The gentle creamy yellow curtain wall eroded Erno's vision bit by bit, and eventually occupied it completely.

The earth was solemnly silent, and the depressing atmosphere was more suffocating than the thick smoke.

Elno stared at the opposite bank of the river, but he could not see anything.

Wet sweat oozed out of his palms and five fingers uncontrollably, making the butt stock tide and sticky. Elno hesitated for a while, and finally, like a thief who had been stealing for the first time, he tentatively let go of his hand, and then quickly rubbed his pants twice.

At this moment, a human figure suddenly jumped up from the wheat field on the other side and fled to the river valley village where Erno was located.

"Here!" The figure jumped into the river and rolled and crawled, shouting like crazy: "Here are here!"

Herno, whose heart had already reached his throat and his fingers had already put on the launching pole, then realized that the man was the lurking whistle placed by the commanders across the river.

The sentry's warning was hoarse as if it was the invisible hand of the opening cloth. In the wheat field, where they could not see clearly, dark shadows suddenly appeared.

The black shadows floated between the waves of wheat ears and the low-pressure smoke layer, neither shouting nor hiding, and slowly approached Elno.

It seemed as if blood in his body was rushing to his neck, Erno's brain was dizzy and swelling, his back and forehead instantly sprinkled, and his heart was also tugging into a small ball.

"Enemy!" He had only one thought left: "Enemy!!!"

"Fire!" Lieutenant Woods' order came to his ears: "All! Free shooting!"

Elno's fingertips inexplicably sting. He didn't know if he was trembling. But no matter what, he smoothly hung the fuse, steadily installed the gun body, and pulled open the cover of the gunpowder pool.

Aiming at the black human figure in the distance, Elno pressed the launch rod with the beating of his heart.

"Bang!"

Everyone heard the first thunder from Erno's melee gun.

As a command, the crackling burst completely shattered the peace.

The low wall was briefly illuminated by the fire at the muzzle, and the smoke screen seemed to be pushed hard by someone, and the diffuse momentum suddenly stopped.

Immediately afterwards, the snare drums on the other side of the river also played, and the dark figures stopped walking slowly. They let out deafening shouts and rushed towards the Hegu Village.

"Ah, it's beginning, finally..."

Colonel Bode, who was in charge of the battle situation, Colonel Geisa, who was in charge of the battlefield in the south, Colonel Skur, who was in charge of the battlefield in the north, Lieutenant Woods, Captain Rosong, who was waiting for the order to attack, and every officer on the battlefield, all came up with this idea.

However, Elno, who was squatting behind the wall, was not as sentimental as the officer, and he had no spare time to think about where Paratu would go after today. He could not blame him, because no one had ever explained to him why he was fighting this battle.

Erno just loads, shoots, and reloads mechanically, just as they did during training.

The coastal walls were already shrouded in choking smoke. It is hard to tell whether the enemy emitted more smoke or the smoke produced by our own shooting was thicker.

Every time Elno pulled down the firing rod, he would briefly disperse the smoke screen in front of him, allowing him to vaguely glimpse the scene on the other side. But the smoke from the muzzle gushed out of the muzzle quickly merged into the thick fog, just like the gunshots mixed with the shouts of killing - briefly appeared and disappeared quickly.

After the first round of volleys, the musketeers from Baishan County began to shoot freely, and only sporadic gunfire sounded along the wall.

With this density of firepower alone, it is impossible to block the charger's enemy, and even delay the enemy cannot do it.

While most of the musketeers were still stabbing the second lead bullet into the barrel, the Parliamentary soldiers at the front had already jumped into the rapids, flowing with river water that was not over their thighs, and rushed to the opposite shore with their weapons.

Hearing the sound of falling into the water from behind the smoke screen, Woods suddenly realized that he had just wasted the most critical first round of volleys.

However, Woods had no time to regret it. He drove his annoyance out of his mind, kicked the weaving basket behind the wall, and picked out an iron mass the size of a palm from the basket.

"Grenade." Woods shouted with all his strength, and his voice even became strangely sharp: "Prepare!"

However, on the noisy battlefield, no matter how loud a man shouted, it was insignificant. Only Elno and several other soldiers beside Woods heard the lieutenant's order.

Elno hurriedly left the musket, took out an iron mass from the weaving basket, and shouted: "Grenade - prepare!"

