was pathetically weak. Worst of all, it couldn’t change barrels—once the barrel glowed red, you had to stop and stare helplessly. It was infuriating in combat.
If not for his old buddy, the M1917 water-cooled heavy machine gun, being too heavy to accompany the tank charge, he’d never have picked such a bulky piece.
“Thud thud thud…”
A low, muffled machine gun sound suddenly came from ahead, extremely deep like a woodpecker pecking a tree trunk. Caught off guard, the bullet rain felled an infantryman following on the tank’s right side. The fallen soldier convulsed into a shrimp curl, blood seeping from his gray uniform, staining dark red gullies into the yellow earth.
The surrounding soldiers dropped prone at the sight. The lead Renault FT tank halted too, its turret slowly traversing. Before it could fire, an orange-red flash erupted from the rubble pile on the right flank.
The shrieking shell tore through the air, glancing off the tank armor in a shower of blinding sparks.
Shrapnel rained down like a storm; a soldier grunted and rolled into a crater, his helmet clanging crisply on the ground.
“Anti-tank gun… there’s an anti-tank gun!”
Zhuang Xiaoman saw blue smoke rising continuously from the enemy gun position through the periscope, shells exploding nonstop around the tank. Under the threat of death, even the sight’s crosshairs trembled.
“Aim… aim quickly… you pile of shit, can’t you see that’s a rapid-fire gun?” John’s bellow came through the headset.
Amid the cursing, the loader had already rammed a shell into the chamber, the metallic clank especially clear.
“Clang!” A shell suddenly struck the tank turret. The massive impact shook the eighteen-ton Renault FT tank, then it shuddered, spewed black smoke from the rear, and stalled.
“We’re done for.”
Everyone’s hearts sank instantly—who didn’t know what it meant for a tank to lose power amid flying bullets on the battlefield.
“Damn it… for God’s sake, fire… fire now…” John was so anxious that fine sweat beaded on his back.
