Joseon Needs a Coup - Chapter 307
Only Noblemtl
#307. Russian SteamRoller (7)
“The artillery, the artillery fire has stopped···.”
Corporal Yamada, one of the soldiers of the 7th Division under the 3rd Army who had been covering his ears for a long time, could finally see that the enemy artillery fire that had been pouring down like a downpour had stopped as if it were a lie.
When the trenches they had worked so hard to dig collapsed due to artillery fire, most of the infantrymen looked dumbfounded.
Those damn Roske’s, they destroyed our defense line, which was inadequate but tried to prepare properly, before it could even put up a proper fight.
The ground, which was already soft due to the incessant rain, was being hit by continuous artillery fire, continuously collapsing the trenches.
Now the rainwater that had been stagnant was pouring into the trench, overflowing to the point where the boots were completely submerged.
The urgent voice of the officer on the other side was heard.
“Repair the trenches immediately and rescue the dry ammunition! The Roske are coming soon!”
Most of the soldiers, each holding a shovel, were trying to drain the stagnant water by digging a ramp at one end of the trench or trying to make emergency repairs by scooping up dirt from the collapsed trench, but they were soon forced to stop when they heard a voice.
“Ro, it’s Roske! There are a lot of Roske up front!!”
“Is that a valid number?!”
Slowly the fog cleared, and the Japanese soldiers in the trenches were able to witness a most terrifying and yet magnificent sight.
They could see thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Roske’s approaching them with their guns pointed at them.
From Lushun to the outskirts of Fengtian, I saw countless Roske, but compared to what I saw now, they were nothing.
It was a procession that seemed much larger than the crowds that gathered to inspect the training camp and to celebrate victory just before departure.
It even felt like there was a malicious intent to drown the entire Third Army in a sea of people.
“···Tell the command center. There are at least 10 times more enemy forces approaching us, no, maybe even 100 times more.”
At the battalion commander’s words, the soldiers guarding the trenches, and even the non-commissioned officers and officers who were supposed to command the soldiers, all looked on with eyes filled with fear, as if they were horrified by the sight.
Corporal Yamada also suffered a fierce conflict between his sense of duty as a soldier of the Emperor to defend the front lines and his human instincts that were simply terrified.
“Everyone, wake up! If we don’t stop the Roske, we can’t go home! We have to defend this place no matter what!”
And the conflict was put to an end, if only for a moment, by the voice of the regimental commander who had arrived at the front line.
The slogan had changed from fighting to win to fighting to survive and return home, but it didn’t matter to Corporal Yamada.
To return to his small but warm home in Tohoku, he had to overcome his enemies.
As his intense desire to survive momentarily suppressed his human fear, he immediately aimed the rifle he had placed in the trench at the enemy.
The friendly artillery finally received the coordinates and opened fire.
Well, there were so many enemies that you could get hit even if you just shot roughly without any coordinates.
Anyway, when the artillery fire came, some of their ranks were cleared, and the soldiers cheered, but it soon died down again.
Even shelling was of no use now.
Coming in such huge numbers, it was even more discouraging to see them filling in the broken parts like a living wall.
“Shoot!”
As soon as the officer’s order was given, the soldiers who survived the artillery fire aimed their rifles and fired at the enemy lines.
But this was like a child’s play of throwing sand in front of the waves.
Although some of the Roske were hit by bullets and fell, they paid no attention and continued to advance, stepping over the corpses of their comrades.
“Keep shooting! Don’t stop shooting at them!”
Hot shells fell onto the cold ground, and the hot gun barrels hit the rain, creating a hissing sound and steam along with the acrid gunpowder smoke.
Yamada also pulled the bolt to extract the cartridge, then pulled the trigger again and heard a ‘click!’ sound, realizing that there were no more cartridges.
I hurriedly searched through the magazine, but all I could find was mud.
The previous battle had resulted in a high depletion of ammunition, which was not properly replenished.
Although the bewildered non-commissioned officers hastily took out the spare ammunition and handed it over to the soldiers, the number of remaining bullets was small to begin with and there were many soldiers who could use them, so a sufficient number could not be deployed in time.
The officers hastily ordered the men to throw improvised grenades at the enemies, but the situation was the same.
The improvised grenades that got soaked in the rain were unable to do their job.
Even if the wick was barely lit, the gunpowder inside had absorbed a lot of water, so it was rare for it to explode properly among the enemies.
Meanwhile, the Roske’s were now fully approaching the defensive line.
They were originally so numerous that they seemed slow, and it seemed as if they had time to respond, but this was also an illusion.
And only then did Yamada understand why they were described as ‘giant bears’.
Like a brown bear seeing its prey, they began to move faster than anyone else as they neared the trench line.
“They’re coming! Everyone brace yourself!”
