Chapter 54: Attack on Dead Mountain
After taking over the Cobb Forest, the expected plan to attack the Dead Man Mountain with a large army did not succeed. Although Lu Mingfei had tried his best to kill the monster as quickly as possible, those French soldiers who were blessed by the Word Spirit still caused extremely serious casualties to the large army attacking the Cobb Forest.
The plan to attack Dead Man's Hill was postponed again. They would wait for the arrival of Prussian reinforcements before continuing to attack Dead Man's Hill. At the same time, French reinforcements were also pouring into Dead Man's Hill to strengthen the defense facilities.
It can be said that Lu Mingfei and his team's attack was both successful and failed. Lieutenant Colonel Markel used his life to buy precious time for Verdun. His body still remains in the scorched earth, becoming one of the unsung heroes of this war.
The next Prussian offensive was scheduled for March 3, a sunny day when six armies of Prussian soldiers would attack Dead Man's Hill.
The Prussian army first launched a round of saturation artillery bombardment on Dead Man's Hill that lasted for several hours, plowing almost the entire hill. The roar of the shells hitting the ground was deafening.
Mud and rubble flew everywhere in the explosion. The air was filled with the smell of gunpowder and scorched earth. A huge column of smoke rose above the Mountain of the Dead, like a giant black dragon reaching into the sky.
"Charge! Charge!" Lu Mingfei shouted and led Hill and others to charge towards the Dead Man's Hill. After the Prussian reinforcements arrived, some new recruits were added to his team, and the people he could command became a complete platoon again.
In the Cob Forest, Lu Mingfei's arm and several ribs were strangled by the monster that Markel transformed into, but after a few days of recuperation, his injuries were almost healed.
Sometimes when Lu Mingfei saw that others’ injuries took one or two months to heal but his wounds could be completely healed in a few days, he would wonder if he really was a monster.
Lu Mingfei raised his gun and aimed at the remaining French soldiers in the trench in front. Those French soldiers were dizzy from the previous artillery fire and couldn't even tell left from right. He cleared a trench with a few shots, and then led others to occupy the trench.
The soil of the trenches was mixed with blood, and all around were corpses and broken limbs. The cruelty of war was clearly revealed here.
It would be better to call it a bomb crater than a trench. The trench, which was more than two meters deep, was blown down by artillery shells to only one meter deep, barely enough for a person to lie inside.
Lu Mingfei led Hill and his men to use engineering shovels to reinforce the trench, but before they could dig deep, a new round of artillery fire began, this time from the French.
The French artillery fire once again plowed the area occupied by the Prussian army, and the trenches that Lu Mingfei and his men had just dug deeper were flattened again.
Shells rained down from the sky, landing not far from Lu Mingfei and his men, but some shells still fell into the trenches where they were. Some new recruits, whose names Lu Mingfei could only barely remember, were blown to pieces. Blood and dirt mixed together, emitting a disgusting smell.
Lu Mingfei felt the shock waves caused by the continuous bombardment of the earth by the shells. He felt that the shock waves were about to shatter his internal organs. Even he, a superhuman, could hardly bear these shock waves, let alone others.
In such an environment, he didn't even dare to release the sickle-weasel, for fear that it would rupture his eardrums the moment it was released.
It was unknown how long the bombardment lasted. Lu Mingfei felt that every second in such an environment was as long as a century. His ears were filled with the roar of artillery fire, as if the whole world was shaking.
A few minutes after the bombardment ended, he could still feel the roar of the bombardment echoing in his head. This time it was his turn to feel the same way as those French soldiers who were disoriented by the shells.
But the French army would not give him time to recover. The moment the bombardment ended, a large group of French soldiers rushed in front of Lu Mingfei and his men.
Lu Mingfei shook his head to sober himself up, then drew his gun and shot down several French soldiers who were rushing in front of him.
"The French are coming, attack quickly!" Lu Mingfei shouted while shooting. The soldiers around him heard his shout and quickly fired forward.
But their heads were still dizzy at this time, and their accuracy was terrible, comparable to Uncle Black's faith shooting skills. Only one or two unlucky French soldiers were hit.
"Retreat! Retreat!" Lu Mingfei looked at the miserable state of his men and knew that it was impossible to defend the trench, so he quickly called on them to retreat. He fired to cover them as they retreated.
Not long after, they returned to the position where they launched the attack, but this time, only more than 30 people came down out of the 40 people who went up. Not only them, but other companies also retreated.
But this does not mean that the attack is over. A new round of artillery fire has begun to be prepared, and the moment the artillery fire ends, they will also launch a new round of charge.
The mountain was like a meat grinder, with soldiers from both sides constantly pouring up and being minced into pieces.
