novelSusiti Chapter 197 The Starting Point of Bandit Suppression
Chapter 197 The Starting Point of Bandit Suppression
Ottoman border guard captain Qasim was in a bad mood.
Heavy snow was about to close the mountain pass, but his "harassment force" had lost nearly a hundred men in just over a month.
These were all his elite troops, veterans who had survived the border conflicts with the Russians.
How could they have "disappeared" in those Greek villages?
Qasim didn't believe it. He thought it must be the regular Greek army disguised in civilian clothes, secretly plotting something.
He decided to personally lead a large-scale "sweep" to completely destroy the resistance forces around Black Earth Village and teach the Greeks a bloody lesson.
This time, he assembled a force of nearly two hundred men, well-equipped, and even brought two detachable light mountain guns.
He wanted to use overwhelming firepower to wipe those villages that dared to resist, along with all the living creatures inside, off the map!
The night was as deep as ever.
Qasim's troops, like black serpents, stealthily made their way along the dry valley toward Blackwater Village.
Everything went exactly as he planned.
The Greeks were unprepared; he had traversed this route more than once and had never failed.
However, just as his vanguard troops stepped into what appeared to be an ordinary open area, a sudden change occurred!
"call out--!"
A sharp whistling sound rang out from the night sky.
It was a signal rocket with its tail ignited, trailing a long trail of flame as it soared into the sky, exploding into a blinding red ball of light in the pitch-black night.
"Oh no! It's a trap! We've been exposed!"
Qasim's expression changed drastically; he immediately realized something was wrong.
"Everyone scatter! Prepare for battle!"
However, his order came a step too late.
"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"
A barrage of gunfire, as dense as popping beans, rang out almost simultaneously from the hillsides on both sides of the valley!
Hundreds of flames spewed from the darkness, forming a crossfire network with no blind spots, instantly engulfing the Ottoman soldiers crammed into the valley!
The bullets flew like a storm, tearing through the air with sharp whistling sounds.
The limping engineering instructor crouched behind a bunker on the hillside, calmly watching the Ottoman soldiers in disarray in the valley below. Beside him, the young villager who had been asking him how to oil his rifle just yesterday was now red-eyed, pulling the bolt again and again. "Don't be greedy! Fire three shots, then change positions! Remember, we are ghosts!"
He growled and pulled the trigger, and an Ottoman officer wielding a saber fell to the ground. The whistling of bullets tearing through the air, the roars of his comrades, the screams of the enemy, mingled with the thick smell of gunpowder, made him feel as if he had returned to the bloody battlefield years ago where he had lost a leg. But this time, he was no longer fighting alone; behind him were hundreds, even thousands, of awakened hunters.
"Take cover! Find cover!"
Qasim roared hoarsely and collapsed behind a rock in a sorry state.
His well-trained soldiers, after the initial panic, quickly began to seek cover and return fire towards the flickering flames on the hillside.
"Hilltop guns! Quick! Set up the hilltop guns! Bomb those two hills flat!" Qasim roared, his eyes red.
However, just as the soldiers responsible for carrying the mountain gun parts had gathered together to prepare for assembly...
"BOOM!!"
A deafening roar came from beneath their feet!
Those were landmines that had been planted long ago!
The massive explosion sent more than a dozen soldiers, along with the valuable mountain gun parts, flying into the air!
Amidst the flames and thick smoke, severed limbs and remains flew everywhere, creating a scene resembling hell.
Qasim's heart sank to the bottom.
His once-proud firepower advantage vanished in the very first minute of the battle!
"Charge! Charge up the hill! Fight them to the death!"
Desperate, the Ottoman soldiers, led by their officers, began a fearless charge up the hillside.
However, what awaited them was a death feast that had been prepared in advance.
The soldier at the very front tripped over an inconspicuous vine.
In an instant, a huge net hidden in the grass descended from the sky, trapping him and his seven or eight companions inside.
