artillery arc

Chapter 751: Proson Counterattacks

The Plossans were not ready to counterattack until September 9.

This was mainly because it took longer than expected to gather the defeated troops and restore the organization.

However, this also allowed the three divisions coming up from the rear to arrive.

After all, the current location of the Prosen Line of Defense is very close to the border before the invasion of Melania, and there is also a new railway that took a lot of time and effort to build.

General Hawke was full of confidence. With three divisions of fresh troops, he would surely be able to defeat Rokossov, who was still unstable.

Not only were there three divisions of reinforcements, but two newly formed armored brigades were also transferred from the rear.

Moreover, a brave general who had just returned to the team after recovering from injury, Colonel Schlieffen, winner of the Knight's Cross of Swords, was transferred to the rear.

On the morning of September 9, General Hawke accompanied Colonel Schlieffen to the 11rd Independent Armored Brigade.

The armored brigade's base was in a requisitioned stable. After all the horses were driven out, dozens of sleeping bags were placed there. All the crews of the entire armored brigade slept here.

Before General Hawke came in, the tankmen had already tidied up their belongings and stood in a circle against the wall, so that the general could see all the tankmen's faces directly when he entered the room.

"Stand at attention!" the brigade chief of staff shouted.

Admiral Hawke signaled to Colonel Schlieffen.

The colonel walked from behind the general to the front and looked at the tankmen's faces one by one.

Seeing the third one he stopped and asked, "How old are you?"

"Sixteen years old, General!" the boy answered energetically.

Colonel Schlieffen frowned and walked up to the next tanker: "What about you?"

"Fifteen years old, General!"

Colonel Schlieffen: "How long did you receive armored training?"

"Three months, General! I drove the tank for 120 hours!"

Admiral Hawke: "Much better than the sixty hours of the Ants."

Colonel Schlieffen: "These people are still children!"

General Hawke: "One battle will turn them into men."

Colonel Schlieffen: "In the past, when I arrived at a new unit, I would live with them for six months to get to know what kind of people they were! Now these people only have six months of training! And today I met them for the first time.

“They’re all children!”

General Hawke: "They have never been defeated."

Colonel Schlieffen: "Do they know what's waiting for them? In Upper Peyniers, I almost defeated Rokossov, and now he has become the nightmare of the entire Eastern Front, no, the entire Plossen Army. Are these children really ready to face that monster?"

"They are ready to die for you!" said Admiral Hawke.

Colonel Schlieffen: "That kind of death is meaningless and does not change the situation of the war at all!"

General Hawke: "Behind us is the border. You also participated in the offensive in the first two years. You know what we did in Ante. Imagine what the Ante people would do if they entered our homeland!"

Colonel Schlieffen bit his lip and made no reply.

At this time, the child who had just introduced himself as sixteen years old sang the Plossen military song "The Song of the Armored Troops" loudly:
“Whether it’s a storm or a snowflake, or the sun smiles upon us.

“Whether it’s a hot day or a cold night.

“The dust was blowing in our faces, but we were enjoying this fun, yes, this fun!

"Our tanks rolled forward, stirring up clouds of yellow sand!"

The other children joined in the singing, pacing their right feet as they sang:

"With the roar of the thundering engines, we are as fast as lightning!

"Sheltered in armor, we charge at the enemy!
"We march forward side by side with our comrades, we face the enemy independently, yes, we face the enemy independently!
"We will march straight in and strike at the heart of the enemy!"

General Hawke stared at the young children for a few seconds, then turned his gaze to Colonel Schlieffen who was still silent: "Sing!"

Colonel Schlieffen obeyed the order, but was so exhausted that his voice was almost inaudible.

General Hawke: "Louder!"

Colonel Schlieffen could only open his voice, his mature masculine voice drowning out the children's tender voices:
"If an enemy tank suddenly appears in front of you during an attack.

"I'll just step on the accelerator, and the brave will win.

"What is the value of our lives? Fighting for Plossom? Yes! Fighting for Plossom!

"It is our highest honor to die for Plossom!"

Admiral Hawke raised his hand, trying to signal that they could stop singing here.

But the young people didn't care. They were driven by the passion brought by the song and continued to sing:
"Suppose we are forsaken by Fortune!

