Chapter 2108 - Breaking Into the Position

The 12-pounder mountain howitzers began a slow, rhythmic bombardment of the abatis. The stakes and sharpened branches standing outside the trenches were gradually torn apart and destroyed under the shellfire. Soon several large gaps had been blasted open.

While the artillery fired, the approach trenches continued their inexorable advance. Song Ming knew those gaps would soon become the Hair-Bandits' breakthrough points, and he immediately ordered his counterattack reserves to take up positions in the nearby trenches.

By now the Fubo Army's communication trenches had pushed to within seventy or eighty meters of the Bangshan position—so close that Jiang Suo could hear the soldiers and laborers digging: the scrape of shovels and the rasp of heavy breathing.

Jiang Suo made a quiet hand signal. Song Ming immediately raised a flag. Three hundred archers waiting in the rear trench simultaneously drew their bows, nocked arrows, and loosed a volley skyward toward the slope below.

The high-arcing arrows were quite lethal at this range of less than a hundred meters. Though most of the blindly aimed arrows landed outside the trenches, some fell within. The engineers and laborers caught unprepared took casualties. Some arrows struck steel helmets and glanced off, but a number of engineers were wounded. The laborers, lacking helmets, fared worse—many were hit. Panic spread; some turned and ran, others threw down their tools and scrambled out of the trench to flee, only to be cut down by another volley at the trench's edge.

The laborers fell into chaos, crowding together, pushing and shoving in their desperation to escape back along the trenches. The engineers couldn't control them—the workers threatened to sweep everything away in their flight. In the confusion, men were knocked down and trampled, their screams rising above the din.

The light infantry company commander leading the covering force immediately brought his soldiers up to restore order. On the front line, there was no room for "fish-and-water sentiment." The light infantry leveled their bayonets. The commander fired his revolver into the air three times and roared: "No one runs! Everyone back to work!"

When the laborers heard this, they froze, halting their flight, but they refused to return. Then someone started wailing, and suddenly the whole crowd broke into sobbing.

"Please, sir, let us go! We came to work, not to die!"

"We've all got families to support—please, sir, have mercy!"

"Sir! We each have old folks and children depending on us—please let us live!"

"Work in peace and the Great Song will look after your families. Die here and the Great Song pays your pension. Get wounded and the Great Song covers your care." Then came a cold follow-up: "Anyone who flees the field will be executed without question!"

Under the threat of "execution without question," the laborers turned back and resumed digging.

"Get the medics! Get the casualties out! Reserves, hand over your helmets—send them forward for the laborers!" Yang Zeng had observed the Ming action and was somewhat impressed: organized and disciplined. They hadn't recklessly sallied forth, nor had they wasted ammunition with wild firing. Instead, they had used high-arc arrow volleys to disrupt engineering work.

"Get some door-planks up there too for cover!" Yang Zeng continued issuing orders.

The orders were swiftly executed. Door-planks had been prepared in advance, and they were quickly delivered.

Wave after wave of arrows fell—some incendiary, trailing fire; others "poison-smoke" arrows. But with helmets and door-planks providing overhead protection, each salvo caused far fewer casualties.

Soon the laborers and engineers had pushed the assault trench to within fifty-odd meters of the Ming first line. Song Ming ordered: "Prepare the Wanren Di!"

Soldiers quickly brought forward several large wooden frames, each containing a great black clay sphere.

"What's that?" Jiang Suo asked.

"Wanren Di—'Ten-Thousand Man Enemy.'"

The Wanren Di was an incendiary device: essentially a hollow mud ball with small holes around its surface. Inside, it was packed with gunpowder and various toxic substances. When the enemy attacked, the fuse was lit and the sphere hurled off the walls. Flames would jet from all sides and the ball would spin, scorching anyone nearby—a common defensive weapon of the era.

"Throw!"

On command, several of the great clay spheres were pushed out from the Ming position. The defenders dared not show themselves; several men together used door-planks to shove the spheres out over the parapet. The spheres had lit fuses; the fuses quickly ignited the contents, and the balls became spinning fireballs, spewing flames in all directions as they rolled down the slope.

"Wanren Di!" a light infantryman shouted the warning. In the assault on Sanliang Market years ago, Shi Zhiqi's Marines had been hit by one of these. The case study had been circulated throughout the army; every Fubo soldier knew exactly how devastating a Wanren Di could be in confined terrain.

