Chapter 557: If Russians Don’t Rush, Are They Even Russians?

Standing before the observation window on the L15's bridge, Morin watched the red markers on the system map shift from their rear positions on the east bank toward the river. To be honest, he truly hadn't expected this...

No, he had anticipated the White Army would launch an offensive, but he hadn't expected them to charge headlong early in the morning the very day after the armored airship arrived.

Should he call them incredibly brave or incredibly reckless?

Or perhaps both...

After all, a rational mind would observe for a day or two, figure out exactly what this new weapon was, and then make a decision. But Denikin and the White Army high command clearly didn't operate on standard logic.

Or, to look at it differently, the Commander-in-Chief of the Southern Army had weighed the pros and cons and still chosen to attack. This meant he possessed supreme confidence in his 140,000-man advantage.

It was a very "Russian" approach... When you believe you have the advantage, not rushing the enemy is simply unbearable.

"Seven crossing points simultaneously..." Morin's gaze swept over the faintly visible columns forming in the depth of the opposite bank. "Looks like they want to drown us in numbers."

Lieutenant Colonel Andreasia, standing nearby, heard this and leaned over to peer down at the river.

"General, should the airship open fire now? If we use the 150mm guns, the enemy is actually within range..."

"No rush. Send an early warning to the ground forces first! Let's not alert them prematurely." Morin's reply was crisp.

Some time later, the seven White Army columns approached their respective crossing points at varying speeds. The fastest groups had already reached the vegetation-covered areas near the riverbank.

Watching these enemies moving like a swarm of ants in the dim morning light, Morin finally gave the order:

"Proceed as planned. Let them get in the water before we strike."

At this moment along the Rzhyshchiv riverbank defense line, the garrison had barely finished manning their positions.

Many Western Rus National Army soldiers scrambled into the trenches still half-asleep and numb.

Yesterday was peaceful. The day before that was peaceful...

Ever since the Saxon artillery arrived and plowed the east bank, the White Army had turtled up in the rear and stopped moving.

So, many assumed today would be no different. Just wait until the sun sets and go back to sleep.

Until an officer's roar carried from one end of the trench to the other.

"Wake the fuck up! Movement across the river!"

"Seriously?"

"Shut up! Ammo checks! Machine gunners to your posts!"

Bearded Andrei's booming voice, much like other hot-tempered NCOs, could be heard hundreds of meters away.

This commander, whose style mirrored Morin's, burst out of his regimental bunker clutching binoculars. Taking the steps two at a time, he vaulted onto an observation post and began surveying the river.

The first wave of White Army troops was still behind the tree line on the east bank, making final preparations...

Ivan was an ordinary soldier in an infantry division of the Southern Army. He had been "conscripted" just three months ago. While he had seen some combat, he had never experienced an offensive of this scale.

The drawing of lots after morning assembly was the worst moment of his life.

First wave.

When the company commander displayed the slip of paper reading "1" to the entire company, Ivan's legs nearly gave out.

The veteran to his left, Mikhail, cursed under his breath. The new recruit to his right, who had just turned eighteen, went pale.

But even so, no one dared run. The barrier troops' machine guns in the rear didn't have eyes.

So Ivan could only follow the men in front of him, hunching over as he jogged down the path toward the riverbank. The dirt beneath his feet was slick with morning dew, threatening to slip out from under him if he wasn't careful.

As he ran, he sneaked a glance up at the sky above the river.

That massive gray monster was still floating overhead, silent.

It hadn't opened fire or made a move; it just hung there... Yet this made Ivan's heart pound even harder.

"Stop looking at the fucking sky! Watch your step!" Mikhail smashed his rifle butt into Ivan's backside from behind.

Ivan ducked his head and quickened his pace.

He could see unknown vegetation dotting the riverbank ahead. Small boats, hidden there under the cover of night, were being dragged out by the vanguard.

Strangely, even at this stage, there was no sign of incoming fire from the opposite bank.

Based on the experience of other units during previous probing crossings, the "Rebels" in the west bank trenches should have started shooting the moment they neared the river.

And those 105mm and 150mm Saxon artillery shells had been the direct source of the east bank White Army's nightmares over the past two days.

But today, the west bank was disturbingly quiet. Even the most obtuse soldier would feel something was wrong.

"Did the Saxons just not spot us?" a recruit asked in a hushed voice.

Mikhail ignored him, but his expression was grim.

As a veteran who had survived this long since the old Imperial Army days, he knew one truth deeply: If the enemy doesn't fire on the battlefield, they either haven't seen you, or they are deliberately letting you in.

But with that massive thing floating overhead, Mikhail refused to believe the enemy hadn't spotted them!

