Chapter 24: Chapter 22 “Damn it, you’re hitting friendly forces
Su Fang watched the truck disappear into the distance and turned to take a closer look at the silver-haired girl.
“She’s truly beautiful,” she exclaimed sincerely.
It was then that the silver-haired girl spoke up, “He must be out of his mind, the him in the past would never do such a thing.”
Su Fang asked, “The him in the past? Have you known the Earl for a long time?”
The silver-haired girl shrugged, “I’ve known him since I was a child, given that our lands are next to each other.”
Su Fang asked, “Are you a noble lady?”
“Not yet, I am a Prayer Hand now, so I cannot accept a secular title.”
One cannot accept a secular title after becoming clergy.
“Oh,” Su Fang nodded and then asked, “So will you marry the Earl in the future?”
“Huh?” The silver-haired girl was momentarily stunned, then turned to look at Su Fang and grinned, “You… you aren’t interested in him, are you? He’s known for being a scoundrel. Many salons at Saint Ye Katerina Fortress don’t welcome him because he goes around touching everything, like a dog in heat. Come to think of it, when I was supporting him just now, he didn’t try to take advantage of me, probably because he’s befuddled from the fever!”
Su Fang was shocked, “Is he such a person?”
“You aren’t part of the mixed brigade he commands, the 41st, are you? His notoriety is well-known throughout the brigade. By the way, after the battle commenced yesterday, he immediately ran crying to the basement and even wet his pants. The morale of the 41st Mixed Brigade took a hit because of his behavior.”
While the silver-haired girl was speaking, Yegorov coughed once, “Enough. He might have been a coward before, but what I see now is a brave man from Ante! Without him, we would probably be surrounded in Ronied City by now.
Be mindful, Monk, and don’t speak of things that could impact morale!”
A Prayer Hand is also a Monk, a member of the clergy.
The silver-haired girl hurriedly said, “I’m sorry, I just… just…”
She hesitated for a long time unable to finish her sentence and just shrugged her shoulders.
As the saying goes, in the blink of an eye, a muffled sound came from a distance.
The soldiers around who had dismounted to rest all uniformly threw themselves to the ground.
Yegorov, a veteran like him, waved his hand, “Don’t panic, it’s still far away! If the artillery was landing overhead, you’d hear a ‘whoosh’ first. When you’ve become seasoned veterans, you could even tell the caliber from that sound.”
But the silver-haired girl suddenly shouted, “The sound of the guns is coming from the direction he went!”
Then she grabbed Yegorov’s binoculars and ran a few steps to stand on a stone by the roadside to observe the distance.
The wind from the east blew her braids apart, causing her silver hair to fly in the dawn light.
**
Wang Zhong saw the tank start to run from a bird’s-eye view.
He wanted to jump out of the truck, but he simply had no strength left.
By the time he switched back to his normal vision, a shell had already landed by the road, with dirt thrown up by the blast flying into the half-open truck bed and landing on his face.
Sergey directly opened the door and jumped out of the truck, leaving it to continue forward uncontrollably.
In a daze, Wang Zhong reached out his hand to grab the steering wheel and stretched his foot to the other side, pressing down, but unfortunately, he couldn’t muster the strength because of the fever, and his foot didn’t move the pedal.
However, perhaps because he didn’t accelerate, or maybe because the engine was damaged by shrapnel, the truck gradually slowed down.
The tank on the mountaintop fired another round, and the truck’s bed was directly blown into an orange fireball.
The glass behind the driver’s seat shattered, the fragments cutting Wang Zhong’s cheek.
Wang Zhong sat in the vehicle, tried to open the door, but his physical condition wouldn’t allow it.
It was only then that he realized there was no need for him to make the trip himself.
Damn it, trying to stay alive only to deliver myself to death in the end.
By now, the tanks on the hilltop might have seen the white flag on the truck, or they simply confirmed the truck was destroyed and wanted to save ammunition. In any case, they stopped firing.
