Chapter 39: Fishing Out French Fries

The hell surrounding the Yamato artillery positions was merely the endpoint; for the Yamato soldiers still charging forward, they had only just stepped through the gates of hell.

Their pathetic little tanks couldn't even withstand the Rasia 45mm anti-tank guns, let alone a 105mm howitzer.

A single hit meant absolute destruction for any of these "tin cans."

One had to admit, those elite veteran bastards possessed truly terrifying combat capabilities.

Transformed into ferocious ghouls by their battle frenzy, these veterans could move and fire simultaneously during a charge, covering a hundred meters in fifteen seconds. Within fifty meters, the Rasian soldiers across the trenches were practically picked off the moment they poked their heads up.

Unfortunately, once the continuous rattling of machine guns erupted, carbon-based lifeforms ultimately bowed down to firearms and artillery!

Sergeant Tanshita, a veteran with three years of shooting practice under his belt, managed to drop two Rasia soldiers who exposed themselves during the charge. Yet, after the enemy guns roared back, he felt a sudden, sharp pain in his chest.

As he collapsed to the ground, his final thought was inexplicably...

Why on earth were the enemies also using the Type 37 rifle?!

He had no way of knowing that amidst this fatal charge, he was already the soldier who had made it closest to the Rasia defense line.

The vast majority of his comrades had fallen hundreds of meters behind him in the death zone.

"This is infuriating! Where is the Imperial Air Force? Where are our planes?!" Lieutenant General Yoshikawa bellowed in rage.

"Your Excellency, it seems they encountered interception right after takeoff. There are eyewitness reports of aerial combat near both the second and first supply depots," his staff officer reported cautiously.

Even a field airstrip could never be built within range of the enemy's artillery.

Yoshikawa had never imagined that within that twenty-kilometer window, their taking-off aircraft would still be intercepted.

Next, a scene unfolded that made his eyes bloodshot with fury...

Flying in from the direction of the enemy's rear mountains were numerous "obsolete" biplane fighters. These were models they had never seen before; clearly, they weren't powerful, and they looked at least slower than their own Type 96 fighters.

The trouble was that when there are no tigers in the mountains, monkeys claim kingship.

These junk fighter planes, in Yoshikawa's eyes, were brazenly bullying the fact that he had no air cover, and began transforming into a pack of ruthless ground-attack hounds.

"Rat-tat-tat-tat!"

Heavy machine guns swept wildly along the Yamato trenches, and 12.7mm justice randomly sought out anyone fated to receive it.

Every now and then, scorching blooms of blood would burst from the bodies of the wretched Yamato soldiers crouching and hugging their heads in the trenches, accompanied by a chorus of endless screams.

When all was said and done, the Yamato soldiers lacked experience in digging trenches, building them in mostly straight lines. What might have seemed like unexposed trenches to opposing infantry looked no different from wild boars running haphazardly across the open ground to the eyes of the air force.

"Wahahaha! Flower Q—" shouted a few guys wearing cowboy hats in the aircraft, speaking a language completely foreign to the Yamato as they kept up their relentless firing.

In the trenches along the railway opposite, some Rasia soldiers finally mustered the courage to poke their heads out and tentatively ask, "Our planes?"

"Looks like it!"

"Hey! I see them, it's our double-headed golden eagle!"

"Ooh ooh ooh! Ura—"

Just weeks ago, these Homeland Defense Brigade soldiers had been ordinary farmers, picking up rifles purely to defend their homes. In their simple-minded earnestness, they didn't care what kind of planes these were; the moment they saw friendly forces, they erupted into ecstatic cheers.

One side was heaven, while the other was hell.

Lieutenant General Yoshikawa soon discovered that those second-rate trash biplanes weren't finished just by completing their ground attacks and flying back; a swarm of heavy bombers, akin to midnight phantoms, arrived yet again.

Diverting from their usual role solely as night bombers, the TB-3 bomber formation brazenly sortied in broad daylight.

