When the expeditionary force soldiers quickly found out they couldn’t use the Saxons’ trenches to fight, they had to brace themselves and start attacking the winding communication trenches leading to the second trench.
And in order to prevent the enemy from occupying the communication trenches, or rather, using a small number of weapons to block an entire trench line…
When the Saxon fortification engineers built this defense line, they also followed the operational content of the “Imperial Army Earthwork Operations Manual” and built the communication trenches in a “Z” shape.
“Don’t stop! The people behind are going to step on my head! Keep moving forward!”
Yorkshire recruit Taylor felt like he was suffocating.
He was the son of a miner in Yorkshire, and the farthest place he had ever been in his life was the market in Leeds.
More than two months ago, a recruiting officer gave a speech in the town square, saying that as long as they took a trip to the Gallic Republic and helped their allies recover lost territory from the savage and evil Saxons, they could get a medal and an allowance enough to buy several cows.
Now, Taylor only wanted to stuff that recruiting officer into a meat grinder.
“God bless, God bless…”
Taylor muttered nervously, his hands tightly gripping that Lee-Enfield rifle. The stock was already covered with sweat, making it so slippery he could barely hold it.
Before charging out of their own trench, he still fantasized that this attack would be as easy as the Major said.
But just now, his fellow townsman Bill, who grew up with him and always boasted he could drink a gallon of beer, had his head explode like a rotten watermelon the second before jumping into the trench.
The red and white matter splashed all over Taylor’s face, warm and foul-smelling.
Before he could even scream, he was pushed and shoved by the crowd surging up from behind and jumped into that deep ditch.
As soon as he landed, there was a hand-to-hand combat that left people completely unprepared, and then Taylor followed the others into the Saxons’ communication trench.
And he quickly felt a sense of despair because he couldn’t see the road ahead at all.
The Saxons built this section of the communication trench as if it existed purely to torture people.
It wasn’t a straight road to the end, but rather a nearly ninety-degree sharp turn every dozen meters.
This damn structure made Taylor and his fellow attackers completely blind.
You never knew what was hiding behind that eerie corner.
Was it an empty dead end? Or several bayonets already polished bright?
“Oi! Why have we stopped ahead?!”
“Don’t push, I can’t move!”
The soldiers behind were still continuously pouring in, squeezing the people in front like sardines in a can.
Taylor was squeezed in the middle, unable to even lift his arms.
“Careful, there are Saxons ahead!”
Someone suddenly shouted shrilly in the front.
Immediately after were several dull gunshots; that was the sound of bolt-action rifles from both sides firing at close range.
“Charge through! They don’t have many people!”
A sergeant major was waving a Webley pistol in the back, his eyes glaring bloodshot: “Whoever dares to retreat, I’ll shoot him!”
Under the threat of death, the team squirmed again.
Taylor was squeezed past the first corner along with the flow of people.
The mud on the ground had turned black-red. Three corpses lay haphazardly there, two wearing khaki Britannian uniforms and one wearing a gray Saxon military overcoat.
That Saxon soldier was still tightly gripping a rifle in his hand, the bayonet on the muzzle deeply thrust into the neck of a Britannian soldier, while his own chest had two still-bleeding bullet holes.
“Blegh…”
Taylor retched, but before he could vomit, he was pushed by the people behind and almost stepped on that corpse’s face.
“Don’t dawdle here! Move forward!”
Another dozen meters.
In this narrow passage, there was simply no such thing as tactical movements and coordination between comrades; it was all bullshit.
In Taylor’s view, this was just like fighting in an alley next to a country tavern, competing to see who was more ruthless and who was less afraid of death.
When turning the second corner, Taylor’s heart suddenly shrank into a ball.
This time there was no warning.
Three Saxon soldiers wearing those spiked helmets, like they had grown out of the mud wall, were squatting less than five meters ahead.
Dark muzzles pointed straight this way.
“Bang! Bang! Bang!”
The muzzle flashes appeared exceptionally dazzling in the close-quarters trench.
