Chapter 129
Wang Zhong was currently using a cheat to monitor the enemies who had been released.
As soon as the last enemy left their field of view, Wang Zhong immediately gave the order: "Withdraw from the tank emplacement, maneuver to Ambush Position Two."
Vehicle 422 immediately reversed out of the emplacement, then pivoted on the spot and drove south along the track path pressed by tank treads.
Wang Zhong shouted to the messenger: "Go inform the infantry battalion to act according to the original plan!"
The original plan was to plant booby traps after clearing the battlefield, then the entire battalion would retreat to the cover trench at Ambush Position Two.
Wang Zhong had witnessed just how much the T34s needed infantry cover, so he would never allow the tanks and infantry to become separated.
If the distance were long, infantry could ride on the tanks to move together, but the two ambush positions were not far apart, and at a normal pace on foot, infantry could reach it in just twenty minutes.
Vehicle 422 drove out from behind the emplacements of other vehicles, and most of the tank crew brought by Loktov followed along. But some of the newly replenished tank crew were still immersed in the huge joy of victory and hadn't noticed that the battalion command vehicle-Vehicle 422-had already withdrawn.
Wang Zhong had already made arrangements for this: there were infantry by each tank, who would climb up and open the hatches to inform them.
Soon, 30 T34 tanks withdrew from the position and drove along the already-prepared simple road toward the second ambush area.
After the tanks left, the gunners of the anti-tank gun company also rushed their horses, dragging the cannons away from their positions.
Grigori raised the red flag, leading Bucephalus and blending in with the artillery convoy.
----
At the same time as the 151st Temporary Division withdrew from their position-twenty kilometers away from the ambush site-on the mobile armored command vehicle of the Prossenian Asgard Knights' Amplar Division, Major General Wilhelm Dietrich frowned deeply.
"Only eighteen made it back?" Major General Wilhelm approached the deputy battalion commander of the 1st Armored Battalion, raised his hand to slap him, but held back. "The battalion commander is either dead or missing, so I won't punish you!"
The division's Chief of Staff said, "It's not the soldiers' fault. We clearly sent out recon aircraft for low-altitude surveillance-it was the recon plane that told us everything looked normal! It's the recon's fault!"
Major General Wilhelm glared at the Chief of Staff: "Blaming the air force is no different than saying the enemy is too cunning. No, there's no difference! This happened because we weren't careful enough. I should have deployed sufficient forward reconnaissance teams!"
"Even if it's the air force's fault, it's my fault for trusting them too much-when we all know they're unreliable!"
No one else in the vehicle dared speak, waiting for Major General Wilhelm to finish his self-reflection.
Just then, a messenger ran in: "Report! The wounded from the 1st Armored Battalion have returned!"
Wilhelm was shocked: "Wounded?"
"Yes, the wounded said the Ant people only captured officers with the rank of Captain and above. As for the others, they just shot them in the arms and let them go."
Wilhelm cursed: "These Ant people are too cunning! This way, those wounded can't return to the battlefield, and they'll burden our medical system and consume our supply transport capacity!"
But then he thought for a moment and added: "Bring the highest-ranking one among the wounded, I want to hear what he has to say!"
The messenger immediately turned and left.
The Chief of Staff stepped forward and said: "These people may be carrying false information deliberately spread by the enemy. Be careful."
"I know." Major General Wilhelm sighed to express his discontent.
At that moment, the messenger returned with two wounded soldiers. One was a lieutenant-just below the Ants' prisoner capture threshold for low-altitude flight-and the other was a Sergeant Major, wearing the veteran exemption marker-which indicated he didn't need to perform regular duties and was a key soldier in the unit.
Major General Wilhelm first asked the lieutenant: "Do you understand the Ant language?"
The lieutenant: "No."
Major General: "I see. Then based on your observations, what information did you gather from the enemy?"
"The enemy had a large number of tanks hidden in the forest. We were hit by flank fire from enemy tanks, but we could only see the flashes and smoke from their guns, not the tanks themselves."
Major General: "If you couldn't see the tanks, how can you be sure there were that many?"
"The enemy's gunfire was extremely dense, and there was constant loud engine noise. Our battalion was wiped out almost instantly-maybe in just about three volleys. And I saw a lot of shells miss. The Ants' gunnery is still as lousy as ever!
"So I believe at least 60 tanks were hidden in the woods attacking us!"
In reality, this was a mistaken impression. This time, the 151st Temporary Division's firing was quite accurate-relatively speaking. On average, it only took two armor-piercing rounds to destroy one Prossenian tank.
But if you looked forward and backward in the formation, the angle of view would give the illusion that many shells had missed.
The lieutenant didn't realize this and made a firm judgment.
Major General Wilhelm wrote "sixty" on the map with a pencil and added a question mark beside it.
"Anything else?" he asked.
Lieutenant: "The enemy's infantry wore Guardsmen cloaks and were very well-equipped, all with semi-automatic Tokarev rifles, and they had seized a large number of our MP submachine guns, with plenty of magazines."