"What if we can never return home!

"If the shells end our lives, if we are doomed, yes, we are doomed!
"At least that loyal chariot will give us a steel grave!"

When the song ended, Colonel Schlieffen once again looked around the room and said, "Well, gentlemen, prepare to attack. I will command you."

The young children all smiled as if they were about to attend a school party and dance with the girls they liked.

They rushed out of the farmhouse and rushed to their tanks.

The purpose of organizing the armored brigade was to learn advanced experience from the Ants, but in fact, the essence was that Proson could no longer organize it into a luxurious armored division like before.

In the second year after Barbarossa, many of Plossen's armored divisions changed from a two-battalion system to a one-battalion system, and the entire armored division had only one armored battalion.

The result of further drawdown is now the armored brigade.

The entire armored brigade has less than a hundred tanks. Theoretically, the combat effectiveness of such a force is still not low as long as it is equipped with auxiliary forces. However, in these temporarily formed brigades, many auxiliary forces only exist on paper.

The armored grenadiers assigned to the armored brigade were fully equipped, but many of them did not have half-track vehicles (equivalent to the later infantry fighting vehicles) and could only ride Opel Lightning trucks to keep up with the tank troops.

Colonel Shriven stood at the door of the farmhouse, watching the children anxiously as they prepared for the attack.

General Hawke took the walkie-talkie from his adjutant and said, "Artillery, you may begin!"

————Wang Zhong stopped when he heard the sound of artillery fire and pretended to listen, but in fact he switched to a bird's-eye view.

He silently counted the landing points of the shells. A minute later, he switched back to his own perspective and asked Vasily: "The enemy's firepower is very sparse. Their supplies should be better than ours. What's going on?"

Vasily: "It may be that the artillery production capacity cannot keep up. The documents we seized show that the barrels of the barreled artillery produced by Melania's factory recently are all anti-aircraft gun barrels, which were sent to Plossen to be made into anti-aircraft guns."

Wang Zhong: "Do you still have time to study these?"

"That's right. I thought they were going to launch a tentative counterattack on the 9th, but it turned out to be a calm situation. We still had a lot of preparations to do, so I thought to myself, 'Oh no, we have to let the enemy into the city and fight street battles.'

"But on the 9th, the enemy did not move. We had almost completed all the preparations and restored a lot of the troops. On the 8th, our soldiers could not find the officers, and the officers did not know how many of their troops were still alive. By the evening of the 9th, each officer had at least someone available.

"On the 10th, I thought there would be a fierce battle, but the enemy didn't even do any reconnaissance. I had nothing to do but go through the enemy's files with the Inquisition's intelligence analysts."

Wang Zhong frowned: "Did the enemy conduct reconnaissance yesterday? Didn't they catch the tongue?"

Vasily: "I organized a night patrol and didn't encounter the enemy's squad that was looking for tongues. But there were many civilians and guerrillas in the city, so maybe some guerrillas were captured. It's normal that the guerrillas didn't think of reporting the situation because of the chaos."

Vasily suddenly showed a look of contempt: "Now the guerrillas give me the feeling that all the brave and reliable patriots have died under the enemy's butcher knife, and the rest are just a bunch of insects."

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Wang Zhong: “When the war is over, the well-tested Melania People’s Army soldiers can be transformed into police and municipal civil servants on the spot, and they will treat their country well.

"Not now, we have to end this damn war."

After saying that, he easily switched the topic back to the enemy patrol: "The enemy didn't catch our tongue, so how could they know our defense situation? In this way, they don't even know where to focus their artillery fire."

Vasily shrugged. "I'm not the enemy, so how can I know what happened? But isn't this a good thing for us? Maybe the enemy's artillery preparations didn't destroy our minefields at all, and they will have to dawdle in front of the minefields for the whole day."

Wang Zhong: "How is that possible? Proson's engineering corps is very professional."

Vasily: "But it is a fact that they have more and more recruits now."

At this time, a shell hit the building where the headquarters was located, and a large amount of dust fell from the ceiling.

Wang Zhong raised his head and looked at the ceiling. "The shell that hit the headquarters seemed to be only 105 mm. Did the enemy's firepower drop so much?"