Dead Man's Hill is a barren hill. The few trees there had long been shattered by artillery fire from both sides. The infiltration tactics that the Prussian army excelled at could not be used here at all, and they could only use human lives to fill the trenches they had just captured.
The artillery fire continued to blast the ground into pits, and the entire hill seemed to have been hammered by a giant with a huge hammer, with craters and corpses everywhere.
"Bang!" Lu Mingfei killed a Prussian flamethrower who was rushing in the front. The flamethrower was injured during the charge. Unexpectedly, he turned the nozzle around and sprayed at his own people. The flame danced wildly in the air like hellfire, engulfing everything around it. The flame and blood intertwined together to form a hellish picture.
These flamethrowers, who used to terrify the French soldiers, would now be sniped by the French soldiers as soon as they entered the battlefield. Some flamethrowers whose fuel tanks were hit by grenades were directly turned into torches, while some flamethrowers who were hit in the torso would spray hellfire indiscriminately around because of the pain. This made the flamethrowers have a bad reputation among the soldiers of both sides.
After killing the flamethrower, Lu Mingfei continued to rush forward to clear out the French troops in the trench in front, and then occupied the trench.
After running into the trench, Lu Mingfei did not ask the soldiers who followed him into the trench to reinforce the trench. Instead, he lit a cigarette, leaned against the trench and began to puff.
The smell of tobacco mixed with the bloody smell of the battlefield gave him a strange sense of peace.
"Mr. Lieutenant, aren't we going to dig trenches?" Hill looked at Lu Mingfei with some confusion. His face was covered with dust and sweat, and there was a hint of confusion in his eyes.
"No more digging..." Lu Mingfei said tiredly while smoking a cigarette. He felt exhausted physically and mentally. He didn't know how many times he had occupied this trench. Every time he dug halfway, the French artillery fire would attack. After the artillery fire ended, the French soldiers would charge, and then they would be driven back to their original position.
Lu Mingfei didn't know what to say when he looked at the young, nervous and unfamiliar faces in the trenches. Except for Hill, Paul and Kropp, all the other familiar faces he knew had died in the previous attacks. Those comrades who had fought together now only had sporadic memories and endless sorrow.
Now these unfamiliar young faces are all new recruits who have just been pulled over from Prussia not long ago. They have not even received complete recruit training. They were just taught how to shoot in the recruit training camp and then were sent to the front line.
Lu Mingfei saw the fear and anxiety in their eyes, as if he saw himself a few months ago.
The whistling sound of artillery fire across the sky rang out again, and the French artillery bombardment came again.
The soldiers in the trenches immediately became nervous, because every artillery fire could take away one or several of them. They huddled together, hugged their weapons tightly, and prayed that the artillery fire would not fall on their heads this time.
……
Moreno is now lying in a hospital behind Verdun. He was knocked unconscious by Hohenlohe and brought here. Markel arranged him as a wounded person and is now waiting for a car back to Paris. The air in the hospital is filled with the smell of disinfectant and decay. The groans of the wounded and the shouts of medical staff are intertwined, forming an unsettling background sound.
He was lying on the hospital bed and was awakened by the endless wailing around him and the roars of nurses and doctors. The entire hospital was filled with wounded soldiers transported from the front line.
Every corner here is packed with wounded people, some of whom can only lie in the corridor, waiting for their fate.
The doctors here were overworked and the working conditions were extremely difficult, so they divided the wounded into three categories: the first category of wounded would die no matter what and were not worth treating; the second category of wounded could survive but would never go to the battlefield again; the third category of wounded could return to the front line after recovering from their injuries.
In such an extreme environment, doctors can only choose to give priority to treating those soldiers who have the hope of returning to the war. This is the cruel reality of wartime medical care.
When Moreno woke up, he saw a wounded man lying on the ground outside the ward, wailing. There was a hole in the wounded man's stomach, and he could even see the intestines still moving slightly in the hole. Blood kept pouring out of the wound, staining the ground red.
He quickly climbed out of bed and carried the injured person to where he had just been lying, then began to call the nurse.
"Nurse! Nurse! There is a hole in this man's stomach!" Moreno's voice was a little anxious.
"If there's a hole, just use a rag to plug it!" A nurse just glanced at the injured person and hurried to another ward. Her tone was full of fatigue and numbness, and it was obvious that she was no stranger to such scenes.
"I... I'll go find a bandage for you..." Moreno said stutteringly as he looked at the wounded man lying on the bed, covering the hole in his stomach and wailing. He planned to find a bandage to give the wounded man a simple bandage.
