Chapter 1008

“They are a brave bunch of lads, good. Charlie, take them to the back. When these Great Yu people land, let them experience the might of our British Redcoats!”

Alden said happily, the eight thousand men slightly easing his nervous mind.

As the British were organizing their counterattack, small boats were being lowered from the imperial warships at sea. The soldiers sat in the small boats and began rowing towards the shore.

In a short while, the entire sea surface was covered with troop transports.

Seeing this, Alden and Kenneth’s expressions changed. They had not expected the Great Yu Empire to commit so many troops to attack Australia.

“God bless!”

Kenneth made the sign of the cross on his chest.

“Shell the small boats on the sea, quickly!” Alden had no time to pray to God now; he shouted loudly for the soldiers to attack.

However, even the thirty hastily built artillery emplacements were quickly destroyed by half by the Great Yu Empire’s warships in a short amount of time. Of course, they were not without gains; one shell hit one of the warships.

At this moment, this warship was burning fiercely.

“Lieutenant, we’re out of explosive shells,” a soldier called out.

“What!” Alden’s vision went black. He suddenly became angry and cursed, “Damn the British Navy! Why didn’t they give us more shells, you bastards, bastards!”

After cursing, he said with red eyes, “Now, immediately use solid shot.”

Kenneth felt a wave of despair. A while ago, three British warships had docked in Wales, and these explosive shells were provided by them. However, according to the navy, these shells were very expensive. The price of one shell was enough to make fifty or sixty solid shots, so these shells were still supplied proportionally.

Even the navy used ninety percent solid shot and ten percent explosive shells.

At sea, soldiers were using seawater to extinguish the burning deck. An explosive shell from the British had blown a hole here. After the flames were extinguished, the engineers immediately used nails and wood planks to repair the damaged area.

Lei Ming saw this scene and breathed a slight sigh of relief. If his flagship had been hit, there was no doubt that it would leave a stain on the campaign to attack Australia, which he could not tolerate.

Putting away his binoculars, Lei Ming looked at the small boats one after another on the surface of the sea and said, “Tell the machine gun teams to be calm. Do not open fire before landing, it will startle the enemy.”

“Yes.” Shi Yanjun immediately had the flagman wave his flag to give the order. The machine gun was their secret weapon for this operation and had to be saved for last.

As his order was given, the shore batteries unleashed another volley.

Shi Yanjun was startled. He immediately shielded Lei Ming, but the black cannonballs that landed on the deck only sent wood chips flying and did not explode.

“These are solid shots. Just as we expected, they don’t have enough explosive shells.” Lei Ming picked up a shell from the deck and smiled, feeling relieved.

With the threat of explosive shells gone, the threat to the imperial soldiers suddenly decreased. Hundreds of boats, enduring the bombardment of solid shots, reached the shore in half an hour.

“Machine guns, prepare!”

Stepping onto the soft sand, Chang Yuzhu calmly issued orders. He was the regimental commander of the Third Division’s Fifth Regiment. As the vanguard, they were the first to reach the coast.

As they landed, the British Redcoats were also assembling. Just as they had predicted, the British army, which had not yet experienced machine guns, still used old-fashioned linear tactics.

With a wicked smile, Chang Yuzhu also had his soldiers use linear tactics to deceive the opponent. Secretly, however, he hid the machine gunners in the line, preparing for a surprise attack.

“Boom boom boom…”

The British artillery continued to fire, but now their target was the imperial soldiers who had come ashore. Looking at the surrounding artillery emplacements, Chang Yuzhu dispatched a group of skirmishers to suppress them.

“Bang bang bang…”

A crisp sound of Han-style rifles rang out. A British soldier on an artillery emplacement, who was about to load his gun, suddenly fell into a pool of blood. A metal bullet instantly pierced his chest.

The British soldiers on other artillery emplacements were not having an easy time either. The Han-style rifles had accurate and long range, while the artillery pieces on the emplacements were only three hundred meters away from them, all within the range of the Han-style rifles.

In addition, the skirmish lines were composed of soldiers who were excellent marksmen, so the British forces on the artillery emplacements suffered heavy losses in a short time.

While the rifles and artillery were clashing, four lines of British formation slowly advanced towards the shore. According to Alden’s plan, they should attack while only half of the Great Yu Empire’s soldiers were ashore, as this would achieve the best effect.

Therefore, in addition to deploying all his regular troops, he also committed the hastily organized militia to the battlefield. More than eleven thousand men formed a dense line on the open beach, approaching the Great Yu Empire’s army.

At the edge of the beach, Chang Yuzhu’s formation was completed. In these formations, there was a machine gun every five meters. To conquer Australia, one hundred machine guns were put into battle, and these machine guns were enough to give the British a hard time.

Standing on one side of the formation, Chang Yuzhu led his soldiers forward, while the machine gun teams pushed their machine guns and followed behind the formation.

“Boom boom boom” drum sounds came from the British formation, full of rhythm, but the British did not know that every step they took was a step towards death.

Three hundred meters, two hundred meters, one hundred meters. The distance was getting closer. The British did not open fire. Chang Yuzhu breathed a sigh of relief. According to the information they had gathered from Western merchants, the British Redcoats usually only opened fire at a distance of fifty meters, hoping to wipe out the enemy in one wave.

Now the British were confirming this.

However, Chang Yuzhu would not give the British a chance to get within fifty meters. With his order, the soldiers fired a volley at a distance of ninety meters.

“Crack crack crack…” After a dense volley of gunfire, the soldiers in the front row of the British formation suddenly fell almost in a single line, but the British soldiers in the British formation did not panic. The soldiers behind immediately filled the gaps in front, showing strict discipline.

“Machine gun!”

The British soldiers’ discipline surprised Chang Yuzhu a little. In ten years of war, they had rarely encountered such disciplined troops, but this instead excited him.

As the order was given, the soldiers immediately stopped advancing and cleared a path for the machine gunners. The machine gunners in the back immediately pushed their machine guns to the front.

The main gunner grasped the gun bolt, and the assistant gunner quickly loaded the ammunition belt. At this point, the distance between the two armies was only sixty meters.

“Fire!”

Everything was ready, Chang Yuzhu shouted loudly. At this time, the British were already at fifty meters, and the British soldiers stopped and raised their flintlock guns to aim.

“Dah dah dah…”

Before the British soldiers could pull the trigger, the first twenty machine guns that had landed spewed fire. Bullets flew towards the British soldiers like a belt of ammunition, and the densely packed British soldiers fell one after another.

[Translator’s Note]

Check my another translation project at patreon/caleredhair:
Title: Bloodstained Soldier. On Yuanling Planet, due to a food and oil crisis, the various nations that had not experienced large-scale war for a hundred years suddenly erupted into conflict. Tens of billions of civilians were swept into the war. As an Earthling, Hu Hao transmigrated for the second time. He originally intended to travel the world, but war broke out instead.