Dawn broke. The mountain ridges to the south and the towering mountains of Nepal to the north were illuminated unusually brightly. The Siliguri Corridor, situated between the two mountains, was hidden in the shadows of the mountains on both sides, appearing extremely dim.

It wasn't until the buzzing of propeller planes came from the sky that the British troops on the Siliguri Corridor defense line immediately became alert. The Chinese Air Force had already dived down, launching an attack on the defense line on the ground.

Facing the Chinese Air Force, the British army did not sit idle. Seeing Chinese fighter planes change their previous practice of high-altitude reconnaissance and bombing to diving down for bombing and strafing, many anti-aircraft gun positions on the defense line pulled off their gun covers and opened fire fiercely at the Chinese Air Force fighter planes.

Soon, the fuselage of a Chinese fighter plane shook, and it quickly pulled level from its dive. Not long after, thick smoke billowed from the junction of the wing and the fuselage of this fighter plane; the fuel line had likely been pierced. This fighter plane could only drag its injured body and fly back towards the Chinese positions.

Another fighter plane was hit repeatedly, the thick smoke billowing from its fuselage mixed with flames. The plane had lost control, tracing a helpless curve, and plunged headlong into the British defense line positions.

Seeing the air defense system taking effect, many nearby British soldiers cheered in the trenches. Having been suppressed by the Chinese Air Force for so long, they could finally vent their frustration; how could they not be happy? These British soldiers stared at the battle between the sky and the ground, unable to stop praying that God would help the British air defense troops win.

However, planes were aircraft with speeds exceeding 200 kilometers per hour after all, flying over 50 meters per second. After the Chinese Air Force discovered the British air defense fire points, they immediately chose to avoid them. The rotation speed of anti-aircraft machine guns could not keep up with the speed of the planes. Although the subsequent firing was fierce, it no longer posed the previous threat.

Less than a minute later, British soldiers closer to the heavy artillery group behind the British defense line heard the whistling of shells breaking through the air above their heads. Officers immediately shouted loudly: "Take cover!" and were the first to drill into the bombproof shelters.

The British army was, after all, a powerful force that had participated in many bloody battles in the Great War in Europe. Under the command of officers, the soldiers used both hands and feet to drill into bombproof shelters. Immediately, they felt the mountains shake and the earth move, just like riding on a wild horse. The soil above the bombproof shelter was shaken down in showers. The heavy artillery group of the Republic National Defense Force began a duel with the British heavy artillery group.

It was 7:00 AM. Division Commander Yu Cen had been awake for two hours. He looked at the sand table calmly, listening to the staff department nearby using the radio broadcasting system to communicate with the troops preparing to attack via walkie-talkies.

Even though the radio communication system used by the troops was produced by the same manufacturer as the domestic civilian broadcasting system and was not a military-industrial product; even though the current wireless walkie-talkies were bulky and heavy, and battalion-level walkie-talkies required particularly strong signal corpsmen to carry them while moving; even though the failure rate of walkie-talkies would increase with the intensity of shocks received during movement; even though the transmission rate of human voice was only 1-5 bytes per second, and required training to ensure precise understanding of vocabulary—Yu Cen still felt incomparably reassured in his heart.

In the past, troop command relied on field telephones and radios. Once the battle started, it relied on the regimental commander to exert his own battlefield command ability. On a battlefield where the situation changed rapidly, the division headquarters' ability to grasp the battlefield was too low.

Now battalion-level combat units could contact the rear at any time via walkie-talkies. Of course, the division headquarters would not bypass the regiment headquarters because of this. Only in compelling emergency situations would the division headquarters directly command battalion-level combat units. But the division headquarters could already understand within a very short time what positions each battalion had arrived at and what combat actions were being carried out.

And it wasn't just the division headquarters that felt relaxed; the corps headquarters and army group headquarters could similarly obtain information at high speed. The integrated information was then distributed in batches to the corps and division headquarters through the latest electronic equipment, allowing division-level units to obtain a lot of information about the entire battlefield extremely quickly.

Although this system was very rough and could only play a comprehensive combat role in fixed battle lines like the current one at this stage, and required a large number of well-trained engineering technicians responsible for information editing, checking, and transmission, Major General Yu Cen was an optimist like most of his comrades. He believed that since the problem of existence had been solved, as long as technology was iterated and updated, such an efficient battlefield command system would definitely be applied in more and wider combat scenarios.