Ahead, Ivan slung his rifle back over his shoulder and followed the others into the knee-deep river water.

Working together, several men shoved a small skiff capable of holding six or seven people down the bank. The wooden hull scraped against the riverbed mud before successfully floating.

"Board the boats! Hurry up and board!"

An officer urged them from behind. When Ivan stepped in, the boat rocked violently, nearly throwing him into the water.

Once seated securely, he grabbed an oar and, along with the others, began rowing for his life.

Just as the first wave of crossing troops entered the water, the first artillery shot rang out from the White Army's rear positions.

A salvo from 76.2mm field guns tore through the morning air. The shells flew across the river and slammed into the forward positions of the west bank defenders. Dirt and splintered wood flew into the air, causing the National Army soldiers in the trenches to reflexively hunker down.

The bombardment came fast and fierce. Judging by the sound, at least two artillery regiments were firing simultaneously.

The artillery possessed by the Southern Army... or rather, the South Rus Volunteer Army, was basically standard-issue equipment from the old Imperial era.

It was primarily divided into two calibers: 76.2mm and 122mm.

The M1900/02 76.2mm field gun was the most widely equipped artillery piece in the old Greater Rus Empire, with roughly 11,000 produced. Now, most were carved up among the various Rus factions.

This gun, which entered service in the early 20th century, was essentially a knockoff of the Saxon Empire's 77mm field gun. It boasted a rate of fire of 10-12 rounds per minute, a maximum range of over 13,000 meters, and an effective range of over 8,500 meters.

When initially deployed, its performance placed it in the top tier of similar weapons, but now, it was beginning to fall behind the times.

As for the other, the M1910 122mm howitzer, it was the final artillery piece adopted by the old Imperial Artillery. In some units, the civil war broke out shortly after they received the equipment.

Consequently, the number of these medium-caliber guns was relatively low.

Right now, the 76.2mm field guns that fired first were continuously raining shells onto the west bank defending positions.

Morin watched clearly from the airship. The White Army's 76.2mm shells had minimal effect on the positions reinforced by the Combat Engineer Company.

The craters they blasted weren't deep, only kicking up topsoil. The main structures of the trenches didn't budge an inch.

"Have to say, their artillery is definitely outdated. This really doesn't feel very 'Russian'..." Morin muttered to himself.

Beside him, Lieutenant Colonel Andreasia ordered the armored airship to climb higher, preventing a wildly unlucky hit from a stray White Army shell.

Regardless of the bombardment's effectiveness, the White Army artillery was indeed covering the first wave's crossing.

Under the cover of the guns, more and more White Army soldiers burst from the bushes and riverbank vegetation across all seven directions on the east bank.

Seeing that the friendly forces in the first wave were nearing the middle of the river without being attacked, they redoubled their efforts, dragging out hidden boats and clumsily shoving them into the water.

Meanwhile, the target of their attack—the west bank of the Dnieper River—was frighteningly quiet. Aside from the continuous explosions of their own artillery shells, the defenders hadn't fired a single bullet.

This only heightened the unease of the White Army's first-wave soldiers rowing furiously.

Ivan felt it too, but watching the opposite bank draw closer brought a sliver of hope to his heart.

Suddenly, Mikhail cursed under his breath behind him. Ivan looked back; the veteran was staring intently at the armored airship overhead.

Ivan looked up while still rowing, realizing it was ascending.

"Row, you bastards!" Mikhail shrieked. "Row your fucking asses off! That thing is dodging artillery—take this chance and get across!"

Before the veteran finished speaking, the west bank suddenly "lit up."

Muzzle flashes erupted simultaneously across the entire defensive line.

Ivan's ears only registered a continuous string of shhh-shhh-shhh... crack-crack-crack, before the boat to his left was shredded to pieces, men and all.

The enemy's heavy machine guns had opened fire.

The density of the firepower pouring from the west bank was entirely incomparable to previous minor probing attacks.

Apart from a few ferries brought up from downstream that had additional armor plating, the vast majority of the White Army's crossing vessels were small wooden skiffs. Facing this sudden onslaught, these skiffs offered zero protection to their occupants.

Ivan flattened himself against the bottom of the boat, lying in a mix of pooled water and other men's blood. He didn't know if the other rowers were dead or wounded. The boat began spinning in circles on the river.

Bullets struck the water, kicking up plumes as dense as a torrential downpour.

"We're dead..."

Ivan curled himself as tightly as possible into the bloody water, listening to the screams and the sound of splintering wood echoing all around him.

Almost simultaneously, gunfire and artillery roared across every riverbank position from Rzhyshchiv upstream and down.

