Bright Sword: The Flowers of War

Chapter 105 Tank Company Charge

Although they knew that Su Yaoyang would shell the village, Li Zongren and Sun Lianzhong were still surprised by the scale of the shelling.

The entire world seemed to be devoid of any sound except for the deafening roar of the explosion. Even from this distance, they could feel the ground beneath their feet trembling incessantly.

Smoke from the battle coiled around the entire town of Taierzhuang like a giant python. Fireballs rising in the distance made their pupils flicker. Debris from the explosions struck the town like thousands of evil spirits knocking on the door at the same time.

Even though the two were more than ten miles away from Taierzhuang, gusts of wind still blew the sulfurous gunpowder smoke into their nostrils. This reminded Sun Lianzhong of watching blacksmiths forging iron when he was a child. Sparks flew as the red-hot iron blocks were hammered. But the hammer in front of him was clearly going to smash the entire Taierzhuang into hell.

The shelling lasted for a full half hour before it abruptly stopped.

Sun Lianzhong put down his binoculars and looked at Taierzhuang, which was completely shrouded in smoke in the distance, and muttered, "My goodness... Do we even need to fight? We just need to send a battalion to collect the bodies of the Japanese, right?"

"There's no such thing as a free lunch," Li Zongren said calmly. "In my opinion, the Japanese will eventually have to put up a fight."

Although Li Zongren appeared calm and collected on the surface, a closer look would reveal a glint of joy in his eyes.

However, he wasn't wrong; given this density of firepower, the complete recapture of Taierzhuang was just around the corner.

"Sirs, look! The security force has launched its attack!"

"Oh……"

The two men raised their binoculars almost simultaneously and saw a row of tanks emerging from the smoke and slowly crawling toward the Japanese position, followed closely by countless blurry figures.

The steel behemoth emitted a grating metallic scraping sound in the morning mist, and the broken bricks splashed up as its tracks rolled over the scorched earth.

John, inside the Chaffee tank, saw through the observation window the trench that had been half-shaved off by artillery fire. What was originally a two-story building had now become a Japanese machine gun emplacement.

Looking at the machine gun emplacement that was constantly spitting fire at them, John shouted into his headset, "Target... Japanese machine gun position 300 meters to the right front... Fire!"

"Boom..." With a loud explosion, the Japanese machine gun position was blasted into the air.

Amid the explosion, shattered parts of the Type 92 heavy machine gun, along with clods of earth and dark red blood foam, shot into the sky like a dirty rain of blood.

The tank company continued to advance, the steel tracks making a teeth-grinding crunch as they rolled over twisted rifles, the truck beds filled with the pungent smell of engine oil and sulfur.

In the lingering smoke and dust in the distance, half of the Rising Sun flag was burning, the crackling sound of flames licking the fabric clearer than the explosion itself.

"Scatter... Scatter quickly... Don't get too close to the tank, or you'll get hit by stray bullets from the Japanese!"

Following closely behind the tank company was the 3rd Company of the 1st Battalion. Seeing many soldiers closely surrounding the tanks, Wang Shouxin quickly dispersed them.

"Platoon leader... I told you to spread out, not to scatter. You're so far from the tanks. What if the Japanese demolition experts come around from the tanks' blind spots?"

As this was the first time the 1st Battalion had conducted combined arms operations in actual combat, its performance was somewhat lacking. However, there was nothing that could be done about it, as the tank company had been established for too short a time and lacked both training and combat experience. It was inevitable that problems would arise.

However, there are two sides to the story. This was the first time the security regiment had conducted combined arms combat with infantry, and the same was true for the Japanese army.

In the past, it was always the Japanese who used their own tanks to bully the Nationalist army, which had no anti-armor capabilities. Today, however, they have been punished and are now dumbfounded.

Faced with the oncoming steel monsters, the surviving Japanese soldiers discovered that they had no weapons at all that could deal with the Chinese tanks.

On the battlefield littered with ruins and wreckage, the muffled thud of the Chaffee tank tracks rolling over the position sounded like rolling thunder. On the Japanese position, Private First Class Seitaro Nishijima from Hyogo Prefecture lay tightly in a shell crater, his helmet askew, revealing bloodshot eyes. He stared intently at the steel behemoth spewing black smoke from its rear, a dark cannon barrel slowly turning toward his trench.

Despite the bullet holes riddled with bullet holes on its bluish-gray armor, it continued to advance like a stubborn bison.

Seitaro Nishijima's fingers twitched on the trigger of his Type 38 rifle, and the cold sweat seeping from his palms made the wooden stock of the rifle exceptionally slippery.

He wanted to raise his gun and shoot at the approaching tank, but found that his hands were trembling uncontrollably, and he even lost the strength to raise the gun.

As the tanks drew ever closer, he suddenly recalled the sinister smiles he had heard a few days earlier during the attack on Teng County, as the Imperial tanks crushed the flesh and blood of Nationalist soldiers.

Just as he was beginning to despair, a low, rumbling machine gun fire suddenly came from his right.

"Is that a Type 92 heavy machine gun? Someone is firing at the Chinese?"

Seitaro Nishijima was both surprised and delighted. Following the sound of gunfire, he saw, sure enough, a firing position hidden in a dilapidated house more than 30 meters away, continuously pouring fire at the tank in front of him. Bullets struck the tank's exterior with a clanging sound.

Sure enough, the attention of the tanks that were originally heading towards him was instantly drawn to the firing point on the right.

As the turret slowly rotated, the entire vehicle came to a halt. A muffled thud followed by a massive explosion, and the firing point that had just been spewing fire was instantly blasted into the air.

The Chaffee tank, having eliminated the firing point, did not stop but continued to advance rapidly toward the building.

With a tearing sound, the tank crashed into the already dilapidated building.

Amidst the flying rubble, Seitaro Nishijima saw a soldier leap out of the trench, holding a bundle of cluster grenades high and yelling. But before he could reach the tank, he was shot in two by the coaxial machine gun in front of the tank, and the cluster grenades fell to the ground.

"boom!"

Amidst the deafening explosion, the body, severed in two, was blasted into fragments by a cluster grenade before it even hit the ground. The acrid smell of burning gunpowder mixed with gunpowder smoke filled Seitaro Nishijima's nostrils, and the intense stench of burning made his stomach churn and convulse.

Perhaps it was Seitaro Nishijima's vomiting that startled the tank, whose coaxial machine gun suddenly turned its muzzle, and amidst a burst of rapid gunfire, dense bullets plowed through the soil at his feet.

Seitaro Nishijima huddled in the crater, frantically touching his body, only to find that he only had a Type 89 grenade at his waist. However, this kind of anti-personnel grenade, which only relies on fragmentation to injure the enemy, couldn't even penetrate the steel plate of a truck. Wasn't it a joke to use it to blow up a tank?
"Look... there's a Japanese soldier in that shell crater over there!"

"Liu Lao Er,"

"To!"

"Give the little devils two small pineapples to try."

"Yes!"

Although Seitaro Nishijima did not understand Chinese, it did not prevent him from sensing the danger.

Just as he was about to leave the crater, two small black dots fell from the sky.

"Boom boom..."

In a series of explosions, two MK3 grenades turned Seitaro Nishijima, who was hiding in a crater, into a sieve...

(End of this chapter)