Intelligence coming from the 4th Army Group Staff Department was marked one by one on the sand table by the division staff officers. Yu Cen saw the opposite British artillery positions, position transport hubs, air defense positions, and defensive positions gradually becoming clear.

The greatest threat to the attacker was the opponent's heavy artillery group. The Chinese Air Force gathered 360 fighter planes in this campaign, divided into six teams, continuously attacking the British army. The Army's artillery group was also cooperating closely with the Air Force, striving to make the heavy artillery group behind the British defense line lose combat capability.

To make an opponent's heavy gun lose combat effectiveness on the battlefield, one did not need one's own shells to accurately hit the opponent's gun body and thoroughly destroy the gun barrel. The gun barrel of artillery was indeed very important, but without artillery operators and transport personnel, without the artillery's aiming system, having an intact gun barrel was meaningless. To destroy artillerymen and transport soldiers, and destroy the artillery's aiming system, it was enough for just one Chinese 120mm artillery shell to explode within 10 meters of a British 150mm artillery piece.

Less than half an hour later, the British artillery fire began to falter. Inside the defense line headquarters, telephones rang one after another. Because calls couldn't get through, those signal soldiers ran on their two legs. When they arrived outside the headquarters panting, they found the entrance already crowded with other signal soldiers waiting to deliver messages.

Inside the British headquarters were humans after all; they could only listen to messages one by one. With so many messages being delivered simultaneously, the headquarters simply couldn't accept so much information. Even the information the British headquarters had already obtained made huge fear linger in the hearts of the Commander and Chief of Staff.

Britain did not lack heavy artillery, nor did China. After more than a year of road building and transport, the number of heavy guns on both sides of the Siliguri Corridor was around 300.

The British air defense firepower indeed effectively threatened the Chinese Air Force, damaging or shooting down over a dozen Chinese fighter planes in a short time. However, to the British army's astonishment, the remaining Chinese fighter planes seemed to ignore death, continuing to carry out attacks amidst British air defense fire. At the same time, Chinese artillerymen also began bombarding under the guidance of the Chinese Air Force.

Even if the British army again adopted the method of releasing smoke to provide cover, the Chinese Air Force adopted a close-range attack combat method. Even if the accuracy of bombs was still insufficient, machine guns on fighter planes swept across British gun positions, still beating the British artillerymen and troops transporting artillery into flying flesh and blood.

The bombing, strafing, and artillery guidance of the Chinese Air Force caused the British heavy artillery positions to suffer a catastrophic disaster. In just half an hour, it was confirmed that more than 80 artillery pieces had lost combat capability. The remaining artillery was being moved desperately; not many heavy guns remained that could continue to fight.

If the situation continued to deteriorate like this, the British defense line would have to rely on built fortifications to withstand the attacks of the Chinese heavy artillery group and infantry. Based on the experience of British officers who had participated in the Great War in Europe, the battle had already begun to develop towards a level of despair.

When the Chinese heavy artillery group began to bombard the minefields and barbed wire positions at the front of the British defense line, Yu Cen felt the time for attack had arrived. Just as he was preparing to give the order, the headquarters' 'Attack Order' also arrived. This made Yu Cen feel a little unhappy in his heart. In the past, the thrill of issuing attack orders to thousands of troops was enjoyed by Yu Cen alone. Now Yu Cen had to note that in the Corps Headquarters behind him and the Army Group Headquarters sat a group of generals whose sensitivity to war and grasp of timing were above Yu Cen's.

"Attack!" Yu Cen ordered. The staff department immediately transmitted the order down. Just when Yu Cen estimated the order had just been distributed to the grassroots units, the shelling weakened at a clearly discernible speed. At this time, the British artillerymen were too busy looking after themselves under the joint strangulation of the Chinese Air Force and artillery. Presumably, this brief pause was to make time for the infantry to attack, and the National Defense Force artillerymen were also quickly shifting gun positions, preparing for the next round of shelling.

Yu Cen walked out of the command post and entered the observation post. Through high-power binoculars, he saw those rather light tanks rushing out of the positions, advancing towards the British positions. Following behind the tanks were squads of infantry. The tanks' tracks could flatten potholed roads and also crush out a safe path for the infantry. The tank body could also be seen as a mobile fortification for the infantry squads, blocking light fire attacks from British positions within a certain angle.

