Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 108 Extinguishing the Fire
The tank company continued to advance, John's eyes glued to the observation window.

The tank tracks groaned as they rolled over the craters, and nine steel behemoths cut through the thick smoke in a wedge formation.

Suddenly, the third tank on the left burst into a blinding flash of fire, and the muzzle flashes of three Type 92 infantry guns appeared in the dark brown bushes.

"Ten o'clock!" John's shout, mixed with the sound of cannon fire, came through the microphone.

He saw the tank turret at the front suddenly turn, but the smoke from the main gun was swallowed up by the dust wave stirred up by a new round of shells.

The gravel pelted the armor with a crackling sound, like countless fingernails scratching.

Cold sweat trickled down his temples and into his collar. Through his binoculars, he saw the frantic loading of Japanese artillery crews... Their khaki uniforms blended almost seamlessly into the battlefield.

The loader's voice rang in my ears, and at the same time, the metallic clang of the shell entering the chamber was clearly heard.

"High-explosive shells loaded!"

The loader's slightly trembling voice reached his ears. Gunner Zhuang Xiaoman wiped the blood mist that had congealed on the observation window, and the crosshairs of the scope were locked on the Type 92 infantry gun that was ejecting its spent cartridge case 300 yards away.

As the tank bounced around in the crater, his right index finger pulled the trigger.

The 75mm high-explosive shell burst out of the gun barrel in an instant. He could even see the high-explosive shell piercing the enemy's gun shield. The flying gears and blood and flesh were like a belated sacrifice, a sacrifice to the civilians who died tragically under the Japanese army's butcher's knife.

Before Zhuang Xiaoman could even smile, he saw three dark figures emerge from the shell crater through his observation scope. Rows of explosives were strapped to their tattered uniforms, and they pounced on the lead Chaffee tank like demons crawling out of hell.

“Three o’clock!” John’s voice rang out at the same time.

But his warning came too late; his roar was shattered by the explosion.

The lead Chaffee tank quickly turned around, and its coaxial machine gun hastily mowed down two enemies, but the third Japanese soldier had already rolled under the tracks.

"boom!"

An orange-red fireball shot into the air, and the shockwave shattered the glass of John's tank dashboard.

John saw the burning wreckage of the Chaffee tank through the twisted metal gaps.

A tank crewman, his body engulfed in flames, pushed open the turret cover and climbed out. Before he could even jump down, Japanese machine guns swept across the area, quickly carving more than a dozen bloody holes in his body.

"Shet!"

John, who had witnessed everything, had just started to curse when the second platoon leader's urgent voice came through his earpiece: "They're coming up from the ditch!"

Twenty meters away, five Japanese suicide squad members strapped with explosives were charging over the corpses of their comrades.

Logically, a distance of more than 20 meters should only take them a few seconds to reach, but the terrain had already been sifted through by the artillery fire, and the loose soil and craters made it extremely difficult to advance.

The small, thin Japanese soldier leading the group suddenly tripped over a ditch and fell. The fuse of the explosive charge was pulled as he fell, and in the blinding flash, John saw the man's last expression—a grin with yellow teeth.

“Madmen…the Japanese are a bunch of madmen!” John cursed wildly in English.

Such a horrific scene was almost unbearable even for him, a veteran of World War I. His churning stomach made him feel an urge to push open the hatch and jump out to vomit.

"What are you all doing? Are your eyes on your ass?" At the same time, Wang Shouxin's voice roared from behind.

He pointed to the tank in the distance and the bodies of several tank crew members scattered outside the tank, and roared at the soldiers around him: "See? It is because of your negligence that we lost a tank and five brothers."

This is the first time, and I hope it's the last. If something like this happens again, I wouldn't mind sending you guys to take the hits in front of the tanks!

After suffering their first losses in a Japanese suicide attack, the tank crews went berserk, with co-drivers starting to strafe any suspicious targets on the ground with their coaxial machine guns.

Their bloodshot eyes glared out from the observation window, their fingers gripping the machine gun triggers tightly, brass cartridge cases gushing out of the ejection port like bursting bean pods.

Bullets tore through the damp air, carving dense waves of earth along the edge of the trenches.

The tank crews were busy, and the infantry following behind them were not idle either.

As a machine gunner, Lao Cao was struggling to walk across the dusty battlefield, carrying a nearly 20-pound BAR automatic rifle, constantly cursing the damned monstrosity in his hand.

Yes, you read that right, the gun in Lao Cao's hand is a hybrid of two different types.

You might call it a rifle, but besides being able to fire automatically, it also has a pair of bipods, and it's incredibly heavy, weighing a full twenty pounds.

You could call it a machine gun, but with only a 20-round magazine, its sustained firepower is incredibly weak. The worst part is that you can't change the barrel; once the barrel turns red-hot, you can only stop and stare helplessly. It's incredibly annoying during battles.

If it weren't for the fact that his old partner, the M1917 water-cooled heavy machine gun, was too heavy to accompany a tank charge, he would never have chosen such a cumbersome thing.

"Dong dong dong..."

Suddenly, a low, muffled machine gun blast came from ahead. The sound was extremely deep, like a woodpecker pecking at a tree trunk. Caught off guard, the hail of bullets knocked down an infantryman following the right side of the tank. The fallen infantryman convulsed and curled up like a shrimp, blood seeping from his gray uniform, staining the yellow earth with dark red ravines.

Upon seeing this, the surrounding soldiers quickly lay down, and the foremost Chaffee tank also stopped, its turret slowly rotating. Before it could fire, a flash of orange-red light suddenly appeared from the pile of rubble on the right flank.

The whistling shells tore through the air, grazing the tank armor and sending out blinding sparks.

Shrapnel rained down like a storm, and a soldier groaned as he rolled into a crater, his helmet clanging crisply against the ground.

"Anti-tank gun...there's an anti-tank gun!"

Through the periscope, Zhuang Xiaoman saw the smoke rising from the enemy's gun emplacements, and shells exploding around the tanks. Under the threat of death, the crosshairs of the scope trembled.

"Aim... aim now... you pile of shit, can't you see that's a rapid-fire cannon?" John's roar came from beside my ear.

Amid the curses, the loader had already pushed a shell into the breech, the metallic clanging sound particularly clear.

"Bang!" A shell suddenly struck the tank's turret. The huge impact shook the 18-ton Chaffee tank. After shaking for a moment, the tank emitted a plume of black smoke from its rear and then stalled.

"Ruined."

Everyone's hearts sank immediately. Everyone knew what the consequences would be if a tank lost power on a battlefield filled with flying bullets.

“Damn it… For God’s sake, fire… Fire now…” John was so anxious that a thin layer of sweat seeped out of his back.

(End of this chapter)