"Next time I must be more careful in observing the enemy's situation!" A thought of regret flashed through the Battalion Commander's mind, but this feeling of regret only lasted for a very short few seconds. The Battalion Commander had experience in life-and-death situations after all; he gritted his teeth tightly and continued to observe the enemy situation with his binoculars. The momentum of the Sharp Knife Company's attack had been checked by the enemy's heavy machine guns. The front half of the attack column halted, while the rear half was still moving forward.

After watching for a moment longer, the Battalion Commander finally cursed aloud, "Spread out the formation! Are you standing there just to get hit?"

When encountering fierce resistance from the enemy, one must either concentrate fire to destroy the enemy's strongpoints or use sharpshooters to eliminate them, or rapidly spread out the formation to maintain the offensive line. If the enemy adjusted their troop deployment under the support of their strongpoints and then launched a counterattack, the casualties of the blocked attacking troops would skyrocket.

The Sharp Knife Company and the enemy were clearly exchanging fire. Leaving aside the effectiveness for now, the Beiyang Army, which had been chased like ducks, gradually opened up distance from the Sharp Knife Company under the cover of heavy machine gun fire. A fairly significant distance had appeared between the two sides.

"Artillery, fire support!" Seeing that they couldn't get tangled up with the enemy, the Battalion Commander immediately issued a new order.

"The firing data hasn't been adjusted! No way to guarantee accuracy," the artillery platoon commander replied anxiously.

"Shoot further away first, adjust while shooting! Don't save ammunition now," the Battalion Commander roared. After roaring at the artillery platoon leader, the Battalion Commander asked the communicator, "When will the Fourth Battalion led by the Regiment Commander catch up?"

"There is no sign of the Regimental Headquarters moving forward for the time being," the communicator replied immediately.

The military academy was divided into four levels. Squad and platoon levels were the primary class, trained by various infantry schools. Regiment, battalion, and company commanders were intermediate commanders, trained by various military academies. Senior commanders at the corps and division levels were uniformly trained by the Army Academy. As for even higher-level training, it was the training classes opened by the Military Commission, which were basically of a discussion and seminar nature.

The Regiment Commander and the Battalion Commander had graduated from the same batch of military academy training. Hearing that the Regimental Headquarters had not continued to move forward, the Battalion Commander was furious in his heart. But he understood after a moment. Currently, there were two tactics for fighting against the Beiyang Army. One was to annihilate the Beiyang forces in one go with three routes simultaneously. The other was to thoroughly divide and surround the Beiyang Army, "eat one, clamp one, watch one." Where exactly the breakthrough point was could not be determined by everyone before the battle. In the actual choice during the battle, frontline commanders, especially battalion-level commanders, had a considerable say.

"Fourth Company prepare, follow me up," the Battalion Commander ordered.

The Fourth Company Commander went to prepare cheerfully. The Deputy Battalion Commander hurriedly came up to persuade him, "Battalion Commander, let me lead the team up."

"You manage the artillery and fire suppression units. If there are any orders from the regiment, notify me in time," the Battalion Commander replied.

The Deputy Battalion Commander did not accept the Battalion Commander's arrangement. He said with dissatisfaction, "Battalion Commander, the Commissar is enough for these tasks! You... do you not trust me?"

"I don't trust you? If I get gloriously sacrificed up front in a while, you have to take over. You need to observe the battle situation and be responsible for liaison now. How many times have I said it, you have to use your brain when fighting! Obey orders now and hurry up to make preparations." After the Battalion Commander finished speaking, he took the Fourth Company and headed towards the very front of the line.

The Fourth Company did not directly commit to the assault battle. The Battalion Commander had them replace the First Company's right flank to continue maintaining the offensive. The First and Second Companies fully entered a frontal attack state.

But the situation on the battlefield changed in the blink of an eye. After the Battalion Commander went to the front line, the enemies in front had already hidden within the range of the Beiyang heavy machine guns. The railway roadbed was higher than the ground to begin with, and the Beiyang Army mounted machine guns on the train cars and flatbeds, giving them a commanding height. Having been fiercely struck by the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army just now, the Beiyang heavy machine gunners, in their fright, operated the machine guns with a violent attitude to fiercely shoot at the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's positions. Looking at their intent, they seemingly hoped to rely on the twenty-something heavy machine guns to kill all the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army troops.

"Start digging cover!" the Battalion Commander ordered. Hard-on-hard tactics were the method prioritized only when there were no other choices. At this time, they had to rely on individual combat quality to engage in a shooting battle.

The First Company Commander and Second Company Commander argued slightly for a few sentences, but the Battalion Commander pushed them back with one sentence, "Does everyone lack confidence in their own marksmanship?"

Now the two company commanders fell silent. Pre-battle mobilization wasn't just shouting to comrades "sacrifice for the revolution." The troops wouldn't leak military secrets; naturally, pre-battle layout and military action times couldn't be said. However, apart from this, the weapons, troop strength, training, and characteristics of both the enemy and us were all content of the pre-battle mobilization. These things, which were treated as secrets in other armies, were things to be spoken about openly in the the People's Liberation Army's mobilization tradition.

According to the online debates Chen Ke had seen, as well as the literature and comments provided by various parties in the debates, all claimed that the Beiyang Army's infantry aiming and shooting training was extremely poor. Truly, without investigation, there is no right to speak; Chen Ke finally became convinced that this comment was correct. This could be inferred from the Beiyang Army ammunition inventory data collected by the People's Party intelligence personnel. The quantity of bullets used by the Beiyang Army for soldier live-fire shooting in a year was less than 20 rounds.

