Chapter 182: Unspecified Combat Strength (Part 2)

After the forward observers returned and sent back news that the Gallic infantry had begun to advance, Morin also accompanied the soldiers of the 1st Company to the outermost defense line of the city.

He then realized he had slightly underestimated the Gallic ‘Mademoiselle 75.’ Looking at a two-story building that had half collapsed, he couldn’t help but sigh that the 15-minute bombardment was more powerful than he had imagined.

Although the houses in Charleroi City were mostly stone and brick, incomparable in strength to reinforced concrete, they could still withstand small-caliber field artillery for a while. But against the Gallic 75mm Magic Guided Cannons, these houses collapsed in swathes, as if they were made of paper.

Morin looked at the smoking ruins in the distance, mentally assessing the weapon’s power, which was clearly a notch stronger than the Saxon Empire’s 77mm Field Gun.

Moreover, judging by the name ‘Magic Guided Cannon’ and the Gallics’ magical modification of the cavalry cuirasses, Morin realized that the Gallic Republic might be pursuing a different technological path in magic-guided technology than the Britannians. However, he had no opportunity to get close to the ‘Mademoiselle 75’ right now, so he couldn’t figure out the specific structure and technological application of the weapon.

Under the attack of the 75mm Magic Guided Cannons, the Instruction Assault Battalion was forced to abandon the outermost ring of buildings and pull back into the city by about a hundred meters. However, this terrain, ‘modified’ by artillery fire and littered with ruins and large shell craters, paradoxically created natural cover, making it more suitable for defensive combat.

Soon, Morin followed an MG08 Heavy Machine Gun squad and took cover inside a relatively intact building. This was a core strongpoint of the 1st Company’s deployment on the first defense line, chosen for its strategically tricky position. The machine gun was set up in a room on the second floor, with a small firing port carved into the wall.

Looking out from this port, they had a perfect view of the wide main thoroughfare ahead, providing a clear field of fire that covered the entire street. At the same time, the gun barrel was fully retracted inside the room, making it difficult to spot from outside.

Morin looked at the Machine Gunner operating the Heavy Machine Gun beside him, feeling that the man looked familiar. After a long moment of recollection, he remembered: this was the soldier who, during the operation in the Kingdom of Aragon, had used a Vickers machine gun on the flank to single-handedly break the Kingdom Army’s attack. The ‘gradual fire saturation’ smile on the soldier’s face at the time was something Morin would never forget. He hadn’t expected that after the old 1st Company was merged into the Instruction Assault Battalion, this soldier had become a Machine Gunner for the 1st Company again.

“Ready?” Morin couldn’t help but ask.

The Machine Gunner glanced back at Morin, grinned, and showed a mouthful of white teeth: “Don’t worry, Battalion Commander! We’ve been ready for a long time!”

As they spoke, the Heavy Machine Gun squad’s Assistant Gunner and Ammunition Bearer were also busy, arranging the ammunition belts within easy reach.

Morin nodded, stopped talking, and refocused his attention outside the window.

The gunpowder smoke gradually cleared, and the field of vision sharpened. In the distance, the dense formation composed of blue jackets and red trousers had entered the urban area.

They still maintained that very traditional, dense formation. Even as they entered the narrow streets, they only slightly reduced the width of the column. Officers walked at the front and sides of the column, shouting loudly, maintaining the soldiers’ formation and morale. Their conspicuous uniforms stood out sharply against the gray urban backdrop of ruins and debris.

Watching this through his binoculars, Morin recalled some information he had previously seen. Whether it was the Gallic military in this world or the French military in the other, their deliberate choice of red for the trousers was not simply because they viewed bright uniforms as a symbol of courage. More outrageously, in a military uniform color experiment, they reached the highly counter-intuitive conclusion that red was the color with the lowest probability of being hit on the battlefield.

While he didn’t know how they tested this, judging by the subsequent reality of the battlefield, the color of the uniform probably didn’t make much difference. The Saxon Empire had actually conducted similar experiments and reached a comparable conclusion: red was indeed counter-intuitively difficult to hit. But the Saxon military ultimately chose not to adopt this garish color due to more practical considerations such as cost and concealment.

Just as these ‘cold facts’ flashed through Morin’s mind, over half of the Gallic infantry company responsible for attacking this block had already entered the open street ahead. They were now less than two hundred meters away.

Morin could clearly see the expressions on the faces of the Gallic soldiers through his binoculars, watching them advance with fixed bayonets, looking straight ahead, as if the path before them was not a death trap but a road to glory.

“They are almost entering the ‘killing zone’ now,” Morin murmured to himself.

The Machine Gunner beside him licked his lips, his eyes gleaming with a thirst for blood. He did not open fire immediately but was waiting for a signal.

