Chapter 298: Launch The General Offensive
One hour.
A full hour of shelling.
When that terrifying roar capable of tearing eardrums finally came to an abrupt halt, the entire world seemed to fall into dead silence.
Li Yunlong and Ding Wei, lying in the trench, were completely dumbfounded.
They were like two wooden statues struck by lightning, motionless, with only their chests heaving violently.
An hour of continuous shelling, more than three hundred artillery pieces from 60 caliber to 155 caliber, tens of thousands of shells of various calibers, poured onto the Japanese defensive line that had already been bombed full of holes by aircraft, in a nearly extravagant manner.
Now, that defensive line no longer existed, replaced by a scorched earth covered in violent death smoke, continuously emitting black smoke, pockmarked like the surface of the moon.
It could be said without exaggeration that he, Li Yunlong, after fighting for more than ten years from the Red Army era to today, all the shells he had personally taken or seen combined probably did not amount to even a fraction of what the Shanxi Militia artillery fired in that one hour just now.
This was no longer warfare; this was plowing the land, plowing the little devils’ positions from end to end with shells!
In this brief yet suffocating silence, the earth began to shake once again.
But this time, it was not the sharp and violent tremor of the shelling, but a low, continuous rumble as if steel behemoths were awakening.
“Old Li… Old Li, look quickly… their… their armored forces are launching an attack!”
The voice of Political Commissar Zhao Gang rang out nearby, filled with incredulous shock, even trembling slightly.
“I see it.”
Li Yunlong gritted his teeth, squeezing out these words through clenched teeth.
He stared dead ahead at the area shrouded in gun smoke, a complex glint of shock, frenzy, and extreme envy flashing in his eyes.
Over a hundred M4 Sherman tanks painted with the Blue Sky White Sun emblem formed neat attack formations, slowly rolling out from behind the militia positions.
Their heavy tracks crushed over craters and scorched earth, emitting thunderous rumbles, with 75mm main guns on the turrets held high, and machine guns on the hulls already spitting flames, clearing any possible threats.
Behind these steel behemoths were hundreds and thousands of militia soldiers carrying submachine guns and semi-automatic rifles, advancing alternately under tank cover, their movements skilled and bold.
“Damn it…”
Li Yunlong smashed a fierce fist into the dirt mound in front of him. “If I had armored forces like this, let alone Taiyuan, I would’ve taken the entire Shanxi province long ago!”
Zhao Gang beside him sighed slightly upon hearing this, not purely excited like Li Yunlong.
As a top graduate from Tsinghua University, his understanding of certain matters was far deeper than that of Li Yunlong, the fierce general from peasant stock.
He knew all too well how terrifying an industrial base and logistics support system were needed to build and maintain a mechanized army as powerful as the one before them.
Those seemingly majestic aircraft, tanks, and heavy artillery would be nothing but useless scrap metal without fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and professional maintenance personnel.
To achieve this dream, for a poor and weak China, it might require countless people to spend a generation or even several generations building and striving before it could be realized.
This Shanxi Militia… what kind of monster had emerged from where?
Zhao Gang’s heart was filled with deep shock and doubt.
In the shocked gazes of Li Yunlong and Zhao Gang, the first M4 Sherman tank with gray paint and a Blue Sky White Sun emblem on the side of its turret emerged slowly from behind a reverse slope, like an awakening steel behemoth.
Its wide tracks churned up charred soil, easily crushing over a huge crater blasted by a shell, the thirty-ton hull remarkably steady on the uneven ground.
But this was merely the beginning.
Immediately after, on both sides of the first tank, the second, third… more Sherman tanks appeared one after another.
They did not rush out in a swarm, but advanced in standard attack squads of three tanks each, one squad after another, quickly deploying in front of the positions to form a broad, intimidating steel front.
Soon, two full-strength armored regiments with over a hundred tanks formed an enormous wedge-shaped attack formation in three echelons, like a giant iron plow ready to pierce the heavens, slowly pressing toward the silent Japanese positions.
The roar of over a hundred engines merged into a symphony of destruction, the metallic impacts and friction of over a hundred tracks crushing the earth enough to stop any heart.
And it wasn’t over yet!
As this moving steel forest began to advance, from the trenches behind them, soldiers of two infantry regiments surged out like a breached flood!
They did not charge like headless flies, but advanced rapidly and orderly behind the tanks in squads and platoons.
Some carried M1 Garand semi-automatic rifles, some held BAR automatic rifles, others gripped Thompson submachine guns.