Wang Zhong, sitting in the driver’s seat, tried twice more to open the door but failed. Maybe the shell that had just hit his side of the vehicle had damaged the door.
He had no choice but to clamber toward the driver’s side, planning to get out from the side where Sergey had jumped from.
After all, he didn’t know if the truck would catch fire.
Being burned to death was the most painful way to go, and Wang Zhong did not want to experience it.
Just then, he saw a white horse appear on the slope where the tanks were positioned!
Someone riding the white horse trotted down the hill, heading straight towards the wreckage of the vehicle.
Wang Zhong watched the white horse, even forgetting his struggle to survive for a moment.
Switching to a bird’s-eye view, Wang Zhong could clearly see that the man on the horse’s back was a captain wearing a tank helmet; likely the commander of this tank platoon.
The captain arrived, looked at Wang Zhong’s rank on the vehicle, cursed “Sukabule”, and hurriedly dismounted to open the door.
After dragging Wang Zhong out of the car, the captain took a deep breath, stood up, and saluted, “Captain Lubokov of the 31st Tank Regiment, Second Battalion, Fourth Tank Army, ordered to snipe the Prussian Army here!”
Wang Zhong, “Second Battalion? I only saw four tanks.”
The captain with a bitter face, “That’s all that’s left of us. The air raid took out most of our tanks. The Prussians equipped 20mm cannons on their planes, they can damage us from the sky, not to mention the bombs.”
As he spoke he glanced at the hilltop and continued to complain, “Our tanks are fragile, damn it, this is all the fault of that Military Industry Minister who likes multiple turrets! The Prussian tanks are all with single turrets now! When we discussed it, we also thought the Carolingian single-turret tanks are the future!”
Wang Zhong, “If you knew your tanks were fragile, why did you still deploy on the hilltop?”
The captain, “It’s a good vantage point; our 45mm guns can destroy Prussian tanks from a great distance.”
Wang Zhong, “What if the enemy’s air force comes again? And you only have four vehicles; the enemy is endless.”
The captain, “We are prepared to die with honor. When we left our base yesterday, there were hundreds of us; brothers who lived and worked together. Now only a few of us are left, and we have no intention of living alone.”
“No, no,” Wang Zhong shook his head repeatedly, “You’re under my command now. I’m just leading the way; there’s more than half an infantry regiment out there, as well as the direct headquarters department. There’s a small town behind the hill, and we’ll retreat there to defend.”
Wang Zhong enjoyed playing real-time strategy games, and he particularly liked one called “Wargame: Red Dragon”. In that game, tanks that rashly entered cities would be blasted by infantry with rocket launchers.
Moreover, before his crossing over, he had watched quite a few instructional videos by “Mars Patriots” on “anti-tank gymnastics”, so naturally, he thought of retreating into town to fight guerrilla warfare with the enemy.
This way, they could use the terrain to best avoid the weakness of the T28 tanks’ thin armor, and also avoid enemy air strafing.
This decision might not be sensible, but under the current circumstances, it was the best course of action Wang Zhong could think of.
The captain stared at Wang Zhong for a few seconds and said, “I just saw from the hilltop, the Prussian convoy was moving with their lights on, then they all turned their lights off suddenly. Could that be the infantry regiment you’re talking about?”
Wang Zhong nodded, “Yeah, we mounted a counterattack, wiped out an enemy division headquarters, and captured one of their supply depots. Those vehicles are all spoils of war.”
The captain scratched his head, “Although I should verify your identity by procedure, but… my intuition tells me you’re one of us. Moreover, you’re wounded and running a fever, yet you dare charge at our tank formation; this courage makes it hard to believe you’re actually an enemy spy…”
Wang Zhong, “So what’s your decision? Skip the useless parts and tell me your decision.”
The captain clicked his tongue, “Our radio is broken, we can’t get in touch with our superiors; according to regulations, we’re under your command!”