Vasily: "Considering that we have captured a lot of enemy 150mm and 210mm heavy artillery, this is possible."

Vasily's words made the temporary staff in the headquarters look at each other in confusion.

Everyone felt that the Proson Empire was getting weaker. The Proson troops on the front line were still quite powerful, but the Proson troops outside the front line were hard to describe.

The empire is crumbling.

----

Colonel Schlieffen led his troops forward, and because it was expected that most of the fighting would be urban, his brigade was attached to the 600th Infantry Division, which had just arrived at the front.

After seeing the mismatched troops of the 600th Infantry Division, Colonel Schlieffen was suddenly relieved about the "younger" nature of his troops.

At least the teenagers in his own unit still looked like soldiers, but the old soldiers in their forties and fifties in the 600th Division looked like they were in a movie set in the wrong place.

The Plosson troops are generally well-groomed. In fact, housekeeping is an important means for the army to maintain discipline.

Kicking off hair and beards can also reduce the trouble for medics on the battlefield when identifying injuries.

Most of the men in the 600th Division had beards, so if they got injured in the neck, it would be difficult for the medical staff to find it.

This beard directly reduced the work efficiency of the Proson Army medical staff.

Looking more closely, these "infantrymen" were not even wearing their uniforms properly. Many of the uncles' trouser legs were too short, and their boots were not standard military boots.

Colonel Schlieffen shook his head. He couldn't help but think of the elite troops he led when Barbarossa first set out.

Those veterans who participated in the Melania and Carolingian campaigns were worth ten of these misfits.

Those veterans can highlight the superiority of the Prosen nation. Now these old guys are just cannon fodder.

At this time, Colonel Schlieffen heard a report from the vanguard in his earphone: "We found a sign on the side of the road, which read 'Minefield ahead, don't approach' in Plossen."

Colonel Schlieffen: "This is a sleight of hand! If there really is a minefield, why would they put up a sign to inform us? Wouldn't this alert the enemy? Push down the sign and keep moving forward."

Striker: "But I've read the summary of the experience of fighting Rokossov. When Rokossov's troops put up a sign saying there is a minefield ahead, there is a high probability that there is really a minefield ahead, and there may be various booby traps specifically targeting our demining engineers."

Colonel Schlieffen: "Then why put up a sign to tell us? Is it a counter-logic? Is there such a ridiculous thing? This is a battlefield, not a brain teaser! Push down the sign and move forward."

"But……"

Colonel Schlieffen: "On the bright side, maybe this is an illogical counter-intuitive act. Rokossov came charging at us without any supplies or mines. He took advantage of our preconceived notions and tried to deceive us with just a sign."

"Okay, push down the sign and keep moving forward." The commander of the vanguard finally agreed to Colonel Schlieffen's order.

Colonel Schlieffen had very complicated feelings, because in the past, the grassroots officers in Plossen always carried out the orders from colonels like him without thinking.

Many professors at military academies believe that this is not a good idea as it is not conducive to grassroots officers exercising their subjective initiative.

But now, Colonel Schlieffen feels that being too proactive is not a good idea.

There was an explosion ahead.

Colonel Schlieffen looked ahead and saw a column of sand and earth rising high into the sky from the explosion of the mine.

His mouth opened into an O shape. He had heard that the Ante mine was very powerful, but he didn't expect it to be so powerful.

----

Wang Zhong looked at the huge pillar of sand through a telescope and asked, "How much explosives did you bury?"

"This is a special version. We prepared six in total, each filled with 500 kilograms of TNT." Vasily laughed, "I know the Prosen people too well. We have to make a big noise to scare them. Now they have to clear the mines carefully."

Wang Zhong: "You put up a sign again?"

“Yes, we have prepared several real minefields on the periphery, and buried these great treasures in places where the enemy is more likely to pass through.

"Then we put up signs in other places and created a bunch of fake minefields."

Wang Zhong laughed: "You guy, I thought time had returned to the summer when the war just started. This is a familiar formula."

Vasily: "It's a pity that there are no canned pickles. I used the cans of Proson that I collected. Some of the cans were connected with the fuses of Proson grenades. I made a simple booby trap."

Wang Zhong laughed: "Fortunately there are no canned pickles. I don't want to eat pickles for a few more days."

(End of this chapter)