Chapter 251: Chapter 231: Consecutive Battles and Victories

The defense position built by the Portuguese can indeed withstand some bombardment from the firearms, but they did not consider the threat from above.

As a result, when the Portuguese army was subjected to bombing from above, not only were the majority of Portuguese soldiers unprepared, but the defensive positions that had previously provided them with a lot of protection failed to serve any purpose.

Although there were fewer shells in this round of bombing than before, the shells carried by the bombers were all large-caliber, touch-on-impact bombs, filled with a vast number of fragments of iron, steel balls, glass shards, and other sharp materials to maximize the damage.

As luck would have it, one of the bombs fell right next to the Military Commander of the Portuguese Timor, Khalif Filho, and the force of the explosion swept him away, along with his deputy officer and messenger.

After dropping all the bombs, the bombers immediately turned back without a second thought, leaving behind a buzzing sound in the sky for the Portuguese to hear.

Of course, it would be impossible to kill all the Portuguese soldiers and native soldiers with just over a hundred bombs.

The precision of dropping bombs from high in the sky is not very high, and it would be relatively good if half of the hundred bombs fell near the Portuguese soldiers.

Despite this, the sheer amount of shells falling from the sky causes a fear that can’t easily be alleviated.

Especially the ones who witnessed the shells growing larger in their sight and finally exploding beside them, even if they were lucky enough to escape death, they were already terrified.

This was the case for the Portuguese, let alone the indigenous army that was already loose in numbers.

The indigenous army suffered even more casualties during the bombings; some terrified native people could no longer restrain their inner fear and ran out of their positions, crawling and rolling out of their positions.

If it were under normal circumstances, these indigenous people would be met with bullets and scolding from the Supervising Team as soon as they crawled out of their positions.

But now, with Military Commander Khalif Filho, the deputy officer, and the messenger all killed in the recent bombardment, the Portuguese soldiers of the Supervising Team were still immersed in the fear of the bombardment that had just come from the sky, and they initially failed to notice the disintegration of the indigenous army.

By the time the soldiers of the Supervising Team reacted, many native soldiers had already left their positions, sprinting towards the jungle at full speed.

“Damn it, quickly stop those yellow monkeys!” A quick-thinking Portuguese soldier shouted out in desperation.

As a member of the Supervising Team, overseeing all the native soldiers was their responsibility. If they let these indigenous people successfully dissolve, they would be held accountable whether the war was won or lost.

Seeing that scolding was ineffective, several soldiers from the Supervising Team hurriedly pulled out their rifles and opened fire on the fleeing native soldiers.

Although the sporadic gunshots did bring down a few natives, more of them accelerated their pace of escape after hearing the gunshots, moving forward by rolling and crawling even after falling unintentionally.

The Portuguese soldiers were somewhat annoyed, but the first escaping natives had already run several hundred meters away and were not easily caught.

Helpless, the Supervising Team could only focus on the remaining native soldiers in their positions, carefully preventing other native soldiers from escaping while immediately reporting to Military Commander Khalif Filho.

But how could these soldiers of the Supervising Team know that their commander, to whom they were loyal, had already perished in the earlier bombardment, and their report was destined to be in vain?

On the other side, after the bombing, General Silvio Lonnie Rodlin naturally wouldn’t miss such an excellent opportunity.

After three rounds of consecutive bombings, the morale of the Portuguese collapsed and the indigenous army even began to flee.

This was the best opportunity for the First Division to attack; if successful, they could even take the enemy’s position in one fell swoop.

Of course, to implement the requirement of minimal casualties, General Silvio Lonnie Rodlin specifically ordered the artillery to bombard the enemy’s position once more before the infantry launched their assault.

This round of bombing, like the first one, was carried out on a large scale and at a high frequency.

This was to prevent the Portuguese from counterattacking the soldiers of the First Division and causing unnecessary casualties.

This was also the current logistics advantage of Australasia. Faced with just a thousand Portuguese troops and two thousand indigenous troops, the First Division had already consumed hundreds of shells and even deployed bombers for this purpose.

Of course, the effect of doing so was very apparent. The First Division had not suffered any casualties so far, while the Portuguese had suffered heavy casualties, and the vast majority of the survivors had already lost their will to fight.

Under the cover of the artillery, the soldiers of the First Division quickly approached the Portuguese positions.

At this point, there were few Portuguese soldiers left with thewill to fight, and they were all suppressed by the artillery so much that they couldn’t even raise their heads.

It wasn’t until the soldiers of First Division were only a hundred meters away from the Portuguese positions that the coverage of the artillery fire quietly moved towards the rear of the enemy’s positions to avoid injuring the soldiers of the First Division.

At this point, the surviving Portuguese soldiers, due to the death of their commander and the fear of the previous bombings and air raids, had been hiding in concrete facilities and did not dare to come out, thus naturally unable to counterattack at the slowly approaching Australasian soldiers.