The three White Army crossing columns heading directly for Rzhyshchiv took the first brutal hit.

In the sector commanded by Bearded Andrei, water-cooled heavy machine guns set up in interlocking fields of fire—a tactic learned from Morin back in Sevilla—opened up simultaneously. The interlocking fire wove a net of lead that blanketed the clustered boats on the river.

At this moment, the boats were positioned exactly in the middle of the river, flanked by hundreds of meters of open water on both sides, utterly devoid of cover.

As the first sweep of bullets raked across, men on almost every boat were hit and collapsed.

Laying in his observation post, the scene through Andrei's binoculars brought a complex expression to the bearded man's face.

The White Army soldiers possessed virtually no means of fighting back.

Trapped on the water, the only thing they could do was row back as hard as they could... but under the ferocious firepower from the west bank, that was clearly pointless.

Less than twenty minutes after the defenders unleashed their first volley, barely any boats were still moving on the river facing Rzhyshchiv.

Most of the small skiffs had either capsized or were spinning aimlessly downstream in the current.

Scattered silhouettes floated on the water's surface; some struggled, but most were still.

This stretch of the Dnieper River was slowly turning a thin, reddish-brown.

Meanwhile, on the bridge of the L15 armored airship.

Morin watched the system map. The red unit markers for the three crossing assaults heading straight for Rzhyshchiv rapidly turned gray, and some were simply crossed out, indicating the units had lost combat effectiveness or had been completely annihilated. ℴ

"The three frontal columns have been blocked," he muttered to himself, shifting his gaze north and south.

The other four crossing points chosen by the White Army were distributed several kilometers upstream and downstream of Rzhyshchiv. The defensive strength there was indeed thin... but Morin had never planned to rely on the garrison to handle them.

"Lieutenant Colonel Andreasia."

"Here."

"Turn the airship, heading fifteen degrees south. I need a better view."

"Understood."

The L15 slowly adjusted its heading, its massive hull carving an arc through the sky.

Looking down, Morin's attention shifted to the two crossing points to the south. The White Army boats there had already crossed the midpoint of the river.

Because Morin had meticulously refined the operational plans with Rundstedt and his staff, the Instruction Brigade possessed numerous contingencies for various scenarios. Acting like trigger mechanisms, when the White Army made a specific move, the Instruction Brigade's commanders at all levels would execute their respective commands based on the contingencies.

Thus, at least for now, Morin didn't need to directly intervene in unit operations, micromanaging things like "shift the heavy machine gun nest 50 meters left." His job now was to watch from the air as his troops fought their own battles.

This feeling was truly exhilarating. It was like toggling "auto-battle" in a video game; he only needed to step in at critical moments.

About four kilometers downstream from Rzhyshchiv, at one of the White Army first echelon's southern crossing points.

The river narrowed here to just over three hundred meters, with both banks shielded by low woods.

The Southern Army had committed a full-strength infantry battalion as the first wave here, with another regiment massing behind them.

Compared to the slaughter of the three crossing points facing Rzhyshchiv, the situation here was much better.

The west bank defense line here was held by a single company-sized unit of the Western Rus National Army; the firepower density was nowhere near that of the Rzhyshchiv front.

Therefore, when the White Army boats rowed to the middle of the river, despite taking rifle and light machine gun fire, the entire river surface couldn't be completely locked down.

The leading White Army captain stood at the bow of a larger ferry. He saw several small boats had already hit the shore ahead of him, and soldiers were jumping into waist-deep water to wade to the bank.

"Excellent, keep going! Keep charging!"

As he yelled, a bullet whipped past his head and punched through the shoulder of a soldier behind him.

The soldier screamed and tumbled into the water, but no one moved to fish him out.

"Ignore him, row! Row your fucking asses off! Once we hit the shore, we win!"

The captain's urging worked. Over a dozen more boats reached the shore in the next minute, and roughly seventy or eighty White Army soldiers sloshed through the muddy shallows onto the west bank.

The defending company across from them kept firing, but against dispersed, landing enemies, a single company's firepower was clearly insufficient.

"Haha! We made it!"

When the White Army captain leaped from his boat, the water reached his thighs. Pistol raised, he waded through the final dozen meters of shallows and stepped onto the soft mud of the west bank.

The soldiers behind him were coming ashore one after another. Some sought cover; others, following combat doctrine, searched for spots to set up machine guns.

Though casualties during the crossing were significant, the first step of the landing was complete.

Crouching behind a shattered tree stump, the White Army captain began counting his men.

Out of the sixty-plus men in the first wave, roughly forty made it ashore. The rest had either died in the river or been washed away after taking hits.