The tall guy from Scotland in front of Taylor violently fell backward, half his shoulder blown away by a bullet, spraying blood all over Taylor.
“Ahhhhh!”
Extreme fear transformed into hysterical madness.
Taylor closed his eyes, thrusting the Lee-Enfield rifle with a fixed bayonet, and charged up with a strange cry.
Those three Saxon soldiers had finished firing one bullet and simply had no time to pull the bolt to chamber another round.
They crisply raised their rifles with already fixed bayonets and thrust them in the direction of Taylor and the others.
“Clang!”
Taylor’s bayonet was fiercely parried by the other party’s bayonet. This attack with a certain degree of skill almost made him lose his balance.
Before he could react, another Saxon soldier whose bayonet had snapped pulled out an entrenching shovel and hacked toward his head.
I’m going to die…
This thought flashed through Taylor’s mind.
But the anticipated severe pain didn’t arrive.
“Bang!”
A gunshot saved his life.
A Britannian veteran behind fired at extremely close range, the bullet lifting off half of that Saxon’s skull and making his whole body fall backward.
“Don’t space out! Get up! Keep charging!”
The veteran grabbed Taylor’s collar, spittle spraying all over his face.
“They have fewer people! Press over them!”
Just like the situation in the first firing trench, although the Saxons’ counterattack was fierce, they couldn’t withstand the fact that there were simply too many Britannians.
After that headshot corpse fell, more khaki figures stepped over the dead on the ground, continuing to surge towards the next corner like an ant swarm.
Taylor also picked up his rifle, mechanically moving his legs forward.
He was now in the very front row of the team, becoming the unlucky Britannian Expeditionary Force soldier going to scout the next corner of death, just relying on the continuous advantage of troop numbers in a short time, pushing forward like a bulldozer in that narrow communication trench.
Every step forward exacted the price of quite a few human lives.
And the Saxons’ resistance was also so stubborn that it chilled the Britannians.
They utilized every corner, every crater, and even utilized the bodies of their companions as cover, using bullets, grenades, bayonets, and even teeth to block the attack.
But under the long-prepared attack of the Britannians, the Saxons were still continuously losing defense lines.
So the attacking troops of the Britannian Expeditionary Force also quickly approached the Saxons’ second parallel trench.
It’s just that they didn’t know the vast majority of the Saxons’ forces were waiting here, fresh and ready…
At the same time, in an underground command post of the second trench.
Fine dust continuously fell from the dirt ceiling overhead. Manstein was leaning over the map table, that usually meticulous face now covered in black ash.
“The 1st Battalion reports they have blocked the gap, but there are simply too many Britannians, they need some support!”
“Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig has already cooperated with the 2nd Battalion to repel two waves of attacks, but the Armored Knights of the Order of the Garter have also come up. Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig has already entered combat with the other two Armored Knights!”
Messengers continuously ran into the command post and quickly left with new orders.
Not long after, Kleist, carrying a submachine gun, also rushed into the command post—he had just led 20 shooters equipped with semi-automatic rifles to support a wave of positions near the command post.
“How’s the situation?” Kleist asked without looking up, while grabbing a handful of pistol bullets from an ammunition box aside.
“Not too good.”
Manstein took a deep breath, trying to make his voice sound steadier.
“The Britannians have really gone crazy fighting, they are completely filling it with human lives… The first firing trench has been completely lost. Now they are pouring this way along the communication trenches like a flood, but fortunately, our troops have temporarily held the communication trenches.”
“It seems the Britannians are playing for real this time.”
“Yes, their artillery bombardment intensity was too great, several of our telephone lines are broken, and contacting various units is also very troublesome.”
Manstein glanced at the crank telephone on the side, then took a new type of ear-protecting steel helmet from the wall and buckled it on his head: “Currently all units are executing according to Plan C… Fortunately, the Lieutenant Colonel led us to leave so many preset plans before, otherwise our response right now would definitely not be this calm!”
Although Morin wasn’t present, these two young officers still showed their professional competence.
And the instruction unit also acted like an awakened beast, opening its bloody maw toward the invading Britannians.