Soon, a series of short, crisp bursts from MP14 Submachine Guns suddenly erupted from the buildings on both sides of the street!

“Da-da-da!”

And that was the signal to commence the attack!

The moment the gunfire sounded, the entire street seemed to come alive.

“Open fire! Open fire!”

Accompanied by the roars of officers and non-commissioned officers from positions everywhere, the soldiers of the Instruction Assault Battalion, who had been long prepared, pulled their triggers. Gunfire, sounding like firecrackers, instantly filled the entire street, completely dispelling the previous silence.

The veteran Machine Gunner beside Morin opened fire almost the very moment the signal sounded. Unlike some Instruction Assault Battalion recruits firing a Heavy Machine Gun for the first time who might hold the trigger down relentlessly, he used a highly rhythmic, long burst to spray lethal bullets onto the dense red and blue mass of people on the street.

“Da-da-da——Da-da-da——”

The heavy MG08 Heavy Machine Gun was exceptionally stable on its tripod. The muzzle spat out long flames, and hot shell casings clattered out of the ejection port, rolling across the floor. The Machine Gunner calmly traversed the barrel left and right, like an emotionless farmer harvesting the crops in a field with a scythe.

As the bullets swept over, the bodies of the Gallic soldiers in the front row snapped backward, or spun around in place like ragdolls, bursts of blood spray erupting from their bodies. Immediately after, flames simultaneously spat from the windows and firing ports of the buildings on both sides of the street. That was the fire from the riflemen and submachine gunners concealed on the second and third floors. They had the advantage of height, using crossfire to completely seal off the entire street.

“Grenades! Throw them down!”

Following loud shouts, oval-shaped grenades were tossed out of the windows, tracing arcs in the air and landing accurately within the dense formation of the Gallics.

“Boom! Boom! Boom-boom!”

The flash and thick smoke of the explosions instantly engulfed the crowd. The fierce blast wave knocked down the surrounding soldiers, sending debris, dust, and shrapnel, along with shredded uniforms and equipment, flying everywhere. The street instantly turned into a living hell.

The Gallic soldiers were completely stunned. Most of them were disoriented by the sudden rain of bullets and explosions before they could even figure out where the enemy was. They instinctively tried to find cover, but in the open street, there was nowhere to hide except behind the corpses of their fallen comrades.

Some tried to raise their rifles and return fire, but they couldn’t find their targets. The Instruction Assault Battalion’s firing points, prepared with ample time, were positioned too cleverly, all hidden deep inside the buildings. The flash of the muzzles was instantaneous and could not be accurately located on the battlefield, which was filled with smoke and dust.

Occasionally, a soldier with good eyesight spotted a muzzle flash from a building at the end of the street. But just as they tried to raise their rifles to shoot, they were dropped to the ground by bullets flying from an unknown direction. In this state of total suppression, trying to accurately shoot a bullet into a tiny firing port dozens of meters away was simply impossible.

“Hold the line! Hold the line! Keep advancing! Close the distance!”

A battalion-level officer waved his saber, attempting to rally the broken formation with shouts. Gallic soldiers charged forward in rows, only to fall back in rows… The soldiers in the rear stepped on the corpses of their comrades, continuing to charge, only to become corpses themselves, paving the way for those who followed. They advanced fearlessly in tight formations, facing a storm of bullets, like the Old Guard of the Napoleonic era.

But unfortunately, the times had changed. They were facing automatic firepower capable of changing the entire nature of infantry combat.

Morin watched all of this calmly, his heart inexplicably free of any turbulence.

Just a few minutes later, the gunfire on the street gradually thinned out. The Gallic soldiers in the rear had now completely retreated out of the city.

Looking out, there was no longer a single Gallic soldier standing on the street. The ground was covered with a thick layer of corpses. Blood flowed slowly between the bodies, forming small streams. The strong smell of blood mixed with gunpowder smoke was sickening.

Only sporadic rifle shots occasionally rang out from the buildings on both sides of the street. That was the Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers ‘calling the roll’—firing final shots at enemies lying on the ground pretending to be dead or trying to crawl away.

The Gallic infantry’s first wave of attack was launched simultaneously from various directions into South Charleroi, organized at the company and battalion level. The Ninth Infantry Division had a total of twelve infantry battalions, committing four battalions—approximately 4,000 men—to the first wave of attack.

However, half an hour after the attack began, as the gunfire in Charleroi City gradually subsided, General Fournier, the commander of the Ninth Division, and his staff officers quickly realized something was wrong based on the fragmented reports coming back from their subordinate units. The four battalions, after charging into Charleroi, were like drops of water absorbed into the ocean…

The temporary Division Headquarters of the Gallic Army Ninth Infantry Division was set up on a small hill less than three kilometers from South Charleroi, offering a direct view of the area. Division Commander General Jean-Clément Fournier was looking grimly through his binoculars at the distant city, from which smoke was rising everywhere.