These tanks drew heavily from the French Renault light tanks. Yu Cen felt that without British heavy artillery attacks, these tanks should be relatively effective. But he didn't expect that these tanks with freely rotating turrets would advance at a speed the infantry could keep up with while rotating their turrets to bombard British firepower points. Just fighting and driving like this, they crossed the distance between the Chinese and British positions and killed their way into the British defense line. National Defense Force squads followed closely on the path opened up by the tank squads, disappearing into the British defense line.

Yu Cen felt his mind was very clear, but witnessing such an attack being completed with his own eyes, the question 'Is this an exercise?' actually arose for a moment. In the past, National Defense Force infantry had to use very many methods to complete this step. So the National Defense Force mastered civil engineering proficiently, that is, digging communication trenches to approach enemy positions. They mastered various infantry leapfrog tactics—crawling, rolling, jumping—utilizing all available terrain to approach enemy positions.

To rush up straight like this and kill into the British positions was a situation that every commander would only have in their dreams. Now that the dream had shone into reality, Yu Cen felt he indeed needed some time to adjust his mood.

It wasn't just Yu Cen who needed to adjust his mood, nor just the Command of the 4th Army Group of the Republic National Defense Force. British officers at all levels on the British Siliguri Corridor defense line felt dazed. The infantry tactics of the Chinese army were completely different from the tactics the British army was accustomed to.

After Chinese infantry rushed into British positions, they immediately spread out like mercury spilling on the ground. Bullets came from the front, sides, and rear of the British troops at the breach. If encountering attacks from the front and sides was still understandable, attacks from the rear proved that communication between the unit and the troops in the rear bad been cut off. Not only was the unit itself under attack, but the troops behind the unit also had no way to join the battle.

According to British combat regulations, encountering such a situation, the unit needed to hold fast immediately and request reinforcements from higher command departments. First, the command posts of various British regiments and brigades received continuous calls for reinforcements. Soon, British division headquarters also began receiving distress calls.

The command posts of British regiments, brigades, and divisions were all dazed. Where did so many Chinese troops come from? Did they fall from the sky?

If the British command system had a panoramic view of information at this time, they would discover that the total number of Chinese infantry rushing into the British defense line with tanks did not exceed two regiments. Because these two regiments adopted infantry squad and platoon tactics, they had already transformed into nearly 100 combat teams of three men each to start launching attacks.

One platoon, or even two squads, launched multi-angle attacks on a British battalion. There was also a portion of combat teams following behind tanks advancing in depth.

British infantrymen were not cowardly people, and their mastery of the British infantry tactical manual was also very proficient. Precisely because the gap in infantry tactical levels between China and Britain was too large, and the British army was too proficient in British infantry tactics and adhered to them too strictly, the British army shrank themselves into small defensive bodies completely under the control of company and battalion commanders, allowing Chinese infantry squads to infiltrate and attack as they pleased.

On a rapidly changing battlefield, once the opponent seized the initiative, it was very difficult to turn the situation back. Not to mention that various British troops defending themselves and requesting reinforcements from headquarters caused various British headquarters to be overwhelmed and at a loss by this unprecedented information.

It took a lot of time to determine which troops were attacked from front and back and which troops could still move freely. As a result, when a call was made to a unit that hadn't been attacked, the first sentence from the other side after picking up the phone was, "My unit is under siege, requesting support!"

Hearing such news, even the most composed British commander had to panic.

The battlefield was interlinked. Chaos spread from the positions breached by Chinese tanks to the British positions on both sides. The attack pressure on other National Defense Force infantry divisions without tanks to open the way decreased骤ly. When these troops rushed into British positions, a storm sweeping through all British positions beat the more than one hundred thousand British troops into dizziness.

The British Headquarters of the Siliguri Corridor defense line only knew that the Chinese army had attacked and British units were falling into encirclement. From the intelligence currently obtained, the British defense line probably couldn't hold. But why it couldn't hold, and exactly how it couldn't hold, the British Defense Line Headquarters was completely unable to make head or tail of it.

The generals inside the headquarters were at a loss like ants on a hot pan. At this time, the Chief of Staff was doing mental calculations. As the calculation approached the final result, his eyes opened wider and wider. Finally, the Chief of Staff wiped the sweat from his forehead, forcibly suppressed the trembling in his voice, and said quickly in as calm a tone as possible: "Your Excellency Commander, according to reports from the front line, the Chinese army launching the attack this time is definitely not the 200,000 we estimated, it is very likely 600,000!"

