paranoianovel Chapter 917 Blitzkrieg
Chapter 917 Blitzkrieg
Chapter 917 Blitzkrieg
Under the cover of night, in the Russian army trenches stretching for hundreds of miles.
Vasily clasped his nearly frozen hands together, breathed out warm air, and complained, "Weren't they saying the Germans were going to make a big move? How come there hasn't been a sound from the other side for days?"
It's impossible for there to be absolutely no noise.
But what they did were nothing more than the usual back-and-forth exchanges, with each side firing tons of artillery shells at the other's positions, or sniper duels, which Vasily considered normal.
Due to the prolonged stalemate, a great many trenches, bunkers, barbed wire, and even various permanent fortifications were built. Any attempt by either side to launch an attack and achieve any results would come at an extremely heavy price.
Over time, a strange "sit-in war" situation emerged on the eastern front.
Veteran Igor pulled a rusty iron box from his pocket, took out a half-finished cigarette, and put it in his mouth.
After lighting it, Igor exhaled a cloud of smoke with satisfaction before leisurely saying, "I wonder, maybe the Germans set up the main battlefield in the north, which is very close to St. Petersburg, isn't it?"
A new recruit standing nearby looked on with longing: "St. Petersburg is a big city, has any of you been there?"
"Idiot, if anyone had been to a place like that, would they be stuck in the trenches with you as a common soldier? They'd at least be a second lieutenant."
Vasily cursed, then carefully took a bottle of vodka from the ammunition box and gulped it down. The cold liquor slid down his throat and into his stomach, instantly turning into a raging fire.
call--
He exhaled a breath reeking of alcohol and looked at Igor with a smug expression: "Squad leader, can I have a puff too?"
"Get lost! You had wine to drink but didn't share even a drop with me."
Just as Vasily was about to speak, a muffled thunderous roar came from afar.
He instinctively looked up and saw a reddish-orange haze suddenly rise from the horizon. Accompanied by a piercing hum, terrifying shells instantly shattered the silence that enveloped the trench.
Dirt mixed with shrapnel rained down on him, and he staggered into a crater, his ears ringing.
"Conventional artillery fire! Take cover!"
Igor's roar was swallowed by the second wave of explosions, which shook the wooden supports in the trenches, causing dirt to fall from them. Vasily peered out, clinging to sandbags; the previously sparse artillery positions were now densely packed like a torrential downpour.
What's even stranger is that in the past, the artillery fire between the two sides would always be rhythmic and back and forth, but this time the German artillery was like a relentless behemoth, while their own artillery seemed to have been wiped out in the first round.
The artillery fire continued unabated, extinguishing all the oil lamps in the trenches. Screams echoed through the darkness—some unlucky men had half their arms severed by shrapnel, while others were simply blown away by the blast wave.
"Are these Germans crazy? What's the point of bombarding us with so many shells?"
"Are our artillerymen just sitting around doing nothing?!"
"This isn't right!"
"It should have stopped after half an hour normally!"
Igor forced himself to remain calm, grabbed his helmet which was buried in mud, and put it on his head: "This is not a simple shelling. Their goal is not to bury us underground, but to destroy the fortifications, the landmines they laid in advance, and the barbed wire—the Germans are about to launch an attack!"
No one could understand what he was saying. Vasily only saw the squad leader's mouth opening and closing before he was grabbed by the collar and dragged up by the squad leader.
"Take up your weapons and prepare to fight!"
He yelled in each soldier's ear, dragged them up from the dirt mounds and the ground, and charged into the trenches first.
In the distance, smoke of battle lingers everywhere.
The German artillery fire had moved away from their heads and instead targeted their comrades on the nearby defensive lines. Under the gray-black sky, the smoke completely obscured the vast plain in front of the trenches.
They stared outside for a long time but didn't notice anything unusual.
The earth was still trembling, and the air was filled with a piercing ringing.