When he walked out of the ward, he saw the corridor full of wounded soldiers wailing in pain. Those wounded were either waiting for surgery or had no beds available and had to lie in the corridor.
The air was filled with the smell of blood and disinfectant, making people feel nauseous.
There was an operating room next to it. Moreno looked inside through the glass window on the door of the operating room. A wounded man was being held down by three or four people. A doctor was chopping at the half-broken leg of the wounded man with an axe. The wounded man's screams pierced the noise in the hospital and echoed throughout the entire building.
The doctor chopped off the broken leg two or three times before casually throwing it into a trash can nearby. The trash can was already filled with body parts. Blood splattered on the doctor's white coat, creating a horrifying picture.
The hospital here was so short of supplies that it couldn't even give the wounded anesthetics. Moreno couldn't bear to watch any longer and left the glass window, his heart filled with powerlessness and sadness.
He continued to go to other wards to see if there were any bandages, but when he reached the door, he saw an even more shocking scene. There was a large group of wounded lying at the hospital entrance. The wails from these wounded were so slight, and some of them could not even make a wailing sound in pain. If it were not for their chests that were still slightly rising and falling, one would have thought they had already died.
These people were classified by doctors as the first category of wounded people who were not worth treating. Next to these wounded people was a hill of corpses.
There were at least several hundred corpses piled together there, many of which had begun to rot and emit a foul stench, with white maggots crawling around in them. There were more than one such pile of corpses. The back of the hospital seemed like a hell, filled with the smell of death and despair.
The smell of rotting corpses and the wriggling of maggots made Moreno shudder. He had never seen such a shocking scene.
Moreno saw two medical staff carrying a corpse passed by him and then threw the body on the pile of corpses. Their movements were numb and mechanical, as if they had long been accustomed to such work.
"Won't you bury them?" Moreno felt his voice trembled. His eyes were full of shock and confusion. He couldn't understand why these people were so indifferent.
"Hundreds of people die here every day. We don't have enough manpower to bury so many bodies." After saying this, the two medical staff continued to work in other wards.
Moreno silently watched the two medical staff leave. He continued to go to other wards to look for bandages. After getting the bandages from a nurse, he returned to the original ward and continued to bandage the wounded man with a hole in his stomach.
There was a hint of gratitude on the wounded man's face, but more of it was pain and despair. He didn't know whether the wounded man could survive, but he had done everything he could.
Moreno left the ward and asked a hospital administrator for a shovel. He then took the shovel to an open space behind the hospital and started digging.
His eyes began to glow with golden light, and his originally thin body was now stronger than the champion of a bodybuilding competition.
Word Spirit Bronze Throne
Moreno quickly dug a deep pit in the open space behind the hospital, and then began to move the bodies from the pile. He placed the bodies neatly in the pit. He moved from noon to evening, and from evening to early morning.
After burying thousands of bodies, Moreno left the hospital and began to walk aimlessly. He didn't know where to go until he met a company heading to the Mountain of the Dead.
"Sir, I'm separated from my company. Can I join you?" Moreno walked up to the company commander and asked. There was determination in his eyes, but the fatigue on his body could not hide his inner fighting spirit.
"Are you sure? I'm going to the Mountain of the Dead." The company commander said seriously.
Dead Man's Hill has become synonymous with death in the army, and every soldier who sets foot on that land must be prepared to sacrifice.
"I'm sure my previous company is at Dead Man's Hill." Moreno continued firmly. He felt that he should not just leave like that.
"Then follow me." The company commander nodded and accepted Moreno's request.
In this way, Moreno followed the company back to the Mountain of the Dead, but the road to the Mountain of the Dead was like a road to hell.
As they set out on the road to the Mountain of the Dead, they felt as if the whole world had lost its color, leaving only monotonous black and gray between heaven and earth.
All the lush trees were shattered into pieces by the artillery fire, the land that was originally covered with weeds was also charred by the bombardment of the artillery fire, and the sky was dyed black by the black smoke.
A troop that was withdrawing from the Hill of the Dead passed by them. They felt that those people seemed to have lost their color and vitality. Their faces and clothes were covered with mud. They all had no expression and their eyes were numb.
The numb eyes of those soldiers revealed endless fatigue and despair, as if their souls had been devoured by the war.
Perhaps the only bright color in this monotonous world is red. Bombs fell on Moreno and his team like raindrops. Blood dyed the earth red, like blooming flowers of the other shore, strange and enchanting.
Their company of more than 100 people had lost more than half of their men before they even reached Dead Man's Hill.
Today I wrote 4600 words, a little more than yesterday. A few hundred more words is still a lot, isn't it? Thank you all for your tips and votes. Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you
(End of this chapter)