Half an hour ago, he had spiritedly issued the order for the general assault, boasting that he would occupy Charleroi before noon. But now, the expected crushing victory had not materialized. Instead, there was an unsettling silence.

The gunfire in the city had mostly stopped, but his four attacking battalions seemed to have vanished, with only scattered soldiers fleeing back.

“What happened? What on earth happened in the city?” General Fournier lowered his binoculars, his voice carrying a trace of suppressed frustration.

The Chief of Staff hurried over. He hesitated before speaking: “General, the situation is very bad… The four battalions from the first wave of attack have retreated, suffering heavy losses…”

“What?!” General Fournier spun around violently. “What are you saying? Repeat that!”

“Four battalions, virtually combat-ineffective.” The Chief of Staff repeated with difficulty: “Less than one-fifth of the soldiers have retreated, and most of them have suffered mental breakdowns. We can’t get any useful information from them. They just keep repeating one phrase: ‘They are everywhere!’”

The command post was deadly silent. Shock and disbelief were written all over the faces of the staff officers. Four battalions… completely broken in just half an hour. Crucially, the officer casualty rate for these four battalions exceeded 80%, which was the hardest loss to replace.

This was no longer a battle; this was a one-sided massacre.

“The Saxons… how many troops did they actually deploy in the city? This firepower doesn’t belong to a small unit! Is it a division? Or a corps?” a young staff officer said, his voice trembling.

“Impossible!” another veteran staff officer immediately countered: “If they had that many men, why wouldn’t they dare engage us in a field battle outside the city? According to the previous cavalry reconnaissance, the enemy in the city is at most one battalion in size!”

“One battalion? One battalion destroying four of ours? Are you joking?!”

“Then you tell me how to explain it?!”

The command post instantly became a mess. Staff officers argued vehemently, with no one able to convince the other. General Fournier rubbed his aching temples, listening to the noisy arguments, his mood growing increasingly agitated.

He knew clearly that arguing about this now was pointless. The immediate priority was to figure out exactly what happened in the city and then decide what to do next. Under these circumstances, most clear-headed commanders would choose to pause the attack, send small, elite units for reconnaissance, ascertain the enemy’s firepower and deployment, and then plan their next move.

But unfortunately, the Gallic Army at this time, from Commander-in-Chief Joffre down to the most junior officers, was deeply entrenched in a fanatical ideology called the ‘Offensive Doctrine,’ as if brainwashed. They firmly believed that offense was the best defense, and that courage and bayonet charges could overcome all difficulties, including machine guns and artillery. Any hesitation or caution was viewed as cowardice and defeatism.

Therefore, after a brief moment of hesitation and chaos, General Fournier and his staff officers quickly reached a brilliant conclusion—it wasn’t that their tactics were flawed, but that their offensive strength was insufficient!

“I understand now!” The Chief of Staff slammed his hand on the table, a look of ‘sudden realization’ on his face. “Although the Saxons have few men, they have too many automatic weapons! We attacked from four directions with four battalions, scattering our force, which prevented us from achieving an effective breakthrough!”

“Exactly!” another staff officer echoed excitedly: “We should concentrate our superior force and launch a fierce attack from one point! As long as we can charge into their positions and enter close-quarters combat, their machine guns become useless scrap!”

“Right! Increase the intensity of the attack! Commit more troops!”

“Plow their positions again with artillery fire!”

The atmosphere in the command post grew frenzied once more. The shame of defeat and the desire for revenge completely stripped these Gallic officers of their reason.

General Fournier listened to the staff officers’ ‘brilliant ideas.’ The hesitation and unease in his heart were gradually replaced by this fervor. He stood up abruptly, his fighting spirit rekindled in his eyes.

“Pass on my order! The Magic Guided Artillery Regiment will target the frontal area of our previous main attack and conduct another ten minutes of fire saturation!”

“Commit the remaining eight infantry battalions entirely to the battle! Form the second wave of attack!”

“Tell all the soldiers! The glory of Gaul must not be tarnished! Charge! Charge at all costs!”

The order was quickly relayed, and the Ninth Infantry Division began organizing a new wave of attack.

However, the expressions of the Magic Guided Artillery Regiment Commander and the Division Quartermaster were not as enthusiastic as the others. Because they had noticed a problem: continuing such artillery preparation would deplete their shell reserves to a dangerous level… However, at the moment, it seemed no one else noticed this problem besides them.

(End of this Chapter)

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