Over twenty more boats were currently crossing. If they could get two or three more waves across, they could establish a solid bridgehead...

But right then, he heard the sound of engines approaching from behind the low woods to the west.

Over the past two days, that sound had become something that turned the faces of everyone in the Southern Army pale. The roar of engines grew closer, accompanied by the high-pitched squeal of tracks crushing the earth and components grinding together.

The White Army captain peeked out from behind the stump. At the edge of the tree line, over two hundred meters away, three half-track armored vehicles burst from the woods, fanned out in a line.

Their sloped gray frontal armor reflected the cold metallic gleam of the morning light. The machine guns mounted on their roofs, protected by gun shields, swung around and aimed down at the riverbank.

Then came the fourth, the fifth...

Six vehicles in total.

The White Army captain let out a garbled curse, then fired his pistol toward the half-tracks, completely ignoring the fact that his sidearm couldn't possibly reach that far.

"Fire! Fire! Shoot those vehicles!"

His order was obeyed, but not for long...

Because the moment the first half-track's machine gun opened fire, the White Army soldiers on the beach, who had just landed and hadn't even had time to dig proper cover, began dropping in swathes.

Right behind the half-tracks came the dismounting infantry.

After the half-tracks completed their initial suppressive volley, agile Instruction Brigade soldiers vaulted from behind the armored vehicles, advancing in squads to mop up the surviving White Army soldiers on the beach.

The White Army captain was fortunate enough to survive the initial burst. Grazed on the hip by shrapnel, he rolled into a puddle near the river's edge.

Mud and blood smeared his face. He lay perfectly still, playing dead.

When the gunfire thinned slightly, he cracked one eye open to peek.

The boats still crossing the river had begun turning back. On some heavily damaged boats unable to row, White Army soldiers simply abandoned ship, diving into the water and swimming desperately toward the east bank.

But the machine guns on the armored vehicles didn't care if you were on a boat or in the water. The sweeping bullets churned the water's surface into a line of geysers, chasing down the swimming figures.

However, this firing soon ceased. The White Army captain noticed the enemy only seemed to target the boats still attempting to cross.

If soldiers abandoned the attack and fell into the water, the armored vehicles seemingly spared them.

Realizing this, the captain gritted his teeth. Ignoring the stinging pain in his side, he rolled over, dove into the river, and began swimming toward the east bank.

Simultaneously, aboard the armored airship, Morin nodded to Lieutenant Colonel Andreasia.

"Have the 150mm guns commence targeting the enemy's second wave staging areas on the east bank."

"Understood." Lieutenant Colonel Andreasia turned and issued the order.

The twelve single-mount 150mm guns beneath the belly of the L15 rotated, their muzzles pointing toward the White Army's second-wave staging areas on the east bank.

This was the final form of the "Lilienthal-class Armored Transport Assault Airship." Though it sacrificed some cargo capacity, its fire support for assault troops was massively enhanced.

At least they would never again encounter a situation where assault troops fought tooth and nail on the ground while a massive airship overhead could only provide support with machine guns and autocannons...

"Fire!"

Muffled thuds echoed high in the sky. Twelve 150mm high-explosive shells arced down toward the east bank; the delayed sound of explosions drifted back a few seconds later.

After the airship fired a few spotting rounds, the 150mm attacks grew increasingly precise, ultimately raining directly onto the White Army staging areas.

The shrapnel kill radius of a 150mm HE shell was enormous. In densely packed staging areas, a single shell wiped out a huge swath of men.

Those within a dozen or twenty meters of the impact point were thrown into the air by the shockwave, while those further out were struck by shrapnel and collapsed.

Almost simultaneously with the airship opening fire, the Artillery Instruction Regiment in the rear positions received correction data from the artillery observation balloons.

105mm and 150mm shells began pouring systematically onto the east bank.

A large portion fell on the White Army artillery positions. Under the watchful eyes of the balloon observers, the positions of those 76.2mm field guns were quickly pinpointed.

The Artillery Instruction Regiment currently utilized the Saxon Imperial Army's latest artillery system. From reconnaissance targeting to fire correction, every step was a tier above the White Army artillerymen trained under the old Empire's methods.

After the first round of counter-battery fire, at least three White Army artillery company positions on the east bank fell silent.

The remaining White Army artillery scrambled to relocate.

Meanwhile, the brigade aviation unit scrambled from the newly built field airfield not far from the L15's platform.

When Richthofen and Immelmann's two-ship element arrived over Rzhyshchiv, they immediately joined the attack on the river and the White Army forces on the ground.

Under the dual onslaught of aerial and ground firepower, the Southern Army's first wave of seven forced crossings... collapsed across the entire line in less than an hour.