Hearing the warning of incoming artillery, Hu Hao and his men immediately flattened themselves at the bottom of the shallow trenches. Less than two minutes later, the first shells began to fall.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The deafening explosions forced the soldiers to press themselves as deep into the dirt as possible, not daring to move an inch. If a shell landed directly in their trench, they could only curse their bad luck. There was absolutely nothing a single man could do against heavy artillery.
The only sliver of comfort Hu Hao had was that the Imperial Air Force was actually holding its own today. They were successfully fending off the Allied fighter squadrons, preventing the heavy bombers from reaching the airspace above the trenches. If those bombers had made it through, there wouldn't be a battle to fight; the soldiers on the line would simply be erased from existence.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Soon, the sound of explosions echoed from the opposite bank. The Imperial artillery had opened up in retaliation. It seemed the Imperial commanders had finally learned a lesson; they had positioned their artillery batteries out of range of the Allied guns, but close enough to strike the enemy staging areas and lock down the river crossing.
The Allied bombardment lasted for over ten minutes. By the time it stopped, Hu Hao and his men were practically buried in sand and loose dirt. They scrambled out of the soil, ignoring the dirt coating their uniforms, because Allied armored units had already driven onto the opposite beach. The enemy was still determined to force a crossing.
"Get up! Rocket teams, take out those tanks! Now!" Hu Hao yelled, seeing the Allied armor advancing toward the shallows.
Many of the Imperial soldiers were still dazed from the relentless shelling. They couldn't hear Hu Hao's orders clearly and just sat up, staring blankly at the chaos unfolding in front of them.
"Shoot! Start shooting!" the veterans who had quickly recovered began shoving the dazed men, especially the newly arrived reservists. These men had been civilians just days ago, completely disconnected from military life, and had been thrown straight into the most brutal meat grinder imaginable. Many of them were in severe shock, unable to process what was happening.
"Shoot! Point your gun forward and shoot! What are you standing there for?! Fire!" Hu Hao yelled at a thirty-something reservist next to him who was clutching his rifle, too terrified to pull the trigger.
"Listen to me! If you don't shoot, you will die!" Hu Hao roared at him. He emptied his magazine at the opposite shore and quickly slapped a fresh one in.
BOOM! BOOM! Explosions rocked the Imperial line as the Allied tanks on the far bank began firing high-explosive shells directly into their positions.
Soon after, the Imperial counter-barrage ceased, and the Allied infantry began their amphibious assault. God only knew where they had found so many assault boats. Groups of soldiers hauled the small craft into the water and scrambled aboard.
Rat-tat-tat!Bang! Bang! Bang!
The Imperial defenders on the riverbank mounted a fierce, desperate resistance.
"Hao-ge! The heavy machine gun over there is down!" a soldier yelled.
Hu Hao turned and saw that a nearby heavy machine gun nest had gone silent. It had likely taken a direct hit from an Allied tank.
Hu Hao grabbed his rifle and sprinted toward the vacant nest. Seeing him move, another soldier immediately followed to act as his assistant gunner. Everyone knew that in a defensive battle like this, heavy suppressive fire could not stop. If the heavy machine guns fell silent, the enemy would quickly overwhelm them, and reclaiming fire superiority would be impossible.
Rat-tat-tat! Hu Hao took control of the heavy machine gun and opened fire on the assault boats swarming the river.
The water was already choked with the floating corpses of Allied soldiers. In truth, the Allied coalition hadn't gained much ground today. They had organized several crossing attempts, and all had failed. The amphibious assault units had suffered catastrophic casualties.
However, the Allied commanders knew perfectly well that the Imperial defenders were reaching their breaking point. Even with reinforcements pouring in, the Eastern Spirit forces couldn't hold out much longer.
"Give it to them!" Hu Hao roared, holding the trigger down.
Because of the massive influx of Imperial reinforcements earlier, the line held firm for the first hour of the assault. The Allied forces were unable to land significant numbers of troops on the near bank and failed to breach Hu Hao's sector.
But an hour later, the Allied forces organized an even more massive wave of amphibious infantry. Hu Hao and his men fought a grueling, desperate defense. It was only the timely intervention of the Imperial artillery, which rained shells directly onto the river to block the crossing, that barely halted the Allied advance.
As the hours dragged on, Hu Hao went numb. He mechanically fired his weapon, grabbed a grenade, threw it, and fired again. In fact, every soldier on the line had gone numb. The moment they saw an Allied uniform, they pulled the trigger. That was their entire existence.
When a soldier next to them was killed, no one grieved. They had become numb to death, and there was simply no time for sorrow. No one knew if they would live to see the next minute. Rather than wasting time grieving, it was better to fire a few more rounds—it might just buy them, or the man next to them, another second of life.
The battle raged continuously from 1:00 PM to past 5:00 PM. For four agonizing hours, the river ran red with blood, and the Allied coalition suffered staggering losses.
On the Imperial side, three separate waves of reinforcements arrived during the fighting—all comprised of raw reservists. Roughly two hundred thousand conscripts were thrown into the meat grinder. But as the shooting finally died down, Hu Hao looked around and estimated that barely a third of them had survived.
By dusk, the fighting finally ceased. Hu Hao and the men simply sat in the dirt, completely drained. No one wanted to move. From the lowest private to the highest General, everyone was entirely spent.
"Hao-ge. Hao-ge, the Commander wants to see you," Li Jingsong said, walking over with a satellite phone. Li Jingsong had been wounded; his shoulder was bandaged, and his arm rested in a sling.