Standing doctrine called for countermeasures. The trench's outer face—the side facing the Ming—had been deliberately banked higher, making it harder for the rolling spheres to drop inside. The Wanren Di bounced against these embankments, flaming uselessly outside the trench, or shattered on impact, their clay shells too brittle to survive the collision.

The toxic smoke was primarily from poisonous medicinal herbs; when burned, the fumes were harmful but not lethal, and in the open air, the wind dispersed them before they could achieve even tear-gas effect.

Only a few Wanren Di managed to fall into the trench. Soldiers and laborers, responding to the alarm, quickly retreated into side-trenches to take cover, and only a handful were burned by the flames.

Though the Ming's successive attacks delayed the engineering work—forcing the troops to halt construction and postpone advance more than once—by 5 p.m. the trenches had been extended to within thirty-odd meters of the abatis. At that distance, the Ming had no effective counter remaining except continuous arrow volleys. Light infantry fire had completely suppressed the forward line: show your head and die.

Because the available mountain howitzers were few, Yang Zeng ordered the light infantry to conduct range-marking fire with their rifles. Each soldier dug a small earth platform to support his weapon, packed it firm, and then dry-fired repeatedly to ensure coverage of the enemy trench. When the assault began, they would fire at maximum rate to suppress any possible counterattack.

The three 12-pounder mountain howitzers now supporting the breakthrough were elevated to high angles. The artillerymen had built up earth platforms to increase the elevation further—temporarily turning the guns into makeshift mortars.

"Single file, fix bayonets!" the platoon leaders quietly ordered, moving along the trenches to check each soldier's gear and the footholds they would use to climb out.

"Signal—advance!" Yang Zeng raised his binoculars and issued the attack order.

Three red signal rockets suddenly shot into the sky. Jiang Suo murmured, "Here they come!" and pulled Song Ming into a covered shelter beside the trench.

The three mountain howitzers fired simultaneously. Shrapnel shells burst one after another above the trench, and the iron balls rained down in a deadly hail. The archers and musketeers massed in the first trench were caught off guard—bodies torn and pierced, blood spraying; everywhere the sound of screams and wailing.

Next came the grenadiers' hand grenades. Each man had been issued ten. Though these were the lower-powered compressed black powder grenades—nicknamed "stun bombs" for their limited destructive effect—they were easy to use, and when thrown en masse, they could rapidly overwhelm enemy positions, breaking formations and shattering morale almost instantly.

Four to five hundred grenades rained into the trench within minutes; smoke and explosions rolled in a continuous wave. Whatever defenders had survived the shell barrage now collapsed completely under this grenade storm. Several hundred shattered remnants fled along the communication trenches toward the rear.

In the old days, Song Ming would have led his household guards forward to halt the rout. But Jiang Suo had already warned him: don't try to block them. Let them retreat through the communication trenches and reform further back. The trenches were narrow; attempting to stop a rout would only jam everything up and create worse chaos.

"Have everyone check their slow-match and percussion caps—the Australians are about to breach the trench!" Jiang Suo said.

Song Ming ordered his attendants to sound the conch horn. Its deep, mournful note echoed across Bangshan.

Almost simultaneously, in the Fubo Army trenches, company and platoon leaders blew their whistles, drew their sabers, and the grenadiers—led by their officers—climbed out of the trenches, leveled their bayonets, and charged.

"Extend the artillery fire!"

At the artillery commander's order, the three mountain howitzers lowered their elevation slightly and shifted fire to cover the communication trenches around the breakthrough, blocking both reinforcement and retreat.

The grenadiers moved with blinding speed, crossing thirty-odd meters in moments. Some continued throwing grenades as they ran, suppressing any last pockets of resistance. In a flash, the first wave had reached the breaches and leaped into the trench. A green rocket shot into the sky.

The mountain howitzers dropped their angle again, walking fire deeper into the position to cover the secondary communication trenches. Household guards massing there to counterattack took heavy casualties. Jiang Suo watched the men he had trained so carefully shredded by shells inside the trench, falling in heaps. His eyes nearly burst with fury.

He had never been particularly enthusiastic about fighting for the Ming. He had only wanted to settle his inner turmoil. But now, watching comrades he had lived and trained with for two years die so wretchedly under Australian fire, it brought back memories of the old days in Sanliang Market—powerless against Australian might, watching his innocent martial-sister executed before his eyes.

"I will not let you run rampant!" Jiang Suo picked up a rifle beside him and fitted a percussion cap.

(End of Chapter)