Australian Storm 1876

  Chapter 354 Surprising turning point

  The ambush started at 7:40 in the evening

  The violently fired shells landed accurately on the road, and a long flame explosion zone was shot out in a short time, knocking the reinforcements of the Dutch army upside down, causing countless casualties.

  The shelling was violent and deadly. More than 2,000 shells were poured in just three minutes, causing thousands of deaths and injuries to the marching Chinese and Dutch soldiers.

  For a time, the Dutch army was in chaos, and the survivors who had escaped their lives rushed into the dense forest on both sides, screaming and wailing endlessly.

The two 95mm artillery battalions fired at full strength for a three-minute rush, and then the shelling stopped abruptly. The main force gushing out from the rainforest on one side immediately cut off the road, and quickly squeezed towards the middle when the Dutch army was in chaos. .

  The clear and crisp sound of platoon guns sounded continuously, and the battle began to heat up as soon as the battle started.

  On the encircled road of more than 4 kilometers, the main force of the Second Division of Kalimantan cut off the enemy’s escape route one by one, starting from both sides and approaching the middle, strongly compressing the enemy’s living space.

  Compared with the indigenous army, the resistance of the Royal Dutch Army and the White People's Soldiers who followed the encirclement in the encirclement was much more fierce. After only a few minutes of being bombed, they organized counterattacks on the spot and fired at each other.

  You come and I go, the dense bullets cut the fire net in the night, the "crack" keeps ringing, and the battle is fierce.

  At this time, the night has come, and the battlefield has a bad line of sight.

The main force responsible for cutting off the rear encircling circle stopped advancing after encountering a fierce counterattack from the Dutch army, and sent people into the jungles on both sides to break dozens of large trees. After the towering trees collapsed, they soon formed an area of ​​more than 300 meters. The long isolation belt and dense foliage cut off the entire road.

  A group of soldiers quickly occupied the isolation zone, using dense bullets to defeat the counterattack of the Dutch army, and trap it firmly inside.

  The soldiers quickly lit more than a dozen bonfires to brighten the unexpected night, completely eliminating the possibility of the besieged Dutch soldiers taking advantage of the night to break through.

  Look at this situation

  The group is determined to stand by and wait for assistance, wait until dawn to resolve the enemy in the encirclement, and will not rashly launch an offensive.

The second division of Kalimantan has more than 6,500 personnel, and the total number of soldiers in a regiment is only more than 1,600. Compared with the number of enemies, it does not occupy an advantage. This encirclement is also thin-skinned. Dangerous situation.

  Therefore, after the road was cut off, a group of soldiers was not idle, and some troops were allocated to watch the Dutch soldiers in the encirclement circle, and the remaining soldiers assisted the engineering battalion to quickly build a civil fortress on the road.

They dug a deep trench on the road, inserted two-meter-high thick logs into it, and connected them with iron bolts. Then they built a slab wall about tens of meters wide behind the log wall, and filled with soil in the middle to form A civil fortress with a width of more than 60 meters is used to block the follow-up reinforcements of the Royal Netherlands Army that may come from Semuda.

  All the materials have been prepared long ago, so the construction of the fortress is very fast, and it has taken shape after more than 4 hours.

  At this time, it's midnight.

  The enemies in the encircling circle were completely silent, only sporadic clear gunfire sounded occasionally, and the bonfires at both ends of the encircling circle were burning brightly, illuminating the nearby roads.

  The soldiers on both sides of the hostile were huddled in the darkness on both sides, quietly waiting for the dawn.

  Queenslanders can't hide the movement of the Dutch soldiers in the encirclement. It was a night like usual, and almost no one could fall asleep. They knew that they would be devastated after daybreak. How could there be half sleepiness?

  "Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, what should we do?" The chubby Machen Kingdom noble Seccardo was already panicking, and large drops of sweat flowed down his greasy round face.

   "What is it... Commander Henry will not sit back and watch us be surrounded and annihilated. According to the strength of the Kunshan Lanterns, as long as they resist stubbornly, they will not be able to swallow us in one bite. Forgive them for not having such a good appetite."

   "But... they have cannons!"

"This is really a big problem. We can only bite our teeth and stick to it or break through at night." Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt looked hesitant. A fierce shelling in the evening caused heavy casualties to the reinforcements. Another time, the troops might be attacked. It collapsed, completely losing the courage to continue to resist.

  Secardo rolled his eyes when he said that, and ignored the option of sticking to it. Obviously, he was sitting and waiting for death. As for breaking through at night, in which direction should he break through?

If it breaks through the port, the fire that ignited in the evening is bad and bad, and the gunshots in the port direction have completely stopped, which means that the defending army may be wiped out. For 10,000 steps, even if it breaks out, it will still be Deeply trapped, it may sink deeper and deeper.

  In front of the port, there is an endless sea. Where can I escape?

  If you break through the tropical rainforest on both sides, it is better to sit down and wait for death.

  People who have lived in the tropical jungle for a long time know that during the day, it is better. At night, the tropical jungle is a black hole that eats life, and it becomes extremely dangerous and terrifying.

  In the tropical jungle shrouded in the night, you can’t see your fingers, it’s difficult to distinguish the direction, and the horizontal branches and vines make it difficult to move.

   is simply an invitation to a feast of flesh and blood, come... come and bite me!

   "Well, Secardo, how many people do you have?"

   "More than two thousand, two thousand three or four."

   "How can you lose so much?"

"Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, our vanguard troops were hit by the enemy's artillery fire. Seven or eight hundred people were lost in a single shot of shells, and the enemy came up with a violent attack. We suffered heavy casualties. what!"

  Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt nodded gloomily. Now is not the time to reprimand Sekkaduo, but to consider the next step. This is a life-threatening matter for all officers and soldiers in the encirclement circle.

