artillery arc

Chapter 72 Minefield blocks the enemy
Next, Wang Zhong gained a deeper understanding of the role of heavy artillery.

It was obviously just a salvo, and two of the four shells missed. In fact, the one that hit the enemy was the last one that fell.

But even so, the enemy's armored reconnaissance battalion can't do anything for the next hour. Just rescuing the wounded, collecting equipment from the wounded and dead, and pushing the destroyed vehicles to the roadside will keep them busy. It's overwhelming.

At first, Wang Zhong paid close attention to the enemy's next move. After watching it for a while, he became discouraged. He pulled up a chair and sat by the window to look at the sky.

On the surface, he is looking at the sky, but actually he is looking at the enemy from an overhead perspective.

His mentality has changed, and now he feels like a child squatting on the school playground, having just destroyed an ant's nest with a bottle of mineral water, and now watching the ants save themselves with relish.

In fact, originally, an armored reconnaissance battalion posed no threat to Loktov's defense. Now that it was bombed by heavy artillery, it no longer poses a threat.

At 11 o'clock at noon, the enemy seemed to have finally completed their reorganization and dispersed across the field.

Then, they encountered the first gift prepared by Wang Zhong: a fake minefield.

No, the minefield near the main road was planted by the city defense group, and it was genuine.

Vasily also reported that they had buried two boxes of real mines in the fake minefield, mixed with the lids of a large number of canned pickles.

This is enough for the Prossens.

While Wang Zhong was thinking about this, the enemy infantry searching for and advancing on both sides of the road stepped on the mines laid by the city defense regiment.

The man was blown three meters into the air. His legs flew even further, flying across the road and landing on the other side.

Wang Zhong was speechless: "You told me this is a landmine?"

Dimitri, who was observing through the artillery mirror, said: "It's normal. This thing has a 300-gram charge. If it doesn't kill the one next to it, it's considered abnormal."

Wang Zhong was shocked: "Is this an anti-tank mine?"

"Anti-personnel mines!" Vasily said, "I buried two boxes with my own hands. They are indeed anti-personnel mines."

What kind of infantry requires 300 grams of explosives to kill?
Could it be that there is an Asir clan in Prosen? Valkyrie? Can't it be blown up without so much explosive?

No, it might just be Mao Zi's regular way of making big bricks and flying.

Wang Zhong continued to observe the enemy. After one person was killed, the remaining enemies all exited the minefield without a sound. At this moment, the scattered enemy troops discovered the sign that Vasily had inserted.

The soldier who noticed the sign called the officer, probably to ask what to do.

After a brief exchange, the soldier grabbed the sign and appeared to be preparing to pull it out and show it to a more senior officer.

Soon enough, the ground was ready! Then it popped like a blown balloon!
The "fountain" formed by the soil sprayed the group of Proson soldiers into the sky.

Vasily was very excited when he heard the sound: "This sound! Did the big thing I buried explode? I buried a whole piece of TNT underneath, more than two kilograms!"

Wang Zhong was sweating. You should be ruthless.

"Do you know how far the enemy flew?" he asked.

Vasily: "How far?"

Dimitri said quickly, "I saw one flying to the top of the barn ten meters away."

"Hahaha!" Vasily slapped his thigh and laughed wildly.

Wang Zhong: "Pay attention to the monitoring, you bastard, I think you plan to pick shit for the rest of your life!"

Vasily quickly put the headphones straight.

The explosion just now caused all the Prosen troops to lie down, seemingly thinking that the heavy artillery bombardment was coming again.

An officer was shouting something, and the soldiers got up in twos and threes.

The orderly soldiers ran along the line of deployment of troops, shouting new orders.

Wang Zhong guessed that all soldiers should stay away from those minefield warning signs.

The enemy began to retreat and did not stop until they were two hundred meters away from the minefield, almost out of Wang Zhong's sight.

Dimitri said happily: "The enemy has retreated! It seems that they have no engineers and there is nothing they can do with the mines!"

At this time, Yegorov, who was guarding the phone, also came to the window, held up a telescope to observe the enemy, and exclaimed: "If it were me, I would send a reconnaissance team to move along the minefield to see how wide the minefield is. It ends wherever it goes."

As soon as he finished speaking, two half-track vehicles carried soldiers to the northwest and southeast respectively. It was obvious that the enemy commander's current thoughts were the same as Yegorov's.

Wang Zhong was speechless: "If we have more magic arrows, we can take down these two reconnaissance teams, or at least blow up the vehicles to slow down the enemy's reconnaissance."

Yegorov: "But we don't have magic arrows."

Vasily suddenly shouted: "I heard the enemy on the front talking to his superior. He reported... Let me take a look!"

As he spoke, he looked through the notebook that Wang Zhong personally led the team to seize yesterday, and checked the radio call signs and location codes recorded on it.

"The Armored Reconnaissance Battalion reported to the 15th Armored Division Headquarters that Loktov has army artillery-level firepower and a large number of mines! Maybe the information about the number of defenders here is wrong!"

After finishing the translation, Vasily looked at Wang Zhong excitedly: "General, we are regarded as a group army!"

Wang Zhong smiled slightly: "It's mainly due to the B4 heavy artillery."

Yegorov was speechless: "They definitely didn't expect that there are heavy artillery here just because the commander is the prince's dandy brother."

Just when Vasily was about to answer, he suddenly pressed the earphones again to listen carefully. Apparently someone was talking inside again.

He flipped through his notebook furiously while listening, and after a moment he said: "The 15th Infantry Division Headquarters said the engineers would arrive around three in the afternoon!"