One must know that in the Eighth Route Army era, even if the number of bullets per soldier in each battle was only 5, the Eighth Route Army attached extra importance to basic shooting technique training. For example, the gun-holding posture involved hanging bricks on the muzzle. Moreover, the Eighth Route Army engaged in tens of thousands of company-level battles during the eight-year War of Resistance. The number of times each soldier fired in actual combat each year was not just five. It was not uncommon for elite troops who fought many battles to fire hundreds of bullets a year. This not only spawned a large number of elite marksmen but also allowed the infantry squad and platoon tactics of the later PLA era to fully mature.

But the Beiyang Army did not have thousands or tens of thousands of actual battles every year. In the intelligence collected by the People's Party intelligence agency, the Beiyang Army also did not have large-scale arduous shooting posture training. The content of Beiyang's training was officers commanding soldiers to charge forward, charge forward.

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army did not have many field troops. The 20,000 troops of the 4407 Division were mostly new recruits, and much of their time was still spent engaging in labor work. Even so, during the half-year reorganization from last year to this year, and the three months of intensive military training, on average, every soldier had fired more than 100 rounds of bullets.

From another angle, one could also see the Beiyang Army's attitude towards live-fire shooting. The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army had specialized gun calibration personnel, and every soldier had specialized gun calibration and shooting training classes. The troops had specialized gun calibration experts and sharpshooters. Warriors who obtained these two titles were the technical backbone of the troops and had to go down daily to train the warriors. The Beiyang Army did not have these two positions, nor were any duties equivalent to these two units found.

In this pre-battle mobilization, these gaps were specifically explained to the officers and soldiers. Therefore, when the Battalion Commander requested the Sharp Knife Company to start digging cover and trenches to exchange fire with the Beiyang Army, the Sharp Knife Company Commander did not refuse. There were not so many taboos on the battlefield either; not only did they use entrenching shovels to dig soil, but the Beiyang Army corpses scattered on the battlefield were also dragged over to pile up as cover. As a result, some Beiyang soldiers who were feigning death were exposed while being dragged.

The warriors of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army were all of peasant origin and frequently engaged in civil engineering work on normal days. They very quickly built up cover and began to purposefully exchange fire with the Beiyang Army.

The bullets fiercely spewed by the Beiyang Army's heavy machine guns rained down on the ground, splashing up spots of mud on the cover, or flesh and blood on the corpses. Duan Zhigui was not a completely incompetent person either; at this time, the routed Beiyang troops also began to attempt to return fire with volleys. Amidst the ping-pong sound of gunfire, Beiyang could be considered to have stabilized its footing for a time.

The Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army no longer attempted to continue attacking. Instead, after returning fire with precise shooting, the casualties of the Beiyang heavy machine gunners, who were the first to encounter the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's focused fire, immediately rose. It could be seen clearly through the binoculars that for every ten shots fired, a certain Beiyang heavy machine gun strongpoint would pause. The Battalion Commander even saw the skulls of several Beiyang gunners being blown off.

Even if the heavy machine guns' shooting accuracy wasn't high, their firepower was fierce, plus there were quite a few Beiyang heavy machine guns. At least seven or eight warriors were injured or killed under the heavy machine gun fire. After first weakening the threat of the Beiyang Army's heavy machine guns, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army warriors dared to show their heads more to start shooting. Now it was the turn of the ordinary Beiyang infantry to suffer.

Beiyang did not have the habit of digging trenches, let alone field trenches. Even if the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army couldn't talk about wiping out an enemy with every bullet, the Beiyang Army, densely packed in front of the train, became excellent targets. The key to the People's Party's Hanyang Type 88 was that it did not use a magazine, but used a stripper clip. This directly led to an increase in the rate of fire.

The warriors of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army each had to carry 100 rounds of ammunition. The Beiyang soldiers opposite were either squatting or standing, completely exposed under the muzzles. The warriors of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army were hiding in cover or even trenches. Although the range of the light machine guns was not far, so they did not join the battle group for the time being, the accuracy of the warriors' aimed fire was simply not something Beiyang could compare with.

As the time of the exchange of fire prolonged, the Beiyang Army's heavy machine gunners suffered heavy losses. At some machine gun positions, people certainly appeared, but they didn't fire. Watching the enemy anxiously fiddling with the heavy machine guns through the binoculars but consistently failing to operate them smoothly, the Battalion Commander already understood that the enemy's machine gunners were almost exhausted.

Not only were the Beiyang Army's machine gunners exhausted, but in the exchange of fire, the Beiyang troops were knocked down one after another. This severely struck the Beiyang Army's morale. Beiyang soldiers constantly fell to the ground, and Beiyang soldiers standing in front of the train constantly slipped behind the train, attempting to rely on the train body for defense. But the train body was not prepared for war at all; it was either too high or too low. Hiding behind it was okay, but wanting to rely on the train to fight became extremely laughable. The Beiyang Army's fire density dropped greatly, which allowed the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army's shooting density to increase greatly.

As one fell and the other rose, while thoroughly suppressing the Beiyang Army's heavy machine gun fire, the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army also suppressed the Beiyang Army's infantry. The battle completely presented a one-sided situation.

Such a battle situation did not last too long either. When gunshots also rang out from the west of the Beiyang Army, the Battalion Commander knew that the battle situation was completely irreversible.

Sure enough, even braving the fierce fire of the Workers' and Peasants' Revolutionary Army, some Beiyang soldiers still fled over from the other side. Or some Beiyang soldiers simply hid under the train and dared not show their heads again.

With the sounding of the charge bugle from the opposite side, the Battalion Commander ordered, "Slow down the rate of fire, aim before shooting, don't accidentally injure our own comrades!"