  He looked up at the dark night sky and the darker jungle on both sides, and his heart shuddered suddenly, dispelling his plan to break through to the sides.

A normal march can travel 5 kilometers in an hour, but there is no road in the tropical jungle. You must use a machete to open the road. Thank God you can walk 1.5 kilometers in an hour. Even if the direction is correct, the distance is more than 10 kilometers. In addition, it is the hour of night, and the danger is multiplied.

If the brigade is marching, it is difficult not to disturb the opponent. If the Queenslanders quickly push the front to the bottom of Semuda, it only takes an hour or two, then the return distance is not 10 kilometers, but multiplied by 2 and 3, otherwise Still in the encirclement.

  How many people can come out in the end is still between the two.

  Think about it

  Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt finally made up his mind, preparing to attack the defenders in the direction of Symuda, breaking the fortress wall built in the rear and fleeing back.

   "Played 3 red flares to inform Commander Henry of our determination to break through. He knows what to do."

   "Yes, sir."

  Three red flare bombs exploded in the night sky, and they looked so dazzling in the night. The defenders of Saimuda Fortress quickly saw it and reported the news quickly.

  According to the prior agreement, after seeing the signal, Colonel Henry "The Butcher" knew that the besieged troops were ready to break through the encirclement at any cost, so he sighed and made deployment;

He personally led the Royal Netherlands Army with two gun battalions and 5,000 indigenous servants. The three guns set off at 5:00 in the morning, preparing to fight with the besieged forces inside and outside to break the encirclement and save the Dutch trapped inside. Military officers and soldiers.

  Never mind the indigenous troops, there are still 1,700 white soldiers in the encirclement, which cannot be discarded anyway.

  Otherwise, when the news comes out, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of the Netherlands will not be able to withstand the surging public opinion, let alone a colonel commander.

  The soldiers of the Royal Dutch Army can die in battle, but they must never die.

  This night is extremely long for the officers and soldiers of both sides.

   5 a.m.

   There was just a glimmer of dawn on the horizon, and the night had not completely faded. With the faint morning light, the surrounding scenery could be seen blurryly. The vast jungle was still dark like a terrible green monster, and visibility was not high.

  The commander Liu Shan stood in the jungle with a cold expression, raised his hand and looked at the watch on his wrist. The pointer had already coincided with 5 o'clock, and he decisively issued an order; "The shelling begins, launch an attack."

   give an order

Four 60mm light artillery guns were pushed to a close range and fired directly at the tree barriers set up by the native servants. The bright flames flickered, and the fierce explosive fire blasted the trees into the woods, and they kept behind the trees. The corpses of the indigenous soldiers from the bombing were shattered, and they retreated in a panic.

The   light artillery opened the offensive channel. The long-awaited soldiers of the Third Regiment and the Second Regiment charged like tigers out of the gate. For a time, the sound of gunfire was loud, and the fire and the sound of killing were intertwined, cutting through the quiet night sky in the early morning.

  The native servant army defending the encirclement in the direction of the port was beaten back and forth again and again, and soon lost its front position and fled to the rear, retreating more than one kilometer, and the remaining more than 3,000 soldiers were compressed within a range of less than two kilometers.

  Under the pressure of the thunderous Lieutenant Colonel Schmidt, the indigenous servants were forced to launch a large-scale counterattack.

  In this matter, an unexpected scene appeared.

The soldiers of the 2nd and 3rd regiments of the Kalimantan Division, who were rushing all the way, retreated tacitly, leaving an empty battlefield in the middle, and then thousands of indigenous prisoners were driven in. After picking up knives, guns and sticks on the roadside and waiting for cold weapons, Bite the scalp and rush to the indigenous army on the opposite side.

  The two armies meet, there is no way to retreat.

  Indigenous servants who retreat will be killed by the law enforcement team in the Dutch battlefield. The same is true for indigenous captives who retreat. The soldiers of the Kalimantan Division Supervisor will not be soft.

  Cannon fodder versus cannon fodder on the battlefield may be the tragedy of the weak in this era.

   "Papa Papa..."

After the intensive platoon of guns by the indigenous servants, a large amount of heavy blue-gray smoke rose up. The indigenous captives with cold weapons in their hands were punched in the chest and fell like leeks. The indigenous captives at the back still held them in their hands. Rushing up with a roar of weapons.

  Because behind them, the Queenslanders, who are more terrifying than the devil, point their guns at the black hole, defeating the enemy in front of them may escape death, turning around and returning to the dead.

  The two indigenous troops fought together in a **** battle. The indigenous servants clearly had the advantage. Their firearms used three-stage firearms to beat the indigenous captives with cold weapons. The dogs were generally uneven, and one after another fell dead on the way.

   quickly wiped out most of the indigenous captives. Seeing that victory was about to be ushered in, they were horrified to discover that a group of thousands of indigenous captives rushed over in black, and some of them were empty in their hands, even without weapons.

After the third group of captured thousands of soldiers rushed up, the firearms under Secado’s troops were in chaos. After more than a dozen rounds of shooting, some soldiers repeatedly reloaded their chambers, causing them to explode. Some old-fashioned muskets did not fire. Some of the soldiers fired their guns indiscriminately, and some had already started to flee in fear, and the firing queue was completely chaotic.

Take this opportunity

  The indigenous captives armed with cold weapons rushed in and slashed and killed them. For a time, the sound of war and sword fighting was endless. The indigenous soldiers on both sides fought together, shouting and fighting, and the scene was extremely bloody.

At this moment

  The Queensland army released a fourth group of thousands of prisoners from the rear. All of these prisoners had no weapons and could only pick up weapons from the corpses and join the battle.

  The order they got was that they could only move forward, not backwards, otherwise there would be a dead end.

  (End of this chapter)