The sergeants guarding other wall sections also acted as sound transmission tools, and their roars rose one after another behind the smoke: "Grenades - prepare!"

The enemy soldiers rushing to the front had already wade through the water and climbed the river beach.

Erno also saw the appearance of the "enemy" for the first time - similar to him, with two arms and one head, mostly wearing undyed linen clothes, and his face was twisted and hideous due to fear and violent breathing.

What Lieutenant Woods, who was beside Elno, observed was that the pseudo-government soldiers only hung a light short weapon by their waists, and at the same time, they carried simple ladders and shields in groups.

Neither the ladder nor shield were new equipment for temporary preparation. Although most pseudo-government soldiers were not wearing armor, their actions showed that they were no strangers to siege.

"Has Bazenaur fallen?" Woods' heart sank, and his last expectation for friendly forces disappeared: "Then there will be no reinforcements."

"Today! Only I'll wait!" Woods yelled and stood up, exposing most of his body to the enemy, and threw the lit grenade towards the river beach: "Either win! or die!"

Other soldiers followed and threw grenades.

Lieutenant Woods had paid the tuition once, so this time he waited until the second team of enemy soldiers stepped onto the river beach, and the first team of enemy soldiers had arrived at the edge of the high ground before ordering bomb drops.

A soldier of the Xinkendi Legion who had just followed the people in front of him and crossed the river raised his head and saw many black shadows flying out of the high slope.

At first he thought it was a stone, and subconsciously protected his head. But there was a hissing "heat rope" hanging on the butt of the black iron lump that fell in front of him.

The New Reclamation Army soldier immediately grabbed a handful of mud and splashed it on the hemp rope - he had seen something similar in Bazenaur. The defenders there used it frequently and he learned how to deal with it.

The mud wet the twists of the gunpowder in the hemp rope and extinguished it, but the "hiss" sound was still there!

The soldiers of the Xinkendi Legion turned around in horror, and another grenade that landed behind him exploded.

Dull explosions sounded one after another, and the minced meat was raised into the air with mud and sand, drizzled behind the low wall and into the river, like a light rain.

The shock wave swept away the thick smoke covering the river beach, allowing both sides to briefly see the tragic scene of the river beach:

Although some grenades that fell into the puddle did not explode, and although the fuses of some grenades were extinguished by quick-witted parliamentary soldiers, all the grenades that were successfully detonated caused terrible damage; above the soft soil, there were irregular pits caused by explosions everywhere, and the fragments poked the surface of the pits into holes, like wet marks left by water droplets on stones; the wounded soldiers whose limbs were blown up and wailed, and more wounded soldiers had several more holes in their bodies, and the blood wet the fabric near the wounds, and their lives were quickly lost from those holes.

Woods was shocked by the outcome, and Erno beside him pulled him down.

On the east bank of the nameless river, the musketeers of the Great Parliamentary Army had arrived at the battlefield. When the smoke screen was dispelled by the shock wave, Woods, whose body was exposed outside the chest wall, appeared in front of them.

Following the instructions to prioritize shooting of officers, they immediately set up muskets and fired at the short officers on the other side.

As soon as Woods was pulled back to the back of the chest wall by Elno, he heard a series of gunfire coming from the other side.

Some lead bullets flew over his head, and the remaining lead bullets hit the wall, sinking deep in the soft mud mixed with hay.

It was not until Lieutenant Woods was dragged to a safe position that Elno put up a complete sentence: "Lieutenant! Be careful!"

Woods, who realized it later, was stunned for a moment and nodded gratefully.

The momentum of the parliamentary army's offensive was frustrated, and the soldiers who had to be fully qualified - probably a hundred-man team - threw down the siege equipment and retreated to the other side.

The wounded soldiers—also almost a hundred-man team—are most of them dragged away, leaving only some wounded soldiers with physical incomplete limbs and completely incapacitated movements, were left on the river beach to wait for death.

Realizing that the enemy was retreating, cheers rang out after the walls covered with dirt.

However, at the same time, large parliamentary armies musketeers wearing light brown coats also appeared on the other side of the river in large numbers.

As a red cross-striped white-backed military flag appeared in sight, the actions of the soldiers of the Grand Parliament were even more orderly.

