Trench Bolts and Magic

Chapter 182 The Gallic Offensive: The Cult
After returning to the observation post at the front and receiving news that the Gallic infantry had begun their advance, Morin followed the soldiers of the 1st Company to the outermost defensive line of the city.

Then he realized that he had underestimated the 'Miss 75' of Gaul.

Looking at a two-story building that was half destroyed by the bomb, he couldn't help but marvel at how powerful the fifteen-minute shelling had been, compared to his own imagination.

Although the houses in Charleroi were mostly made of brick and stone, and could not compare to reinforced concrete buildings in terms of sturdiness, they could still hold their own against small-caliber field guns for a while.

But in the face of the Gauls' 75mm magic cannons, these houses were like paper, and were bombarded and collapsed in large swathes.

Looking at the ruins billowing black smoke in the distance, Morin pondered the power of this thing, which was clearly a size larger than the 77mm field guns of the Saxon Empire.
Furthermore, judging from the name "magic cannon" and the Gallic modifications to cavalry breastplates, Morin discovered that the Gallic Republic might be taking a different approach to magic technology than the Britannians.

However, he doesn't have the opportunity to get in touch with 'Miss 75' right now, so he can't figure out the specific structure and technical application of this thing.

Under the attack of the 75mm magic cannon, the training assault battalion had no choice but to abandon the outermost ring of buildings and retreat more than 100 meters into the city.

However, these terrains, 'modified' by artillery fire, with their ruins and huge shell craters, have ironically become natural cover, making them more suitable for defensive warfare.

Soon, Morin followed an MG08 heavy machine gun squad and took cover in a relatively intact building.

This is a key firing point deployed by the 1st Company on the first line of defense, and its location was chosen in a rather cunning way.

The machine gun was mounted in a room on the second floor, with a small firing hole cut into the wall.

Looking out through this hole, one can see the wide main road in front of them, and it also provides a field of view that covers the street.

At the same time, the gun barrel was completely retracted inside the room, making it difficult to spot from the outside.

Morin looked at the machine gunner next to him who was operating the heavy machine gun, and he felt that the man looked somewhat familiar.

After thinking hard for a while, he finally remembered that this guy was the soldier who had used a Vickers machine gun on the flank to break through the kingdom's attack when they were fighting in the Kingdom of Aragon.

The smile on the other side's face at that time, a smile that seemed to indicate a gradual increase in firepower, left a deep impression on Morin.

Unexpectedly, after the old 1st Company was merged into the training assault battalion, this soldier became the machine gunner of the 1st Company again.

"Are you ready?" Morin couldn't help but ask.

The machine gunner turned and glanced at Morin, grinning to reveal a set of white teeth: "Battalion Commander, don't worry! Everything's ready!"

While the two men were talking, the assistant gunner and ammunition handler of the heavy machine gun team were also busy placing ammunition boxes within easy reach.

Morin nodded, said nothing more, and turned his attention back to the view outside the window.

As the smoke cleared, visibility improved.

In the distance, the dense formation of people wearing blue shirts and red pants had already entered the city.

They maintained that very traditional, dense formation, and even when they entered narrow streets, they only tightened the width of the queue.

The officers walked at the front and sides of the column, shouting loudly to maintain the soldiers' formation and morale.

The striking military uniform stood out starkly against the gray backdrop of the city, filled with ruins and rubble.

As Maureen witnessed this scene through the telescope, some information he had previously read flashed through his mind.

Whether it was the Gallic military in this world or the French military in another, they specifically chose red as the color of their trousers, not only because they saw brightly colored uniforms as a symbol of courage.

Even more outrageous, in an experiment about military uniform colors, they came to a very counterintuitive conclusion—red is the color with the lowest probability of being hit by a bullet on the battlefield.

Although it's unclear how they determined this, judging from subsequent battlefield experience, it probably didn't make much difference what color uniform one wore.
The Saxon Empire also conducted similar experiments and reached similar conclusions: red is indeed counterintuitively less likely to be hit.

However, the Saxon military ultimately did not choose this flashy color due to more practical considerations such as cost and concealment.

Just as these 'little-known facts' flashed through Morin's mind, more than half of the Gallic infantry company responsible for attacking this block had already entered the empty street ahead.

They are less than two hundred meters away from here.

Morin could clearly see the expressions on the faces of the Gallic soldiers through his binoculars, watching them march forward with bayoneted rifles, their eyes fixed straight ahead, as if what lay ahead was not a death trap, but a path to a temple of glory.

“We’re almost in the ‘kill zone’,” Morin muttered to himself.

The machine gunner beside him licked his lips, his eyes flashing with a bloodthirsty light.