Right! We are bullying you Yamatos for lacking air superiority fighters.

On the battlefield, seizing the enemy's weaknesses and hammering them relentlessly until death was, in truth, the optimal solution.

Seeing the enemy bombers finish blasting the positions with bombs only to fly back for another round of ground strafing, Lieutenant General Yoshikawa flew into a rage inside his bunker: "Where are our planes? Where are the anti-aircraft guns? Are they all dead?!"

Not a single staff officer dared to answer.

Yes, most likely, they were all dead.

More than fifty Type 96 fighters had been blockaded at their airfield by nearly a hundred aircraft from two I-16 groups before even approaching the battlefield, and a third of them had been blown up right on the tarmac before taking off. The Ninth Division's artillery positions had also been wiped out by Zhang Shan's cheating tactics.

The Yamato forces simply possessed no concept of mobile field air defense.

The few heavy anti-aircraft machine guns left on the positions were completely shredded by the Alika P-26 "toy gun" air fleet that Zhang Shan had invited over.

The machine gunners aboard the TB-3 bombers, cruising at just over two hundred kilometers per hour, practically felt as though they were playing target-shooting practice.

aided by the Myriad Realms God of War System, Zhang Shan was able to switch to the perspective of one of the bomber gunners.

If one ignored the gunner's mouth full of "suka blyat," the field of view genuinely felt a bit like playing Beach Head or Call of Duty.

That almost mindless sweeping fire was enough to make one's brain frantically secrete endorphins representing pleasure.

As blossoms of blood burst across the trenches and Yamato soldiers in yellow-brown uniforms fell like mown wheat, Zhang Shan suddenly felt a bizarre sense of déjà vu.

Why did this look precisely like French fries dipped in ketchup?

Far away in the command post, the corners of Zhang Shan's mouth curled upward involuntarily.

This left the guards standing beside him looking somewhat baffled.

Not far away, Antonov abruptly received a phone call: "What? The Seventh Homeland Defense Brigade is requesting to launch a counter-charge against the enemy?"

The Lieutenant General froze.

Zhang Shan's voice drifted over faintly: "I strongly advise against doing this."

"..."

"Your Excellency the General, you surely don't believe that while the enemy still retains more than half a division of infantry, a bunch of recruits with less than a month of training can successfully assault the enemy's heavily fortified positions? The order for the air force's ground attack was given by me; I estimate the air force is about to run out of ammunition and will soon be returning."

Deep down, Antonov intensely disliked the Crown Prince interfering with command, as it made him feel his domain was being encroached upon. On the other hand, he had to admit that His Royal Highness the Prince was right.

He had witnessed the individual combat quality of the Yamato Grade A divisions; leave aside the Homeland Defense Brigade, even his Eighth Division couldn't defeat them.

Antonov glanced at Zhang Shan, nodded slightly, and spoke into the phone: "Strict orders! Forbid any sorties! Forbid sorties! Anyone violating this order will be treated as a deserter."

Hanging up the phone, Antonov turned to Zhang Shan: "It appears the crux still lies in the urban combat within Red Tower City."

"Mhm." At the thought of the incomparably brutal urban warfare, Zhang Shan's expression involuntarily tightened.

Given a choice, he would never wish to witness a city meat grinder.

For both warring parties, it would inflict catastrophic losses.

Yet the hateful part was that, knowing the Yamato Grade A division soldiers possessed superior individual capabilities, urban combat was actually the optimal solution for Rasia at this stage.

The gap in marksmanship between the two sides' soldiers was simply too vast.

If it came to trench warfare and shooting across open plains, the Yamatos would most likely achieve an exchange ratio of better than 1 to 4.

Those veteran soldiers who had practiced for over three years simply possessed that level of marksmanship.

Applied to Ceris at this specific point in time, that ratio was universally around 1:6, and on certain battlefields even reached 1:10.