While relying on the ridges of the Great Parliament Army, the musketeers of the Great Parliament Army suppressed the defenders on the highlands on the other side, they also pushed the thick wooden boards they carried into the ridges along the river, and transformed the earth ridges used by villagers to demarcate flood control into temporary chest walls.

As the soldiers of the Great Parliamentary Army who attacked the "two waists" of the river bay also temporarily retreated, the battle form along the river was soon turned into two armies of musketeers shooting at each other across the river.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Woods ordered the counting of ammunition and transporting the wounded soldiers, and re-checking his defense line.

Disorderly gunfire and screams filled the lieutenant's ears, and in addition to both, there were the continued wails of dying soldiers on the river beach.

Not long after, the miserable tragedy disappeared, leaving only the "bang bang" gunshot and the exclamation of the person who was shot.

After repelling the enemy's first attack, Woods's soldiers were generally excited and the enemy on the other side was not as sluggish as before.

Unfortunately, the lieutenant could not share the joy of his subordinates, because he knew very well that it was just a tentative attack just now, with the purpose of finding out the details of the defenders.

As the enemy positions on the other side of the river are consolidated, the subsequent attacks will become more fierce and fierce again and again.

And how many consumptions can the ammunition his troops reserved - especially those easy-to-use hand-dumped grenades - withstand?

Woods began to feel regretful. He regretted that Captain Winters Montagne did not ask for any more when he sent people to send the grenades.

The hand-throwing grenade looks like an iron mass, but it is not easy to manufacture. Either two iron shells are first punched out and then forged together, or cast them as a whole. The former is labor-consuming and time-consuming, while the latter is astonishingly difficult.

Therefore, Baishan County cannot create hand-dumped grenades, nor does it use hand-dumped grenade tactics.

The "shell" of the hand-thrown grenades equipped by the Baishan County garrison troops came from Tiefeng County. Some of them were delivered as deductible items during the trade between the two counties; the rest were sent by Winters Montane when the troops were divided before.

Tiefeng County took out the "hand-throwing grenade" that bartered, and its power was very unsatisfactory. One blow of two pieces is not as good as the old-fashioned large iron shell bomb.

Therefore, the merchants of Baishan County have always been buying the grenade shells provided by Tiefeng County as iron materials. Baishan County once suspected that the reason why the Venetta man made this thing was to sell the iron materials more expensive.

However, the new batch of grenades sent by Winters Montane are obviously not the same as the old ones.

Lieutenant Woods returned to his front-line command post, the sheep pen transformed into a bulge, picked out a grenade from the weaving basket, which had not been inserted into gunpowder, and looked at the dark iron shell in his hand.

He instinctively wanted to know what improvements the Tiefeng County people had made on it, but he was thinking more about how to make the remaining grenades play a bigger role.

Two "appointed centurions" and fourteen sergeants from the First Infantry Brigade of Baishan County were urgently summoned by Woods.

"Don't talk nonsense." The lieutenant looked around his subordinates. If the First Battalion was regarded as a human body, then the sixteen people in front of him would support the bones of the First Battalion: "The newly sent grenades from Tiefeng County are good things, and they must be used for the best use. There were too many unexploded bombs just now. After you go back, cut off half of the gunpowder twists of all grenades."

"Sir." A commissioned centurion replied in a low voice: "I'm afraid it's not a problem with medicine. I just saw with my own eyes that the guys wearing new clothes below were stepping on the medicine. They had seen this thing and knew how to deal with it."

"That's why I asked you to cut half of the medicine twists off, so don't give them time to react." Woods thought for a moment and patted his knees: "Just do this - go back and pick out soldiers with a good brain and arm strength, and let them be responsible for throwing grenades. Well... I'll send someone to fire. One person throws them, one person to fire, so that some fools won't throw the grenades as stones. How could it be blown up when thrown into the water?"

"yes!"

"I have sent someone to find the colonel and ask the colonel to collect all the grenades from other brigades and give them to us for use." Woods sincerely asked his subordinates beside him: "What advice do you have?"

The appointed centurion and sergeants looked at me, and I looked at you, all silent because they did not know whether they were qualified to speak.

These veterans knew very well that the only reason they could be promoted to non-commissioned officers or even military officers was that the army in Baishan County expanded too fast and had serious lack of commanders, and they had practical experience. No officer wanted to listen to their opinions, and no officer wanted to see them point fingers.
To be continued...