The officers in the room collectively looked at their watches.

Yegorov: "It's three o'clock. There will only be five hours until dark at that time. There should be no way to clear so many minefields. It seems like this is the first day of the battle." Wang Zhong: "What do we have? Can the firepower reach the engineers who are clearing mines?”

Yegorov: "The highest scale of our heavy machine gun is 1000, but experienced veterans can sling fire to 1500, but... the accuracy is completely impossible to see."

Wang Zhong: "It doesn't matter, don't expose the firepower we really want to use, put the machine gun in a temporary position, and lob fire to create a blockage for the enemy engineers."

"If it's just to add to the obstruction," Yegorov blinked, "you can lob fire behind the obstacle so that the enemy can't see the shooters and machine guns. Of course, the new recruits can't do this, but the ones who survived in my old unit A few machine gunners can do it, but it’s all about chance anyway, as long as they can hit the bullets near the enemy, then leave the rest to St. Andrew.”

St. Andrew, the founder of the secular sect of Eastern Saints, is currently the only one canonized by the secular sect.

Wang Zhong: "Very good, make arrangements immediately!"

Yegorov immediately went to give the order.

At this time Vasily asked: "What should we do before the enemy engineers come? Just wait?"

Wang Zhong: "Yes... right?"

Vasily: "What was it like between two enemy attacks in Upper Peniye?"

Wang Zhong: "I was having a fever at that time. I would go to bed after the enemy retreated, so don't ask me."

Vasily was shocked: "Fever? Is it the fever I understand?"

"Correct!"

"You can still win like this? If you don't have a fever now, the enemy will be in trouble." Even Dimitri, who had been concentrating on observing the enemy, couldn't help but turn around and said.

Vasily: "No, maybe you can only fight well when you have a fever."

Wang Zhong glared at Vasily, thinking, damn, this dog is really bad at talking. If it were any other general, he might have been shot.

At this time Yegorov came back, and Wang Zhong took the opportunity to throw the question to him: "Yegorov, the recruits asked how to pass the time between the two battles."

Yegorov immediately replied: "Clean the gun. This is what the veterans taught me when I participated in the first battle. At that time, there was a civil war. As a secular army, we guarded a place called Tsaritsyn."

"The enemy launched a total of seven attacks a day, and each time was repulsed in about 20 minutes. Then it took them an hour and a half to organize a new attack.

"We fought like this from four o'clock in the morning until dark at nine o'clock in the evening. When we repelled the first attack, I asked the veteran why the enemy didn't attack immediately. The veteran said that the enemy had to spend time to gather the troops who ran back. It took one hour to get people back to work, and then they replenished ammunition and arranged a new attack formation. Half an hour passed.

"The first thing our defenders need to do during this period is to clean the gun. There must have been a lot of sand and dust falling into the gun during the battle. If you don't clean it properly, the gun may jam next time and you will die. ”

After listening, Vasily lowered his head and nodded his fingers, and then asked: "Fighting from four o'clock to nine o'clock, seventeen hours. One attack took two hours. There were seven attacks in total. Where are the three hours left?"

Brigade headquarters fell silent.

Wang Zhong regretted his choice to focus on cultivating this thorn.

Well, a little bit.

Yegorov: "The enemy wants to eat, you idiot! Picking shit tonight will help you remember a little bit longer!"

Vasily looked depressed, so his smile shifted to Wang Zhong's face.

At this time, the walkie-talkie suddenly rang again. Vasily quickly put on his earphones to listen and flipped through his notebook while listening: "This is... installing the 15th Division and asking the Air Force... to destroy something. I guess it is our howitzer."

Wang Zhong: “What’s the Air Force’s response?”

"No response yet... Wait a minute, here we come. The Air Force is asking for positions from the 15th Infantry Division."

Wang Zhong: "It seems that our tactics of sealing off the investigation are working."

There is really no place around Loktov where you can see the two positions of B4, so you can only rely on aerial reconnaissance.

Vasily: "Pretend to be 15 and ask, the Air Force should be responsible for aerial reconnaissance. Does the Prosin have a bad relationship with the Army and the Air Force?"

That is quite bad. It seems that conflicts between the military services existed in most countries during World War II.

Vasily listened for a while longer and replied: "No more information. Silence on both sides."

Wang Zhong: "Ask Brother Peter to pay more attention to enemy reconnaissance planes. Also, try to create as many fake artillery positions as possible."

Yegorov immediately passed on the order.

Vasily: "Besides cleaning the gun, what else can you do to pass the time?"

No, do you still want to discuss this issue?
Yegorov: "Playing cards."

"Playing cards?" Vasily exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's better than drinking. It's just killing time anyway. It doesn't make any difference what you do. War is like this. Most of the time you have nothing to do. The only time you need to lick blood with the tip of a knife is the one percent, but you don't know When will this one percent come, so I am always on tenterhooks.”

Wang Zhong: "Then did you bring any playing cards?"

Yegorov took out a deck of playing cards from his coat pocket.

"On the front lines we usually bet on cigarettes," he said.

----

In the afternoon, Yegorov happily put the cigarettes he had just won into his pocket: "I am also the one who has defeated the legendary general - the future legendary general."

Wang Zhong threw the playing cards in his hand on the table and exclaimed: "I don't smoke much anyway, so I let you win on purpose!"

"Ah, is that so?" Yegorov said triumphantly, "With your card-playing skills, you will soon become a big enemy."

At this time, Dimitri, who had been observing in front of the artillery mirror, shouted: "Tank No. 1! Tank No. 1 converted into a wrecker! Engineers are coming up!"

(End of this chapter)