Chapter 197: Chapter 150, The Deathly Iron Can_2
The soldier with the broken leg had his comrades dragging him back, where the follow-up logistics support would take over and relay him back to the field hospital in the rear.
The remaining men continued to advance.
The artillery fire from the rear was still ongoing, the intensity had diminished a bit, but the target area of the bombardment shrunk from the full coverage of the green-skinned positions to a smaller scope, roughly covering only about two hundred meters in front of the infantry.
The coordination of infantry and artillery was such that, after they cleared the area, the artillery barrage would extend another two hundred meters forward, and the newly vacant area would be scouted by the infantry as they moved ahead.
This process would repeat four times until they broke through the enemy positions that stretched about eight hundred meters wide.
Truth be told, the only thing Lacroix was genuinely afraid of during the whole operation was his own gunners having shaky hands. The heavy artillery blasting around two hundred meters in front of him was indeed frightful.
As for the green skins?
He had seen green-skinned corpses scattered all over the ground, mutilated beyond recognition, finding an intact body was difficult. Occasionally, a few living ones would pop up, but they were scattered and met with dozens of guns firing at them, posing no real threat.
To be honest, apart from the fear brought by his own artillery, Lacroix’s greatest feeling was… a bit of boredom?
Of course, he knew this feeling of his was somewhat absurd.
A bit further ahead, he and his comrades entered a ruin with four walls. The roof of the building was covered with a resting concrete slab, likely hit by a shell, with smoke still billowing out.
There was a fifty-fifty chance that it was empty; the other fifty percent was that it contained green skins mangled beyond human recognition or still alive yet equally disfigured. If they encountered the latter, they would just deliver a few shots to end their lives.
Even so, according to tactical protocols, they still had to go in and make sure it was cleared.
This time, they ran into an unlikely event.
With a loud ‘bang’ of a gunshot, the first brother to enter had half his face blown open, his helmet was blasted away by the large-caliber green skin weapon, and his body fell backward violently.
Lacroix was second in line.
He instinctively took a step back, opening up a position to raise his gun easily. His G9A assault rifle began to wildly sweep the pitch-dark space inside.
He couldn’t see the target, so he fired blindly.
His comrades from the same squad rushed over and, like him, poured bullets inside.
Lacroix was the first to empty his magazine. He deftly straightened the bayonet, then, once the others in his squad had ceased fire, he rushed in first.
In the darkness, he vaguely saw a monstrous figure taller than himself approaching, with a pungent odor.
His mind went blank, but his hands moved in the most standard position, thrusting the bayonet forward.
Immediately, he felt a huge resistance; he had struck something.
He pushed forward desperately, twisting the rifle. The resistance made him step back a few paces, but it quickly lost its strength and was fiercely pushed down by him.
Lacroix fell as well.
He felt his clothes were wet, stained with the stench of fresh blood.
Suddenly, several comrades from his squad rushed in. Someone pulled him up, while others stabbed at the corpse under him with their bayonets.
The green skin was indeed dead.
Upon leaving the narrow bunker, and with the help of light, Lacroix saw that he was indeed in a sorry state, covered in blood.
But it seemed all to be green skin blood; he did not feel injured, only a bit shaky in his arm from overexertion.
As he regained his senses, he was amazed that he had actually managed to kill a green skin with a bayonet!
Although the creature had probably been severely wounded from the earlier gunfire and suffered multiple injuries, it was ultimately he who had delivered the killing blow.
Looking around, he noticed that along with himself, there were only six men left.
The one who had entered before him and had his head shot off was the fourth from their squad to die.
Today, only two had been killed; the other two had died over the past half-month; their squad hadn’t been replenished with new soldiers.
He became more alert, and the previous thoughts of ‘boredom’ had flown far away.
The squad leader came over, patted him on the shoulder, and shouted in his ear, “Good job! But private! We don’t have time to rest now! Move out!”
The war, was still harsh.
…
Li Kexi also felt that war was cruel.
The heavy artillery had cleared a wave of enemies for them, especially with such intense fire. The remaining number of the enemy was not much, but during the close-quarters clearance, his soldiers still paid a considerable price.
Of course, it wasn’t to the exaggerated extent of Lacroix’s infantry squad, which lost six and had two wounded, mainly because they were the vanguard and so their plight was somewhat worse.
The overall casualty rate for the regiment was around 2%. They had lost about a hundred warriors, eliminating over two hundred scattered green skins that emerged.
As for the total death count of green skins in this position, that was harder to estimate. The heavy artillery had been firing for more than an hour; at least five thousand shells had exploded here, the number of dead green skins was at least over five hundred.
Of course, this was an estimated figure, many bodies were too mutilated or buried under the rubble to be precisely counted, so it could only be said that the number was much more than five hundred.