They skillfully used the tanks’ massive hulls as moving cover, providing alternating suppression, advancing in short, quick steps.
The tanks’ turrets and hull machine guns continuously unleashed short, lethal roars, thoroughly cleansing any possible threats in craters and surviving fortifications with dense bullet barrages.
From above, this scene would make any military commander break out in a cold sweat.
It was an unstoppable armored fist of over a hundred tanks, escorted by two regiments and thousands of elite infantry, charging toward the Japanese positions already plowed once by artillery with an undeniable, crushing momentum.
For the Japanese soldiers who had luckily survived the hour-long hellish barrage, the sight before them was even more despairing than the shelling.
They had just crawled out from the soil that nearly buried them alive, ears still ringing, minds not yet clear, when they saw this group of steel nightmares slowly emerging from the smoke.
Bullets from their Type 38 rifles hitting the tanks’ thick armor only sparked futile sparks and “ping-ping-pang-pang” ricochet sounds, not even enough to tickle.
The tanks’ response was 75mm high-explosive shells and hundreds of thousands of bullets.
One shell could refill a huge crater hiding several Japanese soldiers, burying them along with it.
One sweep of machine gun fire could tear any daring resister to shreds.
The battle skipped the probing phase from the start, instantly entering the most brutal and bloody white-hot stage.
After the tank flood crushed the Japanese main position, countless shattered trenches, tunnels, and caves bombarded by artillery became hard bones for the infantry to gnaw with flesh and blood.
On a half-collapsed mountainside position, a militia infantry platoon leader crouched low, pointing his submachine gun at a pitch-black cave mouth not far away, shouting loudly to a soldier carrying a heavy metal tank beside him: “Flamethrower! Aim at that cave!”
The soldier carrying the dozens-of-pounds M2 flamethrower hesitated not a moment; he immediately half-squatted, aimed the nozzle at the cave mouth, and fiercely pulled the trigger.
“Whoosh…”
A viscous, orange-red fire dragon, with a muffled roar, instantly erupted from the nozzle and poured precisely into the deep cave.
The napalm flames instantly ignited everything inside: air, rock walls, and the people hiding within.
Dead silence first filled the cave, followed by an inhuman wail of ghosts and wolves.
Seconds later, seven or eight Japanese soldiers completely engulfed in flames rushed out of the cave like fire ghosts from hell, billowing thick black smoke—the stench of burning uniforms, flesh, and fat.
These “fire men” rolled frantically on the ground, futilely trying to extinguish the maggot-like flames clinging to them, emitting the most piercing howls.
Suddenly, a few more Japanese soldiers rushed out from the cave, their bodies only lightly burning but skin mostly charred red and ulcerated, bayoneted rifles in hand.
Feeling no pain from their ignited fat, faces twisted in madness, they charged desperately at the militia soldiers at the cave mouth for a final cornered beast fight.
“Sweep them!”
Their answer was the cold, frenzied roar of several Thompson submachine guns.
The dense bullet storm instantly riddled these Japanese “fire men” with holes, blood and flesh fragments splattering in the flames; in seconds, they were flipped to the ground, becoming twitching, burning charred corpses.
“Close in, spray again!” the platoon leader roared loudly. From the earlier sounds, he judged the cave was very deep with remaining enemies inside.
The flamethrower soldier rushed to the cave mouth upon command, pulled the trigger again, shooting a longer, fiercer fire dragon deep into the cave.
This time, the agonized howls from inside were denser, overlapping, but soon weakened.
“Follow me in to kill!” The platoon leader waited no longer; he waved his hand and charged first into the cave still radiating scorching heat and charred stench.
Over a dozen soldiers followed tightly behind, guns ready, rushing in.
The flamethrower soldier stayed at the entrance, occasionally spitting short bursts of flame into the pitch-black depths—for deterrence and brief illumination for his comrades inside.
The soldiers nonstop hurled grenades deep into the cave, using explosions’ shockwaves and shrapnel to search for any remaining enemies.
At that moment, with a sudden explosion, a Type 89 grenade detonated nearby; the leading platoon leader suddenly felt intense pain from all over his body.
Head, arms, legs… pain from wounds everywhere.
Shrapnel wounds continuously seeped blood, soaking his clothes, causing drilling pain and dizziness.
“Platoon leader…” a nearby soldier shouted, hurrying to support him.
“Platoon leader, let me help you down?”
“No… I won’t go down until the devils inside are cleared!” The platoon leader gritted his teeth in reply, raised his Thompson submachine gun, and continued charging into the cave.