"What does he want? I haven't even settled my score with him yet," Hu Hao replied, looking up in confusion.
"I don't know. He called and told me to find you. He wants you to report to his command post," Li Jingsong shook his head.
"Oh. Are you going?" Hu Hao asked. He didn't understand what Jiang Kai could possibly want, but after a moment's thought, he figured he might as well go see what the old man had to say.
"I'm not going. I need to rest. Go on your own," Li Jingsong sighed, sitting down heavily in the trench.
Hu Hao grabbed his rifle and stood up. He walked back from the line until he found a relatively intact jeep. He turned the key, and the engine sputtered to life. Driving slowly, Hu Hao navigated the battered landscape toward the command post.
The Zone Command had been established beneath a small concrete bridge. Hu Hao found the location and was escorted into the makeshift headquarters.
"Good evening, Commander. Good evening, Generals," Hu Hao said, delivering a crisp salute as he approached Jiang Kai and his staff.
"Ah, Hu Hao is here. Come over," Jiang Kai said. He was sitting alone on a large rock, smoking a cigarette.
Hu Hao walked over.
"Find a place to sit," Jiang Kai said, taking a slow drag of his cigarette.
Hu Hao didn't bother looking for a chair; he simply sat down on the dirt floor. He pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket and lit one for himself.
"Do you know how many men from the Southwest Combat Zone are still alive on this line? I mean men who can actually still hold a rifle and fight," Jiang Kai asked, his eyes staring blankly at the distant river.
"I don't know. Probably not many," Hu Hao shook his head.
"Less than twenty thousand," Jiang Kai said, his voice hollow with grief. "The Southwest Combat Zone had seven corps. Four were Class-A corps, at full strength with sixty thousand men each. The other three were Class-B corps, with thirty thousand men each. That's a total of three hundred and thirty thousand men.
If you add the remnants of the Southern and Western Combat Zones that joined our retreat from Langcheng... we started with nearly half a million troops. Today, excluding the wounded in the hospitals, we have twenty thousand left. Twenty thousand!" Jiang Kai repeated, the pain evident in every syllable.
"The enlisted men under your command frequently call us commanders 'straw bags'—incompetent fools. And they are right. We are fools. To lose so many men in less than ten days... if we aren't fools, what are we?" Jiang Kai lamented.
Hu Hao remained silent. He still didn't know why Jiang Kai had called him here, and it didn't seem like the right time to ask.
"Hu Hao, let me ask you something," Jiang Kai suddenly turned to look at him. "Do you have a plan? Do you have any way to stop the Allied offensive?"
"Me? Commander, the Allied forces have fighters, bombers, artillery, tanks, and hundreds of thousands of infantry. You're asking me if I can solve this? You tell me: how exactly am I supposed to solve this?" Hu Hao asked, staring at Jiang Kai in genuine disbelief.
"I'm the one asking you, why are you asking me? ...Sigh. You're right. How could you possibly have a solution? You're just a Lieutenant Colonel... hmm?" Jiang Kai noticed the insignia on Hu Hao's collar. "Why are you still wearing Major's insignia? Didn't I order your promotion to Lieutenant Colonel? Chief of Staff Sun, what happened?" Jiang Kai frowned, turning to Sun Qinxue.
"The order was issued, Commander, and the military personnel system has been updated. However, the fighting has been continuous. It's likely Corps Commander Li simply hasn't had the time or opportunity to formally notify Hu Hao and present him with his new rank insignia," Sun Qinxue explained quickly.
"Mmh. Fine. There's nothing to be done about it; we haven't had a single moment to breathe," Jiang Kai nodded, looking back at Hu Hao, who simply nodded in acknowledgment.
Jiang Kai took another deep drag of his cigarette.
"It's strange. I don't know why, but looking at this horrific situation, I kept hoping you would magically have a solution. I'm just so incredibly frustrated. I don't understand where we went so wrong. Why are we being beaten this badly? Sigh...
Forget it. Ignore me. I'm just rambling. How could I expect you to fix everything? In the face of armies this massive, the abilities of a single man are ultimately limited," Jiang Kai laughed bitterly, mocking his own desperation.
"Commander, aren't there more reinforcements arriving soon?" Hu Hao asked after a moment's thought.
"Yes. Several more corps will arrive tonight. But what use is it? You saw it yourself: we threw over three hundred thousand reservists onto the line today. Look out there and tell me how many are left. And the active-duty corps that reinforced us this afternoon? In a single afternoon, they suffered over thirty thousand casualties. More than half their strength, gone," Jiang Kai smiled bleakly.
"The Allied forces are also bleeding heavily," Hu Hao noted, leaning forward. "I understand why they are fighting this way, but I don't understand why they chose this specific location. They absolutely don't need to fight us to the death over this one river crossing.
They could easily launch simultaneous offensives from multiple other directions. But they are completely fixated on this single point. I know they want to wage a war of attrition to grind down our main forces, but their own forces are being ground down just as badly. Truthfully, they didn't gain any real strategic advantage today!"
Hu Hao posed the question deliberately. He wanted to probe Jiang Kai to see if the Zone Commander truly understood the Allied coalition's overarching strategy.
"They don't care about their casualties," Jiang Kai sighed, explaining the grim reality to Hu Hao. "They only care about destroying us as quickly as possible. They want to annihilate the Eastern Spirit Empire's standing army! They are fighting for time! And the tragic irony is... we need time even more than they do!"