"Battle-hardened elite infantry." Major General Wilhelm noted this on the map. "Continue."
The lieutenant shook his head: "That's all. I kept trying to stall for time, hoping their tanks would appear. But the tank group remained hidden in the woods, with no intention of revealing themselves."
At that point, the veteran Sergeant Major spoke up: "The enemy was performing a voodoo ritual!"
Everyone turned to look at the Sergeant Major.
The staff officer took out an identification manual, flipped it open in front of the Sergeant Major: "Which voodoo ritual was it?"
The Sergeant Major quickly flipped through the manual and still shook his head: "It's not in here. This ritual seemed to involve desecrating enemy corpses! After the ritual, the ones performing it let out howls like savages."
Chief of Staff: "According to the Minister of Propaganda, the Ant people are savages."
"Uh......" The Sergeant Major was embarrassed. "Let me think-right, it was like Viking war cries!"
Actually, there weren't any. The Sergeant Major's subjective bias had distorted his memory.
"Viking war cries, huh?" Major General Wilhelm wrote the words "Viking war cries" on the paper and added three question marks. "I thought Vikings were a branch of the Germanic peoples."
Chief of Staff: "Should we report this? During the Carolingian Campaign, the malaria summoned by a witch was more troublesome than the entire United Kingdom's army."
Major General Wilhelm: "No, we'll report it after the battle. Reporting now would look like we're making excuses. Even if it's some evil ritual, they usually take a long time to be effective-that's the limitation of all this superstitious nonsense."
Suddenly the Sergeant Major said: "They're Ants! In the primeval forests of the East, witches command beasts and elemental spirits! Voodoo magic summons the bizarre powers of the forest!"
"Calm down. This is Kosalia-most of this kingdom is grassland," Major General Wilhelm said. "Alright, if there's no other intel, I'm going to..."
The lieutenant suddenly said: "Wait, while I don't understand the Ant language, I could recognize their names because I know Carolingian. Ant names are often variations of Carolingian."
"Oh?" Major General Wilhelm became interested again. "What did you hear?"
"I heard their commander seemed to be called Alexei-something-something-Rokosov."
The Chief of Staff immediately ran to check the roster of enemy generals distributed by the Army Group Headquarters, looking for matching names and unit numbers.
He quickly found it: "It's that Ant general who performed well at Upper Peniye and Loktov! The Southern Army Group rated him as: a master of defensive warfare, and a reckless general who likes to charge forward alone to boost morale."
Major General Wilhelm scrunched his brows into a knot: "How do those two traits even go together? Aren't masters of defense supposed to be the kind drawing maps in their command posts?"
The Chief of Staff shrugged.
Major General Wilhelm paced back and forth, then after a few seconds of thinking, noticed the two men were still there and waved them off: "Go receive treatment. One last question-was everyone who got released shot in the shoulder?"
The two nodded together, and the lieutenant added: "And they deliberately avoided arteries and veins, as if they didn't want us to bleed to death halfway. This General Rokosov is rather merciful-like a gentleman. Could someone so noble really be from an inferior race?"
The Chief of Staff was shocked: "Lieutenant! Don't let the Ministry of the Interior's agents hear you say that! You'll get all of us killed!"
The lieutenant shut his mouth.
Chief of Staff: "Go quickly. Once you're in the hospital, just focus on recovery-keep your mouth shut."
The two saluted and left.
The Chief of Staff turned to Major General Wilhelm: "What now? The 2nd Battalion is currently in disarray because of the retreating troops from the 1st Battalion. Even if we want the 2nd Battalion to go on the offensive, it'll be at least an hour."
"No." Major General Wilhelm waved his hand. "We're not rushing the attack. Wait until the infantry, artillery, and engineers arrive. Also, call the air force-tell them to make up for their mistake and plow through that forest for me!"
"Yes, sir!"
----
Wang Zhong didn't hear the engine sounds in the sky until 1530 at the second ambush position.
He switched to an overhead vantage point and sure enough saw a massive formation of aircraft flying this way.
No, they were headed toward Ambush Position One.
At that moment, a sergeant in the forward infantry trench shouted: "Don't be afraid, those planes are definitely bombing our previous position. Don't be afraid!"
Not long after, Wang Zhong saw from the overhead vantage point that the area beside the former ambush site-got bombed.
Good grief, the Prossenian air force missed!
With skills like that, no wonder your commander is named Meyer.
After one round of bombing, Wang Zhong thought to himself that maybe tomorrow they could return to Ambush Position One and ambush the enemy again.
At that moment, a tank crew member commanding a tank in another platoon asked over the headset: "General, the bombing's over-shouldn't the enemy be coming now?"
Wang Zhong: "Don't be in a rush. The enemy's goal is to break through us and encircle Agsukov. They'll definitely come."
Thanks to the alliance leader of Dreaming for Three Hundred Years
(End of Chapter)