Chapter 316 Shen Billy

Hello everyone, let me explain:

The review time for pictures with portraits is often longer, which may involve the issue of portrait rights. Sometimes it takes more than ten hours to see it the next day. This is the case with the two pictures yesterday. I didn’t miss them.

If you didn’t see them at the time, you will see them when you look back the next day.

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The arrival of the 5th Australian Light Cavalry relieved the pressure on the troops on the defense line.

In order to avoid the problem of incompatibility between the combat habits and tactics of the French and Australian armies, Tijani handed over the trenches on the east side to the Australian army for defense, and he led the French army to defend the trenches on the west side to face the surrounded enemy.

This is not that Tijani handed over the more dangerous enemy’s main attack direction to the Australian army for defense.

The fact is that Tijani believed that the enemies surrounded to the west were more dangerous and more important, and the Australian army could not bear this heavy responsibility, so he made such an arrangement.

"If the enemy gives us two days, it means we must organize a counterattack." Tijani said: "And the best direction of attack is the west. We should do everything we can to force them to surrender, whether it is with the coordination of the fleet or by any other method. In such a battle, we certainly cannot pin our hopes on the Australian army."

Tijani still looked down on them, and there was always a sense of superiority in his words, even though the Australian army performed well on the battlefield.

...

The next morning, the sky was dim.

The artillery fire was still intermittent, that was the bombing of the enemy by the Allied fleet.

Under the command of General Winter, the fleet adopted a rotation bombing system: he divided the battleships into five groups, each with two to three ships, and each group bombed for about four hours.

General Winter believed that this uninterrupted bombing could keep the enemy under pressure, and at the same time, they could not rest, and they might collapse at any time.

Charles thought this was useful, after all, it was better to have bombing than not.

However, when Charles woke up in the early morning and looked in the direction of the enemy with a telescope, he found that all this was in vain: the Ottoman army took advantage of the night to build a trench, and the closest place was only two or three hundred meters away from the French trench.

In order to avoid accidental killing, battleships often concentrated their shells at the farther tip of the "A" angle during bombing.

Tijani also saw this after he got out of the tunnel. He laughed at himself: "They must be laughing at us in the trench, doing useless work and wasting shells all night."

Charles didn't say anything. He put away the telescope and ran along the communication trench to the trench where the Australian army was stationed on the other side.

As expected, the Ottoman army on this side also built trenches to a distance of two or three hundred meters.

Tijani followed and looked in the direction of the enemy, and said unexpectedly: "They are trying to shorten the charge distance!"

"Not only that, General." Charles replied: "They are compressing our living space."

Tijani said "Oh" and understood what Charles meant.

Then he felt a little regretful. He should have sent troops to fight for space with the enemy last night and then dug trenches to advance layer by layer, so that he could accommodate more reinforcements.

But last night, he only thought about how to consolidate the defense line and how to deal with the enemy's charge today.

Charles didn't expect this either. He and Tijani were also trapped in inertial thinking, thinking that the enemy would be the same as yesterday.

But the fact is not the case. The enemy commander is very smart. He used the method of defending instead of attacking to sandwich the French defense line in the middle to prevent it from developing.

"The good news is that the enemy may not attack." Charles judged: "At least not in the next one or two days."

"Why?" Tijani asked.

As soon as he asked the question, he thought of the reason:

The space of the French defense line has been compressed to the extreme, and the troops can no longer be increased. There is no need for the Ottoman army to attack.

Otherwise, the attack during the day will not be successful, and the French troops will be replenished at night, and nothing will change in the end.

It is better to wait for two days, while accumulating strength and waiting for grenades and mortars to arrive, so that the French defense line can be taken down in one fell swoop.

"I understand." Tijani sighed and cursed fiercely: "Damn Germans!"

This must be a method thought up by the Germans. The Ottomans don't know how to fight like this.

Colonel Richard ran over in a panic. He stood respectfully beside Tijani, with self-blame in his tone: "I'm very sorry, General. This is my fault. The sound of the shells covered the enemy's trench construction. We didn't notice that they built a defense line in front of us."

Tijani didn't speak. He couldn't blame Colonel Richard because the same thing happened on the other side. He didn't notice the enemy's movements.

Suddenly, Charles found a not very obvious bright spot on the opposite trench. Charles realized that it was the sunlight reflected from the enemy's telescope lens.

Charles immediately put away the telescope and grabbed the rifle to aim at the bright spot.

Maybe it's a big fish, Charles thought, it should be an officer who is observing the situation in the French trench.

Charles's eyes jumped over the crosshairs and found half of a head wearing a black round hat on the other side. It almost blended into the black background. If it weren't for the bright spot just now, Charles wouldn't have found him at all.

Tijani's eyes searched in the direction of Charles' gun, but he saw nothing. He laughed at himself, is it because I'm old and my eyesight is not good?

Just as Charles was about to pull the trigger, there was a gunshot, and the "black round hat" burst into red and then disappeared.

Charles quickly put away his gun and retracted his head. This shot was not fired by Charles. It was extremely accurate and hit the half of the head that was sticking out accurately at a distance of 300 meters.

Tijani didn't even know the result. He bent down and asked Charles half-doubtfully: "Did you hit it?"

Charles nodded: "Yes, it should be an officer."

Charles turned his eyes to Richard: "Who shot it?"

Richard was stunned and replied: "I'll go and see."

He ran towards the direction of the gunshot with his back bent, and soon brought a soldier.

It was a corporal, about 30 years old. What surprised Charles was that he had a Chinese face.

The corporal stood calmly in front of Charles and reported in English: "Colonel, I fired the gun!"

Charles asked curiously: "Have you been a soldier before?"

"No, Colonel." The corporal replied: "I just joined the army a month ago."

Charles looked at the corporal in confusion. Was that shot a coincidence?

The corporal seemed to understand what Charles meant. He straightened his chest and said with pride: "Colonel, I have been hunting kangaroos in my hometown since I was a teenager, and I have been doing it for more than ten years. Such a target is not difficult for me."

Hunting kangaroos?

Chinese?

Charles thought of a person, a famous sharpshooter during World War I.

"What's your name?" Charles asked.

"Report to the colonel." The corporal replied: "My name is Edward Shen!"

(The picture above shows William Edward Sing (1886-1943), a famous sniper in the Gallipoli battlefield of World War I, also known as Billy Shen, a Chinese-British mixed-race. His father was a vegetable farmer in the suburbs of Shanghai before he immigrated to Australia, and his mother was a nurse who served in the 5th Light Cavalry Regiment of Australia.)