The number 600,000 made the air inside the British headquarters congeal for an instant. But after a moment, the expressions of those shocked British generals actually became relieved.

No wonder! No wonder! The British army on this defense line had 150,000 men; 600,000 Chinese troops were four times the British army. After this quantity of Chinese troops rushed in, it could indeed achieve the situation where British frontline combat units instantly fell into being attacked from front and rear.

If 600,000 opposing troops braved fierce British artillery fire and charged in disregarding casualties, all previous incomprehensible battle reports exceeding common sense could receive a completely reasonable explanation.

The despicable Chinese actually gathered so many troops on the battlefield! The British Commander thought of how he actually had to resist 600,000 Chinese troops—four times his own—with 150,000 troops, and strong grief and indignation couldn't help but rise in his heart.

Thinking again, 150,000 against 600,000, and the British defense line had already been breached by the Chinese army. What should be done now...

Just at this moment, new news came. The British Army originally engaged in mountain field battles with the Chinese Army on the two wings outside the defense line could not hold under the ceaseless dive bombing and strafing of the Chinese Air Force and the fierce, mountain-shaving artillery fire of Chinese heavy artillery, and had to begin retreating.

The front was breached, and the two wings were being outflanked. What should be done now? Without waiting for the Commander to order, the Chief of Staff already said with a pale face: "Your Excellency Commander, given the current situation, I suggest a full retreat."

The Defense Line Commander's gaze swept over the other officers in the headquarters. Although everyone he saw said nothing, their expressions already indicated their attitude. The Defense Line Commander sighed slightly; he had tried his best, and the British army had tried its best. But the Chinese army was pouring into British positions like the tide of the sea. Facing the Chinese human sea with complete air superiority, artillery superiority, and a four-fold infantry numerical superiority, there was no other choice besides retreat.

The retreat order was issued at 10:47 AM. Yu Cen received the news that the British army began a full retreat at 11:19 AM. After receiving this news, Yu Cen and the comrades in the division headquarters were all stunned.

The British squad defense was actually fought very well. Moreover, up to now, the vanguard troops rushing at the very front had only punched two small holes in the British second line of defense. And the British army had a total of three lines of defense; to really punch through completely, they would have to fight until at least after 3 PM.

Yu Cen immediately called the Army Group Headquarters, but the line was busy. "Call via radio!" Yu Cen ordered immediately. However, the radio was also busy.

Yu Cen didn't give up and immediately called the Corps Headquarters. The Corps Headquarters line wasn't busy. Even though the sound on the phone wasn't very good, Yu Cen heard a chaotic noise inside the Corps Headquarters. The communications staff officer answering the phone just listened to Yu Cen's question, and with some movement, the Chief of Staff's voice came from the other end, "Division Commander Yu, the Corps Headquarters is the same; we can't figure out what the British army is thinking. The data sent by machine came from the Army Group Headquarters. The Corps Commander is contacting the Army Group Headquarters. Wait a moment, we'll call you back after we finish talking."

Anxiously waiting in front of the phone for 10 minutes, the phone finally rang. After picking it up, the Corps Commander's voice immediately came from the other end, "Division Commander Yu, our division has the greatest attack depth. Now I order you to immediately command the troops to attack with full force."

"Corps Commander, what exactly is going on?" Yu Cen felt the British army might have some conspiracy.

The Corps Commander ordered loudly: "I know something isn't right here, but the Air Force reports that the British army has indeed begun a great retreat. We don't know exactly what is going on either. Your unit is the most forward, so chase them down. I guarantee you, if anything happens during the pursuit, I will take full responsibility. All losses of your unit will be prioritized for resupply."

With words said to this point, Yu Cen knew he had no possibility of refusing, so he immediately said loudly: "I resolutely obey the order. I will move the division headquarters forward and join the troops to implement the pursuit!"

Putting down the phone, Yu Cen shouted to the division personnel surrounding him: "Everyone, except for those staying behind, form a mobile headquarters, join up with the troops, and implement the pursuit!"

Seeing Yu Cen's gaze cold as a blade edge, the Chief of Staff and below immediately saluted, speaking the words Yu Cen said to the Corps Commander, "Resolutely obey orders!"