They could neither see nor hear, but they all knew that the enemy was hiding in the smoke of battle. This sense of urgency in the face of the unknown fear made many new recruits wet their pants.
click -
It sounded like the faint rustling of mice gnawing on a can.
Immediately afterward, an armored infantryman wearing a steel mask, who looked like a demon from hell, silently emerged from the smoke of battle and raised his strangely shaped weapon toward them.
The prominent Iron Cross insignia on their helmets immediately made Vasily realize their identity: "Damn it, it's a Prussian armored division!"
They had experienced firsthand the terror of armored divisions, both those of the enemy and those of their own.
It's alright when they're far away, but once ordinary soldiers get close to these armored infantry, it's a massacre. No matter how well they've mastered bayonet fighting, they can't withstand a simple, unadorned slash from an armored infantryman's chainsaw rifle.
boom--
A barrage of gunfire erupted, and these veterans, who had lived on the Eastern Front for at least a year, immediately launched their attack.
Bullets struck the armored infantryman's mask, sending up a flurry of sparks on his breastplate.
But the seemingly demonic armored infantryman remained unmoved, aimed at Vasily, and suddenly pulled the trigger.
boom--
A fire dragon suddenly magnified in Vasily's eye sockets. In the life-or-death moment, his squad leader Igor lunged and pushed him into the trench, but was instantly swallowed up by the fire dragon.
"Monitor!"
Vasily let out a desperate wail, as memories of his past with his comrades flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern.
Suppressing his grief, he unloaded the bullets and took out specially made armor-piercing rounds from the ammunition box to load into the magazine.
But when he peeked out to prepare to counterattack, what he saw was countless armored infantrymen, who were slowly advancing, using more than a dozen heavy land cruisers as mobile cover.
The portable steam engine billowed thick black smoke, and their slow footsteps sounded like the death knell. All resistance was futile in the face of such terrifying power.
"Oh, God!"
Vasily murmured in despair, and the instant he pulled the trigger, an armored infantryman with a prominent Iron Cross emblem on his helmet also aimed at him.
boom--
Two gunshots rang out simultaneously.
An armored infantryman was hit and staggered. He looked up at the large dent in his arm armor, muttered a curse, and continued forward.
Vasily, however, had already fallen forever in the trenches.
The Prussian armored infantry charged into the trenches, first using flamethrowers to mow down the ground, then pulling chainsaws to engage in close combat with the Russian troops who hadn't had time to leave their bunkers and prepare for battle.
The small number of armored infantrymen that the Russian army had deployed in the defensive line were burned to a crisp by the Prussian flamethrowers before they could even put on their armor properly.
The rest were not superior in number or quality to their Prussian armored infantry, and were quickly surrounded and wiped out.
The Prussian armored division, having crossed the first line of defense, continued its advance without stopping.
Then, from the smoke in the rear emerged Prussian soldiers wearing pointed helmets. They wore steel helmets, led mules and other pack animals, and dragged heavy small and medium caliber artillery behind them.
These well-trained Prussian soldiers quickly set up their artillery positions.
Immediately, intense artillery fire erupted again on the enemy's rear defensive lines.
buzzing-
Overhead, a Russian airship, having taken off urgently, slowly approached.
A Prussian artillery colonel roared, "Forget about those airships, keep covering our armored division's advance!"
"But."
"Follow orders. Those airships will be dealt with by designated personnel!"
The artillerymen obeyed orders and nervously loaded shells, but some would occasionally glance up at the enemy airships. These steam airships had an astonishingly large bomb load; if they were to fly overhead, they could bomb countless people.
But at that moment, the airship that had taken off suddenly seemed to be hit by an anti-aircraft gun, and in the blink of an eye it exploded into a huge torch, the flames illuminating the entire sky as bright as day.
In a daze, some people saw an enormous creature slowly flapping its wings and leaving from the raging flames.
"God, what is that?"
"Debon's newest weapon?"