Before they could even struggle, dozens of sharpened javelins were hurled from the woods on the hillside!
The screams lasted only a few seconds.
On the other side, a group of soldiers struggled to climb up the slippery mud.
Suddenly, a muffled rumbling sound came from the hillside.
Dozens of massive trees, each as thick as a person's embrace, were pushed down from a great height, carrying immense force as they crushed down like a war chariot!
The charging troops were instantly smashed, their bones broken and their flesh mangled.
From the very beginning, this battle was not an evenly matched contest.
This was a meticulously planned, one-sided massacre.
The three militia groups of Heishui Village, Shiqiao Village, and Hongtupo Village, with nearly 500 villagers, under the coordination of their respective "spark" instructors, turned this river valley where their ancestors had lived for generations into a huge graveyard tailor-made for the invaders.
The military skills that the Ottoman soldiers were so proud of appeared laughable and powerless in the face of such primitive and barbaric traps and saturation attacks.
Their numbers were infinitely diluted in the vast mountainous region.
Their marksmanship is useless if they cannot lock onto a target.
Fear spread wildly among the surviving soldiers.
They finally realized that they were not facing any "peasants" at all.
Instead, they were a group of the most terrifying hunters who had lived in these mountains for hundreds of years!
They are the prey!
The battle lasted less than an hour.
As the gunfire gradually subsided, the entire Dry River Valley had become a living hell.
Nearly two hundred elite Ottoman soldiers, more than one hundred and fifty in total, fell forever on this foreign land.
Under the desperate protection of his guards, Qasim led the remaining few dozen men and fled the Valley of Death in a sorry state.
His face no longer held any arrogance or contempt, only the fear of surviving a catastrophe and a deep-seated confusion.
He doesn't understand.
How did all of this happen?
When the message reached the Ottoman Empire's border command, Commander-in-Chief Talatpasha was having his dinner.
After listening to his adjutant's stammering battle report, the general, known for his ruthlessness, dropped his silver knife onto the expensive carpet with a clatter.
"Completely wiped out? Qasim led two hundred men! Two hundred elite troops! You're telling me they were all wiped out?!"
His roar sent shivers down the spines of the entire command post.
"How many troops did the Greeks send? One division? Or two divisions?!"
The adjutant's face was worse than that of a dead man.
"General... according to... according to the survivors' reports... they didn't see a single Greek regular army soldier..."
"All they saw... were... farmers..."
"Peasants?" Talat Pasha exclaimed as if he'd heard the biggest joke of the century. He grabbed his adjutant by the collar. "You're telling me my two hundred battle-hardened veterans were wiped out by a bunch of peasants with hoes?"
He couldn't understand it, nor could he accept it.
This was beyond his understanding of military matters.
Meanwhile, in the royal palace in Athens.
Metaxas is giving his final report to Constantine.
"Your Highness, the 'Battle of the Dry Valley' has completely destroyed all of the enemy's manpower on the Thessalian border. According to intelligence, the Ottoman Empire has fully withdrawn its harassment forces."
His face showed an undisguised excitement and admiration.
"We succeeded. We won an impossible victory with minimal cost. This people's war will be recorded in the annals of Greek history."
Constantine simply listened calmly.
He walked to the window and looked at the myriad lights of Athens.
The initial victory in this "ghost war" was not merely military.
More importantly, it ignited the confidence and fighting spirit of the entire Greek nation.
Countless ordinary heroes emerged in this war.
There was a shepherd boy in the dry valley who was the first to sound the signal rocket.
There was a village chief's wife who led the women in preparing a night's worth of military rations for the frontline militia.
And then there was the old hunter Elias, whose marksmanship was divine; he single-handedly killed seven enemies.
Their story was featured prominently in The Daily Telegraph and turned into songs by traveling poets, which were sung in every city, village, and tavern in Greece.
The concept that "it is everyone's responsibility to protect our homeland" has taken root in people's hearts for the first time.
But Constantine knew this was just the beginning.