To the enemy’s chant of “Charge!” soldiers with skewered bayonets and men with guns with something crooked stuck in them upside down rushed toward the trenches.
They too threw something similar to a grenade, but when it didn’t explode due to the same problem as them, they decided to charge straight ahead.
Yamada quickly took out the long bayonet from his waistband and inserted it into the front of the gun barrel.
Now, the only thing I could trust was this bayonet.
“Stop them! Everyone, put your bayonets on!”
“Your Majesty the Emperor-”
The moment the battalion commander drew his sword and gave the charge call, he collapsed like a beehive with the sound of beans roasting.
As the surprised men looked straight ahead, they saw large, blue-eyed Roske soldiers firing strangely shaped machine guns and clearing out the inside of the trench.
There was no way the 7th Division’s troops, short on ammunition and men, could stop this.
Fortunately, it couldn’t fire long enough and for long enough like their vaunted Maxim gun, but it was enough to suppress any who might put up meaningful resistance inside the trenches.
There was no time to catch my breath or respond.
From now on, it was their time.
As if changing ranks, enemy infantry rushed into the trenches with bayonets, shovels, and swords, and soon a bloody battle broke out.
Some officers divided their troops into company units and tried to disperse the Roske’s ranks through skirmishes, but it was no use.
It was like pouring a glass of water on a large fire that had spread across the field.
The brave but reckless counterattack was simply crushed by the vanguard of the Russian 8th Army Corps.
“Ouch!”
A rookie soldier right next to me was hit in the chest with a rifle butt and fell to the ground, then struggled with a bayonet stuck in his neck.
Then, the Roskemen brutally stabbed the struggling rookie with their bayonets until he stopped moving, then struck his head and chest with the buttstocks.
When he finally stopped moving, only mangled corpses lay in the trench.
“These motherfuckers!”
One enraged sergeant swung his sword at Roske, knocking him down, but an enemy officer who immediately rushed in after him swung his shashka, cutting his face and making him scream.
Then he put the gun to the back of the head of the kneeling sergeant and pulled the trigger without a moment’s hesitation.
One poor fellow fell to the ground, his head crushed by an enemy boot, and he slowly suffocated to death in the mud.
With the slaughter almost one-sided all along the trench line, the 7th Division could bear it no longer.
If the Roske I had met in Lushun had been tenacious, those I was facing now were like devils just rescued from hell, out to kill as many of them as possible.
“Damn it! I came here because I didn’t want to meet those devilish Joseon guys!”
One officer’s voice could also be heard, a mixture of lament and despair.
If the Joseon people were devils, then the Roske were devils.
You could say that it’s the same thing, but at least for them, there was a strict difference.
At least the Roske were manageable, but the Joseon guys were close to being an indescribable horror.
But now that’s wrong too.
A few soldiers managed to knock down the Roske, but soon many more enemies rushed in shouting at them, and the tower collapsed, unable to hold out.
Finally, even the regimental commander who had been fighting directly from the rear was swept away by the enemies while fighting them, and even his duty to suppress his fear was now useless.
“Run away! There are too many Roske!”
And at the sound of someone’s voice, survivors, regardless of whether you or I, started running to escape the trench lines.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that if there is a hell, this is it.
Yamada, who was out of breath, threw away his cumbersome gun on the ground and started to desperately escape the front line like the others.
Suddenly, I looked back and saw that there were many more enemies running towards our troops than the Roske I had seen earlier.
Yamada could sense it intuitively.
In this war, the Empire of Japan was defeated. Even a single ignorant private would know this, and the great generals above must have realized it clearly by now. He started running and running again to save his own life.
***
“It’s over, Commander. Even the 7th Division has collapsed! If we don’t get out now, the command center will soon be overrun by the enemy!”
“What on earth did we do wrong?”
Nogi walked slowly around the table as if he had lost his mind.
A loud burst of gunfire echoed from all directions. And with each blast, reports came in that soldiers on the front were being cut down without mercy.
No matter how much I thought about it, it was clear that it was not my own fault, but the mass of the Russian Empire that had surpassed the expectations of a single human being that had swallowed them up.
No, maybe it was the karma that I had secretly ignored as a loser that had come back to me.
If we hadn’t ignored them and had paid a little more attention to the use of our troops, we wouldn’t have ended up in this situation.
“It seems that all of our intentions have been exposed to the enemy.”
“They are overturning our front lines with incredible shock power like the infantry of Joseon! If we don’t quickly deploy the reserves or reduce the front lines, we’re really finished!”
The two-headed eagle’s massive wings easily broke the flaps of Nogi’s Third Army’s wings.
And now they were roaring again, projecting their pent-up anger onto the battlefield, as if they were trying to show the Japanese Empire the power of a true great empire.
“The eagle’s wings… covered the sun.”
Nogi said, dropping his baton to the floor helplessly.