He did not fire immediately, but waited for a signal.

Soon, a series of short, crisp bursts of MP14 submachine gun fire suddenly rang out from the buildings on both sides of the street!
"Da da da!"

And that's the signal to start the attack!

The moment the gunshot rang out, the entire street seemed to come alive.

"Fire! Fire!"

Amidst the roars of officers and sergeants on various positions, the trained assault battalion soldiers, who had been preparing for some time, pulled the triggers.

In an instant, gunshots like popping beans rang out throughout the street, completely shattering the previous silence.

The veteran machine gunner next to Morin opened fire almost the instant the signal sounded.

Unlike some of the new recruits in the assault battalion who were using heavy machine guns for the first time, he didn't hold the trigger down tightly.

Instead, he used a highly rhythmic burst of fire to spray deadly bullets at the dense crowd of red and blue people on the street.

"Da da da - da da da -"

The heavy MG08 machine gun was exceptionally stable under the support of the tripod, its muzzle spitting out long flames, and the scorching shell casings clattered out of the ejection port and rolled on the ground.

The machine gunner calmly moved the muzzle of his gun from side to side, like an emotionless farmer harvesting crops in a field with a sickle.

As the bullets swept past, the Gallic soldiers in the front row were thrown back violently, or spun around like rag dolls, their bodies exploding into clouds of blood mist.

Immediately afterwards, flames also shot out from the windows and firing ports of the buildings on both sides of the street.

That was the riflemen and submachine gunners who were lying in wait on the second and third floors opening fire.

They positioned themselves on higher ground and used crossfire to completely block off the entire street.

"Grenades! Throw them down!"

With a series of shouts, egg-shaped grenades were thrown out of the windows, tracing arcs in the air before landing precisely in the dense formation of the Gauls.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The explosion's flames and thick smoke instantly engulfed the crowd, and the violent shockwave knocked the surrounding soldiers to the ground. Debris, dirt, and shrapnel, along with torn uniforms and equipment, flew everywhere.

The streets instantly turned into a living hell.

The Gallic soldiers were completely stunned.

Most of them were disoriented by the sudden barrage of bullets and explosions before they even knew where the enemy was.

Their instinct was to seek cover, but in the empty streets, there was nowhere to hide except for the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Some people tried to return fire, but they couldn't find any targets.

The training assault battalion, having had ample time to prepare, had set up its firing positions in a very cunning manner, all hidden deep within buildings. The flashes of gunfire were so fleeting that they could not be accurately detected on the battlefield filled with smoke and dust.

Occasionally, soldiers with good eyesight would spot a flash of light from a building at the end of the street. But just as they were about to raise their guns to fire, they were struck down by bullets flying from an unknown direction.

Under such complete suppression, the idea of ​​accurately firing a bullet into a small firing port tens or hundreds of meters away is simply a pipe dream.

"Hold on! Hold on! Keep moving forward! Close the gap!"

A battalion-level officer brandished his sword, attempting to reorganize the collapsing formation with shouts.

Gallic soldiers charged forward in rows, only to fall down in rows.
The soldiers behind stepped over the corpses of their comrades in front to continue their charge, and then they themselves became corpses, paving the way for those who came after.

They were as fearless as the old guard of Napoleon's era, advancing in tight formation against a hail of bullets.

Unfortunately, times have changed.

They were facing automated firepower capable of changing the entire nature of infantry warfare.

Morin watched all of this calmly, his heart inexplicably undisturbed.

A few minutes later, the gunfire on the street gradually subsided, and the Gallic soldiers at the back had completely retreated from the city.

Looking around, not a single Gallic soldier could be seen standing on the street.

The ground was covered with a thick layer of corpses, and blood flowed slowly between the bodies in small streams. The heavy smell of blood and gunpowder mixed together, making people nauseous.

Only from the buildings lining the streets could one occasionally hear a few sporadic shots of rifle fire.

That was the training of the assault battalion soldiers who were taking turns 'rolling' and firing at those enemies who were lying on the ground pretending to be dead or trying to crawl away.

The first wave of attack launched by the Gallic infantry was a simultaneous assault on the city from all directions south of Charleroi, carried out by battalions and companies.

The 9th Infantry Division comprised a total of twelve infantry battalions, and in the first wave of the attack, it deployed four battalions, totaling approximately 4000 men.

However, half an hour after the attack began, as the gunfire in Charleroi gradually subsided, General Fournier, commander of the 9th Division, and his staff quickly realized from the intermittent messages relayed back by his subordinates that something seemed amiss.

These four battalions, after rushing into Charleroi, were like drops of water merging into the ocean.
The temporary headquarters of the 9th Infantry Division of the Gallic Army was located on a small hill less than three kilometers from the southern city of Charleroi, from which the southern city of Charleroi could be seen directly.

