Boom! Boom! Boom!
The deafening roar of artillery echoed again.
Not just mortars.
Even the howitzers in the rear joined the bombardment.
Schmidt was furious.
The enemy had weapons this modern?
Then why hadn't they used them at the start?
Why wait until his men committed to the attack?
Schmidt slammed his fist into the side of a tank.
If he won this battle, he swore he would capture every one of those soldiers and use them for human experiments.
"Pass the order!"
His voice shook with rage.
"Tank regiment, advance! Crush them! Mortars provide cover! Infantry follow! Wipe out those pieces of trash immediately!"
The messenger beside him shuddered and sprinted off.
Twenty minutes later, as the final shell detonated along the defensive line, the tanks began to move.
Steel monsters rolled forward.
Their armor ignored small-arms fire completely.
Unless heavy artillery reduced them to scrap, bullets were meaningless.
The battlefield disappeared into smoke.
The air stank of burned flesh and freshly overturned earth.
Veteran soldiers, long used to life and death, dragged supplies back into the trenches.
Under squad leaders' commands, they pulled long cylindrical attachments from their belts and fixed them onto their rifles.
Flat muzzles gained strange new extensions.
They looked wrong.
Observers in the rear leaned forward.
This was the "surprise" Howard had mentioned.
The trenches were packed with grenades.
Round ones.
Old stick grenades.
It looked like everyone was ready to die together with the Nazis.
"Three hundred meters!"
"Two hundred!"
"One hundred and fifty!"
The colonel commanding the defense had narrowly avoided enemy snipers and was still standing strong.
"Pay attention! Ready!"
"Load grenades!"
"Prepare to fire!"
Elite soldiers pulled pins, slid grenades into the cylindrical launchers, and braced themselves.
"Fifty meters!"
The colonel's blood surged.
"Fire!"
"Blast them! Hit them hard!"
Eleven tanks charging together.
If their tracks were destroyed, they were nothing but coffins.
Using mechanical launchers in single-shot mode, bullet propulsion amplified the throwing force.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Grenade launchers mounted onto AK-47s extended throwing range from twenty meters to a full hundred.
The soldiers stayed safely inside the trenches.
One elite battalion numbered around five hundred men.
If one grenade wasn't enough, it didn't matter.
There were hundreds more.
Five hundred grenades launched at once.
The sight was indescribable.
Above the tanks, a storm of fire descended.
Grenades.
Stick grenades.
A dense, black rain that filled the sky.
Boom!!!
Crash!!
Explosions chained together.
Most detonations hit around the tanks.
Tracks shattered.
Shockwaves crushed the crews inside.
Steel cracked.
Earth erupted.
Hundreds of explosions churned the battlefield into dust.
Smoke swallowed everything.
The Nazi infantry pulled on gas masks and kept advancing.
They reached the Czech lines faster than expected.
But this was where the AK-47 showed its true value.
At close range, aiming wasn't even necessary.
A simple sweep was enough.
Rat-tat-tat!
Without waiting for orders, soldiers detached the launchers and opened fire.
Thwack. Thwack.
Bullets tore through flesh.
Screams overlapped.
Steel rang.
The battlefield became pure chaos.
The brutality was enough to terrify cowards into madness or forge trembling recruits into veterans in minutes.
Blood and fire baptized them all.
The battle dragged on for an hour.
For the first time, Nazi troops were forced to retreat under command.
Even in retreat, their discipline held.
Overeager Czech soldiers who pursued suffered heavy losses.
The strongest army of World War II wasn't a joke.
Normally, they would have crushed the Czech forces with ease.
This time, they'd encountered something new.
They hadn't adapted fast enough.
Once Nazi staff analyzed these weapons, rifles alone wouldn't stop planes and heavy artillery.
The absence of Luftwaffe support didn't mean it didn't exist.
They simply hadn't expected resistance in a place as small as Košice.
A prepared Nazi army would flatten the city.
Disabled tanks.
Bullet-riddled bodies.
Earth torn apart repeatedly by artillery.
The battlefield recorded everything.
War correspondents in the distance captured every moment.
For the first time, the Nazi army-pampered by Britain and France-had taken a serious blow.
Casualties approached a full regiment.
Nearly three thousand men.
For an army that had been unstoppable since last year, it was humiliating.
Not fatal.
But painful.
At the same time, the first appearance of the AK-47 on a real battlefield stunned military strategists.
Firepower comparable to heavy machine guns.
Mobility of a rifle.
Soldiers could relocate freely.
As long as ammunition held, fire suppression could be established anywhere.
In 1938, the most powerful machine gun available was the SG-43.
On raw output, a wheeled machine gun still surpassed the AK-47.
But it was slow.
Clumsy.
One grenade usually ended it.
Gulp.
Officers in the rear swallowed hard.
No one expected grenades and assault rifles alone to stop a Nazi vanguard supported by eleven tanks.
If Czech soldiers could do this-
What if Americans used them?
Every nation believed its soldiers were the best.
Good enough to fight ten men each.
Howard was stunned.
He'd invested because he believed the weapon could change local engagements.
He hadn't expected it to exceed expectations by this much.
His investment in Ryden was too small.
Dangerously small.
If competitors found out, they'd try to steal him immediately.
He needed to offer incentives.
A routine defensive battle in Košice had become the perfect advertisement.
Once the reports went out, the world would know within days.
Orders would pour in.
Capital would follow.
Expansion would be inevitable.
Schmidt hurled his cap to the ground.
In the sunset, the flag still flying over Czech lines seemed to mock him.
For someone desperate to climb the ranks, this defeat hurt badly.
One loss wasn't fatal.
But it was enough to catch the Führer's attention.
The first failure.
The first setback.
And the entire Nazi high command would be watching.
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