Sword of Light: Humanoid Self-Propelled Artillery

Chapter 83: No Cannons, Only the Helplessness of Being Bombed
After the artillery bombardment, the infantry naturally charged. Facing the Japanese's aggressive charge, Wang Gensheng naturally would not sit idly by and wait for death.

Instead, he immediately ordered all twenty machine gunners in his special cavalry company's firepower group to join the battle.

There were multiple communication trenches connecting the village trenches outside and inside the village, so Wang Gensheng immediately ordered the firepower group of the special cavalry company to go in after the Japanese artillery bombardment.

Immediately, the firepower of the machine guns of the Third Battalion doubled. You should know that the entire New Second Regiment had only eighty machine guns, but the Special Cavalry Company directly accounted for a quarter of them, with twenty light machine guns.

The remaining sixty machine guns were evenly distributed among the three battalions, with each battalion only receiving twenty machine guns. Therefore, the firepower group of Wang Gensheng's cavalry company was equivalent to the firepower of a battalion.

"Toss sent it! Toss sent it!"

Unfortunately, Wang Gensheng did not understand the Japanese language, so he did not know what the slogan meant. However, Wang Gensheng, who was already in the front line and commanding the Japanese, did not order to shoot.

As they got closer, three hundred meters, two hundred meters, and finally one hundred meters, Wang Gensheng gave the order to open fire.

Suddenly, the riflemen holding rifles in the trenches and the machine gunners in the machine gun bunkers opened fire at full force.

There was no other way. Since I usually didn't want to practice with bullets, I only did the simplest practice of holding the gun and aiming, so I could only practice within a hundred meters to avoid wasting bullets.

The firepower of forty machine guns immediately stunned the charging Japanese soldiers. You know, when they were charging, they thought that their own artillery fire had already defeated these Eighth Route Army soldiers and they were unable to fight back!
The powerful firepower that erupted in the blink of an eye made the Japanese soldiers feel their scalps tingling.

At this time, Wang Gensheng, the front-line commander, began to throw grenades. He threw one grenade after another. With precise timing control, each grenade exploded in the air at a height of three to five meters from the ground.

So even though some of the Japanese reacted quickly, they immediately lay down under the fierce fire from the machine guns.

However, he still could not escape the power of Wang Gensheng's grenade air burst. The distance of 100 meters was exactly the best distance for the grenade air burst.

If it's farther away, the grenade fuse won't have enough time to detonate.

So in this wave of defense, Wang Gensheng's side killed at least two hundred Japanese soldiers, which was equivalent to directly destroying an entire Japanese squadron.

However, although they seemed to have the advantage, they were about to be bombarded in the blink of an eye, because Wang Gensheng had already seen flames coming out of the Japanese Type 92 artillery position a thousand meters away in the distance.

Without time to think, Wang Gensheng immediately ordered loudly:

"Avoid the fire! Avoid the fire!"

Wang Gensheng's order was quickly conveyed, and after many training sessions that Wang Gensheng had prepared in advance, the soldiers of the third battalion reacted quickly after receiving the order. In less than three seconds, they all took shelter in the nearest cat ear holes.

Of course, Wang Gensheng also found a cat ear hole nearby to hide.

Three seconds later, the Type 92 infantry gun shell finally landed near the trench and exploded. From the moment Wang Gensheng noticed the flash of fire to the moment the shell landed, the entire flight took six seconds. The Japanese Type 92 infantry gun's shells simply flew that slowly.

It takes five seconds to fly a thousand meters, and there is no way around it, because the initial velocity of the Japanese Type 92 infantry gun's shells is only one hundred and ninety-eight meters per second!

Therefore, a distance of one thousand meters, plus the deceleration effect of air resistance when the shell is flying, and the arc trajectory of the shell flight increases the flight distance, so it takes six seconds to fly a distance of one thousand meters.

And these six seconds were Wang Gensheng's time to dodge. For some reason, the Japanese really liked the three-round artillery attack.

After Wang Gensheng felt the bombardment disappear, he immediately said:
"Report your losses to each company. Send any wounded back to the village for immediate treatment!"

"A shell directly hit a hole in the first company's position, causing an explosion. Three were killed, but no one was injured. The second company suffered no casualties or losses. A machine gun bunker in the third company's position was directly hit, killing the machine gunner and assistant gunner instantly. The machine gun is intact!"

The three company commanders of the third battalion reported very quickly and counted the casualties in less than a minute. A total of five people were killed and a machine gun bunker was destroyed!
Wang Gensheng had no way to deal with the situation of the first company. You know, the entrance of the cat ear cave is very narrow, only 50 centimeters wide and less than one meter high. However, such a narrow entrance was directly hit by a shell. What could Wang Gensheng do about it!

It can only be said that luck is also very important on the battlefield, but no matter what, overall, the cat ear holes were made very well. If there were no cat ear holes, these two artillery bombardments would have caused at least hundreds of casualties, instead of just a few.

Wang Gensheng took the telescope and looked at the artillery position in the distance. It was one thousand meters away. There was no way the only weapon the New Second Regiment could get was the Type 97 90mm mortar, but there were no gunners in the New Second Regiment.

The new Second Regiment was initially composed of soldiers supported by regular regiments such as the 772nd and 771st Regiments.

However, both the 772nd and 771st Regiments tacitly agreed not to send supporting gunners. In addition to the fact that there were too few experienced gunners, more importantly, they did not think that the new 2nd Regiment could obtain any heavy artillery.

After all, apart from the grenade launcher, things like the Type 92 infantry gun were only available to the Japanese at the battalion level. But how could a newly established New Second Regiment possibly defeat a battalion of Japanese soldiers!

But no one would have thought that a mere infantry company would be equipped with an artillery squad!

What's more, there are few gunners like Wang Chengzhu in the entire Eighth Route Army.

Therefore, Wang Gensheng, who had no means of long-range attack, could only endure the Japanese artillery bombardment and had no way to fight back, so Wang Gensheng could only order:
"Hurry up! While the Japanese bombardment has stopped and they haven't launched a charge yet, go and repair that machine gun bunker for me. That location is very important!"

Maybe it was because they lost a squadron of Japanese soldiers in the first charge! Wang Gensheng waited for more than half an hour but still didn't see the Japanese attack.

However, Wang Gensheng didn't know that Ichiro Omoto, who was commanding the charge, was being slapped in the face.

The only one who dared to slap Ichiro Omoto was naturally Watanabe Dairo, the commander of the Watanabe Regiment.

You have to know that one attack directly resulted in the loss of an entire squadron of Japanese soldiers. Such a huge loss is equivalent to a quarter of the strength of a battalion. After all, a battalion only has four infantry squadrons!
A regiment naturally only has twelve infantry companies, so this naturally means that Watanabe's regiment has lost one-twelfth of its troops.

(End of this chapter)