Division Commander General Jean-Claude Fournier, his face grim, was looking through binoculars at the distant city where smoke was rising everywhere.

Half an hour earlier, he had confidently issued the order for a general offensive and boasted that he would capture Charleroi before lunch.

But now, the expected overwhelming victory has not materialized; instead, there is an unsettling stillness.

The gunfire in the city had mostly stopped, but his four attack battalions seemed to have vanished into thin air, with only a few scattered soldiers escaping back.

"What happened? What exactly is going on in the city?"

General Fournier put down his binoculars, his voice tinged with barely suppressed frustration.

The division chief of staff strode over, hesitated for a moment, and then spoke:
"General, the situation is dire. The first wave of attacks, consisting of four battalions, has retreated, suffering heavy losses."

"What?!" General Fournier turned his head sharply. "What did you say? Say it again!"

"The four battalions have basically lost their combat effectiveness."

The chief of staff repeated it with difficulty:
"Less than a fifth of the soldiers were evacuated, and most of them were mentally broken. You couldn't get any useful information out of them; they just kept repeating the same thing: 'They're everywhere!'"

The command post was deathly silent; shock and disbelief were written on the faces of all the staff officers.

Four battalions were completely wiped out in just half an hour.

Most importantly, the officer casualty rate in these four battalions has exceeded 8%, and this is an extremely difficult group to replace.
This is no longer a battle; it's a one-sided massacre.

“The Saxons… How many troops have they deployed in the city? This doesn’t seem like the firepower of a small force. Is it a division? Or an corps?” a young staff officer asked, his voice trembling.

"impossible!"

Another senior staff officer immediately retorted:
"If they have so many men, why don't they dare to fight us in the open outside the city? According to the cavalry's reconnaissance, the enemy inside the city is at most a battalion in size!"

"One battalion? One battalion can wipe out four of our battalions? Are you kidding me?!"

"Then how do you suggest an explanation?!"

The command post was thrown into chaos as the staff officers argued amongst themselves, none of them able to convince the others.

General Fournier rubbed his aching temples, his mood growing increasingly irritable as he listened to the cacophony of arguments around him.

He knew very well that arguing about these things now was pointless.

The most urgent task is to find out exactly what happened in the city and then decide what to do next.

In this situation, most clear-headed commanders would likely choose to suspend the offensive, send out small elite units to conduct reconnaissance, ascertain the enemy's firepower and deployment, and then make further plans.

Unfortunately, at this time, the Gallic army, from Commander-in-Chief Joffre to the lowest-ranking officers, was deeply mired in a fanatical ideology called 'offensiveism,' as if they had been brainwashed.

They firmly believed that offense is the best defense, and that courage and bayonet charges could overcome all difficulties, including those caused by machine guns and artillery.

Any hesitation or caution is seen as cowardice and defeatism.

So, after a brief moment of hesitation and confusion, General Fournier and his staff quickly came to a brilliant conclusion—it wasn't that their tactics were flawed, but rather that their offensive was not strong enough!

"I understand!"

The division chief of staff slammed his hand on the table, a look of sudden realization on his face.

"Although the Saxons have fewer troops, they have too many automatic weapons! We attacked from four directions with four battalions, but our forces were scattered and we were unable to achieve an effective breakthrough!"

"That's right!"

Another staff officer excitedly echoed:
"We should concentrate our superior forces and launch a fierce attack on one point! As long as we can break into their positions and engage in hand-to-hand combat, their machine guns will be useless!"

"Yes! Intensify the offensive! Deploy more troops!"

"Use artillery fire to plow their positions again!"

The atmosphere in the command center became enthusiastic once again.

The shame of defeat and the desire for revenge drove these Gallic officers to utter madness.

As General Fournier listened to his staff's "brilliant insights," his hesitation and unease were gradually replaced by this fervor.

He stood up suddenly, and the fighting spirit in his eyes was rekindled.

"Pass on my order! Magical Artillery Regiment, focus fire on the frontal area we just attacked and provide fire coverage for another ten minutes!"

"Deploy the remaining eight infantry battalions into battle! Form a second wave of attack!"

"Tell all soldiers! The glory of Gaul must not be tarnished! Charge! Charge at all costs!"

The order was quickly relayed, and the 9th Infantry Division began organizing a new wave of attacks.

However, the commander of the Magic Artillery Regiment and the quartermaster of the division did not show the same excitement as the others.

They discovered a problem: if this kind of firepower preparation continued, the ammunition reserves would drop to a dangerous level.
However, it seems that no one else has noticed this problem, except for them.

(End of this chapter)